Give Us the Blueprints IV

The most chaotic and haphazard phase of the entire war manpower problem has been the training and procurement of specialists at the college level. While the plans of the armed-forces for training line officers are still uncoordinated, they at least follow the definite outlines of the reserve programs. But not even such simple directives have been worked out for procuring the much needed engineers, physicists, chemists, and men who can speak Russian and Japanese.

Plans to distribute college physicists effectively between the services and industrial research are almost completely non-existent. Although high-frequency men can enlist in the Signal Corps Reserve, no provision has been made for other science concentrators who must fill the many semitechnical jobs in both combatant and noncombatant fields. Badly needed in industrial and government laboratories, even the cream of the electronics crop is at a loss for a clear-cut route to these jobs and the resulting uncertainty has seriously curtailed the available supply of these vital men.

The need for men with a knowledge of Japanese continues, yet these men are given no assurance that they will end up farther east than Ireland. Nor is there a uniform draft policy, a centralized procurement office, or a government-sponsored training program. The Navy has its own school, and the F.B.I., Marine Corps, Army Air Corps, Army Intelligence, and Army Signal Corps all make individual sporadic requests for outstanding students. In Russian the complete chaos is even more evident. The Navy has asked for a few men but usually students have to try to find their own positions. Since students lack any assurance that they will ever have a chance to use their special training, the enrollment in these courses is very unstable; thus the armed forces are deprived of a steady stream that can be counted on to fill all future needs.

Meanwhile, the armed forces are allowing each university to recommend draft exemptions for their specialists as they see fit. Having failed to formulate specifications for such recommendations, the services have indirectly given rise to a situation in which some schools feel justified in asking deferments for almost all their students regardless of fields, while other universities, like Harvard, don't even request exemption for their technicians.

Again last week the issue was placed squarely before the War Manpower Board and Selective Service. Calling for drastic changes in draft policy a conference of West Coast college presidents warned that "unless careful plans are made and put in operation, the reservoir of competent students will be exhausted by draining them off prematurely into the armed forces. The reservoir of specialists has been so dangerously drained that we are now scraping the bottom of the barrel." Only clear directives from Washington can keep the barrel filled.