Military Activities

"For a great many years there has been maintained at this school a battalion of cadets who have added a military touch to the campus of the institution. The value of military training for youths of the adolescent period of life is widely and almost universally recognized. It adds dignity to the school as well as to the individual. It promotes a proper posture and carriage and fosters the health of every boy. Pure military drill is as effective as gymnastics in promoting the general health and tone of the body, and combined with gymnastics makes an ideal combination for health building. Marching to music and command is so well recognized in this respect that it is a component part of all well organized gymnastic courses though they may be organized and sponsored without thought of any military training and their sponsors may even be utterly opposed to all things military.

                          
In the army, parades and ceremonies have been found a necessity in order to break up the drab monotony of the confining and fatiguing life of the soldier. The music, the pomp and ceremony, the pride of organization and of regalia serve to build an esprit de Corps that is impossible of attainment in any other way. Here again we take a lesson from the army, and by dressing our boys in their finest, and allowing them to parade once a week with their own officers, their own band and their own stand of colors, instill in them a pride of organization and of person and helps them forget the less pleasant things of a life shut away from the world."1