NATURE 



349 



THURSDAY, MAY 20, 1920. 



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The Officers Training Corps and the 



Universities. 



IN a leading article on "The Universities and the 

 Army," in Nature for AprilS, we referred to 

 the Memorandum on the Army Estimates for 

 1920-21 published by the War Office, and quoted 

 the words : " One of the important lessons of the 

 war has been the extent to which the Army is de- 

 pendent on the Universities." Of these lessons one 

 ■especially was" emphasised, viz. the necessity for 

 the reorgfanisation of the Army on its educational 

 side. We were told again and again, both during- 

 and after hostilities, that the war was primarily 

 I scientific war — laboratory against laboratory, 

 machine shop against machine shop, trained, in- 

 telligence against trained intelligence — and it is 

 gratifying to know that the War Office recognises 

 that " the Universities responded to the call for 

 help in a splendid manner." That they did so 

 is an indisputable fact. Thousands of under- 

 graduates and hundreds of their teachers, from 

 junior assistant to full-fledged professor, switched 

 off from classics, history, philosophy, natural 

 science, and what not, to gunnery, engineering, 

 motor transport, and so on. Chemical laboratories 

 -substituted investigations on explosives, anti-gas 

 protectives, and smoke screens for routine qualita- 

 tive and quantitative analysis ; engineering labora- 

 tories concentrated their energies on the invention 

 of depth charges, shell-gauges, and submarine 

 engines; and the geologist relinquished the study 

 of stratigraphy and palaeontology to discover new 

 sources of sand from which to manufacture glass. 

 All this work was novel to the Universities, and, 

 as many would add, foreign to their purpose and 

 traditions ; yet should another war of similar mag- 

 nitude ever arise, can it be doubted that the 

 Universities will again be called upon to play an 

 even greater part in it than they did in the Great 

 War of 1914-18? 



NO. 2638, VOL. 105] 



If this be so, and if the Army be regarded as a 

 profession, should its officers not receive a pro- 

 fessional training, and where more appropriately 

 and effectively than in the Universities? One of 

 the most enlightened features of Army reorganisa- 

 tion introduced by Lord Haldane in 1907 was the 

 institution of the Officers Training Corps in con- 

 nection with the Universities. Had this tentative 

 scheme of professional training for future Army 

 officers received proper encouragement and been 

 developed on suitable and elastic lines, the War 

 Office might have had at its disposal in the autumn 

 of 1914 a large reserve of trained officers who 

 had passed through a properly devised University 

 curriculum. 



The military education committees of the 

 various British universities and university colleges 

 were recently sounded as to their views on the 

 future of the Officers Training Corps, and from 

 the replies received it would appear that most of 

 them are unwilling to commit themselves to any 

 plan of action until the attitude of the Army 

 Council in reference to the Corps has been ascer- 

 tained. What that attitude may be we have at 

 present no means of finding out. We are informed 

 that one of the largest Universities in the Kingdom 

 answered the inquiry in the following terms : 

 " The Military Education Committee are not of the 

 opinion that it is desirable to take any further 

 action at the present time until the Army Council 

 have made a definite statement with regard to the 

 future position of the Officers Training Corps, or 

 to take any steps in regard to the creation of a 

 Department of Military Studies until this official 

 statement is issued." Several other Universities 

 replied in similarly non-committal terms, and out 

 of twelve, only one expressed any enthusiasm on 

 the subject. 



If the Army Council sincerely desires to make 

 use of the Universities in the training of officers, 

 let it say so in clear and unmistakable language, 

 and indicate at the same time how and to what 

 extent it is prepared to aid the Universities in 

 carrying out its ideas. Some progress might be 

 made, for example, if the Army Council would 

 appoint a committee representing all departments 

 concerned with Officers Training Corps, iviih 

 power to act and not merely to hear and report, to 

 meet and confer with representatives of the Uni- 

 versities, who on their side could submit the 

 special needs of the Universities regarding 

 Officers Training Corps. We cannot get rid of 

 the suspicion that the War Office authorities are 

 unaware of the work and organisation of the 



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