Our Colleges and the War

FREDERICK JAMES GREGG

EVERY playing member of the 1916 football squad, which defeated both Harvard and Princeton, is now in war service. In the picture above, there is an outer semi-circle of eleven men. Beginning at the left, they are as follows: Chester J. La Roche, who was a 1918 man in "Shcff." He is now an ensign in the United States Navy; Emile Jacques, '17 S., Commission in Ordnance Department; Lawrence W. Fox, '17 S., 2d Lieut., 19th F. A., U. S. R.; Howard M. Baldrige, '18, Captain, O. R. C., Battery F, 338th Field Artillery, Camp Dodge, Des Moines, la.; James M. Braden, '18, recommended for 1st O. R. C., Fort Niagara, N. Y.; C. L. C. Galt, '19 (in College), member of the R. O. T. C.; A. W. Olsen, '17, Manager of Team; Charles P. Taft 2d, '18, Battalion Sergeant Major, 12th F. A., Fort Myer, Va.; Reginald L. Hutchinson, '18 S., Naval Coast Defense Reserve, Newport, R. I.; Charles A. Comerford, '18 S., American Ambulance, France; John T. Callahan, '18 S., Third Class Quartermaster, N. R., Newport, R. I. The man seated on the right of Captain Black is Artemus Lamb Gates (Captain-elect for 1917), '18, Ensign, U. S. N. R. (Aeronautical Detachment No. 1, American Expeditionary Forces in France). Clinton R. Black, Jr. (Captain, 1916), '18 S., U. S. N. R. F., Newport, R. I., holds the ball. The two men to the left of him arc Harry W. Le Gore, '17, 2d Lieut., 5th Regiment, U. S. Marine Corps, France, and George C. Moseley, '17 S., Lafayette Escadrille, France. The three men seated on the ground are, beginning at the left, Heyliger Church, '17, 1st Sergeant, Aviation Section, American Expeditionary Forces, in Italy; Joseph M. Neville, '18, Captain, School of Military Aviation, 302d F. A., Camp Devens, Mass., and Harold I). Carey, '18 S., Captain, F. A., U. S. R. And yet certain folk were wont to shake wise heads and doubt that college football brought out the stuff that men were made of or could prepare them for war.

WHEN the last heroic deed has been entered in the big book of the Great War, no chapter of the volume will be more stirring than that which will describe the part taken in the struggle, by land and sea, by the graduates and undergraduates of the universities of the United States, and the sons of great schools like Exeter, St. Paul's and Groton.

This is no case of the vain boasting which hides itself under the guise of confident prophesy. For long before the United States had entered upon the great adventure, Yale and Harvard, Princeton and the rest were represented by men who had fought and died under the colors of Great Britain—once the traditional enemy—and of France—always the traditional friend of this Republic. Indeed, by the Fall of 1916, a considerable proportion of the 16,000 Americans, who had enlisted in Canadian regiments, and of the 10,000, who had been helping the French in aviation and with the ambulance, were on the lists of universities on this side of the line.

GEORGE WILLIAMSON, Harvard 1905, was a British lieutenant, when he died in Belgium on November 12, 1914. Forty-one other Harvard men were serving, before September 16, 1916, in the Coldstream Guards, the Black Watch, the Irish Guards, the Grenadier Guards, and other less famous units. Major Robert Emmet, the bearer of a revered Irish name, was in the Warwickshire Territorials. Filling, the stroke of the Harvard crew in the Harvard-Cambridge race at Putney, in 1906, was at the front in Flanders in a British uniform. George Perkins Knapp died of fever at Diahabur, in August, 1915, as the result of his labors for the Armenians against the Turks. Nineteen other Harvard men, serving in the various allied armies, had fallen in action, adding their names to the list of Harvard's honored dead, which is preserved for all time at Memorial Hall in Cambridge.

It is a fact, not always recognized here, that certain of our universities have had a closer connection with war, as institutions, than the great British seats of learning have had. It was not until the Boer War that Oxford and Cambridge sent out organizations to fight as such. But, from the time of the Revolution, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia (the old King's College) and the University of Pennsylvania, were represented directly on fields of battle. It was at the elm in Cambridge that Washington—the greatest honorary graduate of Haryard—took command of the Colonial forces, and the buildings of the college of New Jersey were occupied in turn, by the forces of King George and the troops of the Revolutionary army.

