Sauce to the Commander

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer will names be withheld.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

If these men who have tasted Military and Naval training in college are not best qualified to judge its value, then who is? Are the aesthetes who spend most of their time at poetry, music, and afternoon tea; who do not know a howitzer from a latrine, an azimuth from a pelorus; in any position to critize intelligently the benefit that others may derive from instruction in ballistics or celestial navigation? No, they are not! On the other hand, all members of the R.O.T.C. have worn enough mufti in the progress of their liberal educations to be able to assign "culture" its large and proper place in the program. What is sauce to the Debating Team and Liberal Club is not necessarily sauce to the commander.

In that baloting of yesteryear which the CRIMSON conducted on Prohibition, it might well be asserted by one of your editors that "Those who drink are not supposed as being capable of deciding about repeal or modification." If that were the case, your little poll (with all unqualified votes subtracted) would have brought in lily-white results.

Training to defend one's country has always been part of a gentleman's education, a citizen's privilege. There is just as great a distinction between a Reserve Officer's Commission and a job as Letter Carrier, Fireman, Dog Catcher, or Street Cleaner, as there is between a professor of Greek literature and the proprietor of a Greek restaurant; or as between an architect and a brick-layer. The mere wearing of a uniform is no sign of boorishness, nor is it the disgraceful badge of submission to a system. In fact, the season is approaching when even the aesthetes put on their traditional caps and gowns!

Cambridge, March '12. Eugene DuBois '33.