Anything But Bingo

"With all the hell I get," avers Lieut. General Lewis Blaine Hershey, "I have less power than most anybody else." A lot of draft-age Americans would be happier if that were so. In fact, the crusty Selective Service director in recent weeks has fought the U.S. Justice Department, the White House, and a large segment of Congress, the press, the academic world and the public to a standstill. For a man of 74 who is functionally blind,*Hershey seems as invulnerable as he is intractable.

Draconian Draftsmanship. The casus belli was posed by Hershey's celebrated letter of Oct. 26, advising the nation's 4,081 draft boards to induct any draftdeferred protester whose actions were not in the "national interest." The Justice Department, all too aware in 20th century terms of the legal trouble "delinquents" and their families could make, held that so clearly punitive a process seemed to be indefensible under the First Amendment. Hershey, however, is a 19th century man, unread in constitutional law but totally committed to what used to be called Americanism.

After a three-week series of negotiating sessions between Hershey and the Justice Department, mediated by the White House, Hershey agreed to exclude "lawful" protesters from his Draconian draftsmanship. Then, though it had been understood that in the interests of discretion no one would publicly elaborate on the compromise, Hershey told newsmen that he had won the fight. Justice, undone, now feels it must let the courts decide the legality of Hershey's decision.

Members of Congress immediately joined the fray. Seven liberal Senators from both sides of the aisle introduced a bill that would make it illegal to reclassify anyone as "delinquent" unless he destroyed or turned in his draft card, thus removing the threat to mere demonstrators. House members planned similar bills, including one already offered that would bring Selective Service under White House supervision. None of the measures, of course, can be acted upon until 1968, when the next session of Congress convenes. Eight Representatives, however, signed a statement urging that Hershey himself be drafted--into retirement.

Boon for the Buzzards. That, too, is highly unlikely. After 56 years in the Army and a quarter of a century as head of the draft, Hershey is--like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover--a Washington monument.

One of his most powerful supporters, House Armed Services Committee Chairman L. Mendel Rivers, came out in favor of Hershey's harshness. "When," he asked, "did it become a disservice to serve in the armed forces?

It's the best thing General Hershey could do for these buzzards."

Even the White House is chary of retiring Hershey: he has too many powerful friends in Congress and the military lobbies, while his public image is precisely that of the draft itself: selfless and patriotic. Moreover, the Indiana-born sheriff's son, who saw his first military action against Pancho Villa in 1916 and retired from the Army in 1946 (but serves at the President's discretion as draft boss), is not about to quit on his own. "Retire? Huh!" he snorted last week. "What do I do? En joy myself? What friends I've got left have been retired for years. What the hell do they do? Play bingo five nights a week. Maybe I could stand retirement, but I couldn't stand bingo five nights a week."

*He lost his right eye to a polo mallet at Fort Sill, Okla., in 1926 as a captain; the sight of his left eye failed last year.

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