URGES COLLEGE MEN TO PREPARE FOR WAR

Major-General Edwards, a graduate of the United States Military Academy in the class of 1883, first saw actual service in the Philippines during the insurrection in 1899. For 10 months he was on front-line duty, directing his troops in the Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne offensives; and for meritorious service the French government awarded him the Croix de Guerre with Palm and made him a Commander of the Legion of Honor. He was relieved from active duty the first of this year.

We made a frightful mistake in the last war. We drafted men's lives and not capital and labor. We ought to pass a law that automatically, when war is declared, will call every man, woman, boy, and girl between liberal ages to mobilize for war. The one thought to the individual mind should be, "Where can I be of the greatest use to my country and its liberties?" On this basis, admitting that a youth fights his country's battles, a college man's duty is to prepare himself even more than any other youth. College men are the sons of privilege. Educational institutions are free from taxation and thus those sons who are denied by force of circumstances the higher education are taxed to aid these more fortunate sons of privilege.

Says Youth Should Be Prepared

The best rule of action of life to control youth is the maintenance of one's own self respect. I do not see how a young college man, if he will give the matter thought and granting that the next war should be one of universal service, can maintain his self-respect if he fails to prepare himself to best meet that emergency. Presumptively, because of the privilege he enjoys, he should aim to be an officer, a leader of men. If he be an officer he must prepare himself for the most serious responsibility in the world--the least possible waste of human life committed to his care and leadership.

The ideal situation would be that the entire youth of this country should have a year's service with the colors, with the idea of inspiring them to a decent citizenship. The factors of decent citizenship are a sound body and a sound mind; the appreciation of the dignity of labor and the happiness of industry; self-mastery, self-control; the appreciation of the benefits of our institutions and our obligations to them, and of the other man's point of view. Another essential factor is the spiritual, which is the function of the home and the family.

I know of no other means that we have right at hand that will so quickly inspire youth as those of the military when properly applied by the instructors who understand the peculiar psychology of the American youth, providing that the youth senses its leadership in the right spirit.

The trouble today is undisciplined, inconsequent, uninspired youth. Unfortunately, on account of causes I will not mention, such a blessing as universal service as an aid to citizenship today is not ours.

Enumerates Opportunities for Training

However there are under our present laws opportunities never before offered the youth of this country. The civilian training camp, requiring a month's time for four years during vacation, the R. O. T. C. and the National Guard, outside of service in the regular army,--all of these opportunities are open to college men. This soft, mushy propaganda, rampant through the country today and especially through New England, of peace at any price, peace with dishonor, assumes that there has been a fundamental change in human nature. It concerns me in that it is making an impression on many earnest, serious minds, especially on the minds of women, some of them educators. But what surprises me more than anything else, is that heed is given to it in a small proportion in the student body in some colleges. In fact, in some of them, the faculty are notoriously pacifist. A study of history will quickly point out the danger of such pacificism, which surely points to the fear that the sacrifices of the next generation will be even more than the unpardonable sacrifices suffered by America in the past war due to our smug complacency of unpreparedness.

Praises Swiss Preparedness

This kind of preparedness that I deduced from this last war is not the German "kultur", that was the preparatiton to conquer the world, but rather that preparedness for defense exemplified by the youth of Switzerland which absolutely prevented Switzerland from suffering any of the catastrophies of the world war. The reason it did not suffer was that even the best armies in Europe did not dare to put foot on Switzerland, a terrible temptation, because it must be admitted that the army that could have gone through would have given the "coup de grace" to the other. They did not dare because they knew they would be whipped and why?--Because in its youth Switzerland had been prepared for the only kind of citizenship on which any country ought to rely. Switzerland with no military burdens, with no standing army, so called, no war for a hundred years, with half the population of Belgium was able to produce on the day of mobilization 21 divisions, and keep inviolate their territory, compared to Belgium with five fine regular divisions but with no trained citizenship--the world knows the result. Does not this example appeal to the college man?

I reiterate to these sons of privilege that your duty is plain to your flag and your country. If you want to retain your individual respect, take advantage of the opportunities now offered by your country