University Backward in Co-operation.

(We invite all men in the University to submit communications on subjects of timely interest, but assume no responsibility for sentiments expressed under this head.)

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I have been interested in following in your columns the news of the programs made by other colleges or universities toward the establishment of units of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. But it has been a source of regret to me, and I fancy to many other Harvard graduates also, to contrast these programs with on own inactivity in the matter. It would appear, indeed, as if the reluctance of the University last year to encourage or sanction even the Volunteer Regiment was to be repeated in a similar unwillingness now to co-operate with the War Department in a patriotic work of great importance. Last year the Volunteer Regiment succeeded in spite of academic indifference and discouragement through the enthusiasm and the self-sacrifice of the student body. It would seem as if it were now time for the graduates to make every effort and use every influence to see that this more important and vital measure does not die of similar inanition on the part of the University, and to insure the immediate establishment of a unit of the Corps at Harvard.

The need for action at once is great. The War Department regulations require twenty-eight weeks of drill during the college year, and the time for complying with this requirement grows short. Yale has already made her application for a unit at New Haven, and Cornell and Pennsylvania have announced their intention of so doing. Even if the time is not yet ripe for any action on our part, has not the moment arrived for at least a word to assure us that the University is actively engaged in considering how Harvard can best fulfill the plans which the War Department has proposed and comply with the regulations which the military authorities have deemed necessary to its most efficient operation? B. A. G. FULLER '00.