The Nashville globe. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1906-193?, 1917-08-10
FAILURE At CAMP
NOT D|SGRACEFUL
If Course is not Completed
Wrong Idea Prevalent
Masses Ignorant Of
Danger in Battle.

Fl Des Moines, Iowa, August s.
Especial to the Globe. When it was
recently called to the attention of
Colonel c. c. Ballou, COmmandant of
the Officers Training School for Col
ored men at Fort Des MOines, that
there was tendency on the part of
acquaintance to Critiyise candidates
who are being discharged and re-
turned home, said;
Many persons seem to feel that
failure TO complete the prescribed
course at an Officers Training Camp
carries with il certain stigma APP
proXimating to disgrace.
This is, in general, not true, and
is only true in cases Of men sent
home by reason of misconduct
There is more dangerous and err
roueOus belief than that INDUCED in
by many of our people, to the effect
that any and every man can become
cool military officer This idea is
almost equivalent TO the notion that
putting a Uniform ON a man and a
li g i'm his hands makes him a sol
der Both ideas are as incorrect and
Fundamentally absurd as would be
the belief that putting a scalpel IN
mans hands converts him into
surgeon or tina, putting on the cap
of naval officer qualities a man to
navigate and fight a battelship,
Not the least useful result of our
Great training camps will he the cor
rection of these absurd notions
II once mustered into service as
b ffl lY ifrl4 In,
frankly said: 81 don't know anything
about military matters | don't know
how to get my regiment going, and
! if | once got it going, | wouldn't
/ know how to stop it again Yet
twelve hundred lives and national in
uerests were made dependent upon
this utterly unqualified man for pure,
| ~ political reasons.
The mass of the people have had
/ very little idea of the danger and
| disaster that lie behind such appoint
ments, but there are, nevertheless,
many wives, mothers and sisters who
, are beginning to realize that they
don't want husbands, sons, fathers
and brothers ordered in battle by
men who don't know how to give
>
And these training camps are going
to vastly increase the appreciation
of the simple proposition that sol
der needs to know his business just
as does the surgeon, the lawyer, the
sailor, the electrician and every 9th
err man of profession or trade.
Furthermore, they will spread &
conception of the fact that Army OF
ticers, on whose competence or in
competence depend the lives of mer
: and the fate of nations require fol
the proper discharge of their grave
duties, training and abilities of Q
higher order and more varied charac
ter than do men of any other profeS
sion in life.
1T is, therefore, only reasonable
to expect that large numbers o
those who enter Officers Training
Camps will find after a few weeks
trial that they were not destined b!
nature for the duties and responsi
hilities of military command Thi
fact should involve no reproach. I
is no more disgraceful to be a mis-
! fit at an Officers Training CAM
than to be similar misfit in training
! for the church choir. Real militar,
leaders are as rare as good mus
clans, and the unfit must be eliminat
, ed as ruthlessly as are the discordan
aspirants for place in the orchestrf
q and this elimination is not evidenc
, that the rejected ones are not goo
a men, grave men or patriotic men. y