Seaman-gunner schools are located at the Washington Navy Yard and at the torpedo station at Newport. All of these schools give short, intensive courses ranging from three to eighteen months in length. The students are paid wages, and all expenses are met the same as with other enlisted men. Seven free marine-engineering schools and thirty free navigation schools are being started on the Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific, and Great Lakes coasts to train men already having some experience for better places at advanced pay as engineers and deck officers in the new merchant fleet. The graduates are being placed as fast as they are graduated. The need for their services is expected to last for many years after peace is restored. For several years our industrial continuation schools have had as their motto "Earn and Learn." But the naval technical schools have shown a way whereby young men may both serve and learn. CHAPTER IV OUR COLLEGES AND TECHNICAL INSTITUTES It is to be hoped that if we can realize, as England did not, that education, to quote Arnold Bennett, "is the very last thing that we ought to economize in," we shall spare ourselves some of the unnecessary calamities of war. England, France, Italy, and the Central Powers have thrown into battle a very large percentage of their educated and trained men, including most of the young professors and instructors in their universities and colleges, gymnasiums, and _lycées_. Their colleges and universities are almost empty. The young men who would under normal conditions be receiving the education and training necessary to prepare them for leadership in the future development of these countries are fighting and dying in the trenches. In view of the fact that all of these countries must needs go through a long period of reconstruction, industrial and otherwise, it is a pity that the sacrifice of its best youth had needlessly to be made. As a matter of fact, we see now that no university, college, or technical school that can possibly avoid it should permit its faculty or student body to be scattered or its energies dissipated. All concerned should redouble their energies and concentrate them upon those things which will be of the most service in the progress of the war and will prepare the students for the most effective service when the war is over. President Wilson, three months after the severing of relations with Germany, in response to a request for an opinion on the continuance of a college or a technical-school education during the war, wrote this letter: