Conscription

A Gallup Poll taken at May's end showed that the U. S. was divided half for, half against conscription. Last week another poll showed two-thirds of the U. S. people (67%) favored conscription. But also last week this majority seemed about to be defeated.

Up in Congress was the Burke-Wads-worth Selective Training and Service Bill. By the simpler concepts of democracy, the bill should have rolled through Congress, garnering applause from its supporters. The opposite happened. The bill was stalled, hacked to the point of emasculation. Minority pressure was, for the moment at least, triumphant. This was neither new nor even out of the ordinary. What was extraordinary last week was the great, mal-assorted conglomeration of minorities against conscription; the extreme inaction of the thwarted majority, the silence or ineptitude of most of its supposed spokesmen, the misinformation or lack of information which was permitted to imperil the majority will.

Hash From Home. Citizens wondering how the majority could be thus dillied, did well to look toward La Salle and Ran dolph Streets in Chicago. At that busy corner, one day last week, a white horse stood. On the horse was Miss Elane Summers, 19, a Rockford (Ill.) College sophomore, in a Revolutionary getup which was supposed to make her resemble Paul Revere (see cut,p.11). Calling herself Pauline Revere, Miss Summers admonished the U. S.: "MOBILIZE FOR PEACE--DEFEAT CONSCRIPTION." Said alliterative Papa Summers (who in 1938 denounced Communists for luring his son Thane to death in Loyalist Spain): ". . . My pink daughter ... [on] a white horse ... a pretty puppet is paraded to propagandize against American preparedness . . . [by] Stalin's subtle stooges."

Symbolized by this puppet Pauline was the bulk of last week's "popular" opposition to conscription. Among the articulate minorities which frightened Congress were many sincere, substantial, respected groups. But in sum they made as weird a hash as was ever dumped on Washington:

P:There was first a noble front of such eminent moralists as Norman Thomas, oldtime Pacifist Oswald Garrison Villard and Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, who is full of guilty feelings about the last war.

P:Labor in the person of C. I. O.'s John Lewis identified conscription with dictatorship ("Democracy must offer its own way of life to combat the forces which imperil civilization today"). Caught between his instinct to oppose John Lewis and his aversion to any politically uncertain controversy. A. F. of L.'s William Green hesitated, finally came out against compulsory training until it becomes "necessary to defend, protect and preserve America."

P:The Communist Party was of course against U. S. conscription. So, naturally enough, was the American Youth Congress, whose loud lobbyists visited Capitol Hill in mass. A. Y. C.'s most potent friend is Eleanor Roosevelt, who surprised readers of her column last month by gently slapping her young chums' wrists for not facing "the world as it is today." Last week, she changed tune, did no favor to her husband by writing in "My Day": "The general feeling I encounter is that we should remain, where military service is concerned, on a voluntary basis."

P:Clergymen of nearly all faiths (but by no means all clergymen) put themselves in opposition by sermons, letters, testimony before Congressional committees. Typical Catholic: Monsignor Michael J. Ready of the National Catholic Welfare Conference who pleaded for volunteer recruiting. Typical Methodist: prime, bespectacled Dr. Charles F. Boss Jr. (conscription would "junk the American system"). Dr. Boss presided at an anti-conscription rally in Washington, where posters ("We're using our ballots so we won't stop bullets") indicated that his audience would not furnish many volunteers.

P:Much in evidence were "peace societies." The Citizens' Keep America Out of War Committee sloganed: "Why the Rush?"

P:Many were the hybrids which defied precise definition. Example: the Trade Unions' Committee for Peace, which sent a phalanx of determined young women to Capitol Hill. Whatever else these pacific Amazons accomplished, they pungently reported on their interviews with politicos in travail: On Speaker Bankhead ("I said, 'Well, what about the conscription bill?' He said, 'I don't know anything about it. I haven't even read it'"); Henry Wallace ("He was very uneasy and begged us to excuse him"); G. O. P.'s Vice-Presidential Nominee Charles L. McNary ("He said young men in uniform to solve the unemployment problem is Hitler's method").

"A Year of Their Lives." Thousands of good, individual voters confided their fears in letters to Congressmen. A natural target for this barrage was the man who stood head & shoulders above other Congressional oppositionists: Montana's distinguished chameleon, Senator BURTON KENDALL WHEELER. Changeable on many things, but long against war, armaments and intervention. Burt Wheeler last week had drawn 3,935 wires, letters, postcards against conscription, 32 for it.

