Theirs to Reason Why

The Tennysonian notion that it is not a soldier's business to reason why is so much spinach to the U.S. Army; and this week the Army firmly said to hell with it. At Army posts all over the U.S., selected officers and civilians began to deliver twice-weekly lectures on post-World War I history, U.S. military and foreign policy, the contrary policies of the Axis.

Organized by Colonel Herman Beukema, professor of economics, government and history at West Point (see p. 56), the new educational program will run for two months, enable soldiers to hear such observers as Raymond Clapper, Hanson W. Baldwin, Carl Crow, Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Since part of the course will be a day-to-day interpretation of current events, maps are being installed in soldiers' day rooms on which shifting battles can be checked and charted.

While Colonel Beukema's program was getting under way, another Army educational venture went into high gear on a smaller front. To a series of three-times-a-week classes planned by hard-boiled Lieut. General Ben Lear and soft-spoken Major Robert Allen Griffin (TIME, Nov. 24) went the 125,000 officers and men of the Second Army. The Lear-Griffin outline of their program:

We don't intend to give you any pep talks. The purpose of this program is to assist you to attain a better and clearer understanding of the world affairs of this world war. . . . It is to make clear to you not why you are fighting, but for what you are fighting.

The Second Army school includes two courses:

Course A (two hours a week) begins with lectures on geography, world trade and the strategic importance of bases and routes. Dr. William G. Fletcher of Yale wrote the geography lesson, quoted Napoleon: "Policies of all states are to be found in their geography."

Why is the United States interested in an obscure, faraway island in the Pacific called New Caledonia? Why must we be concerned about a port in West Africa called Dakar? How do different types of soil and varying weather conditions affect the defense and power of any country? . . . Geography as we must study it . . . is a study of differences in environment and their effect on men's lives.

Course B (one hour a week), prepared by the Second Army Board, explains the operation of U.S. armed forces, German, Russian and British tactics in this war, propaganda and psychological warfare:

When this course is finished it is expected that you will know something about what a sailor does on a ship; how a big warship is operated; how an air task force is formed, and what it is expected to do; how the Army Commander spends his day; how your chow gets to you (or maybe why it doesn't sometimes); how German units work; the way you distinguish between truth, propaganda and pure, unadulterated BUNK.

Teachers are 300 officers in Ben Lear's Army, chosen for pedagogical skill and leadership. Their orders: "Ordinary dull academic instruction is to be avoided."

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