Long before the rest of the country was ready for war, undergraduate opinion at Harvard in the year 1916 had crystallized. Under the slogan Preparedness, the alma mater of tub-thumping Teddy Roosevelt rallied to arms, with a Harvard Regiment readily recruited and almost 1000 men receiving training at the outset.

Today, as new undergraduates flock to Cambridge, the burning, question in once again Preparedness. Can we get training if we want it? Will we be forced to have it even if we don't want it? Will we be drafted while we are at college?

No one knows all the answers yet, but there is considerable agreement in informed circles that 1940 is not 1916 or 1917. In other words, the large-scale training into which the Harvard community plunged itself before the first World War is not likely to be repeated now--or at least not yet.

Professors Drilled in '16

Back in 1916, Captain Constant Cordier, U. S. A., was detailed to Cambridge at the urgent request of President Lowell, and he supervised the first R. O. T. C. courses given here. Most of the actual instruction was by regular Harvard Faculty members, such as Professor Julian L. Coolidge '95, who last year retired as Master of Lowell House. These professors had received training during the previous summer at Platisburg, and were considered qualified to give military instruction.

Then in 1917, ten weeks before the declaration of war with Germany, President Lowell requested the French Government to send Harvard a few disabled officers to train our R. O. T. C. in the methods of warfare lately developed in Europe. In April came the French mission, including Lieutenant Andre Morize, who in 1940 is on leave from Harvard as Professor of French Literature. The R. O. T. C. had meanwhile expanded from an initial 864 to 1227, and engaged in extensive training. furrowing the land about Fresh Pond with trenches. Thereafter most of the members proceeded to a regular officers' training camp.

French Officers Serve

By the summer of 1918 the French officers were ordered elsewhere, and meanwhile the R. O. T. C. had become greatly depleted, since almost all undergraduates above the draft age were by this time in the Government training camps or on active service. Practically every student who was old enough and physically fit got into some form of war training.

Both the Government and the College encouraged undergraduates to enter officers' training schools until commissioned at the age of 21, but hundreds who were too impatient to wait enlisted in the ranks. Special final examinations had been held in April-May 1917, when most of the student body left for active service or full-time training, and by May 1, 1918, the enrollment had tapered off to about one-fifth normal.

In 1940, the picture is different. The United States Army and National Guard are today larger than in 1916, and there is already a huge number of R. O. T. C. graduates who have been turned out since the First War and who had no counterpart in this country at the start of the last war. At the present time there are not sufficient supplies or equipment for all these men, let alone new recruits, although the necessary materials are being amassed as rapidly as possible. Hence the initial training will undoubtedly involve principally the existing Army, National Guard, and R. O. T. C. officers, who have had considerable service before but require additional instruction in the new and active phases of warfare.

"Skeleton Units"

Once this preliminary group of semitrained men has been polished up, new men between the ages of 21 and probably 31 will be drafted in increments of 400,000 called up about three months apart. These new recruits will be apportioned out to fill spaces in "skeleton" units officered by the Army, National Guard, and R. O. T. C. members previously referred to When the new men have been thoroughly trained, they will direct new increments of recruits, and so on, in a gradually expanding net built around the principle of assigning skilled officers to unskilled men.

It is this "skeleton" technique which contrasts with the 1916-17 method, often described as "green officers for green men." At the time only a few officers to each regiment had had previous training, and they selected as junior officers likely-looking candidates from among the recruits. The results was slow and misnecessful training, contranting unfavorably with the results expected from the "skeleton" system.

Nowhere wan the "green officers and green men" principle more wholeheartedly adopted than at Harvard, where students got into uniforms much faster than the government could supply officers to instruct them.

Undergraduates "Deferred"

It is at Harvard that the contrast between 1916 and 1940 will be most apparent. Undergraduates will be expected to finish their schooling, even if already over 21, since there are enough young men between 21 and 31 who are now unemployed and without dependents to fill immediate army needs. Men of this description will be called up at the start, while undergraduates are placed in a "deferred" classification, from which they will be removed only barring a national emergency like invasion--when they have graduated.

So far as increased training at Harvard itself is concerned--as distinguished from calling students away to be drafted--this appears to depend on finances. The government has not appropriated additional money nor designated additional officers for the Harvard R. O. T. C. unit, and as a result this unit will probably accommodate about the usual number and no more. Nor is extra-curricular training likely to be instituted, because of opposition to the "green officers and green men" theory.

Nevertheless the University has compiled a list of Faculty members holding up-to-date commissions in the Unnted States military services, and the number comes to 129. Since one of the distinguishing marks of an up-to-date commission is the periodic re-training of the holder of the rank, it is believed that these 129 might be qualified to instruct in military tactics just as Professor Coolidge and others instructed in the last war. Whether this "fund" of teachers is to be drawn upon depends largely on the attitude of the Corporation of the University, but at the moment at least, the prevailing attitude seems to be opposed to the idea.

In short, the only army training around Harvard for the near future seems likely to be Military Science 1, open to entering Freshmen, but limited to about 175 of them.