Draft as Usual

In Korea last week, Army Secretary Robert Stevens jarred the post-truce hopes of a million potential draftees back home by announcing that the U.S. would maintain its present strength in Korea for at least "several years." In Washington, the Defense Department was more specific: the monthly quota of 23,000 draftees will probably be maintained through 1953. Then, barring drastic international crisis, draft quotas will drop to 19,000 per month during the first half of 1954. But beginning in July 1954, the number will jump to 45,000 a month. Reasons: 1) since the big buildup of 1951, the Army has faced a biennial wave of discharges, and the wave will hit next in the summer of 1954; 2) truce or no truce, the U.S. plans to keep the Army at its current strength of 1,500,000 men.

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