ENLISTMENT IN ERC WILL CLOSE BY DECEMBER 31

This is the first of two articles which will present material released by the War Service Information Bureau. By Jerome D. Greene, 2nd.

Although the Enlisted Reserve Corps will close up tight at Harvard after October 20, and throughout the country after the end of the year, there is a good chance that it will re-open for the class of 1947, declared Elliot Perkins, director of War Service Information, yesterday.

As a result of Secretary of War Stimson's announcement a month age, the presumption now is that all enlistees in the Military Reserve may expect to be inducted into the regular Army at the end of the scholiast term in which they attain their draft age. Exception may be made, however, in the case of a very few pre-med, pre-dental, and electronics concentrators. "I am willing to guess," said Perkins, "with the situation as vague as it is, that we will have a clear statement from the War Department within the next two or three weeks."

No Time For Doubt

With the release of this long-awaited official communique, the true status of all ERC men, deferred draft-agers, and eighteen-and nineteen year-olds, will be clearly defined.

An irreconcilable gap, Perkins believes, lies between college and military views on the fundamental purpose for ERC. From the date of its inception, undergraduate enlistees have looked on the Reserve as a means of guaranteeing two years of liberal study, as an "educational procurement facility," whereas the War department considers it purely and simply "an officer procurement plan."