Appeal to Conscience

When the President called for a National Service Act, everybody talked at once. Hot arguments about the motives and the merits of the President's proposal flew back & forth. Then an Elder Statesman spoke--and the momentary silence that followed his words showed a shamefaced realization that at his own moral level there was no reply. Secretary of War Stimson, whose years have carried him beyond party and personal ambition, appeared last week before the Senate Military Affairs Committee to plead for the National Service Act. His appeal was directed straight to the conscience of every American. He said:

"This war will last much longer than the last great war. The effect of the division between the men who have borne the burden of the fighting abroad, and the men who have shown this irresponsibility at home, will have a longer time to sink in and be accentuated.

"Our democracy has been founded upon equality and justice. Today the men in the armed forces are beginning to believe that they are being discriminated against. There is danger that under the influence of that feeling they will not give even fair recognition to the tremendous production effort by the great majority of American management and labor. . . .'

"These men who strike or threaten to strike are Americans like all of the rest of us. [They] are not essentially different from heroes in the South Pacific and on the Italian peninsula. They can be more accurately defined as the victims of the failure of the nation to develop a sense of responsibility in this gravest of all wars."

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