Newsman Urges End to Draft

A noted radio news commentator had called for the abolition of the draft and the conversion of the nation's 4,000 draft boards into army recruiting centers.

Paul Harvey of the American Broadcasting Company told a nationwide audience last week that for the past four months 4,000 draft boards have been responsible for finding only 6,000 men per month."

"I am adamantly opposed to maintaining 4,000 draft boards to select one and one-half men each per month," Harvey told the Summer News yesterday. He also sustained that "peacetime conscription contradicts our entire civilian tradition."

Harvey admitted, however, that no politician would ever support abolition of the "draft gravy train" which provides office jobs for hundreds of civilians.

Thus, he urged, "we should take the time and talents of the draft records and convert them to army recruiting stations." "Surely the army can be made as attractive asthe navy or the air force," Harvey said, noting that neither of these services has a draft program.

The army must be made attractive enough to attract volunteers," Harvey asserted, " because the modern military service needs skilled and dedicated technicians, not drafted tin soldiers."

"Under this plan," Harvey asserted, "civilian draft board jobs could be carried over to recruiting centers," and there would be "new pride and honor in being a member of the United States Army."

Harvey further stressed that this system would preserve the large bureaucracy necessary to conduct a war-time draft, and that in an emergency, the draft boards could easily be re-activated for a new conscription program