"Part of Their Lives"

Secretary Stimson gingerly put his left hand in the jar, took the first capsule he touched, handed it to Mr. Roosevelt. The President, old stager that he was, glanced at the newsreel and radio men, got their nod before he intoned: "The first number is one--five--eight." Registration serial number 158, held by some 6175 registrants throughout the U.S., thus became Draft Order No. 1.

--TIME, Nov. 11, 1940

Eighteen years, a war, a police action, and 12 1/2 million men after Secretary of War Henry Stimson pulled No. 158 out of the jar, young U.S. men are still being drafted into the armed forces--and the draft remains a subject for controversy. Last week, with selective service scheduled to expire June 30, Defense Secretary Neil McElroy moved against simmering congressional end-the-draft sentiment, asked for a four-year extension to 1963.

By asking an extension, McElroy hoped to head off arguments that the U.S. could save $28 million a year in draft board administration costs and still keep the services sufficiently strong through volunteer enlistments. In fact, although the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard do not need draftees to maintain their force levels, the Army does: at a current draft rate of 9,000 men a month, 28% of the Army's 804,000-man enlisted personnel is drafted. More important, as McElroy pointed out, the omnipresent threat of selective service "stimulates" young men to volunteer for the service of their own choice. Says a Massachusetts draft-board official: "If the draft went off, all the recruiting services would be hard put."

The most valid criticism of the draft as now operated is that it is inequitable. Of the nation's 2,200,000 physically fit men in the 18 1/2-to-26-year-old bracket, only 120,000 get grabbed by the draft each year. Thousands of others volunteer, but the fact is that in the skimpy-quota peacetime era it requires little imagination to think up a reason to be deferred, e.g., as a student, a farmer, a scientist or a hardship case. Thousands of 17-and 18-year-olds exercise their alternative right of fulfilling military obligations with six months of active duty and 7 1/2 years of weekly drill and summer camp in the reserves or National Guard.

Strangely enough, those most affected seem to fret least about the apparent inequities of the peacetime draft. "I don't worry about the draft," says a Dallas high school student. "Why should I? There's no war." Says a Chicago draft-board official: "Most boys of draft age have never known a time when there was no draft.-They regard it as a part of their lives." And--Manny Celler & Co. to the contrary--for as long as the young men feel so, there are likely to be more numbers drawn in the long line of succession to 158.

*The draft law has been on the books continuously since 1940, except for 15 months in 1947 and 1948, when it was allowed to expire at the suggestion of President Truman.

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