Men at War

Secretary of Defense Marshall has presented his draft program to Congress. He has asked for Universal Military Service immediately. To keep from fatally harming the nation's colleges, he has plotted a system of deferments for the first few years of his program. He argues that the Defense Department has listened to all the testimony and worried about the problems mobilization will bring, and it is satisfied that his plan will provide the necessary troops, help the colleges as much as possible without either creating an educational elite or discriminating among draft eligibles.

His plan very closely resembles that backed by President Conant, the American Association on Universities and other groups. Many people have opposed such a proposal, complaining that U.M.S. would wipe out many schools and hurt civilian professions during its first years. But, as Conant, and now Marshall, have pointed out, the short-run system of deferments should largely solve that problem. As for providing a sufficient amount of manpower for our now-weak defenses, no plan alone could be successful. We will always be dependent to some degree on voluntary enlistments And U.M.S. does supply the right answers to the questions of discrimination by profession, the grade race and the educated elite: there will be none.

Now it is up to the men on the Hill. But they are politicians. They are sometimes inclined to subvert controversial legislation by letting the "necessity" of pleasing their various constituencies interfere. They are sometimes inclined to let their party affiliation overly affect their thinking and their voting. Once in awhile, they weasel when the legislative waters get rough, as they did when they left determination of certain classifications up to local boards under the last law.

Some educators are so worried about Congress' ability and willingness to work out a good law that they have resorted to a little lobbing themselves. If the legislators will pay attention to these teachers and carefully discuss the proposals, this rather new departure may be effective help in getting a good draft law.

Men who will have to spend normally valuable and productive years learning the grisly profession of war, however, can only hope that the Capitol's occupants will forget party-lines and pork barrels for the time-being. Let the Congressmen instead concentrate on making perfect what for many will be the most important law of a lifetime and a foreshortened lifetime at that.