Two Differing Views of the National Draft

We can safely agree with Mr. Gitlin that conscription is harming much of America's youth. We need only look around us to see how the selective draft produces a general confusion and misdirection in the lives of those eligible to be called up. As soon as he graduates from high school, the teenager is faced with the quandry of when, how, and even whether he ought to enlist. He can "get it over with" before college, but that means starting school after his friends. Besides, he will have to attend boring Army Reserve meetings every week for years.

Serving after college seems like a better idea, but those reserve meetings will limit travel and job opportunities and make graduate school that much more difficult. Doing nothing at all tempts some, since only 30 per cent of the men is in the draft pool are ever drafted. But the price of being caught is pretty stiff: three years' service in the infantry.

Of course the really clever, or the very rich, can keep on going to school until they have passed the magic age of 26, beyond which practically no one is drafted. Thousands of students are, in fact, populating our graduate institutions with little motivation other than of escaping the government's summons. And now marriage has been added to the list of plots by which the unwilling can avoid the discomfort of serving in the military.

The draft leads to another evil which Mr. Gitlin does not mention. High school and college graduates who have not serverd their time, but who are still eligible, are discriminated against by employers. Many who enlist do not do so from any desire to serve their country or to reap the benefits of a military training, but rather to eliminate the prime obstacle to decent employment.

Concept of Service

Perhaps the greatest disadvantage of the draft is that it engenders in young Americans an attitude which damages its own purpose. Fewer and fewer of us feel that we have an obligation to serve America in any fashion. Why should we, when all the incentives point toward finagling our way out of military service. Most of the men who are drafted, and even those who have enlisted, feel imposed upon, and, what is worse, imposed upon unfairly. This serious drop of national morale is reflected in the drop-out rate of the armed services. From 1946 to 1950, 14 per cent of the men who enlisted serve one hitch in the military, reenlisted to serve another. By contrast, over the last four years only 10 per cent have reenlisted. We are not surprised to learn that barely 3 per cent of today's army draftees reenlisting.

Having admitted the evils of the draft, we are still saddled with the need of manning the military structure. Like so many other critics of the draft, Mr. Gitlin proposes that the draft be abolished and the military professionalised.

Regrettably, a professional armed service does not provide a simple solution to the problem. Each year 500,000 men are inducted into the military. One hundred thousand are drafted the others enlist. If the draft were abolished, the services would lose not only the 100,000 draftees, but also most of the other 400,000. As the above mentioned dropout figures suggest, nine out of ten men enlist because of the threat of the draft. Once free of that threat, they show little eagerness to stay in uniform.

Officers

The manpower problem is even more acute on the officer level. Most of the officers who enter the three largest services, the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, come up through ROTC programs. And whereever ROTC is offered, it is frankly presented-and accepted-as an alternative to the draft. The coercive factor behind ROTC is shown by the turnover rate in the lower officer echelons of the service. In the Air Force, for example, only 28% of ROTC graduates stay beyond the required period of service. The retention rate is even lower in the Army, but is slightly higher in the Navy.

Plainly, salaries will have to be raised more than Mr. Gitlin suggests before either enough enlisted men or officers can be induced to make the military their career. And the problem is bound to grow worse as all services become more technically specialized. Only highly trained and competent men can operate today's military machine, and the military is finding it more difficult to recruit such men and to keep those it has. An Army major with 15 years experience who oversees a research laboratory receives about the same pay as a fresh out of grad school research scientist employed by private industry. An Air Force jet engine mechanic with four years' service earns three hundreds dollars a month; his counterpart an American Airlines makes twice the amount.

Those who advocate a fully professionalised military, then, must be willing to accept an enormous increase in salary expenditures. In 1959, when the government paid $11.5 billion in military salaries, the Nation estimated that pay checks would have to be raised from 40 to 50 per cent across the board in order to make the military completely professional. Today, the salary bill is $13 billion dollars and the retention problem is greater than it was five years ago.

An Alternative

For those who shy away from the cost, or simply the concept of a professional army, there is at least one other alternative solution to the draft problem. John C. Esty, a dean of Amherst College, has recommended that the draft be made universal once again. The draftee, however, would be given a wide choice of field of national service including the Peace Corps, the Foreign Service, teaching, and welfare work.

Whatever the drawbacks of Esty plan, it would at least go a long way toward eliminating the evils caused by a selective draft.

Since all healthy males would have to serve, the draft would no longer seem unfair or discriminatory. One of the plans brightest features-from both the government's and the draftee point of view-is that each draftee can select the service which best suits his capabilities and temperament. Serving the country might become a humanitarian, as well a military responsibility. Above all, Mr. Esty's proposal promises to end the sag in morale of young Americans caused by the injustices of the draft and by the generally unattractive character of military service at the infantry level. Any plan that accomplishes that much deserves serious attention from Congress.