STUDENTS SHOULD LEAD ARMY

In the current number of Every body's Magazine, President Jacob Gould Schurman, LL.D. '09, of Cornell, puts forth some interesting views on the question of military training in the colleges. He bases his article on the problem of national defence and on the country's present un preparedness to cope with attack, and offers as a solution of the problem the systematic tutoring of college men for positions as officers in time of emergency. President Schurman does not advance his view simply as a possible scheme; he regards such a course as the only remedy for the precarious conditions in our national defence.

Although in 1913, with the exception of Great Britain, the reserves of the other powers were each estimated at over a million, the United States has no reserves whatever. The present task of Lord Kitchener bespeaks the effect of Great Britain's policy. There is a general confidence in our volunteer system. Experience has shown that many hundreds of thousands would readily respond to a call, and this mere statement of the numbers available is apt to produce a false feeling of security. General Leonard Wood, M.D. '84, has declared that 300,000 men would be necessary at the outset of an attack on this country; the total available mobile force is at present less than 90,000, and that discrepancy, coupled with the absolute need of thousands of more officers to train recruits, makes up our present problem.

52 Schools Aid.

In 1913, counting Hawaii and Porto Rico, there were fifty-two land grant colleges and universities having a required term of military service, and these enrolled in their military departments 23,864 students. The movement favored by President Schurman is thus already on its way, but to date, the Government has paid little attention to the work, and it is a definite course of action which is suggested.

President Schurman urges in the first place that the Government offer such commissions in the regular army to the best trained men in the military departments of our colleges and universities, that after a year, they may return to civil life, retaining their commissions as officers of the reserve. Next, he suggests that such institutions as already have military training go a step further and establish regular military departments, in which those desiring to fit themselves for the military profession might study the theoretical branches underlying that profession, as is now done at West Point, while at the same time undergoing a more extensive and intensive practical military training than that now required of other students." These departments should, he declares, be established by Federal appropriations, the cost of each of which should not exceed $20,000 per year. Such a plan would well solve our present problem.

Private Institutions Willing.

Of the privately endowed institutions, which are not forced by Federal obligations to maintain a military curriculum, President Schurman speaks as follows:

"The privately endowed universities and larger colleges--or many of them--would, I believe, if the Government authorized the necessary detail of officers, be quite willing to organize voluntary classes for military training. This is a resource which the Government should by all means utilize and develop. The system of military training now in operation in the land-grant colleges and universities might be at once extended to these sister institutions; and as new experiments were tried out in the former they could be established in the latter.

"It is quite conceivable that we may see the athletic excesses from which American colleges and universities still suffer find an effective corrective in military drill, with results highly beneficial to the individual and immensely serviceable and helpful in the Republic. Such students, if our Government only has the with to utilize existing institutions and develop well-established practices, could be prepared before graduation to qualify as military officers competent to train in time of war our volunteer armies, which in a last resort form the military bulwark of the Republic."