About 70% of his correspondence was from women. Typical protests: "We don't want Hitlerism in this country. Has everybody in Washington gone hysterical?" "Just think how many young boys' careers will be ruined. This means a year out of their lives." Socialite Mrs. Richard Newton, of Water Mill, L. I., informed the Senator that conscription was camouflage to conceal the Third Term issue. Dr. C. F. Aked (D.D., LL.D., Litt.D.), of Los Angeles, telegraphed: "I thank God for your noble fight against . . death dealing systems of continental Europe where conscription means both syphilis and slavery." Banker John M. Johnston Jr. of Wayne, Pa. objected to having the normal course of his life interrupted. Said Burt Wheeler, duly impressed: "Democrats who vote for [conscription] before the coming election . . . will be driving nails in their coffins."

Burt Wheeler was one of less than 60 U. S. Senators and Representatives who up to week's end had had the courage to declare themselves on conscription. While the rest of the 531 fried, the bill burned. This was possible because last week's battle to arm or not arm the U. S. with trained man power was fought not on the floors but in two committees (Military Affairs-of Senate and House.

Clustered around Burton Wheeler were a potent few who by background, conviction or inherent quirk, viewed U. S. conscription with alarm. Minnesota's ERNEST LUNDEEN (who voted against U. S. entry into World War I*) was as loud against conscription as he was for seizing Franco-British possessions in the Caribbean--a step which might eventually require all the trained man power the U. S. could muster. Nebraska's aged (79), revered GEORGE W. NORRIS (who also opposed World War I) has said that World War II is different. But he and younger, 45, Isolationist ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE JR. (whose late father voted with George Norris in 1917) opposed the draft because they considered Adolf Hitler a lesser, remoter menace to U. S. civil liberties. Professionally isolationist in more ways than mere consistency was North Dakota's GERALD PRENTICE NYE, who annually makes a tidy sum lecturing about the horrors of war.

In the herded House, conscription last week had fewer aggressive opponents than in the Senate. Leading the House opposition was New York's HAMILTON FISH, who last year thought he was ordained to be Hitler's Peace-Agent. Of all those who wished to prevent conscription, only one was wholly consistent--VITO MARCANTONIC, valiant, reddish radish from Manhattan's Harlem, who capped his unbroken record of opposition to Defense measures last week by casting a lone vote against a $4,963,151,957 Army-Navy Bill.

Paper v. Men. Of all the arguments heard against conscription last week, the most effective was that volunteer recruiting is enough, until & unless the U. S. goes to war.

Politics aside, this argument missed the point of the Burke-Wadsworth Bill. Its purpose was not to build up the standing Army and Navy, but rather to assure the U. S. a reserve of trained man power to be called when & if needed. Said the Army's Chief of Staff George Marshall last week: "Paper plans no longer will suffice. The security of our country depends on having trained men . . . and there is no other way to do it. . . ."

Where Were They? Last week a letter-writer to the New York Herald Tribune, Author David Cohn of Mississippi, put the case for conscription in five simple words. He dusted off the isolationists, Democrats, Republicans and congenital do-nothings in Washington, asked in the line-of-the-week: "Where are the Americans hiding?"

Other U. S. citizens might well have asked where Franklin Roosevelt's Administration leaders in Congress were hiding early last week, when the opposition was most vocal and active. Not until the Burke-Wadsworth Bill had been well com-mitteemandered did Mr. Roosevelt come out for conscription in principle, at week's end had yet to indorse the endangered bill specifically.

His nominal Senate leader, Alben Barkley, contributed only the observation that the matter would require several weeks of debate. Normally aggressive, adroit Jimmy Byrnes of South Carolina, who long since supplanted Bumbler Barkley as the majority's real leader, led off last week with the suggestion that the bill be well watered down.

So well advanced was this malaise by mid-week that Secretary of War Henry Lewis Stimson and General Marshall had to go up Capitol Hill, plead for action which most U. S. people already wanted. After three weeks in his new job, 72-year-old Mr. Stimson looked a little worn. His voice quavered, alike from weariness and irritation. But in his grave, informed statement of U. S. peril in Hitler's world, Henry Stimson pulled no punches. House committee quibblers drove him to distraction, finally drove him to his best line of the day: "All this talk of wait, wait, wait, and we're confronted with an enemy who does not wait!"

But this week, when a compromise version of the Burke-Wadsworth Bill emerged at last from the Senate Military Affairs Committee, Henry Stimson's fire and logic had yet to convert many a doubter. Biggest obstacle to conscription still was the Congressional state of mind typified by Iowa's grey GUY MARK GILLETTE. Like most of the other opposition Senators, Mr. Gillette has voted for billions in emergency Defense appropriations. Last week he announced that conscription should be delayed until there is an emergency. For good measure, Guy Gillette also devised a new definition of military training: "This idea of letting the boys sit around for a year playing stud poker and blackjack is poppycock."

*So did the late Representative Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., whose son Charles this week took to the radio to advocate appeasing Adolf Hitler.

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