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No draft was necessary, as far as the American colleges were concerned, when War came with the German Empire, and the President called for troops. The colleges mobilized from Boston Bay to the Golden Gate. The institutions did not stop work. They proceeded to change their activities: instead of fitting boys for civil life, they hastened to prepare them for the necessary and temporary occupation of arms. In fact the colleges adopted, for the time being, the courses which were regularly followed at the military academies of West Point and Annapolis. Khaki became the academic costume of the hour.

IT is only possible to take typical cases, which stand for all, to indicate the widespread transformation. To begin with Harvard: President Lowell obtained, from the French government, the assistance of Colonel Azan, and six other officers, to direct the instruction of the Harvard Reserve Officers' Training Corps. On the declaration of war the Harvard Regiment was turned into a training camp. Intensive work was done from May 8, to August 15, 1917. The enrollment was 1855, consisting of 1,139 undergraduates, 309 graduates, 290 from other colleges, and 147 men with no college affiliations A naval school for wireless operators was established under Commandant Rush of the Charleston Navy Yard. There are now 1,900 men in the institution, which will represent the Navy Department for the duration of the war.

The Cadet School, First Naval District, now at Harvard, trains men for the ensigns' examinations. There are two army courses of instruction, with 700 undergraduates enrolled in the elementary, and 325 in the advanced course. The latter, under French officers, includes map-reading, military topography, reading of French maps, sand table work and entrenchments to scale; the history of military development in the present war, field orders, minor tactics (French and United States) and railroad transportation. Courses in both Army and Navy Medicine are given at the Medical School. Three Base Hospital units have been sent to France, and another is waiting orders. These arc manned almost exclusively by members of the teaching force, or by graduates. No less than twelve of the buildings of the university are being used for military purposes, while field training is going on at Soldiers' Field, Fresh Pond, Waverley and Barre.

Harvard's record, to November, is as follows: In the United States army, 1,997 men; Harvard R. O.

T. C., and othe. nilitarv bodies 917; Foreign armies, 122; U. S. Navy, /i3; Red Cross and other relief work, 229; Ambulance Service, 420; National, State and committee work, 498; Miscellaneous, 125. Total, 5,429. President Lowell says this record of months must be lived up to until the very end.

Yale, Harvard's indomitable sister, is all the more willing to admit the importance of what has been done at Harvard, because she herself has a record of accomplishment that could not be more satisfactory. At the present moment there are 5,000 sons of Eli serving in the army, the navy and the camps, to say nothing of the 1,000 prospective Yale students who went straight into training elsewhere, especially at sea.

Of the 2,129 undergraduates in Yale University in November, 950 were regularly enrolled in military service. Of these 675 were in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, under Captain Winfield S. Overton,

U. S. A. retired, while 275 were in the Yale Naval Training Unit, under Rear Admiral Chester, U. S. N. retired.

YALE has already an honor list to her credit that is more than striking. The French croix de guerre has been conferred on sixteen of her sons. Three have received "citation." One, Edwin H. Dunning, killed in action, received the British Distinguished Service Cross; one the British War Cross with Gold Star, and one ambulance section, of the Formation Harjes, received a citation—ordre de l'armée; Croix de Guerre, with Palm.

Yale was very much beforehand in the matter of artillery training, and that means the most important branch of the service nowadays. President Hadley has been justified in his prediction that we would be brought in, and that the only thing to do was to get ready. So as far back as 1915 the Artillery Battalion of the University was formed under Colonel Danforth, who is now in active service. On October 2 of this year, a battery of the French 75 millimeter guns, presented to the university on the recommendation of M. Andre Tardieu, the French High Commissioner, arrived at New Haven, to be used for purposes of instruction. They had been consecrated at the western front and were still camouflaged. Captain Dupont of the French artillery is helping Captain Overton and the Canadian officers with the course, and Professor Reed has prepared a book of French and English military terms for the men, with special reference to the needs of the artillery.

