Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 195, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1916 — COLLEGE STUDENTS MAY LEAVE BORDER [ARTICLE]

COLLEGE STUDENTS MAY LEAVE BORDER

Order From War Department Provides for Their Muster Out After September First. ■ I Mercedes, Texas, 14.—According to an order from the war department just received by BrigadierGeneral Lewis, commanding general of Llano Grande camp, all organizations of college students can go home to their schools after September 1, provided no situation arises that requires their services here as soldiers. All organizations in Indiana will be sent to Fort Harrison, there mustered out of the service, required to turn over their equipment and make a strict accounting to the federal government. The equipment will be sent to the government arsenal at Rock Island, and the students mustered out no longer will be in the national guard service or receive the aid of ths government. This applies to individuals students, as well as student organizations. Battery B, of the Indiana field artillery, is made up of Purdue university men. Battery B received government aid. If Battery B goes home, it will pass out of existence as a part of the national guard. Federal support will be withdrawn from it. Purdue will receive no mpney to keep up an organization in the national guard but will receive the money paid it by the government for military instructions. That is, the university will get money from the government to pay its teaching of military work but not to keep up an organization in the national guard. The students can not enlist in the regular guard while they are students, but they may enlist after their student work is done.

The order is imperative and explicit. It reads that individual students and student organizations shall be mustered out and so even'should any student desire to remain in the service, he can not do so if he claims his rights as a student. If he does not make the claim to being a student, he may Remain because no one will hunt up evidence that he is a student. So, after all, it is up to the student himself whether he remains or not. All who claim -to be students must go home and be mustered out of the national guard service. Captain Mclvor, of Battery B, said the Purdue students probably will go home in a body. A few of Battery B who are not claiming to be students may rerpain and join one of the other batteries.- This order is one of the worst blows the Indiana national guard has yet received. Every Indiana unit has students among its men and officers and if they claim a student’s right under the order/ they must quit the service, and if they do, the Indiana troops here will be reduced to almost a skelton.

Indiana university has a band in the national guard and one of the compaines in the Second regiment practically is' made up of students. The same law applies to Indiana university that applies to Purdue. Just how many of the students will take but the report hare is that wxzfiflffffi advantage of the law is not known because the order just came and there has not been time for investigation.

Many of the students have said that if there was any reason for ’heir being here, or if there was any prospect of their being called for service, they would remain, but as it appears on the surface to them, there is no need, they say, of their remaining and thus miss the school work. If all the individual students in various commands and in Battery B return home, it' will reduce the Indiana troops by about 600 men. The loss of Battery B woudl break the Indiana battalion of light artillery. Another, battery is being organized at Fort Wayne that will take Battery B’s place, should it leave. The order mustering out the individual students and the student z organizations has caused a great deal of dissatisfaction amohg the Indiana troops. They are not criticising the students for going, but they feel that others are just as mhch entitled to a discharge as a student and it need not be surprising if there are a number of resignations among the officers and a demand for a discharge among the men.

None/ of the Indiana, outfits is up to the regulation in the number of men, and if the recruiting officers can not fill in the quota, there is a possibility that Indiana may lose a regiment. It might be that the men from one regiment may be consolidated into the other two regiments and it is not beyond the possibility that unless the Indiana regiments should be filled, an Indiana regiment might be made pare of an Ohio or a Kentucky o’r a Wisconsin brigade and Indiana thus would lose its identity, it would be a unit in a brigade, instead of a brigade of itself. So it was good news when the men here received the word that politicians who have been ap-