URGES ESTABLISHMENT OF CONTINENTAL RESERVES

Professor Edwin J. Clapp, head of the Department of Economics at New York University, urges the establishment by the Government of a Continental Force, the ranks of which shall be composed of students in colleges, high schools, and preparatory schools.

Persons of this type could without difficulty or loss, in fact with definite benefits derived therefrom, give at least a year for the necessary military training, Dr. Clapp asserts.

Depending chiefly upon college men not out of college more than three years and high school students not continuing their education, 200,000 men could be recruited annually, is the contention of Professor Clapp. With these men subject to call for four years, the country in five years would have 1,000,000 regular soldiers with officers.

In his statement Dr. Clapp says: "In common with many of my fellow citizens I am impressed with the objections of army men to the proposed system of completing our military system by training Continentals, a new sort of militia.

"These Continentals are to be trained for a period of two months in each of three successive years and then for a number of years to hold themselves subject to military duty.

"A serious objection is that six months of training, so broken, would not suffice to make a soldier. Army men state that a continuous year is the minimum.

"Moreover, it will be a rare man who can afford two months each year for three years away from his occupation. Such interruptions do not go with the making of an American career.

"Employers who voluntarily grant such leaves of absence will act from motives of philanthropy, not business. Even were these difficulties overcome, the patchwork of six months, so spent, would not make a soldier.

"There is a class of men who could without loss and indeed with profit give up two months of three successive years to this training. These men are students in high schools, preparatory schools and colleges. Most of them are idle during an annual three months vacation. If six scattered months made a soldier these students could be made into a Continental force.

"I believe that a great many of these same men can be had for an entire year of training, namely, the year after graduation from college, or if education is not carried beyond the high school, the year after graduating from high school.

"For a business career this year of setting up and discipline would be a valuable adjunct to academic training. Whether the fault is ours or that of the home, many of our graduates lack discipline, respect for another, a sense of order and responsibility to arrange their days and make the most of them.

"Private employers who complain that their employees lack these fundamental qualities, would not be slow to give preference to the men who had them."