Prospects for the Draft

...Forms of alternative service like the Peace Corps are obviously more accessible to college graduates, and it is surely impossible, even were it desirable, to make civilian service comparable to military service in combat...

...In the first place, even the most limited expectations of draft reform now indicate the early elimination of grades and class standing as criteria for military selection...

...It is easy to overlook the implicit criticism in much of the Advisory Commission's report, especially that directed against the practice—if not the concept—of localism...

...The issue of mobility in the face of a major and genuine threat from abroad is to be taken seriously...

...Reversing the induction process, however, does not solve the problem of student deferments...

...The question, then, is: Should one seize these opportunities in the conviction that substantial amelioration is better than continued control of our manpower policies by the short-sighted and evasive members of the draft lobby, or should one (flattered now by the apparent attentiveness of the Presidential Advisory Commission) hold out for a thoroughly intelligent resolution of the grossest abuses of conscription...

...The notion of a lottery has received more attention than any other reform accepted by President Johnson, obscuring the fact that many of the deeper absurdities and abuses of the draft remain to be eliminated...

...Almost precisely at this point the draft conference began to replace the teach-in as the bossa nova of academic activism...

...President Johnson has sent a special message to Congress announcing his intention to reform the present Selective Service System...

...When one really examines the alleged threat of an army of "mercenaries" the problem becomes patently absurd...

...Rivers made a fervent and highly prejudicial statement at the outset which in the same breath effectively opened and closed one of the most important questions facing his committee—the abolition of conscription...

...In accordance with the ruling in U.S...

...The Sunday supplements have devoted their best pages to "think pieces" on the draft, profiles of vulnerable students, and interviews with the inexhaustible selective service Director, Lieutenant General Lewis B. Hershey...

...The other commission, headed by (retired) General Mark Clark, was appointed by Representative L. Mendel Rivers, chairman of the crucial House Armed Services Committee...

...For example, the Presidential Advisory Commission has proposed that all young men be "tested" for social and military purposes at the age of 18...

...nor did the Presidential Advisory Commission, which was sharply divided on this issue...

...Bruce Chapman puts the figure at considerably less, and his very detailed analysis indicates that a volunteer army would be able to maintain greater efficiency in several respects, including general morale and eliminating the waste of hundreds of millions of dollars annually in the hidden costs of personnel turnover...

...Benjamin Spock, Dr...

...That many critics were also disappointed, or not surprised, by the commission's unwillingness to support serious opposition to certain basic assumptions of draft psychology was to be expected—the more so if one allows that public debate did influence the deliberations, for the academic and social service communities were themselves seriously divided on such questions as eliminating conscription and extending conscientious objection...

...In other words, if all students randomly selected to serve were required to report for duty immediately upon termination of their undergraduate education, deferments could not blossom into exemptions under the careful cultivation that so many graduate students now give them...

...no one would remain blind to man's relation to the globe he lives on...

...Of all the Advisory Commission's proposals included in the President's message to Congress, only the one to reverse the order of induction—which corresponds roughly to the Clark group's suggestion— is likely to be accepted without trouble...

...in Mississippi, 42 per cent Negro, none out of 302...

...The National Advisory Commission, headed by former Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall, was appointed by President Johnson in the summer of 1966...

...A group of 77 prominent educators, authors and ministers—including Dr...

...Mounting criticism of the draft in late 1965 brought a pledge from him that his committee would begin hearings on the subject within a month...

...There is no longer any reason why the law should not honor non-religious convictions as well as religious convictions, and the convictions of those who object to a particular war as well as the convictions of pacifists...

...No, this issue is not to be taken seriously...

...The House Armed Services Committee will of course be responsible for drawing up legislation either to extend the present selective service law (under which President Johnson can decree reforms by executive order) or to enact new provisions by June 30...

...Even if the members of the Presidential Advisory Commission had been willing to go all the way with their recommendations, their courage would probably have been futile...

