THE CONSCRIPTION WEAPON

America is preparing. With conscription fully underway our citizens will sleep peacefully tonight feeling their "threatened democracy" is now safe. For only a show of real strength will keep the forces of European totalitarianism at arm's length. But what is to prevent such incipient forces at home from using conscription to promote their own fascism? The Selective Service Act leaves several doors open to such action.

No real assurance that persons will regain their jobs after a year of training is established. For only men whose jobs are not "temporary" fall under the provisions of the act. Who is to determine what jobs are temporary? Seasonal work which is the nature of many industries can certainly fit this category. The conscript must further show that he is still qualified to hold his former job. This has to be purely arbitrary with the employer. But even if these two qualifications are met, the job still depends on the circumstances of the employer being unchanged so that the reinstatement is not unreasonable or impossible. The employer also decides which men are essential to his plant in the case of exemptions.

Most obvious of all is the inadequate provision made for conscript voting. The trainee may vote by absentee ballot if his state allows or he may obtain a one day leave. This is hardly sufficient for most men to reach their homes and return, and it would also involve a great expense. Furthermore, future registration will certainly be curtailed by these rules. In this time when every decision taken will have so profound an effect on our future, an untold number of men are deprived of one of their most sacred liberties and duties because they are "learning to preserve their democracy."

Under all these arbitrary powers our labor movement, whose existence today is the very symbol of a democracy, stands to lose the most. Labor can and very likely will be made the complete victim of those seeking to stifle its organized effectiveness. But not only labor is in danger. Each and every one of us is directly affected by the inadequacies of the bill. We can not even be sure of our period of service, for this also is arbitrary, depending on "conditions."

These failings of the bill are serious. Because any form of military regimentation is serious-in that it makes for totalitarianism and promotes disdain for the parliamentary system-conscription is essentially dangerous to a democracy. But in an organic world, overrun as is ours by mad dogs, it is fatal to be complacently defenseless. The need for strength is here. Let not the strength be used for the perversion of democratic ideals, but rather for their preservation.