Reluctant, Unanimous

ARMY & NAVY

For years, and especially since World War II, military men have sternly urged the nation to adopt universal military training. Six months ago a presidential commission of nine civilians began a study of the subject. This week they made their report. Their reluctant but unanimous conclusion, arrived at in a kind of solemn horror: the Army is right; universal training is a matter of "urgent military necessity" for the U.S.

The make-up of the commission was almost as interesting as its 448-page report. The chairman: Physicist Karl Compton, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The members: Joseph (Mission to Moscow) Davies, ex-Ambassador to Russia and sometime apologist for the Soviet Union; the Rev. Daniel Poling, noted Baptist minister and editor of the Christian Herald; Charles E. Wilson, president of General Electric Co. and wartime vice-chairman of WPB; the Rev. Edmund Walsh, Georgetown University geopolitician; Samuel Rosenman, onetime adviser and ghostwriter to Franklin Roosevelt; Dr. Harold Dodds, president of Princeton University; Truman Gibson Jr., Negro attorney and onetime civilian aide to the Secretary of War; and one woman, Hungarian-born Anna Rosenberg, labor-relations expert.

This group listened to some 200 witnesses, including psychiatrists, scientists, soldiers, students, teachers, youth leaders, then drew up a hair-raising preview of World War III as a basis for their recommendations. In the preview: atom-bombing planes flying at supersonic speed; chemical and bacteriological warfare; destruction laid down overnight that would equal the destruction in Germany after three and a half years of saturation bombing.

All Boys. The commission's recommendation for U.M.T. provides that every American boy, except the physically handicapped, be drafted at 18, or after he finishes secondary school. Training would be in two parts. The first stage would be basic training in camp or aboard ship for six months. From a military standpoint this is not long enough to turn out a well-trained soldier or a bluejacket. But a longer period, said the committee, would have "an adverse effect on the processes of higher education," which is also an essential part of national defense. During basic, boys would be taught to think, act and react like soldiers. The commission's plan followed almost exactly the one proposed by the War Department last January after it had dropped its proposal for one year of training as politically unpalatable.

The second stage of the training would allow a number of options, which in length and intensity would equal at least six months. The options: 1) another six months' training, after which a trainee would have discharged all his obligations short of war; 2) enlistment in one of the regular services for a minimum of two years; 3) enrollment in one of the service academies; 4) enrollment in the National Guard or the Organized Reserve with 48 evenings a year of armory drill and two weeks in summer camp, for three years; 5) enrollment in college R.O.T.C.s or in the Enlisted Reserve Corps at colleges, trade schools, etc., for courses in special techniques. The commission warned that the National Guard must be "far different" from the depleted, poverty-stricken organization it is today and must end its jurisdictional feud with the Organized Reserve.

The military would have charge of the actual training, but an overall commission of two civilians and one military man would be in command. Local boards, like draft boards, would register the neighbors' sons. Other civilian boards would keep constant watch on the welfare of the trainees. Army men might find civilian participation a little thick.

Trainees would be paid $25 a month and a dependency allowance if there was that need. They could not be used in regular service either at home or abroad.

U.M.T., said the commission, would provide a constantly replenished reservoir of trained manpower which a year after M-day could be mobilized into an effective force of around 7,500,000. Estimated cost of the program: $1,750,000,000 a year, less than the sum spent in one week in World War II, but quite a little item in any peacetime year.

Congressmen were cold. There was little chance that any U.M.T. bill would be proposed in this session. On this point the commission had something to say. Even if the program were started this year, it would be six to seven years before it was functioning properly. Period during which the commission believed the U.S. might still hope for exclusive possession of the atomic bomb: four years.

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