Uncle Sam Wants You--If

As the monthly draft call climbs higher and higher, the basic foundations of Selective Service procedure are beginning to come under close scrutiny. One can ask two questions: First, is the draft fair to the nation's youth? And second, is it effective in regard to the nation's security? Looking at the draft from these two vantage points, one finds a sharp difference of opinion.

One view is represented by an article in The Nation of Sept. 23. In it David L. Holmes charges that "The major sacrifices will be those made by a relatively few draft-age youths who, under the provisions of an obsolete Selective Service system, will be forced to carry the burden for their more fortunate fellows."

Holmes' accusations are vigorously denied by Maj. Remo G. Gandin at the Massachusetts Selective Service headquarters. "We defer people because its going to be a hardship on them. ...When we can't use everyone in the country, we can and should be selective. ...We take the best qualified and the ones who will cause the least trouble to the armed forces while they're in."

For the last five years, the Army has been "the sole buyer in a buyer's market." As a result, its standards have been gradually raised, so that many men who would have qualified during World War Two are now rejected. Holmes attacks these higher standards, decries the lack of an induction category for "limited duty" (for men who are not combat fit), and complains that "personnel who in the past have made the best truck drivers and combat soldiers are being denied entrance into the cold-war army."

Maj. Gandin counters, "I don't think that because a man has a low IQ he'll make a better truck driver." He rejected the contention that the talents of high-IQ men might be better employed than in driving trucks. Since the tightening of mental requirements, he added, the Army has had less "trouble" with its men.

It is probably true that many 4-F's could be inducted for limited duty, without any "trouble." At the same time, it is obviously dangerous to think of the army as a dumping ground for the mentally, morally, and physically unfit. Finally, as Maj. Gandin noted, why should the Army take men who are only half-qualified, when with no more trouble it can draft fully-qualified men?

Thus, the deferment of 4-F's is a matter of expediency, not of altruism. The same is apparently true of deferment of husbands and fathers. Apparently, the Army feels that men who are worried about how their families will make out on Army pay will not be concerned enough with doing their jobs properly.

How many Harvard men will be drafted? Undoubtedly, not as many as in an equal group of men selected at random. Not surprisingly, deferment for educational reasons is strongly condemned by Holmes, who is up in arms about the fact that deferment is granted irrespective of the student's field. However, the alternative is hardly desirable. Should it be up to Selective Service to decide what is a good course to follow? True, engineers may go into a vital defense industry. But what of the English major who goes into teaching? In an all-out war, of course, restrictions on draft-exempting studies would be necessary, but in peacetime it would give the Army powers it should not have.

Should any changes be made in Selective Service policies? The induction of men for limited duty, while somewhat less convenient for the army, would probably reduce the inequities of the draft considerably, without actually hampering the Army's operations, in peacetime at least. There is, however, little chance that the Army will choose not to take the best it can get.

As a result of the Berlin crisis, and the increased draft quotas, the average age of inductees is, of course, declining. Now it is 23; in a few months it will be 2 and one half. Unless there is a war, however, it is hardly likely to decline to 18 or 19; moreover a wealth of voluntary programs absorb many of the nation's youths in the 17-to-19 age group. These programs, and other voluntary programs, will be discussed in an article tomorrow.