ROOSEVELT URGES ENLISTMENT

I very earnestly hope that Harvard men, both graduate and undergraduate, will enroll for the military training camps to be held during the coming summer. There will be camps at Plattsburg, N. Y.; Fort Oglethorpe, Ga.; Indianapolis, Ind.; San Antonio, Texas; Salt Lake, Utah; Monterey, Cal.; and American Lake, Wash. It is of especial importance that the training camps have the support of the undergraduate body.

These camps are the entering wedge for a system of universal and obligatory military training for universal and obligatory military service--that is for service, in time of war, by each man in whatever capacity the country needs him. In this nation, just as in every other nation that endures, there exist obligations of citizenship as well as privileges. The obligation to render military service to the country rests upon all citizens, share and share alike, each according to the best of his ability. The camps provide the machinery for the operation of a system of universal military training under exclusive federal control. At present, however, they rest upon a voluntary basis, upon a basis which permits one man to volunteer to fight his neighbor's battles for him, and which allows the employer to "volunteer" the services of his employees to do his fighting for him. This is not only undemocratic but un-American and must be corrected if this nation is to endure.

When attendance at camps such as these is made obligatory for the young men of the nation, when the farmer's boy and the banker's boy, the son of the brakeman or mill worker and the son of the manufacturer or railroad president, the college boy and the public schoolboy rub shoulders together in military training, share the same dog-tents and recognize the equality of obligation that rests upon them all, the fibre of democracy in this country will have been immeasurably strengthened.

I bespeak for the training camps, the support of every Harvard man. I regard enrolment therein as a solemn duty resting upon all properly qualified men. I especially urge the undergraduate body to take the lead in this movement, so full of hope for the future of America.