Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/73

 bility should he “spring to arms”; and if the worst comes to the worst he trusts—usually with success—to his lucky stars.

With the view of the Harvard Corporation the civil authorities quite concurred, though on a somewhat different ground. A great deal of the inefficiency of the militia system was due to the rule of universal service, whereby the whole breeched portion of the population from sixteen to sixty (or even older), the fit and the unfit, the willing and the unwilling, the sober and the drunken, were thrust willy-nilly into the drill-field with every variety of weapon and every degree of aptitude. Still, even then there was an exemption law, and a far more sensible one than at present. It was based, not upon the claims of others, but upon the man’s own value to the community. If enforced in recent years, it would have prevented the now too familiar story of the sacrifice of the flower of the nation’s youth, while the drones and the sluggards remain safely at home. Under its provisions the leaders and the prospective leaders of the people, the best educated and the most difficult to replace, were not called upon to waste their time in farcical training, or to risk their lives in case of war. Among those specifically exempted were the clergy, the physicians, the magistrates, and the teachers and students of Harvard College.