THE NAVAL R. O. T. C.

Reaction, concomitant with post-war existence, has forced the leaders of contemporary thought further from sanity than they would readily admit. In refusing to bend toward any cognizance of that element in human nature upon which war thrives, these intellectuals lean backwards until personal equilibrium is the result merely of their crowded position.

Many such people, together with those who rightly wish to keep academic cloisters free from the correspondence variety of learning, have already hinted that the course in naval science about to be inaugurated at Harvard, is as repulsive (as it is unnecessary. The one sees learning hitched to the anachronistic chariot of war: the other visions an even more despicable pantomime. Neither is exactly correct.

America is not by heritage or by established desire a peaceful nation. At many times circumstances have arisen suggesting war as the necessary alternative to humiliation or that deployment of national prosperity so ill attuned to the national car. Such times may well occur again, peace parliaments and leagues to the contrary notwithstanding. In show the moment for complete disarmament is as yet one with that visionary era of international goodwill toward which all possible effort must continuously he directed, but of which there is as yet no absolute certainly.

Not then, with any jingoistic faith in huge national armaments but with a been realization that peace like the city of Romulus and Remus cannot be built in a day one is perpetually urged by the conditions of his age to wonder how best and with the least friction there can be maintained as a part of American education sufficient interest in and knowledge of modern warfare as to insure national integrity in whatsoever arises.

Inclined to the belief that schools which concern themselves solely with the development of military or naval officers are becoming more and more impotent in matters of culture and intellect, that they are too often sending forth men Ill equipped in anything without the precise and narrow bournes of their particular trade, one considers any movement toward incorporating the study of military or naval science within the category of liberal education is a step forward in humanizing the military profession and giving to the nation an opportunity to reduce the military to its proper place in the college community without allowing the army and navy completely to fall into that state so adequately described by a certain gentleman as "innocuous desuetude."

That this is to be the case at Harvard one may be certain, if one believes that the administration. In admitting this new branch of mental discipline so establish and maintain high standards that this particular curriculum has the respect of the student body. And one may certainly expect such high standards to prevail. Nor is the study of naval science so near the correspondence variety of pseudo learning as one can imagine.

In brief, to rule out this course because of its martial connotation or because it could become too cheap a part of modern education is unfair. The cogent argument against it is that which suggests this as another movement inward professionalizing the college. Yet it need not be quite that if it be a real part of the movement toward making military training less the professional study of the few and more an accessory knowledge of the many. Military life will continue to assume a professional status in the eyes of those who wish so to make it. But the tendency of contemporary advocates of progressive nationalism is toward making the training as part of national life so that the country can be prepared for exigencies without the necessity of maintaining a specialized group in the antiquated manner. If this course, providing, as has been suggested, that its standards are high, can help toward making such science the accessory of the average citizen and thus militate against the further development of real jingoists it is a vital need. How far that can be true, how far the greater necessity of a youth schooled in national defense can modify the certain corruption of the college incumbent upon real professionalization remains to be seen. At all events, in a period of educational experiment such a trial cannot fall to be interesting.