Peacetime Draft?

For centuries, all youths in most of Europe have been drafted for a year or more of peacetime military service. Last week Franklin Roosevelt said he believed the U.S. should give this idea some thought.

In an election year, the President neither recommended nor condemned peacetime conscription. But he wanted to talk about it. So he told the press that at war's end the U.S. will own enough good, concrete-based housing to accommodate 5,000,000 men. With care, this housing should last for another 25 years, and it might very well serve as peacetime barracks for young men of 17 to 23 who would give up a year of their lives to keep their country prepared.

He went on: the late CCC did the boys a great deal of obvious good: it built their muscles, taught them useful trades, order, cleanliness, discipline, respect for law. After the war, why not have a sort of universal military service with CCC vocational training thrown in? Mr. Roosevelt was not crusading. He merely hoped the U.S. would think it over.

In Wartime, Yes. Since the spring of 1783, when the idea was first hailed by General Washington at Newburgh, when he advocated a "hardy and well-organized militia," the U.S. has often thought, many times debated and done exactly nothing about peacetime conscription. Unlike most other nations, the U.S. has preferred to forget entirely about war between wars.Considering that in the intervening years the U.S. has come out betterin its wars than most nations, the evidence is not conclusive that thiswas a completely bad idea -- in the past.

But it was never adopted as an idea. Decisions were usually taken according to the fashionable sentiment of the time:

P: A 1920 peacetime-conscription bill prompted California's Hiram Johnson to a typical Congressional reaction: "Why does universal peace bring with it the necessity for universal training?" Congress shelved the bill as it has others.

P: In 1938 when Gallup pollsters asked, "Should every able-bodied American 20 years old be required to go into the Army or Navy for one year?", 63% of the nation firmly said no. In July 1940, 67% said yes.

P: In the peacetime '30s, when pacifism was aggressively rooting R.O.T.C. units out of U.S. universities, Mrs. Roosevelt deplored the "war spirit," came out against toy soldiers as tending to arouse militarism in children. Early this month she said: 'If we're going to have compulsory military training after the war, then it should be for [both] boys and girls. . .."

The 161-year-old debate is apparently turning changeable again.

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson asserted: "The terrible lessons of this war should convince every thoughtful American that responsible military preparedness is the only means by which peace and security . . . can be maintained."

President Henry M. Wriston of Brown University declared: "If . . . the war ends with a genuine peace and a proper organization to maintain it, compulsory military training might be too great a waste in an already overtaxed economy and educational program."

And Socialist Norman Thomas spoke up: "For America to accept postwar military conscription now is to lose the peace. It is to sentence our sons and their sons to new war."

The important question still untouched was: What now makes military sense? In the world of Blitzkrieg, the U.S. might lose a war before it had time to train a civilian army and build its elaborate, modern weapons. The U.S. might also lose a war if it established peacetime conscription but failed to maintain a keen professional air force.

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