GOODNIGHT! GOODNIGHT!!

"University and military training are not compatible," says Dean S. H. Goodnight, former director of education of the S. A. T. C. at the University of Wisconsin. The American Union Against Militarism goes him one better by declaring in a circular letter appealing for members in the colleges that this opinion has been given support by authorities in most his authorities in most of the colleges where the system was tried out. Among its members, this organization boasts such prominent peace-at-any-price advocates as Oswald G. Villard, of the "Nation" who officiates as chairman, Amos Pinchot, vice-chairman, and Professor Emily G. Balch, of Wellesley. It is hard to reconcile their statement with the facts here, at New Haven, and at the other colleges with which we are most intimately associated. Dean Goodnight's opinion is based solely on the S. A. T. C., the least successful of the training organizations yet tried out. The S. A. T. C. was not at all representative, suffering as it did from many war-time handicaps. Its rolls were filled not with the names of regular undergraduates, for they had already gone into active service, but with the names of younger men who seized this opportunity to enter college without examinations at the expense of the government, and of a few older men evading active duty. Few were of college calibre. Dean Goodnight forgets, (what a convenient memory), the R. O. T. C., the Yale battery, and the similar institutions at other colleges, which were much more representative than the S. A. T. C. of college military training as it is in peace time, and which by concensus of opinion were highly successful. He waxes most enthusiastic in his denunciation apparently of all college training systems in general. In a speech to members of the Madison Civics Club he stressed the fact that "not even the hateful Prussian military system was ever extended to curtail the freedom enjoyed in the German universities." In their circular letter the Union Against Militarism adds this even more oratorical climax: "It is to be hoped that in their effort to out-Prussia Prussia, American preparedness agitators will be balked by sane and sound American public opinion."

Shades of William Jennings Bryan! The "cross of gold" speech hardly exceeds these words in eloquence. Yet we fear that in spite of all this flowery criticism the Union Against Militarism will gain few members here. Dean Goodnight may wave his arms in angry denunciation or bow before us with platitudinous pleadings, yet the plans for the furtherance of military training at Harvard will continue to receive their present well-deserved support.

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much."