Every Able Man Must Aid War Effort, Hershey Says

Every able-bodied man in the United States must soon find his place in either the armed forces or in industries needed to win the war, Major General Lewis B. Hershey, chief of Selective Service, told an audience of Nieman Fellows and undergraduates in the Adams House dining room Monday evening.

No longer is a worker in an "essential" industry eligible for exemption from the draft if there is any possibility that he may be replaced by older men, those who are partially crippled, women, or even children who could be sufficiently trained, he said.

Seven Million Fit to Fight

From the 60 million "human units" between the ages of 16 and 65, the country has about 7,000,000 men to call into the Amry and Navy with requirements at the present level, the general asserted, adding that to maintain striking forces on five fronts as we are today, more men have to be called from civilian life.

Before long, two or three million more men will have to take up arms, so industrialists must scout around for an equivalent amount of replacements, Hershey warned. He pointed to the example of an aircraft factory "in the Los Angeles area" in which the average age was 22 years.

Without advising college students on whether or not they should keep studying by means of "the plums of pseudo-deferment held up by the Army and Navy," the genial chief of the draft said that it was the responsibility of his organization to "steer a course between those whose removal would jeopardize a genuine war effort, and those who are trying to evade their duties as citizens."

Comparing the present fight with the primitive warfare of cave men, he asked the man who carries on as usual behind the lines, "How can you justify yourself as the maker of bows and arrows to the mother of one who is shooting them?"

But again he reiterated as he has in the past that he did not believe that men should volunteer for the regular army, because the individual does not know for what job he is best suited. But he admitted that Army and Navy policies still differ with him.

"Draft Labor" Unnecessary

In response to questions from the floor, General Hershey thought that a compulsory law to draft labor would be unnecessary, saying that rather the nation's working forces would be guided "as some farmers train their cows: by spreading salt on the desired path, at the same time throwing stones into the forbidden areas."

Asked about continuation of the Selective Service Act after the war, he declared that, not only was the system desirable in peacetime, but it might be used also to educate the illiterate and to build up the physically unfit which draft boards now turn down daily.

He would not be quoted on whether or not he thought President Conant's military scholarship plan advisable or feasible.