testify on the spot after the doctors had brought him too.

There was no lowering of the standards in the succeeding years, which
saw the development of players like Hackett, Prince, Farnsworth and
Davis. Those years too saw the rise of such wonderful forwards as W. W.
(Red) Erwin and that huge man from Alaska, D. D. Pullen.

Coming now to more recent times, the coaching was turned over to H. M.
Nelly, assisted by Joseph W. Beacham, fresh from chasing the little
brown brother in the Philippines. Beacham had made a great reputation at
Cornell, and there was evidence that he had kept up with the game at
least in the matter of strategic possibilities, even while in the
tangled jungle of Luzon. He brought with him even more than that--an
uncanny ability to see through the machinery of the team and pick out
its human qualities, upon which he never neglected to play. There have
been few coaches closer to his men than Joe.

Whenever I talk football with Joe Beacham he never forgets to mention
Vaughn Cooper, to whom he gives a large share of the credit for the good
work of his elevens. Cooper was of the quiet type, whose specialty was
defense. These two made a great team.

It was in this period that West Point saw the development of one of its
greatest field generals. There was nothing impressive in the physical
appearance of little H. L. Hyatt. A reasonably good man, ball in hand,
his greatest value lay in his head work. As the West Point trainer said
one day: "I've got him all bandaged up like a leg in a puttee, but from
the neck up he's a piece of ice." The charts of games in which Hyatt ran
the team are set before the squad each year as examples, not merely of
perfect generalship, but of the proper time to violate that generalship
and make it go, a distinction shared by Prichard, who followed in his
footsteps with added touches of his own.

One cannot mention Prichard's name without thinking at once of Merillat,
who, with Prichard, formed one of the finest forward passing
combinations the game has seen. Both at Franklin Field and at the Polo
Grounds this pair brought woe to the Navy.

These stars had able assistance in the persons of McEwan, one of the
greatest centers the game has seen and who was chosen to lead the team
in 1916, Weyand, Neyland and O'Hare, among the forwards, and the
brilliant and sturdy Oliphant in the backfield, the man whose slashing
play against the Navy in 1915 will never be forgotten. Oliphan