"Wake Up, Harvard!"

(We invite all men in the University to submit communications on subjects of timely interest, but assume no responsibility for sentiments expressed under this head.)

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It is to be most fervently hoped that the attendance at the meeting in Sanders Theatre Tuesday night is not indicative of Harvard sentiment towards the R. O. T. C. Of the 5,000 men here at Harvard only about 700 were present. No doubt a few hundred of those who kept away were already enrolled, but what of the several thousand others?

The natural inference is that they considered their own private affairs of more importance than the meeting. Although not yet members of the Corps, they did not even trouble themselves to hear its work outlined by Captain Cordier or its importance estimated by such men as President Lowell, C. A. Coolidge, John Gallishaw and J. H. Farley. In other words they were indifferent. Yet almost every one of them will rally to the colors when the general call to arms shall go forth.

Now how is one to reconcile such a paradox? Here are hundreds of men willing to die in defence of their country. But these same men treat with supreme indifference a concrete, immediate opportunity to strengthen the nation's defensive power and to increase their own military efficiency. There is but one explanation to the puzzle--despite their 11th hour devotion they are not patriots. For a patriot is always ready to fulfill the needs of his country, and our country has as great a need now for volunteer officers, under training, as she will have for a million raw recruits when war is declared.

The country is looking towards the colleges. Now is the time to be a patriot. Now is the time for service that will count.

Wake up, Harvard! JOHN ROTHSCHILD '19.