Harvard is not on a "war footing" in spite of the headlines of a Boston paper, as the Alumni Bulletin points out. But the question of giving technical military instruction in American colleges is becoming insistent, and will soon have to be answered. University presidents throughout the country are in general conspicuous advocates of preparation for defense. President Lowell has consistently supported the movement; President Hibben of Princeton, in an article reprinted in the Illustrated, urges Princetonians to take advantage of the summer military camps; and President Hadley has gone so far as to suggest the advisability of military instruction at Yale.

There is no doubt that the need of greater preparedness is felt throughout the country and that college men, a majority of them, favor the movement. The question becomes, Shall our universities, especially Harvard, assist in training men who shall be fit to lead in case of war? The Alumni Bulletin, although vague in its expression, seems to feel that the University should confine itself to breeding "in their students those highest qualities of citizenship which lead quickly to the making of good soldiers, rather than to undertake actual military instruction."

The proposal for a military department does not include the abandonment of the group system, and its requirement that the student obtain a liberal cultural education. It would simply mean that men would have an opportunity to study and even concentrate in advanced military subjects, and that graduate students could make themselves experts in them. There would be no prescription, and no general exodus from other studies; and the courses could be made difficult enough to frighten away all but the serious-intentioned. The proposal is not to militarize the University any more than the existence of a chemical department has made the University a scientific laboratory.