Christmas is Coming

Draft news reared its confused head again last week. Testimony by Manpower Commission and Army bigwigs, asking Congress for next year's payrolls, raised a welter of headlines that left draft-age men still hopeful but still bewildered. But a handful of facts shone through the fog:

>By July 1 , the armed forces will total 9,200,000 men, 7,161,621 in the Army.

>The Army will reach 8,200,000 in December, probably grow no larger unless war plans change radically. Peak payrolls for fiscal 1944 will be 8,233,083--including 375,000 WAACs.

>For the rest of this year, men will be inducted at the rate of 300,000 a month. For the first half of 1944 (as far as Manpower officials would prognosticate) inductions will be just over 100,000 monthly, i.e., for replacements only.

> Industrial deferment is now limited to six months.

> The supply of single men is practically exhausted, of childless men is fast running out. (Selective Service recognizes children born only before Sept. 14, 1942 as reason for deferment.)

>-A few fathers may be deferred because of "extreme hardship." Draft Director Hershey described a sample case: "... A man with two or three children, whose wife is an invalid and who has nothing except what he earns, and who . . . has to take care of his wife and children . . . get the meals and wash the children's clothes."

>When induction of fathers begins, the number of children will make no difference.

> Drafting of fathers will be general around October. The majority of ablebodied, nonessential fathers between 18 and 38 will be in uniform by year's end.

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