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was one of many evidences that a democracy is a blundering and
slow-moving type of government in wartime, the brief period of
military training was valuable discipline to many of the young men who
participated in it. For the Institute the interlude was a disrupting
influence. Not only did it injure college finances and upset the
curriculum, but it took from the campus several key instructors and
many capable undergraduates, a large number of whom either did not
return or were thrown out of step for the remainder of the course.
Dr. Hollis, in an address to the alumni in March, 1919, summed up the
S. A. T. C. in this fashion: "So far as we were concerned I do not
think it was a success. There was so much correspondence on the
subject and so many orders issued that we did not know exactly where
we stood. Furthermore, the interferences by the War Department
extended at first into everything, and we could not carry on
instruction seriously. It grew to be a habit on the part of the
students to say that this was a military camp and not an educational
institution. Instinctively the students were thus entirely in the
right: this plan of training students for the army was not for the
benefit of education or for the relief of the colleges; it was an
emergency measure for the training of officers. When one stops to
think of the enormous demand for efficient officers in the armies
crossing to France it is easy to see why the Committee on Education
could not think of the benefit to colleges so much as of the benefit
to the army. I should call the whole plan a failure both from the
academic point of view and from the military point of view, but it
must be kept in mind that we do not know how great a success it might
have been if the war had lasted."
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