HEADQUARTERS DEVELOPMENT UNIT
				Camp Grant, Illinois



					January 15, 1919.


Mr. Clarence I. Smith, Jr.,
5838 St. Elmo Ave.,
College Hill
Cincinnati, Ohio.


My dear Mr. Smith:

	I have your letter of the 26th ult. in which you ask my advice 
as to your future course in going to a Military Academy.  My advice 
is, don't think of it.  If you put one-half of the time, patience, 
diligence and "pep" in any other profession or vocation, you will 
succeed and get rich but if you go thru the Military Academy it 
means a dog's life while you are there and for years after you grad-
uate, a pittance of a salary as a subaltern and in the end retirement 
on a mere competence, which does not pay if you have a little girl 
in view that wishes to wear diamonds.

	I tell you this as a brother who has been over the whole road.  
I wish I had taken my time and put it in tropical agriculture and 
supplement it with the Spanish language and I would have been a rich 
man now instead of a Colonel on the scrap heap of the U.S. Army.

				Very sincerely yours,


						 CHAS. YOUNG
						COLONEL, U.S. ARMY
						COMMANDING.

y/p

			

Charles Young Collection

Letter from Charles Young to Clarence I. Smith Jr.