THE CALL FOR MEN

The great crowd of men that heard Captain Beith last night in the Union must have realized the tragic similarity between the unprepared condition of England at the beginning of the war and the present condition of our country. The spontaneous applause at the close of Captain Beith's talk was evidence that Harvard men approved the service that the speaker had given his country. Will patriotic undergraduates stop at mere approval of personal sacrifice, or will they mirror it?

The mass meeting in Sanders Theatre tonight is intended for all who are in the least interested in the movement for individual military fitness. All who have hesitated until now from uncertainty or indifference should be there to justify their indifference, or to allay their uncertainty. Those who have already enrolled should be there to obtain a comprehensive knowledge of the work and training they will undergo. Over 800 men expressed themselves by ballot in favor of a plan of universal military training. Surely they did not mean to exclude themselves. The new plan of instruction is the means whereby they may prove the sincerity of their words, and remedy in so far as lies in their power the weakness which they have declared exists in the nation. The new course in Military Science may mean the dropping of other desired courses. It may mean personal hardship by small and continuous sacrifices. Each man dislikes to sign away his future. Such procrastinators console themselves with the thought that should their nation be put to the test, it will be time enough then to show their loyalty and their devotion.

It would be well if we could put off till tomorrow what seems obnoxious today. But war will not be put off, not by the desires of one nation, nor the delay of its young men. Preparation against calamity takes long. Yet calamity itself comes suddenly, overnight. We are so near war now that the sinking of one American ship, the wanton destruction of American lives, would draw us inevitably into the maelstrom.

The Germans have a folk-proverb whose meaning is simple enough: "Morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute Sagen immer faule leute." Shall we be those idle people who trust to the morrow for shouldering the burdens of today? Today's burden is to be present at Sanders Theatre.