Arms and the Man

When the Administration announced its reserve training proposals early in January, military planning drew abreast of military reality. Prospects for an indefinite period of uneasy peace demand a trained reserve that can mobilize rapidly to support the initial operations of a smaller, professional army. Three-million-man armies on active duty in a cold war are both unwieldy and expensive.

The Administration's reserve bill brings defense theory up to date, yet its view into the future is short-sighted. Under present plans, for example, the new program will run just four years, although field commanders insist that a reserve-training program will be worthwhile only if it extends far into the future. Permanent plans alone can resolve the uncertainties of military service for the nation's youth.

In defending the training program against the label of Universal Military Training, Defense Department spokesmen exposed a more dangerous flaw in the proposed system. "UMT would permit youths to discharge their military obligations quickly" declared Assistant Secretary of Defense Chester Burgess, author of the bill. "The Administration program imposes lengthy military obligations on the reserve men, just as on draftees for the regular army." By requiring nine and a half years of weekly drill and summer camps from the reservists, and six years of the same training from men who have completed two years of active duty, the Administration bill saddles young men with military burdens through an annoyingly long parts of their lives. Farmers, night workers, and anyone with family obligations would be seriously inconvenienced by such required training.

Significantly, the Administration proposed the program of extended reserve training against the advice of the National Security Training Commission, composed of prominent generals and National Guard leaders, which studied reserve military training throughout 1953. The Commission suggested that six-month reservists remain subject to recall in event of an emergency, but that they remain "free" from the active training of an organized reserve, once they had completed their six month service period. It is important, the Commission stressed, that the program maintain the rights of reservists "to speak, to dissent, to believe as they choose, to equal justice under the law." Nine and a half years of drill hall and camp routine might deaden reserve morale. And a decade of indoctrination could create a conditioned military response to the world's problems on the part of many trainees.

Although the distinction between active and inactive reserve training carries tremendous significance for most young men, the actual military difference is small. Active reservists would have the opportunity to maintain proficiency in the newest weapons, of course. But the Commission observed that "regular forces would be immediately available for duty in the theatre of operations. Inactive reservists could complete their field training by the time shipping was available for their transportation." Transportation, not training, would be the bottleneck slowing the mobilization of inactive reservists with just six months of basic training.

Improving the Regular Army

If the United States adopted a program of six-month training as an alternative to two years of active service, the shorter service would undoubtedly prove immensely popular, to the possible detriment of the regular army. The problem might be solved, however, by providing that men with only six-months of training would be recalled for emergencies before men who had completed their two-year tour of duty in the regulars. With the aid of pay reforms and new G.I. benefits, the Defense Department could make the regular army as attractive as six-month service. While the Administration recently raised the pay for career servicemen, a general pay boost for all army members might reap more first enlistments. Tremendous jumps in the enlistment rate during January because of the termination of veterans' benefits on February 1 showed the effectiveness of retirement benefits and other G.I. rights in producing volunteers. The expected cuts in the standing army and elimination of the provisions for extensive active reserve training would make these pay reforms financially feasible.

In cutting the reserve training obligations and improving regular army benefits, the Administration would give real meaning to its statement that "We will give each young man the maximum possible right of self-determination by offering him a choice of methods of meeting his military obligations." Only these improvements will give the U.S. the Reserve force recommended by the National Security Training Commission--"a Reserve that would give us maximum strength with a minimum of waste and a maximum regard for the democratic liberties we are defending."