Against What Nation?

General George Catlett Marshall served notice last week that so far as he is concerned the world of the future will have to reckon with a powerful U.S. military force. In the war-anniversary issue of the Army & Navy Journal, he wrote:

"Wars are the great tragedies of the human race. . . . Yet it probably has been a good thing to have the great military power of the U.S. fully demonstrated . . . that the world may know for the future that this democracy can and will generate a military force sufficient to overwhelm prospective tyrants of the years to come."

But U.S. civilians were not so sure. With growing heat they debated the Army's proposed keystone of future military strength: compulsory military training. Yale's president, urbane, tolerant Dr. Charles Seymour, arose in opposition to most other educators last week when he plumped for compulsory military training for all able-bodied young. "At all costs," said he, "the nation must possess the power to protect our freedom without which there can be no liberal education."

Notre Dame's president, the Very Reverend J. Hugh O'Donnell, endorsed a continuation of training after the war, applying the principles of the Selective Service Act, making "more intensive use of universities . . . high schools. . . ." But advocates of peacetime training were far from agreement on what kind of legislation they wanted. Three bills now in the Congressional hopper (the identical Wadsworth and Gurriey bills and the May bill) are roughly drawn, little more than primers.

While the argument built up, Congressmen stuck to their foxholes, waiting glumly for the battle to break over their heads, as it will when the new 79th Congress convenes next month. The issue was so explosive that many Congressmen wished it could be dropped until war's end, and that is exactly what anticonscription forces advocated, with one voice.

Only one member of Congress dared stick his head out. Hardworking Senator Ed Johnson, of Colorado, an old political warhorse and pre-Pearl Harbor isolationist, said: "[By 1946] the present wars will have ended. War hysteria will have subsided. Our heads will be cooler; our judgments better. The veterans will be home. Let the question of compulsory military training become the issue in 1946. . . . Jingoism, Junkerism, saber rattling and militarism are nationalistic in concept and are dangerous. . . . Certainly 'unconditional surrender' will not permit war machines in [Germany and Japan] to rebuild. Then, against whom are we rearming?"

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