Officers the Great Need.

If we should have war tomorrow the biggest problem confronting this country would not be that of getting men or uniforms, or rifles or machine guns. Our industries are today better organized for the production of equipment and munitions than they have been for fifty years. The most acute problem would be that of supplying a half-million men with the necessary officers. Nearly 30,000 of these would be needed and needed immediately, for without officers even the rudiments of drill and organization cannot be carried through. Right there, as the experience of other countries in the war has shown, would be our most stupendous problem. Even a lieutenant cannot be trained in minor tactics, map reading, entrenchment methods, range-finding, out-post duties, company drill, and so forth, in less than three months, yet how can we hope to train an army without first training its officers?

This explains why Harvard and the other colleges are making such elaborate preparations for an emergency which is sure to arise if war should come. They realize that for them war may mean a general cessation of academic instruction, the turning of dormitories into barracks and of athletic fields into drill grounds. They know that the best service the colleges could render would be to transform themselves at once into so many training schools for officers. At Cambridge and elsewhere the authorities have foreseen this eventuality and are ready for it if it should come. --Boston Herald.