QUIT PLAYING FAVORITES
September 30, 1918
It is announced that the young men of eighteen or nineteen included in the draft will be sent free to college by the Government and will there be given the chance to earn commissions and escape service in the ranks.
Either this represents sheer deception or it will mean gross favoritism. We now have plenty of young men who have been serving in the ranks for nearly eighteen months. Scores of thousands of these left college to go or had just finished high school when they went. All these boys, whether they have or have not been to college, are entitled to the first chance for commissions on equal terms with one another, except that preference should be given those who have been engaged in the fighting overseas. Almost all the second lieutenancies should now be filled in this manner by promotion from the ranks. To give to boys now about to enter college the preference over those who have actually served in the ranks, and especially over those who have actually faced death overseas, would be a cruel injustice.
But the injustice would be equally great among the new recruits themselves. It is wholly illusory forthe Government to say it will send to college all who wish to go. The average working-man or small farmer has not had money enough to educate his son so that the boy can now enter college without further training. Yet that boy may have in him the qualities of leadership which especially fit him for command. Such a working-man or farmer ought to wish, and does wish, that his son be tested on his merits by actual service in the ranks, alongside of all other boys, no favors being shown either him or them. For the Government at this time to send some of these boys to college and thus give them a start over the bulk of their fellows represents privilege given to money and is thoroughly unfair.
For the two years before we entered the war the only important piece of preparedness was that of the men who at their own expense went to the Plattsburg training camp established by General Wood, and when Germany forced us into war it was imperatively necessary at once to establish many additional camps of this kind or we should have had no officers whatever for our army. It is still advisable to keep a few training camps for older men whose age and qualifications especially fit them for certain kinds of service. But it is not wise nor right for the Government now to put certain especially favored classes of boys of eighteen and nineteen into college with a view to giving them an advantage over their fellows. This is undemocratic. It is not fair to the other boys of their age who are not in the army. It is exceedingly unfair and unjust to the young men who arealready enlisted in the army, and especially to those who have seen service overseas.
From now on no young officer should be appointed saving after service in the ranks out of which he is chosen by fair test in comparison with his fellows as fit to enter an officers’ training camp. Moreover, there should be a resolute effort to give preference to the men who have served in the front in France, the very men who are now apt to be neglected.