Filling the Gap

War or defense has dominated world affairs--from budgets to foreign policy--for more than 15 years. Nonetheless, the nation's academicians still brush off the study of war as a matter best left to professional military men. Result: a hard-to-fill hole in the education of civilians who shape U.S. policy at home and abroad.

Now a Harvard Law School professor has made a start at filling the gap. Lanky balding W. (for Walter) Barton Leach, 55, brigadier general U.S.A.F. Reserve knew much of his broad subject firsthand. A onetime secretary to the late Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lawyer Leach became an operations analyst for the Army Air Forces in World War II served as Air Force legal counsel through postwar congressional hassles over unification and the B-36 bomber. Last year he got the university's permission to set up a graduate-level course on national defense policy, began the experiment in September.*

Heated Discussion. One afternoon last week, some 30 hand-picked students from three Harvard graduate schools--law business, public administration--plus a score of interested visitors gathered in a Langdell Hall seminar room for the weekly two-hour session. Among those present: two Army colonels, an Australian defense official, an Air Force captain, a Navy captain, professors of history, economics and government; a scattering of yet-to-be-drafted 25-year-olds. As a tape-recorder whirred, the guest speaker, Air War College Historian Eugene Emme, opened the "case study." Subject: "The Battle of Britain: a Study in Military History and Its Limitations."

Led off by Leach, the students were quick to interrupt Historian Emme and one another with questions and observations, soon had the seminar sounding like a congressional committee hearing. What were the Germans' key mistakes? Why were the British so short on fighter aircraft when war began? What lessons can the U.S., as yet untested in air defense, learn from Britain's ordeal? Primed with facts and background, the students kept verbal exchanges short and to the point, built up enough discussion to keep them arguing and learning long after class.

Academic Breakthrough. The weekly two-hour seminar is merely the showpiece of much previous hard work and organization. Said one second-year law student: "Discussion is only the top of the iceberg." In one or two of 15 subcommittees, each student puts in ten to 15 hours weekly analyzing the press, books and documents (e.g., Britain's white papers on defense, the 1954 U.S. budget), writing discussion papers on specific subjects (e.g., U.S. manpower requirements, tactical air power). A six-student team is appointed to prepare and distribute background material for each case study; before seminar time they go over the topic with the guest speaker. Tape-recorded "testimony" is later transcribed, edited and distibuted for future study. Among the speakers thus far: R.A.F. Marshal Sir John Slessor, Army Lieut. General (ret.) Albert C. Wedemeyer, Vice Admiral Matthias B. Gardner, U.S.N.

Is it hard work getting civilian students interested in national defense? At least three of Bart Leach's students have already decided on civilian careers connected with defense -- the Bureau of the Budget and the Pentagon. Moreover, his students predict that the course's enrollment will easily triple next year.

Satisfied with his experiment's progress, Professor Leach sees it only as a bare beginning. Says he: "Under our concept of civilian control of the military, the defense program should get the same expert, scholarly attention as the tax laws and the farm bills." Leach's special goal: an "academic breakthrough" to beginners' courses in national defense for undergraduates, special programs in all U.S. graduate schools.

* With three aides: Economics Professor Arthur Smithies, Law Professors Arthur Sutherland and Robert Braucher.

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