Conscription

Eire, Canada, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Cuba and the U. S. maintain the only armies in the world of 1940 whose ranks are filled by volunteers. But last week conscription loomed as an imminent reality for the U. S. Never yet has the U. S. had conscription in peacetime, only twice in time of war.* Yet, bulking big in the background for millions of John Does and Richard Roes, peacetime conscription last week cast its unfamiliar shadow over an active week on the U. S. defense front. It was the first big, tough, concrete reality to emerge on the path down which U. S. public opinion has plunged.

Many a citizen would not wait last week for the lumbering processes of democracy to call him to the colors. While the Army's regular Citizens' Military Training Camps for young men (17-29) got under way, to ten encampments, from Massachusetts' Fort Devens to the Presidio in Monterey, tramped 3,000 civilians, aged 25 to 50, for an intensive month of military training. These camps recalled--as their sponsors, the Military Training Camps Association, meant them to--the "Plattsburg Idea" of 1915. To Maryland's Fort Meade went 200 Philadelphia business and professional men, including Republican Senatorial Nominee Jay Cooke. Most publicized encampment was Plattsburg itself, where 810 trainees, many arriving in sleek cars, enrolled at a cost to each of $43.50 for a 30-day regime of study and drill, pork & beans and a 5:45 a.m. bugle. Newshawks and photographers spotted many a notable and socialite among them.

No one believes more firmly than M. T. C. A. that volunteers are not enough. The Association's emergency committee chairman, Manhattan Corporation Lawyer Grenville Clark, and its vice chairman, the New York Times's Colonel Julius Ochs Adler, went to Washington for hearings before the Senate Military Affairs Committee on M. T. C. A.'s legislative baby, the Burke-Wadsworth Selective Training and Service Bill (TIME, June 17). Main features: listing of available men from 18 to 65; from this list, men between 21 and 31 (ultimately 21 to 45) will be liable for selection by lot for an eight-month training period (subject to emergency extension) in U. S. land and naval forces; pay of $5 a month; calling of men to wait until Congress appropriates money for their maintenance.

Chairman Clark pointed out that the bill was a strictly military measure which contemplated no labor battalions or forced work in industry. Harvard's President James Bryant Conant approved, provided the bill deferred training and service for medical and scientific students and other technicians more useful outside a conscript camp. Wartime Generalissimo John J. Pershing testified by letter that such a bill would have saved the U. S. men and mon ey in World War I, reserved approval of the eight-month period (Army men would like at least a year) and the home defense provisions.

While Colonel Adler was on the stand, one of the many hard issues conscription would raise suddenly popped out from California's Townsendite Democrat Sheridan Downey. How about $5 a month, asked Sheridan Downey, when the Army could not get the kind of men it wanted for $21? "We are going to face tremendous difficulties with fifth columnists," boomed Senator Downey, "and I know no better way than to conscript mechanics and pay no wages to service airplanes."

"I have a boy myself," retorted Colonel Adler, champing his cigar, "and I want him to be trained somehow."

"My son left for training camp last night," said South Dakota's Gurney.

"I have a son in the reserve," echoed Indiana's Minton.

For the present no sons will go to camp under the Burke-Wadsworth Bill. Hearings were postponed as Congress waited for word from Franklin Roosevelt, who approves the motives of M. T. C. A. but is pondering with Laborite Sidney Hillman an independent scheme for the voluntary training of 460,000 youths in technical defense jobs, and from the War Department, whose enthusiasm for compulsory enlistment is matched by a determination not to be swamped by calling up excessive numbers at the start.

Last week no major political voice was raised against conscription. No echo was heard to Kansas' old Arthur Capper, who in a radio debate with Senator Burke found peacetime conscription a blow "at the heart of personal liberty and personal freedom." A Gallup Poll found peacetime conscription already approved by 64% of men of military age and their families. It had long ago been approved by George Washington, its first advocate, who thought it essential to his ideal of a "Respectably Defensive Posture" required by freedom from foreign alliances.

*In the Civil War, in World War I, Massachusetts and Virginia during the Revolution, New York during the War of 1812, raised armies by conscription.

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