Military Training

GEN. MARSHALL recently expressed himself as wholly opposed to the maintenance in the United States after the war of a standing army comparable in size to that which this country now has in the field and in training, though favoring whatever will enable the speedy creation of such an army from the ranks of citizenship and insure that such shall not be too much an improvisation. Few will quarrel with that, one believes, because it sounds like a sensible view. Great efforts will surely be made to make any future war a remote contingency, and if such efforts are to have any success at all it would seem folly to assume in advance that they are so clearly doomed to fail that the nations of this world, including our own, must make themselves an armed camp. We should be preparing to fight a war when professing to be intent on insuring that there shall be no wars to fight.

None the less it is far from easy to draw the line between reasonable and unreasonable preparedness, and therefore it is debatable whether or not we should demand of every ablebodied American youth a year of compulsory military training, as many seem inclined to do, as an essential element in future safety. Beyond doubt this country will never again content itself with a standing army so small that it could be assembled in the Yale Bowl. Beyond question the navy of the United States will remain greatly expanded beyond what used to be the standard. As for the air force, that is bound to be great because of the growing necessity for commercial aviation.

The real danger will probably be the exaltation of preparedness for war, and the coincidental diminution of interest in the basic problem of making war unlikely to break out. After being twice caught unprepared, it will be natural for the United States to swing to the other extreme; but hopefully such progress will be made in the line of peace insurance for the world that a just solution of our problems can be found. So long as no one is sure of it, however, there is bound to be a strong case made out for the maintenance of armed forces far in excess of what even a dozen years ago would have been thought necessary.

FALL AND FOOTBALL BRING BACK THE FAMILIAR PRE-GAME BONFIRE ON CAMPUS.