Why No R.0.T.C.?

DURING THE PAST SUMMER President Hopkins not only offered the services and facilities of the College to the government for use in the national defense program but specifically asked for establishment at Dartmouth of a branch of the R.O.T.C. The replies from Army, Navy, and Marine Corps officials were uniformly appreciative of the offer and unanimously regretful that no student training program would be undertaken this year. The officers inferred in polite language that they would prefer volunteers and drafted men for a long period of solid unbroken training rather than grapple with the week-end distractions, dates, and miscellaneous distrac. tions of a college campus.

People ask why there is not R.O.T.C. at Dartmouth. Reasons have been given by self-appointed experts, both publicly and privately, as (1) the College does not want R.0.T.C.; (2) A New Deal, irritated bv Republican sentiment in the colleges, is punishing them by withholding training service; and (3) nothing was ever done by anybody about it. The answer in the President's files is that the College is interested but the government is not at the present time, and for sound military reasons.