Conant Defends U.M.S. Before Defense Heads

President Conant has laid his plan for Universal Military Service before the Defense Department, it was announced yesterday. At the same time, he repeated his statement that the United States should committee 'several hundred thousand troops" in Europe for an indifinite period.

While Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett did not comment on his views on the plan at the meeting, the Defense Department announced last night that it was considering adopting such a proposal.

Conant spoke for the Committee on the Present Danger. This 25-man group, which began its activities must this week, includes Conant, Presidents James Phinney Baxter, III '14 of Williams and Henry M. Wriston of Brown, William L. Marbury, member of the Harvard Corporation, Vannevar Bush, and Robert Gordon Sproul, Chancellor of the University of California.

Take All at 18

Also present at the meeting in the Pentagon, held Wednesday, were representatives of the Association of American Universities, headed by Gordon Gray, president of the University of South Carolina. Both groups endorsed U.M.S., which could draft all men at 18, even those unfit for combat.

Newspaper reports from Washington referred to the plan which the Department is considering as "Universal Military Training." But the details of the proposal-"30 months service for every man, disabled or not, at the age of 18"-coupled with the fact that this "U.M.T." termed "new" though there is already U.M.T. plan before Congress, lead observers to conclude that it is U.M.S. that being discussed.

Few Make Distinction

So far very few reports of Conant's can have made this distinction. (The U.M.T. bill would set up a special corps under part civilian control for training youths.)

The Defense Department's announcement partly confirms Senator Saltonstall's statement to the CRIMSON Sunday night that Secretary George C. Marshall would propose revision of the present draft law thin two weeks, and that his plan would include "some form" of Universal service.