R.O.T.C. Forms Emergency Group While Cadets Trained As Professionals, Says Col. Spaulding

"Corresponding in many ways to the 1200 West Point cadets who will march through Cambridge, are Harvard's 200 students in Military Science," remarked Colonel Oliver L. Spaulding, head of the department, in an interview yesterday. "The theoretical instruction at Harvard is much as that at West Point although of course less complete, yet the uniforms are the same."

Military training in colleges, criticized by many as looking forward to war, is considered by Colonel Spaulding as preparedness and therefore a guarantee against war. Refuting the critics of his department, he affirmed that the soldier is the last man to desire a war, since it is upon him that the work of conducting it rests. "Many are very anxious to acquaint the public with the horrors of war. The military man knows them all. He has had first-hand contact with them.

"The country has never been prepared for any of its wars, not even for the last one. In the emergency of war the reserve army, headed by trained officers of the ROTC, would be quickly and efficiently mobilized for action.

"At West Point men are fully trained for the profession of a soldier, acquiring there a complete college education. Their graduates become second lieutenants in the regular army, and the usual course is active military service. ROTC men, on the other hand, are commissioned in the reserve army. Military service in the time of peace rests entirely with the graduate, but if he wishes he may work and advance in the army. The ROTC is merely a skeleton of an emergency group, while the regular army is a permanent and active organization.

"Both West Point and our Military Science department are administered by commissioned officers of the Army and these instructors are detailed by the war department, which also plans the course and meets the expenses and pays the men."