...The other example comes from California, where the new university campus at Santa Cruz is experimenting with ungraded courses...

...That was in early January 1966, and he repeated the promise periodically until late June when brief hearings were held...

...The commission's argument against this was largely and weakly based on social expediency...

...The vast latitude of action left to local boards may be an expression of grass-roots democracy, but anyone who has ever been in a local office knows that the consequences of this tradition are grass-roots bumbling, prejudice and ignorance...

...and so on...

...It seems to me this is one legitimate problem that could be solved by computer technology...

...Among the many abuses of the current system perhaps the most egregious is the enormous discretionary authority lodged in the local draft boards...

...They deserve credit for going as far as they did go...

...In the second place, though the Vietnamese war is only tangentially relevant to the structure of the Selective Service System, Lawrence Grauman Jr., who is now at Antioch, will be teaching at Vassar College in the fall...

...Chapman contends that the problem is by no means insoluble...

...It is apparent that the Defense Department has given the whole general problem of recruitment and manpower utilization a rather low priority...

...But this happens to be the weakest part of his book...

...This is especially unfortunate in view of the opportunity created by the Supreme Court in 1965...

...The President's commission must have recognized at least some of these objections, and there is no reason to think he will ignore its views here...

...Chapman has collected some impressive new data and organized it concisely to show that a voluntary army would be in the interest of both social justice and the Defense Department...

...The official Pentagon figures have differed from McNamara's and are no more consistent, though an earlier estimate by the Pentagon, which was leaked to the Washington Star in May of 1965, suggested that pay raises costing $3 billion a year could supply the Armed Forces with sufficient volunteer manpower...

...Its report issued three weeks ago thus surprised many draft critics both by the determination of its prose and the comprehensiveness of its proposals...

...The report urged the creation of a centralized system built around eight regional centers which would direct the work of 300-500 area centers...

...The only alternative after all is to insist on the total abolition of conscription, an idea that did not survive the invocation at the Rivers hearings last year...

...Representatives Rivers and Hebert, Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia (chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee) and other defenders of the rural virtues are sure to read "bury" for study, and this may be the last we will hear of such structural reform...

...Last November college officials discovered that 48 per cent of their male undergraduates were classified 1-A...

...Few draft critics took it seriously, believing it to be merely the latest in a long series of diversionary gestures, another machina ex deo designed "to head off the attackers...

...his two answers were $4 billion and $20 billion...

...Although I see no compelling reason for giving students deferments, I think the matter is strongly tied to the acceptance of a lottery, as was acknowledged by the minority on the Presidential Advisory Commission which argued for retention "provided always that deferment is not permitted to become exemption" (italics mine— L. G...

...In the past six months a series of "draft conferences" have been held from coast to coast...

...no artists, linguists or literary critics need apply...

...Indeed, by mid-October —three and a half months after their appointment—its members had met only twice...

...James Farmer and Donald Keys— is convinced that a voluntary army is now a viable alternative...

...Although the proportion of draftees is slightly higher now, who would wish to argue that less than one-sixth of our military forces could prevent the corruption of the entire corps...

...They responded to anxious inquiries with "It would do them good if we put them all in the Army to begin with," or "Every other college we have has come around—what's the matter with Santa Cruz...

...The military ideals of hardihood and discipline would be wrought into the growing fiber of the people...

...They were limited to testimony from Rivers' friend General Hershey, a Defense Department spokesman and several "interested" Congressmen...

...Many liberals and draft reformers will be tempted to forgive the Advisory Commission its lapse on the question of conscientious objectors, to overlook President Johnson's delicate concession to the rural interests and his equivocation over student deferments, and to leap into that forum the President so tolerantly says he will provide, in the hope of at least saving the lottery from the encroachments of Mendel Rivers and Senator John Stennis of Mississippi...

...Nevertheless, if a lottery were the best we could settle for, it would still be a significant improvement (incompassionate and "unreasonable" as the idea must be to all thoughtful people...

