Obedience is not instinctive, as any father of a family can testify. There are, to be sure, American families in which the habit of obedience has been enforced for several generations and discipline has been one of the gifts of inheritance. But the number of such families has been rapidly decreasing under modern social influences. The soldier must be taught obedience. That is the chief, though not the only, object of military training. The hardest problem this nation confronts on the threshold of war is not the recruiting of soldiers, but their training. It is useless to wail over neglected plans. We must face the situation that exists.

Within a year there must be nearly 40,000 officers in our army. We have now only a small fraction of that number, and even in the regular army there is scarcity of officers competent to take hold of a body of men and instill in them the principles of obedience and discipline and the rudiments of modern military science. But the regular army man, no matter how limited his practice may have been in that kind of work, is in the way to master it quickly. With the reserve officers the task will be harder, but they will all have had some sort of training before they begin to train others. There will be no question of getting the number of men required. Every intelligent citizen knows that universal obligation to military service has always been the rule in this country, as it must be in a democracy. But the training will require the utmost devotion to duty on the part of officers and men.

Now is the time when the value of a system of compulsory military training for all able-bodied young Americans must be clear to the most obdurate advocate of peace. The military training of citizens does not mean militarism. It means the perpetual protection of citizenship. But we must now get along with raw troops trained as quickly as possible. The work can be done. There is no problem in the situation that cannot be solved, but in the future we must have a permanent army of trained citizens that will be ready for any emergency. --New York Times.