SMALL PROBLEMS

The introduction into the plan of military training of class-room work, which is conducted in much the same manner as the ordinary College routine, has brought the embryo soldier back from the military cloudland in which he has been wandering for the past two weeks of uninterrupted drill. Class-rooms are something to which he has become inured by long training. Much as he may tremble on the field before the eye of the omniscent instructor, once safe behind the first-line trenches of a bench in a Sever Hall room, he feels himself master of his own destiny. The instructor is there to find out how little he knows. He is there to show how much.

But the class-room work which is now being undertaken may not be "passed" as other work is passed, counted for a degree, and forgotten. The course of training is for the individual man that he may become a better soldier? No one is working for marks, no one is trying to hoodwink an instructor, no one is doing the minimum of study, who is fit to be an officer and a leader of men. That student cadet who allows his study of the work he has undertaken to slip by as most men have allowed their college work to slip by, is not gaining something at a small cost; he is not deserving his instruction. The deception is against himself. He is the man to suffer.

When as officers the students of the Corps get out on the battle line, what opinion their instructor had of their aptitude or cleverness will be of small moment. The thing that will matter then is whether they can solve quickly and soundly "small problems for infantry," and great ones when the need shall come.

Not A's nor C's are the goal of our endeavor, but ability in the crucial hour.