MAN THE BOOKS

The War Manpower Commission must recapture the power over the college field that it has now delegated to the individual services; it must reorganize the draft so that there will be no exceptions. It is wasteful to allow one service to bear alone the brunt of a manpower shortage; an efficient allocation between the Army, Navy, and industry can only be achieved through a centralized agency which has the necessary scope and breadth of vision. And aside from the imperative task of planning how many and how soon, a procedure must be found to decide who should fight, who be allowed to train. Personnel experts must be established through whose hands must pass all those selected for national service. The opportunity for a liberal education is so rare in wartime that its distribution must be accomplished by methods less wasteful than individual initiative and competitive recruiting.

But however systematic and successful such a system may be in the future, it can in no way alter the present composition of these reserves. The members of the Navy programs in particular will b the only sizable group of able-bodied men who can be liberally educated for the duration; yet they have been given this opportunity partly because they meet the minimum qualifications, and more especially because they happened to be in college at a time when enlistment was a prerogative of the individual and of his service. For some, V-1 was a way to dodge the draft; for others, the provisions for a prolonged education meant only an irritating delay in reaching active service. But in any case, the students must regard their liberal education as much a duty as their military service. For in no other way can any amount of planning and cooperation among the services and the colleges make the most of education in wartime.