The Soldiers' President?

The voice was familiar, the argument reasonable, the diction clear. The people at their radios listened to the President. But there seemed to be something in the air that blurred the reception.

"As you know," said the voice, "I have for three years hesitated to recommend a national service act. Today, however, I am convinced of its necessity. . . . National service has proven to be a unifying moral force. . . . It will be a means by which every man and woman can find that inner satisfaction which comes from making the fullest possible contribution to victory."

To a nation that has for so long lacked the warmth of full community, the President offered a path to unity. The response seemed something between reserve and resentment.

"National service," he said, "is the most democratic way to wage war." And that, the nation felt, was true. But why, then, had the President for three years hesitated to recommend it? What had now convinced him of its necessity? "A unifying moral force" would have unified the nation at the start of the war--when unity would have counted doubly, when the danger was deadly and when almost everybody expected such service anyhow.

To be sure, there were solid practical arguments for a national service act. It would unquestionably speed up lagging enlistments in the women's branches of the armed services. And it would allow workers to be shifted swiftly from places where production is being cut back to those where more hands are urgently needed.

But all this, and more, was favoring national service three years ago. Why should something be inescapable in 1944 which in 1941--and for two years after--could be evaded? Did the President have new information so weighty that it swept away the hesitation of three crucial years? If so, he kept it to himself. So the people wondered.

Were the armed forces not growing fast enough? When the President spoke, more than ten million men were in service, more than five million abroad, and the induction machine was functioning more smoothly than ever.

Was production limping? For months, the President's war production agencies had been outdoing each other in glowing reports, and the Truman Committee had told the people that $8 billion of war production contracts had been canceled.

Wasn't the manpower shortage licked? In isolated cases of relatively little moment, labor demand was still bigger than labor supply, but over other industrial areas moved the shadows of temporary layoffs and even unemployment.

Campaign Document? Many a Congressman thought he knew the answer to the President's change of mind: 1944 is an election year. But if the President's message was a campaign document, it was an extraordinary one. Mr. Roosevelt, as Walter Lippmann pointed out, seemed to assume that "it is good politics in the year 1944 to propose the very things which no other politician has ever regarded as anything but straight political suicide." And "we all know that Mr. Roosevelt is just about the shrewdest and most successful practical politician of our time."*

Strangely enough for an election platform, the President had tied the national service act to the enactment of four other legislative proposals which are objectionable, or politically presumed to be objectionable, to large groups of voters. They were:

P: Realistically tough taxation;

P: Tough renegotiation of war contracts;

P: Food subsidies and price control;

P: Re-enactment of the Stabilization Act

(that keeps OPA going).

Congressional opposition to this program was somewhat inconsistent. Some argued that it would lose votes for the President: the people are fed up with regimentation and want no more of it. Others, doubting that the President seriously wants and expects his full program to be passed, suspected a slick move to pass the buck to Congress for continued labor unrest and domestic confusion. Such practical politicians were not sure that, in Mr. Lippmann's words, come November 1944 "a program of blood, sweat and tears [may prove] to be a better way of retaining the people's confidence than a menu of pap, applesauce and eyewash." The President, it seemed, was. And of all U.S. politicians, Mr. Roosevelt has by far the best information on which to base an estimate of what is going to happen between now and November. It was the urgent advice of the military which made the President focus his message on national service.

If the State of the Union message was indeed a campaign document, the President foresees ten months of military events that, next November, will make politics-as-usual look prehistoric.

Labor's Fears. Hardly had a Congressional clerk finished reading the message when A.F. of L. and C.I.O. proclaimed their defiance of the President's surprise proposal. Mild William Green and easygoing Philip Murray had a tense session with the President, told him bluntly that labor would fight national service with everything it had.

Labor, official weekly newspaper of the railroad brotherhoods, flatly accused the President of betrayal. "The recipient of [labor's] support," it declared, now wants labor "to be subjected to involuntary servitude." Fellow-traveling Joe Curran and Harry Bridges gave national service a cheer. But most other major unions joined the fiercest onslaught labor has ever launched at Franklin Roosevelt.

Labor flatly suspected the President of suggesting national service as his own version of the anti-strike legislation that labor's open enemies had openly advocated. To labor's spokesmen, national service looked like a scheme to use the war for a showdown with unionism.

Editorial supporters of national service were prompt to point out that Labor Leaders Murray and Green had also opposed selective service when it was proposed in 1940.

What Is National Service? In experience abroad and in already-drafted U.S. legislation, there is little to support labor's fears, little to support the President's suggestion that national service "will prevent strikes." Neither in Great Britain nor in New Zealand has labor lost its substantial political power under national service acts. Nor have these acts prevented numerous strikes.

President Roosevelt left the machinery of national service to Congress. The bill currently pending in both houses was introduced eleven months ago by two Republicans: Vermont's Austin and New York's Wadsworth. Its essential provisions :

P: Women aged 21 to 50 register through Selective Service. (Men aged 18 to 65 are already registered.)

P: A Director of National Service ascertains shortages of workers and, if volunteers are too few, calls on draft boards to make up the required numbers.

P: National service selectees work at their assigned jobs under existing working contracts and scales. They may neither be forced to join a union nor prevented from joining.

P: Untrained selectees receive training at Government expense; if assignment takes selectees away from home, traveling expenses are paid and adequate housing supplied by the Government.

P: Local draft boards rule on selectees' claims to take their families with them, at Government expense; they also decide claims for exemption because of undue hardship.

P: Automatically exempt are women with children under 18, persons with disabled or overaged dependents, conscientious objectors.

There is nothing in the bill which flatly forbids strikes. Congressman Jimmy Wadsworth, who is one of the proud fathers of the Selective Service Act, predicted last week that his national service bill will pass, after a slow uphill battle in Congress. But Washington betting was against it. Jimmy Wadsworth, however, might be betting, along with the President, that General Eisenhower will contribute to Congressional debate with some very solemn communiques.

The Soldiers' Logic. Mr. Roosevelt had sent his message to Congress and to the nation, but another address was written on it in invisible ink: "To the Soldiers."

Franklin Roosevelt has been many things: the New Deal's President, Labor's President, the President of One-Third of the Nation, the politicians' President, the Democrats' President. But now he seemed to have become the soldiers' President--a President who thought, argued and acted with the stubborn singleness of purpose growing out of daily orders to and reports from the fronts. The soldiers were asking: Why should the folks at home object to being drafted for work, when we have been drafted to fight?

Last week, this soldier logic was Mr. Roosevelt's. "The shrewdest and most successful practical politician of our time" may have convinced himself that the way to get in tune with the listeners at home is to speak with the voice of the soldiers abroad.

*Pundit Lippmann, in an aside, was less appreciative of the President's administrative talents: "When he needs a suit of clothes [he] will find three tailors, will tell each of them to make one leg of the trousers, will let each of them guess which leg he is working on, and will then appoint a fourth tailor to coordinate the trousers."

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