"THEY ALSO SERVE."

The decision of many students who are yet under age to return to College, contrary to their first enthusiastic resolutions last spring, is desirable in many ways.

It must be confessed that the military ardor is never purely a desire for service, unmixed with the love of adventure, and in young men the latter impulse may become stronger than the first. Many misled by the bugles and banners of war, thought to undertake it lightly as they had undertaken other pursuits lightly. We must acknowledge that war, in its most poetic and gaudy guise, is far too terrible a work to be undertaken lightly. For such men a continuation of their college course would be the best course, both as regards themselves and their nation.

If the draft law was wisely planned (and it was planned slowly enough by those who are reputedly our wisest men) then the nation does not need in the work it has set out to do the services of men beyond the statutory limits. The first purpose of the draft law was to get the services of all men within the ten years prescribed. The second purpose was to relieve from those not called the stigma of failing their cause.

It is obvious that one may not measure to the year and the day the age of an individual's mind. Some men of nineteen may be more fit to undertake the military life than some boys of twenty-three. But as an average the younger man, the boy, should not be called to arms.

We have been relieved of the volunteer system, which is heroic, bombastic, and quite wasteful. In its place we have substituted the draft system, much less inspiring, but quite necessary in this age of specialization. Just as all men of twenty-one to thirty-one have been drafted for our martial armies, so men over thirty-one have been drafted to continue the business of our country. And in like measure boys under twenty-one have been drafted to continue their education, that the class of intelligent men may not be diminished in a future decade.

Let us be sensible about the thing. The work lies at each man's hand to be done; the one for the rifle, the other for the book. It should be done as allotted.

Only let those who are drafted to remain remember this: As those who serve on the battlefield or in the fleet will do their work faithfully and well to their utmost so they who serve in keeping alive our heritage of knowledge must do their work faithfully and well. They are stewards to serve in place of the brave young men who have gone. From that responsibility, from that draft, there is no exemption.