Untapped Reservoir

"If we have a well-supported educational system by which talent reaches the college level irrespective of private income, we shall both increase the effectiveness of our leadership in battle and demonstrate the reality of our American ideal." Thus last fortnight Harvard's President James Bryant Conant proposed one of the war's most provocative recruiting schemes.

His argument: Let Army & Navy continue to earmark college undergraduates (some 160,000 a year) for deferment under the present half-dozen college training plans. But let the armed services recognize that these plans are only half measures. As yet, the services take no account of the 400,000 high-school graduates each year who don't go on to college, in most cases because they can't afford to.

Conant believes the Army & Navy could tap this reservoir for at least 50,000 excellent officers simply by choosing promising high-school seniors and paying their way through college.

Conant's scheme smacked of World War I's S.A.T.C. (Students' Army Training Corps), a flop that cost some $160 millions. But Conant argues that S.A.T.C. had too short a trial. The president of Harvard's plan would certainly be expensive, and it would more or less convert all colleges into West Points and Annapolises. But, says Conant, it would also restore "an essential element in our democracy--the birthright of opportunity which in an earlier age was the gift of the American frontier."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.