Military Menace

Struggling to keep something of its wartime power, the Army, backed by President Truman, is collecting its forces to shove universal training through Congress before '48 elections make it impractical for the legislators to press the point. When the bill went before Congress last year, it aroused violent opposition, chiefly from educators and clergymen, and the President, forced to compromise, appointed a committee of distinguished civilians to study UMT and make recommendations. Now, as the committee prepares to report, advocates of the measure hope at least to squeeze it through the House before the July recess.

Meanwhile, the American Legion has started an active propaganda campaign for UMT. The reasons it gives for initiating this unbridled form of American militarism are easily answered. UMT is not a step toward world peace, the Legion to the contrary, as it has never prevented war in Europe's conscription-ridden countries. Though it may give the illusion of bringing national security closer, UMT can do little but make the U. S. and the rest of the world trigger-happy. In the short-run, the ten million veterans preclude any necessity for what is in reality a peace-time draft.

Though disguised as a civilian program, UMT will serve to keep the military caste in power. The program is to be under the auspices of the Regular Army, and the training given in how not to think is the antithesis of the individuality of the democratic system. For military reasons too, conscription is unfeasible. The advantages of having a great, unwieldy pool of men half-trained in obsolete weapons are non-existent, especially in face of all the new implications of atomic warfare.

The advocates of UMT have implicitly rejected the United Nations, and, for both selfish and presumably sincere reasons, have decided on a race in training men that is in many ways more dangerous than an armaments race. But any real security must be on the international level, through UN agreements outlawing conscription and establishing an international police force. For immediate needs, the Army ought to be made more decent to attract enough volunteers.