RESERVE CORPS BIG AID

"The situation in the colleges of England before the war broke out was somewhat different from that in your American universities and colleges today," said Captain Ian Hay Beith, in an interview with a CRIMSON reporter just before his lecture in Tremont Temple yesterday afternoon. "You see, we had had our Officers' Training Corps as a regular institution in the life of the British student, which prepared the undergraduates for ordinary military service, the work of the corps being extremely popular and purely voluntary. When a man in training had passed an examination proving his ability as a potential officer, he received what is known as a Government grant, and also a grant of money for those who then went into the regular army. So, at the end of every academic year young men were turned out all over England experienced in military drill and skilled in the use of a rifle, ready to serve as army officers in case of a national emergency. Your Reserve Officers' Training Corps is conducted on much the same lines, I understand, and you can realize what a great aid our young student-officers proved to England, when the German forces started across Belgium in the late summer of 1914.

"The great public schools of England had much the same system as the colleges before the war with the junior branch of the Officers' Training Corps. At the end of their courses the graduates mostly went into civil life, but the experience they received in military drill while in the schools proved invaluable when the time for action came. You see, when the war broke out there was an immediate call for officers and instantly there was a response from 25,000 of the old boys, who had received training as officers in the different colleges and schools.

"Oxford and Cambridge are practically empty now, and only a handful of foreign students are attending classes in either of these universities. A good many institutions of learning have closed their doors, and several of the colleges have been turned into training schools and military hospitals. All the students have gone to the front and many have sacrificed their lives for their country. None have remained, not even the theological students, whom the church will not accept if they are fit for military service. In regard to compulsory service in England, we have had to come to it, there being no other alternative, and have had it for about a year.

"The sending of an expeditionary force from the United States will undoubtedly have a great moral effect on the allied powers, and, personally, I think one will be very welcome, provided it is composed of trained men. Naturally an untrained force would have serious drawbacks, as there is the transportation of food and various other matters to be considered, which are of vital importance. It seems to me that it would be best to train the men in this country first, and then send them to the European front.

"I think the work of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps in the American universities, and especially at Harvard, is excellent and on the right lines. I agree thoroughly with General Wood on the subject of intensive training for the R. O. T. C., and believe that the development of officers in the American universities is of vital importance to the country. They cannot do better than to carry out the Plattsburg idea of military training. I am immensely impressed with the situation in the colleges of the United States today, and the work of their members is being watched with interest by the countries on both sides of the water.