At a time when the United States is at war in countries with a host of foreign languages and ethnic groups, you’d think that the U.S. Army would be trying to make maximum use of America’s large immigrant population as a recruiting pool for its officer corps, especially through its ROTC programs on college campuses. But you would be wrong, according to a front-page article in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Many of the immigrants likeliest to speak Arabic or Pashto are in big cities like Detroit or New York, but the Army has only a skeletal presence on campuses in those cities. ROTC units there were shut down by the score when the Army concluded that its recruiting prospects were poor in the face of Vietnam-era antimilitarism on campuses. More units were closed when the military contracted after the cold war.

The result has been a shift in recruiting to campuses in the South, which produces 40 percent of all Army officers. As a result, New York City, with a population nearly double that of Alabama, has just one-fifth of the Southern state’s ROTC programs. Last year Alabama colleges generated 174 Army officers, while colleges in New York City graduated just 34. But ROTC is reviving in New York City, and the Journal article describes how.