Treaty with the Guard

Peace came at last to the briefcase battlefield that for two months was strewn with recriminations from the Army and the Army National Guard. The dispute, sparked by the Army's insistence on a six-month training program for all National Guard recruits and the Guard's opposition to the plan (TIME, Feb. 11-18), ended in an armistice worked out with the mediating hand of Chairman Overton Brooks of a House Armed Services subcommittee. The treaty--or, as Louisiana's Brooks called it, a "memorandum of understanding"--permits the Guard to set up an eleven-week training schedule for 17-18 1/2-year-olds until the end of the year. Then, beginning next Jan. 1 (instead of next month, as the Army had originally ruled), the Guard will institute the Army's preferred six-month program. For its part, the Army assured the Guard that it would help keep Guard strength at its present level of 400,000 men--27 divisions, nine regimental combat teams and assorted spare parts.

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