LIEUT. MORIZE ADVISES UNDER-AGE MEN TO WAIT

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Is it a good thing for Harvard undergraduates, who, because of their age, are not yet liable to draft, to try to find some way of entering the service immediately, and give up their studies, in order to make use of their good will, their physical strength, and their intellectual capacity in some kind of war work?

The answer, I think, is very simple. Will you allow me to express frankly my opinion, as an officer, as a former university professor, and especially as a personal friend of all of you?

Here is what I think:

Desire to Enlist Praiseworthy.

The motives which have caused and are still causing many of you to look for a place in the service before you are called are entirely worthy and noble. You feel that you are young, full of strength and enthusiasm. You realize that the first thing to do is to win--and you feel it would be extremely satisfactory both to your feelings and to your reason not merely to seize the chance of serving but to make for yourselves a chance of serving.

I admire you and I like you the better for feeling and talking that way.

Truly Patriotic to Wait.

But I say: Keep that attitude as your cherished capital, but wait--wait till those who are entrusted with the destinies of your country call on you to contribute it. By so doing, in the first place, you will be carrying out the wishes of your country. Certain men have been assigned the heavy task of organizing the resources of the nation for this tremendous struggle. They know where men are to be found, and what are each man's qualifications and abilities. Your names, your worth, your possibilities are known. When you are needed, you will be called. Every month, every week, the War Department says. "We need so many men, of such and such categories--and it finds them. On the day when there is need for so many thousand young students for such and such branches of the service, you will be told, you will be called; and on that day I should blame you if you did not go, just as vehemently as I now urge you to stay where you are. If it is true that this war is not only a soldier's war but a people's war, we must have strict organization of all resources of the nation. And just as the commander of a military force is the only master who may dispose of the services and of the lives of his men, so the leaders of your country are the only masters who may decide where and when and how each one of you should give his work, his brain, or his life. The will of your country is that you should be ready to go when you are called on to go--but not till then.

Great Demand For Officers.

What are you supposed to be is a training school for officers. If your country has need of you, it is primarily as future officers. The war is not going to be over in a few weeks; there will be, as you know, a terrible loss of officers. Look at the British casualty lists for the last few weeks, and note the proportion of officers killed and wounded. It is by preparing yourselves as fully as possible to fulfil that function eventually that you will show the most intelligent realization of your duty. If you go and drive an ambulance in Italy or a motor-truck in France, or clean the motor of an airplane behind the lines somewhere, you will be doing a useful and necessary work; but if you devote yourselves to that you will be squandering human resources. There will be need of officers, always more officers: you are not only a Reserve Officers' Training Corps, but you constitute the reserve of the officers now in the American Army. Don't forget that.

Prepare For Reconstruction Work.

Furthermore, you are preparing for a still greater work. Victory will mean nothing unless the victors are ready to make use of it. In a great military operation, large reserves are necessary to exploit a success. In the war itself there is need of vast reserves of energy and of intelligence to insure, after the victory, the resumption and continuation and expansion of national activity. In every walk of life there will be empty places everywhere there will be need of trained and developed men to fill those empty places, immediately and effectively. Every one of you, in the special line in which you are working, has a grave responsibility: you are like the soldier in the trenches who holds himself ready to take the place of the comrade who falls. On the day when, in a liberated world, intellectual, industrial, commercial activity begins again, no place should remain empty. On that day you, who are young, must be ready. And what your country will ask of you then will not be whether you have driven an ambulance or whether you got ahead of the draft by a few weeks or a few months, but whether you are ready to take in hand some indispensable task which must have men prepared and matured by study. You are the workmen who must do the work that has got to be done.

Need For Strict Discipline.

Lastly, this is a good opportunity for you to apply to yourselves that strict discipline which is the first duty of a soldier. Your nation asks you to stay, when you would like to go: a sacrifice of your personal inclinations. I come back, you see, again and again, to the idea that I never tire of repeating: the