Page 133 - YB1941
P. 133
more arms, the Reserve Officers Training Corps reaches a measure of satisfactory fruition. With the army or the United States expanding to monstrous proportions, the need for officers to train her conscript forces be- comes acute. And at this lime, we may well be grateful for the foresight and planning which motivated the men of our nation at the close of the first World War. And looking back. How different was the Western Maryland College campus in the bleak days of 1917 as the final blunders of neutrality plunged the United States into the European war. There were no Tuesday and Thursday afternoon R.O.T.C. drills in the gymnasium or on Hoffa Field. But there was an interest in the mili- tary life of the nation as a whole; and students, SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEI!:N TWO POlNTS recognizing a gallant episode of excitement, LIEUTENANT CAPLE, BROOKS willingly submitted to regimentation in march- young men for positions of leadership as a ing to and horn classes in well-disciplined defense against foreign aggression. And so ranks. Men were called from their classes today, while history has her finger poised without any of the rudiments of military pre- lightly on the trigger of war and while in an paredness, for the It O. T. C. had not then atmosphere of grimness, sobriety, the people been formulated to give the young men or of America calls for arms, more arms, still college age a background in the science of BATT,\J,!ON STA]',' Smith,lmpeciato, McPike. 129
   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138