Evening star., 1940-09-06
School Cadet Corps
Compulsory Training
kUrged byHoIme5
Assistont Superintendent
Plans Recruiting Drive
Pending Final Outcome
By HENRY GEMMILL.

by HENRY GEMMlLL.
DR.. Chester w. Holmes. assistant
superintendent in charge Of the Dis
tricts white senior high schools,
announced yesterday that he per-
sonally would like to see cadet corps
training made compulsory for all
local high school boys. instead of
the present voluntary plan.
Emphasizing that he expects no
general demand for such a cadet
transcription" move this year-and
adding that the Board of Education
would not adopt his suggestion
without careful study-Dr. Holmes,
former Army sergeant, neverthe-
less projected another program
scheduled to be carried out at
school-opening which seems likely to
alter the High School Cadet Corps
Substantially-and at once.
First, DR.. Holmes said he would
lead a recruiting" drive, which he
hopes will swell the ranks of this
58-year-old uniformed organization
by so per cent. The enrolment last
year in the white schools cadet
corps was 2,033, he stated.
Second. he reported school officials
are considering cutting short the
time young cadets devote to parad-
ing, in order to substitute Butts
manual of setting-up EXERCISES
rugged way of toning up youngsters
for possible future Army life.
Third. resumption is planned of
competitions in map reading and
strategy required to command
troops in combat maneuvers.
Fourth. DR.. Holmes expects to at
tract to the corps for the first time
youths from low-income families
who have largely been precluded
from joining by the cost of uni
forms" His plan is to confer with
uniform companies; get them to de-
wise an installment plan to cushion
the $40 uniform price.
Fifth, the educator anticipates a
subtle shift in emphasis in the cadet
corps goal. While character build.
ing and health will remain upper
most, the boys and their instructors
will be asked, he said, to consider
their drill more soberly than ever
before as preliminary to potential
service in the National Guard, Navy,
Army, Marine Corps or United
States Naval and Military Acad-
emies.
Conference Slated
Asst. Supt. Holmes will confer
upon this program September IT
with the high school principals.
He feels so strongly" about en-
largement of the corps that he de-
clared he would be willing to make
speech in each of the institutions
appealing to the boys snese of re-
sponSibility as coming citizens OF
Nation in danger-telling them
they have a duty to give military
service in return for their free in
struction and other privileges in
this country"
The various principals will prob
ably make the appeals, however, he
DIR. Holmes has been an out
spoken advocate OF various types of
military training since 1913, when
as a freshman at Harvard he gath
cred his courage and wrote a letter
to the university's late. famous
president, A. Lawrence Lowell, de-
manding compulsory training for
his classmates. DR.. Lowell replied
that Harvard never had been, never
would be, military. But in 1916
young Holmes had the pleasure of
marching as buck private in the
first voluntary regiment established
at the college.
Later he served in the Army Med
ical Corps and Field Artillery-re-
| signing at the end of the World
War with the conviction that he
was not cut out for a military
career, but with a love of drilling
and the belief it creates physical
| we'll being.
ures as compulsory gun practice on
tthe high-school rifle ranges-now
impossible because of small con-
gressional appropriations for am
munition-Dr. Holmes plans seem
to resemble the founding spirit of
1882, when the first cadets rushed
bowling over territory between the
Washington Monument and the
White House, discharging blank
cartridges from so old Austrian
rifles in terrific sham battle. These
and later stirring days inspired John
Philip Sousa to write the High
School Cadet March," resplendent
with martial strains that became
well known in Germany.
Afterward hospitals and nervous
individuals objected to the noise,
and the cadets became more sedate.
The climax of recent school years
has been an annual close-order
drill competition, highly artificial in
terms of modern warfare. School
girls crowded the sidelines to watch
the presentation of medals to young
officers whose companies behaved
most like clockwork
That the cadet corps was not en-
tirely removed from the realities of
soldering was indicated last year,
however, when the youths adopted
the Army's new streamlined drill.
COlored Corps to Expand.
confidently" expected this year
is numerical expansion in cadet
platoonS of the colored high schools,
matching that in the white schools,
according to Asst. Supt. of Schools
G. C. Wilkinson. He said approxi-
mately $50 boys were enrolled in
these schools columns last term,
and ''at least 150' more are likely to
join this year.
DR.. Wilkinson, who served as
cadet private from 1895 to 1898 in
the old M Street High School (refus-
ing to accept higher commission
because he preferred rifle to a
saber) says he now refuses to con-
slider the cadets as a primarily mill
tary organization. and does mot
think high schools should be mill
tarized."
Dr uo1noeS ro,,pterino ro<cih1o oh