AVOID THE WARFARE STATE

To the Editors of The Crimson: As a longtime student of Military Science and Tactics, I would like to comment briefly upon the ongoing controversy about the recent Harvard University decision to discontinue its ROTC unit. I served as a Field Artillery Instructor of ROTC units at the University of Missouri for four years and have continued since retirement my interest in and studies of the ROTC in relation to national defense.

As far as the ROTC is concerned, I shall limit my remarks primarily to the U.S. Army in which I served for more than 34 years. After the Civil War and before World War I, the Army was quite small and reverted to that state almost immediately after World War I ended, and remained quite small until shortly before Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.

Between the two big wars, the ROTC served to promote to some degree the purpose of keeping alive some interest at least in the Army as part of our national defense. The ROTC also provided the means for an increase in the officer corps for instructors as did the National Guard and small Reserve units. Before the electronic-thermonuclear age, mass armies made sense and, therefore, the Reserve forces of every kind served a useful purpose.

All of this, however, has changed since the introduction of thermo-nuclear and other mass weapons of destruction. Mass military forces are therefore now, not only very expensive, but utterly useless for national defense purposes. Even during the age of conventional warfare, the ROTC was of questionable value. General Leslie J. MacNair under whom I served at the Field Artillery School, Ft. Sill, and ROTC summer training at Ft. Know (then Camp Knox), and who was in charge of our military training program during World War II, told me that the officers commissioned through the ROTC program required as much additional training before qualifying for command, and often more than those without any previous military training. He explained this by stating that many of them had much to unlearn, and often superior material was available for training. He ended our conference by stating that at the end of the war, he planned to recommend the abolition of the ROTC program. This was in October, 1942. Unfortunately, he was killed during the invasion of Normandy, June, 1944.

Between the big wars, 1918-1941, propaganda for defense purposes was necessary. Now, peace propaganda is necessary in order to avoid the warfare state. Mass military forces now, are not only completely unnecessary, but even dangerous. A small highly trained professional military force capable of handling present sophisticated weapons would provide all of the security possible through military means. The $50-odd billion thus saved annually from the present bloated military budget, if used for better schools, medical care, increased employment, and aid for the aged and infirm would, I believe, add a very great deal to national security by increasing national stability and national unity. Hugh B. Hester   Brig. General U.S. Army [Ret.]