We shall forget our unscientific experiments, the light handling and selfish exploitation we have given to that wonderful possession of youth--the work impulses. And the question we should ask ourselves is, What educational justification have we for this service which the boys have rendered?
The war has already brought about drastic economic changes in Europe. The recall of men from the trenches to perform a more useful professional and industrial service behind the lines has demonstrated the importance of the supporting civilian army. From the viewpoint of the individual, nothing can equal the supreme sacrifice of a life. "What good," wailed a Yiddish woman on the East Side of New York City, "is a free country to me if my Abie is killed?" But in the judgment of the nation the garment worker, Abie, who is drafted into service in the army is of no greater value than his friend the skilled machinist who is allowed to remain in his present occupation. The military exemptions of men in European armies, the adoption of the selective draft in the United States, are acknowledgments of the equality of the military and the civilian occupations indispensable to military activity. To include in our educational law such a recognition, adopting a measure permitting the substitution of types of vocational training for military training, is but to follow the lead of the national government in declaring such exemptions a military necessity. New York State has made a beginning in this direction.
In 1916 the legislature enacted the so-called "Welsh-Slater" bills, making military and physical training compulsory in the secondary schools of the state for boys above 16 and under 19 years of age. Such military training is to aggregate not more than three hours each week between September first of each year and June fifteenth of the next. The law further provides, within the limits of appropriation, for the establishment of military camps with attendance of from two to four weeks. While the operation of these camps and, indeed, the introduction of military drill, have been imperfectly carried out, owing to the lack of suitable state appropriation to carry on the work on the necessary and large scale for a working-boy and schoolboy population of 240,000, it is the intention of the Military Training Commission to insist on the requirements of the law.