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colleges was intended to meet one of the great and permanent needs of the 

 country. Such instruction is uiandatory upon the colleges. By the acceptance 

 of the grant with its conditions this instruction has become an obligation, recog- 

 nized as such by the colleges. So umch — that the colleges shall give instruction 

 in military tactics — is, so to speak, constitutional, unalterable, not debatable. 

 All else is merely statutory or administrative, subject to by-laws, as wisdom 

 and good policy may ordain. 



Leaving, therefore, large latitude to the predilections of individual institutions 

 for more or less of the military feature in their curriculum, what may the 

 colleges, in an average way, be fairly expected to do as their pari; toward 

 supplving the country" with a soldiery in time of need? The organization of a 

 nationalniilitia under Federal laws in all the States has materially changed 

 the situation since Mr. Morrill pictured the nation's •' unpreparedness " in 1862. 

 When not recognized as a part of the militia — as they are in some States — the 

 college battalions represent the possibility of a volunteer corps which would be 

 immediately effective for service, and the individual students and graduates 

 constitute a body out of which officers, commissioned and noncommissioned, 

 could be drawn for service in a suddenly enlisted corps. It can not be expected 

 of the colleges that they turn out thoroughly trained and accomplished officers. 

 It takes four years of military training at West Point to do that. To attempt 

 even something very much below this would take so much of the students' time 

 and energy from their main studies that they would go to colleges in which this 

 burden was not laid upon them. But the colleges, without sacrifice to their 

 "leading objects," may so train their students in the military art, that they, 

 or a good number of them, would make serviceable sergeants, lieutenants, and 

 captains in any force which the State or the nation might need for keeping the 

 I)eace and enforcing the laws. It is of some consequence that students should 

 make a good appearance at inspection or on parade. It is of much more impor- 

 tance that they should learn some of the soldierly virtues, prompt oliedience, 

 power of command, the fine combination of self-respect and submission, which 

 make the good citizen and the good patriot as well as the good soldier. 



But on this part of the subject I am privileged to offer the expert evidence of 

 an able and accomplished officer of tlie Artillery Corps and a highly successful 

 professor of military science and tactics in the University- of Vermont. Capt. 

 C. J. Bailey, Fifteenth Artillery. Captain Bailey says : 



"An opinion is desired as to what extent military instruction should be car- 

 ried in the land-grant colleges. 



"Throwing out those institutions in which the military feature predominates 

 and is advanced as an attraction for students, there remain the colleges or uni- 

 versities in which the student is fitted for almost any profession save the mili- 

 tary. In these every hour devoted to military work takes from the student an 

 hour he might advantageously devote to studies in the particular line he has 

 chosen. Should, then, this military work be limited to three hours weekly, and 

 is even this worth to the student and to the c-ollege the advantages gained by 

 both from the endowments made by the Government? 



" When the writer took up tins work in the University of Vermont in 1897 he 

 was of the opinion that the three hours weekly was inadequate for carrying out 

 the purposes desired by the Government aud he still believes that it should be 

 increased, at least during that part of the college year when outdoor work can 

 be carried on, if this can be done without fwsitive detriment to the other work 

 of the college. If this can not be done, liowever, sufficient instruction can be 

 done in the shorter time to render its value incontestable, particularly if the 

 instructor is allowed some latitude in dividing the students in such a way that 

 small bodies can be instructed in certain parts of the work rather than the whole 

 student body at once. 



" In colleges keeping to this minimum much that an officer deems essential in 

 teaching recruits must either be omitted or the student so interested that lie will 

 voluntarily do the work by himself. This refers particularly to the ' setting up ' 

 drills and" calisthenics now so largely employed in the Army. The college gym- 

 nasium may and should take the place of these, for it is particularly necessary 

 that the student should have them or similar work both to keep him in healttL 

 and to give him the erect carriage distinctive of the good soldier and equally 

 advantageous to the good civilian. But the writer realized from his first at- 

 tempt that to make any progress in the drills of the company and battalion 

 nothing bevond a superficial course in these gymnastics could be attempted. 



" Both theoretical and practical military work can be so varied that the inter- 

 est of the majority of the students is easily retained, the difficulty being ta 



