Ex-President William Howard Taft made the following statement for the University in an interview with a CRIMSON reporter last Friday afternoon:

"I think that the policy of the administration in encouraging the training of the college students of the country with a view to supplying officers for the army to be mobilized under a selective draft bill was admirable. I am informed that practical difficulties have arisen preventing the plan from being fully carried out, but I have no doubt that the effect of the impetus already given will result in the effort of all college men to strive by hook or crook to fit themselves for commissions in the Reserve Officers' Corps. The work at Harvard, of course, meets the commendation of every one who wishes to see a spirit of patriotism united with a capacity for effective help. I do not doubt that we shall find in Harvard, Yale and Princeton and the other universities the same inspiring devotion for the cause of the country that the great universities or England, Oxford and Cambridge, showed at the outbreak of the war and have continued to show in all the dark days of gloom that England has had to pass through."