The Drudge as Hero

Admirers of the "New Army" with its absence of reveille, K.P. and other tiresome traditions believe that the military is now more attractive to recruits.

University of Michigan Sociologist David Segal is skeptical. It may be, he suggested last week, that "drudgery is part of the heroic image of the military. If the Army becomes too easy, it is as likely to lose appeal as gain it."

Drudgery is just one of the topics Segal plans to investigate when he be comes chief of social processes in the Army's new Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences on July 1. He will also study less unusual ways of luring recruits: raising pay, strengthening education and travel incentives and encouraging enlistment by married couples. As Segal sees it, one priority is to learn how to maintain a volunteer army: the nation, he says, will no longer tolerate the draft. He also plans to study racism and drugs. With the Army providing "a captive research population," Segal hopes to make discoveries that will benefit the whole nation: "The boundary between civilian and military society is permeable. The soldier who begins using heroin today will be a civilian addict tomorrow."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.