The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-10-07
HAZING.

Recent dispatches announced the ar
rest and impending court-martial of two
naval cadets at Annapolis Naval Academy
for hazing two fourth class men. The
damning characteristic of all these pro-
ceedings known as hazing is their coward
ice and brutality, and this is the reason
why the government is generally merciless
to cadets convicted of hazing either at West
Point or Annapolis. At West Point the
practice has been stamped out. If hazing
simply stood for sportive lawlessness and
harmless though vexatious pleasantly it
would not reflect disgrace upon the cadets,
but it extends to systematic brutality and
tyranny of the most cowardly description.
At every trial for hazing at Annapolis
the evidence shows that a brutal system
of tagging, as bad as that which fifty years
ago made the great English public schools
q hell to a delicate, sensitive lad, exists,
sustained not only by terrorzing the
younger cadets, but by physical force. A
young boy is overpowered by numbers,
and when he shows fight he is immedi-
ately matched against great hulking class
bully, his superior in age, strength and
skill. and Is pounded into submission.
The authorities of the naval academy of
late years have justly made a severe ex-
ample of all cadets convicted of hazing.
The authorities fairly hold that the
strongest stress of condemnation must be
placed upon all acts which prove that the
education of an officer is not associated
with the spirit of gentleman. An act of
cowardiy tyranny is an objectionable
ofense at q military or naval school,
and a cadet guilty of it ought
to be expelled. for such crea-
ture is sure to become the petty
tyrant Of the quarter deck, or brutal des-
pot in military life. The despotic powers
that are necessary 10 the efficient ad.
ministration of matters of life and death
in the army and navy are capable of be-
ing perverted to acts of horrible abuse and
! inhumanisy when entrusted to a man who
Is possessed OF tyrannical temper and
brutal, cowardly spirit. An officer, who is
inbaed with the courage, the chivalry and
seif-restraint that mark gentleman in the
exercise of despotic authority, never for.
gets that his enormous powers are deli
cate, grave and responsible trust, which he
cannot in honor divert from strict mill
tary justice to crafty personal spite, OF to
satisfy the promptings of = savage, vim
dictive or tyrannical spirit; but q student
who leaves military or naval
school with scholarship and train
ing enough TO become an officer, yet with
the spirit and aggressive arrogance of
petty tyrant, can easily make a ship a
floating hell TO his men. or garrison as
gloomy as prison to his company, with
out doing anything TO make himself liable
to punishment by court-martial, Just as
judge can make himself a judicial terror
and brute TO the bar without making him.
self technically liable to impeachment.
Anybody who saw service in the civil
war can testify TO the capacity of an
orderly sergeant TO make a company by
firm, just and discreet administration of
authority, or 60 break il by brutal misruls
and capricious temper. For this reason all
acts of hazing that pass the broad bound.
airy line between sportive lawlessness and
downright brutality and cowardly tyranny
ought to be mercilessly punished. No
cadet who behaves like a passionate.
brutal tyrant and coward ought 10 he
suffered TO remain an hour in
military or naval government school.
A mere tyrant is bad enough, but il he is
brave enough to scorn 10 take cowardly
advantage of his fellows there IS hope that
his manly courage may hold in restraint
his arbitrary temper, but when the tvrant
Is also a cowardly brute he is hopeless; he
should never be given ship or permitted
70 wear sword. The Annapolis authors