WILL HOLD MILITARY COURSES

Plans have been completed for the establishment of a permanent military school at Columbia University in which three branches of military science and tactics--infantry, artillery, and signal corps work, --will be taught in co-operation with the regular graduate and undergraduate work of the university. It has been announced by that university that, in accordance with the plans of the War Department which is arranging to establish military schools in universities and colleges throughout the country, Columbia hopes to create a large body of trained officers, whose numbers will be increased with every graduating class, and who will be trained and ready for active service if the United States should again be called to war.

It is expected that a battery of eight inch howitzers of the latest model and of the type used by the American heavy artillery regiments on the western front will be installed. Trench mortars, anti-aircraft guns, and a complete set of range-finding instruments and plotting boards such as those used by the Coast Artillery Corps will also be included in the equipment. The Infantry Reserve Officers' Training Corps which is in operation at present will be enlarged next all by the addition of a machine gun company.

In describing the work of the heavy artillery branch, Lieut. Col. A. R. Edwards, Professor of Military Science and Tactics at Columbia recently explained the plan as follows: "Membership in the heavy artillery unit will be open to pre-engineering students in their second college year, and should be completed at the end of the second year in the graduate Engineering School, four years in all. Courses in gunnery, orientation, artillery fundamentals, embracing field service regulations, military law, and artillery material will be given.

"Students in the artillery school, without expense to themselves and probably under pay from the government, will be required to attend two summer camps of six weeks each at Fort Monroe. The first camp will be held at the end of the first year of military training in order that the student may be taught the fundamentals of drill and military view point. The second camp will come after the student has completed all of his theoretical training so that he will be competent at this time to determine firing data and to conduct target practice with big guns."

Colonel Edwards also emphasized the fact that military instruction at Columbia would be co-ordinated with the regular work of the students. Courses in heavy artillery will fit logically with the courses of the men preparing to be civil engineers, and training in the Signal Corps will be closely connected with the work of students of electrical engineering.