ENGINEERS SHOULD NOT JOIN RANKS IN EVENT OF WAR

The report of the all Technology undergraduate preparedness committee, as presented at a mass meeting of the students yesterday, advises against hasty rush to join the army in case of war. Looking at the matter as a problem in engineering, the committee finds that the best service technically trained men can render their country would be not to join the ranks and fight in the trenches, but to hold their training and knowledge in reserve for the engineering problems of a great army. The committee takes Germany and England as examples, since the former refrained from calling out the undergraduates of the colleges for a long time, while the latter country made the mistake of permitting men with special qualifications, who would have been much more useful behind the lines, to enlist. The committee recommends the medical examination of the students so that those found physically unfit for service in the army or navy should be ready to enter industrial work.

There will be no enlistments at M. I. T. as a unit, the objection being that such a unit would mean the concentration of material of the same kind, the diffusion of which would insure its better utilization. But for those men who are desirous of joining the army the committee recommends the Engineers' Corps, Coast Artillery and Ordnance Department.