Service for All?

ARMY & NAVY

Last week an unprecedented movement was under way in the U. S.: military conscription. In only two wars-the Civil War and the World War-has the U. S. conscripted men for its armed services.* But this movement was unprecedented. It was for peacetime conscription, conscription as a preparedness measure. The changed technique of modern war and the changing temper of the U. S. people raised the issue.

The first steps were not taken by the Government, but certainly the War and Navy Departments in Washington knew what was going on, heartily approved. So did Franklin Roosevelt. One morning last week he read in an editorial in the New York Times: "The time has come when, in the interest of self-protection, the American people should at once adopt a national system of universal, compulsory military training. We say this . . . because the logic of events drives us remorselessly to this conclusion." Mr. Roosevelt said he liked the paragraph.

Initiators of the plan for universal training were the Times'?, Colonel Julius Ochs Adler and Manhattan Lawyer Grenville Clark, whose Military Training Camps Association set out to raise $250,000 to promote acceptance of a peacetime draft.

Last week genial Colonel Adler, who served overseas with the 77th Division in 1918, told a group of Princeton alumni and students about a bill which was being drawn up for Congressional action. Most interesting detail: not only young men would be drafted, but about 15% of the draftees would be men from 32 to 38, and 5%, men of 38 to 45 (on the proved theory that groups combining different ages and various levels of intelligence do the best soldiering).

Meanwhile New Jersey's State Director of Relief ordered his subordinates to strip from the rolls all ablebodied, single men who are eligible for military service. His ungentle hint: the Army provides employment. Illinois's old, gentle Congressman Adolph Sabath, who has long opposed school military training, retreated so far as to favor conscription for collegians. A Gallup Poll published last week showed voters divided 50-50 on peacetime conscription; last October, they were 61% against it. Massachusetts' 38-year-old Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (an Army Reserve Captain) proposed to require six months' training for all able young men as they turn 18. The Army's Chief of Staff George Marshall advocated some limited form of peacetime conscription.

The Army in a report last year announced that volunteer enlistment will not work for wartime service. But the reason for peacetime conscription is that volunteer recruiting is inadequate. Recruiting districts throughout the U. S. are behind in their quotas, will have to drive hard to up the Army from 242,000 to 280,000 by next Sept. i. How big an army may be needed to face down the threats of Blitzkrieg no one last week calculated publicly. Some idea of possible requirements could be got from the fact that, if the U. S. ever has 50,000 warplanes in actual service, it will have to have around 75,000 pilots and 750,000 men on the ground (at the rule of thumb of ten men on the ground to keep one man in the air) for its air force alone.

-In the Civil War the Union did not undertake conscription until 1863.

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