Military Training

The nation's greatest potential group of officers-its 650,000 male college undergraduates-is troubled by a sense of wasting time. So insistent have the undergraduates' murmurs become that last week Army & Navy men and representatives of 108 colleges gathered at the University of Chicago to see what could be done.

Chicago's Daily Maroon, completing a survey of 72 colleges, reported: "The average male undergraduate is badly prepared for his inevitable life in the armed forces of his country." It cited Lieut. General Ben Lear's reply to a Chicago parent who complained that his son, a college graduate, was only a private: "These college-trained young men in most instances have the physical and mental qualities of an officer, but because of lack of military knowledge they must join the greenest recruits."

"Glamor" Courses. Colleges have launched nearly a hundred new "military" courses: "military French," military mathematics, military geography, communications, ballistics, truck-driving, music for drum majors. But collegians, aware that the Army has no hand in most of these courses, have already begun to lose interest. And the Army sympathizes with them.

Colonel B. W. Venable bluntly told the educators that "glamor" courses in military matters are often useless. What the Army needs is courage and resourcefulness-both, said he, plain products of a good education. He further shocked the delegation when he told them that the college-graduate soldier did not have as good self-discipline as the soldier of high-school and grade-school level.

Chicago Plan. To many a college the logical solution seemed to be a huge expansion of R.O.T.C. Less than a quarter (160,000) of U.S. male undergraduates are enrolled in the R.O.T.C. units in 136 colleges and universities, and of these only 20,000 are permitted to take the advanced course (junior and senior years) required for a commission. But the Army, which cannot spare instructors, has firmly refused to create new units or enlarge existing ones.

To the Chicago conference last week a substitute plan for R.O.T.C. was presented. Its author is spectacled Arthur Lincoln Hale Rubin, 39, director of the University of Chicago's Institute of Military Studies.

A success from the start, the Institute has admitted undergraduates, faculty men and Chicago citizens to a pre-induction course in military fundamentals. Its enrollment quadrupled after Pearl Harbor, now it has 1,000 students.

Director Rubin claims two big advantages over R.O.T.C. for his course: 1) it saves time; 2) it uses civilian instructors. In his basic infantry course, students get nine weeks' instruction, three hours a week in marksmanship, grenade and bayonet practice, close order drill, map work, the manual of arms, elementary tactics. From the basic course, students go on to specialized ones.

The Institute's instructors, more expert as teachers than the Army men who teach R.O.T.C., save time by applying tricks of their trade, e.g.: they find that students catch on faster when they explain the principles of physics underlying correct body positions for shooting a rifle. At the end of a 15-hour course, taught by English Professor Norman F. Maclean, onetime forest ranger, four out of five of the Institute's marksmanship students qualify as small-bore "expert riflemen."

Although Chicago's Institute does not qualify men for commissions, Director Rubin observed that such a course in the colleges would give the military services hand-picked officer material, speed up their training in officers' schools. His proposal : let the Army & Navy set up standards for a pre-induction course like Chicago's, to be taught by civilians, under the Army's & Navy's supervision, in all U.S. colleges.

Navy Plan. But the Navy, like the Army, wants well-educated men most, refuses to set up a rigid schedule for the colleges. The Navy's plan, explained Joseph W. Barker, is to enlist 17-to-19-year-old students who will take a comprehensive examination after three semesters. If he passes the Navy's test, as well as his college exams, a student can go into Naval aviation at the end of his second year, or, if he elects engineering or other specialized work, can continue his course, get his degree, then his commission. The Navy wants more colleges to adapt their curriculums, include training in mathematics and physical sciences-but it is up to the colleges to revise their ways, give students an education to fit both war and peace.

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