Navy Future

High Navy officials were mightily pleased last week with the results of a poll taken among the Navy's 226,050 reserve officers. To the question--Would you like to transfer to the regular Navy after the war?--60% had already sent replies and 80% of those were: "Aye, aye, sir."

This was surprising news. It suggested that the security of jobs in the armed services looked good to many young, college-trained men. It also meant that the wartime phenomenon of a Navy in which nonAcademy officers outnumbered Academy graduates would become the natural order of things.

Navy brass hats, already concerned with the problem of getting good officers for an outsize peacetime Navy, were glad to know that so many reservists planned to stand by.

Not a Minute Longer. But perhaps all was not so rosy as the Navy made out. Hardly had the results been announced than the New York Herald Tribune began to get telephone calls and letters. Unnamed reservists said that they had given an affirmative answer to avoid "unofficial reprisals." Many others had obviously just been apple-polishing.

"In combat areas," the Herald Tribune was told, "there was no doubt about the sentiment. Out of 400 officers questioned at one post, only three replied affirmatively."

A lieutenant, U.S.N.R., wrote indignantly that not one in too reservists intended to stay in service "one minute longer than absolutely necessary."

After taking its own informal poll, the Herald Tribune reported: "Not one of the men questioned said he intended remaining in the Navy. . . . The reasons given were low pay, promotion by the calendar instead of merit, competition with Naval Academy men, red tape, normal resentment arising from being forced to take orders from obviously incompetent superiors."

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