The university is extending, under Rear Admiral Colby Mitchell Chester, U. S. N., a course of naval training, parallel to the R. O. T. C. course in artillery, and a steam yacht, lent to the Navy Department, for the use of Yale men, has just returned "to an. Atlantic port," after an instruction cruise, under command of Professor Mather Abbott, with Professor Clarence Mendel as Executive Officer. Fourteen men have been recommended for ensigns' commissions, as a result of the trip, the expenses of which were paid by subscriptions from graduates, headed by Mr. Payne Whitney. As a result of their work in the officers' training camps, 560 Yale men have received commissions. Of these 312 are credited to Plattsburg. Half are in the field artillery, which is significant.

YALE is helping to provide the army with gas and gas masks, while for the navy it is busy with periscopes and optical instruments of precision, and professors of the scientific school are being used by the government in the purchase of metals. At the meeting of the Corporation on September 18, 1917, it was announced that over 30 members of the faculty had received leave of absence, or had resigned to take up some form of war work, while Dr. Hadley is giving most of his time to his duties as chairman of the University Emergency War Council.

At a meeting in the Yale Club in New York, on November 16, it was announced that 56 of last year's "Y" men were in service. Of the 22 who got their "Y" in football, twenty-one had gone, and the last was only waiting until he was old enough for service. It was on the same stirring occasion that 23 horses were pledged to the university for the artillery, and Mr. Otto T. Bannard clearly expressed the feelings of the old boys by saying: "Yale is at war and we are for Yale." As it is at Cambridge and New Haven, so it is in slightly varying degree at Princeton, Cornell, Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, Leland Stanford, the University of California, and where you will.

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The incomplete records of Princeton, up to November 17, 1917, show a total of 2,105 men in war service. They arc distributed as follows: Army. 970; Navy, 250; Marines. 45; Aviation, 146; Medical and Ambulance, 364; Y. M. C. A., 72; Civil, 110; Red Cross Executive, 32; Federal work non-uniformed. 53; state work non-unmormed, 20. and Relief 43.

WE have been at war for months, Great Britain has been in for over three years. So comparisons are difficult. But a few of the figures are interesting, as showing to what an extent our government, like that of the Empire, will be able to draw on the colleges for officers. Cambridge University has supplied the army with nearly 4,000 officers from its Officers' Training Corps alone, in addition to over 8,000 graduates and undergraduates who got commissions through other sources, for the most part by enlisting and going up. Bristol, a small, new university—founded in 1909—with an average undergraduate roll of 1,000, has made a record with 700 commissions. Sheffield, also new and small, raised a whole new battalion for the York and Lancaster regiments and the entire Welsh Division is full of men from the university colleges of Wales.

There will be great rivalry among our universities for the Medal of Honor and the War Cross that is to be provided for by Congress. Our men will not be behind their contemporaries of the Isis and the Cam. Oxford, with 12 Victoria Crosses to her credit, leads Cambridge with 6. But, size for size. Liverpool, with a peace time roll of about 1,000 male students, has beaten them both, having won, in fair fight, no less than 4 Victoria Crosses, 11 Distinguished Service Orders, and 34 Military Crosses.

There is a university flag, in addition to the national flag, for each of our university training units. This standard of the college will not go to the firing line, for the men will all be scattered and placed where they are needed. But such an emblem will be hung in one chapel after another as a symbol of the enthusiasm that marked the year 1917, when the call came.

AS the men from the United States, who went to Canada and enlisted in the All American Battalion, nearly two years ago, carried American flags in their pockets at the storming of Vimy Ridge, so the men who go from our universities will carry with them the recollection of what each of them owes to his college. They will feel that the eyes of healthy partizans arc on them. And as Wellington said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playgrounds of Eton, so it will be said that the victories of the greatest of all wars were partly won on the football fields and the rivers of the universities of America.

The sword is gone as a military weapon. It will be remarked no more, as it was remarked of the dandies of Boston, in 1861, "that they went to battle carrying their swords like walking sticks.'' But the spirit of today is the same as the spirit of then. Of that New England and the rest of the country and the rest of the world arc confident.