SCIENCE TRAINING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 September 1942, Page 4

SCIENCE TRAINING

EXPANSION IN CANADA MEETING WAR AND POST-WAR NEEDS. PROPOSED FINANCIAL AID. Faced with a shortage ui engineers and natural scientists to fill the future requirements of the armed forces and war industries, the Dominion Government is now considering a plan to give financial aid to several hundred highranking secondary school graduates to allow university study, it was disclosed at the recent national conference cr Canadian universities held at Toronto. Under the scheme, recruiting for all branches of the armed forces, as far as engineers and science workers graduating from universities are concerned, will be centralised under the director of national selective service. The latter will allocate the graduates where needed. with the armed forces having first call.

University students are not subject to call for military training while taking their courses, but must take basic military training at college, he said.

It was also disclosed that plans are already in effect on a small scale to enable undergraduates and matriculants, and even post-graduate students, who left their studies to enlist, to return to college and complete their education. Under Order-in-Council P. C. 7G33, provision is made for some financial assistance for university fees and maintenance allowances.

However, neither the Government nor the departmental administration has reserved to itself any control over the course pursued by the students. From the time they enter the university, the success or failure of the scheme depends on that body itself. Brig. Gen. H. F. McDonald, Pension Commissioner, who outlined the plan, urged consideration of inclusion of the broad humane principles as well as the feeding of facts and formulae if the scheme is to be carried out as a significant contribution to national reconstruction. Men returning to civil life after a period of service require in a greater or lesser degree a distinct readjustment of mental attitude toward their own individual life and their relations to the community, he said.