PROPORTIONATE TRAINING.

In discussing the establishment of a Field Artillery Training Unit at the University next year, General Edwards said. "In addition to the artillery and infantry units. I would favor aviation, heavy artillery, and chemical warfare units." This statement raises a very interesting and difficult problem in connection with military training at colleges and universities. It is obvious that each university cannot reasonably be expected to maintain R. O. T. C. units in all branches of the service; and on the other hand, all colleges cannot seize upon the same branch of service to the exclusion of fancied less desirable ones. Heterogeneous action of this sort would inevitably result in a bad proportionment of trained officers among the various divisions of military service.

To eliminate this serous possibility of an over-supply of officers in some branches, and an under-supply in others, some definite form of proportioning must eventually be resorted to, which of course implies a control over schools by a central authority that is non-existent at the present time. As the quotation given previously suggests, the University is large enough to maintain a number of units representing the different divisions of service. However, for the sake of thoroughness and efficiency, smaller schools would necessarily be limited in the number of different units which they could profitably estabish.

Few colleges have yet taken direct steps toward the organization of military units. They have rather been occupied in getting back to a pre-war basis after the disrupting effects of the S. A. T. C. There is, however, a firm determination that military training shall become a reality, and the conviction created from experience that the University is the proper place to provide the requisite technical training. Hence, the present chaotic ideas upon the system and methods to be employed will, perforce, have to be straightened out before the opening of the colleges next fall. In the meantime it is very essential that such problems as the one already discussed be decided one way or the other. In short, the universities and colleges throughout the country must not be made the object of experimentation if previous solutions can prevent it.