...For without the draft system, as the Secretary of Defense has observed, it would be "very difficult, if not impossible, to guarantee that the necessary manpower would be available in time to meet the kinds of rapid changes in military requirements which we have encountered in recent years...

...President Johnson, who knows where the grass grows greenest, has neatly equivocated on this proposal by appointing yet another task force to "study" it some more...

...Although the conferences initially appeared to be exercises in political futility, there is evidence that they not only stimulated a remarkably sophisticated dialogue of almost national magnitude but elicited the attention of the Advisory Commission...

...The draft critic's quandary, therefore, is intensified by the opposition to the unexpectedly progressive, if inadequate, Presidential proposals from enormously influential conservatives within Congress, the Selective Service and the Defense Department...

...Those who would retain coercive conscription in a democracy are the ones who should be required to bear the burden of proof...

...Informal testimony from many sources indicates that this scene is by no means atypical...

...Rivers' motive here seems fairly transparent: Having admittedly made up his mind long ago on questions of national defense, the patriot from South Carolina needed a commission of his own to justify his anticipated hostility to the Presidential commission's findings...

...If the national headquarters of Hertz Rent-a-Car were so permissive, they'd be out of business overnight...

...What is more, coerced non-military service cannot even be justified as a means of reducing the inequities of the draft...

...The Rivers' committee will hold hearings on the draft in April, but it is doubtful that many members will come to them with anything that passes for an open mind...

...One does not have to follow all of Chapman's demonstrations in cost accounting to realize that the shortsighted attitude of the Defense Department has deprived it of any claim to authority in this important matter...

...There are currently three principal objections to an all-volunteer army: that it would be too expensive...

...When they inquired at several local boards they found that most of the work, including actual classification, had fallen to the secretarial and clerical staff...

...While I am not so sanguine, it is clear that this reform alone would make a substantial difference in the draft procedure...

...It was, I feel, an impossible situation...

...While it is not the most far-reaching reform of the lot, because of the peculiar interlocking configuration of the present system, it is a very determinant one...

...Though the pious members of the draft lobby refuse to be defended by "mercenaries," they receive medical treatment, legal advice, insurance counseling, spiritual guidance and virtually everything else from "mercenaries"— i.e., from persons who earn their living at their profession...

...Similarly, at that age relatively few men are likely to be deferred for any of the common reasons that apply later, such as critical occupation or fatherhood...

...The language of the Advisory Commission report shows that it fully understood how diffuse, inefficient, and indifferent to the rights and needs of both registrants and society the present set up is...

...A look at the different forces that influenced the two special commissions reveals the current possibilities—and limits—of draft reform...

...It might prove more difficult and complicated to replace our unjust and obsolete draft with a voluntary army than Chapman and other critics make it sound, but surely they have given ample proof that the Selective Service, the Defense Department and Congress have not begun to assume the obligation of intelligent inquiry...

...Attached to each area center would be an independent appeal board representing all elements of the population, recording decisions in writing, and "assisting the appellant in every way...

...The national service scheme can be traced at least as far back as William James, normally a man of uncommon good sense, who argued in The Moral Equivalent of War for "a conscription of the whole youthful population to form a part of the Army enlisted against nature...

...By the time the National Advisory Commission got to the disturbing question of conscientious objectors it had apparently exhausted its reforming zeal, for it declined to alter the status quo...

...it is the necessity of the draft, not the possibility of doing away with it, that should be under constant question...

...An index of the Clark commission's sensitivity to the complex draft inequities is its recommendation that all student deferments be continued "except for graduate students in noncritical fields...

...At least two recent developments suggest that those who have opposed the relationship between the university and the draft must now extend their inquiry to the role of the Selective Service System in the wider society...

...And they are not likely to shortly...

...And since when do draftees set the moral tone of the Army anyhow...

...It smacks of the kind of regimentation usually associated with totalitarian states, it is a totally unwarranted extension of the limits of government power, and it probably violates the 13th Amendment's prohibition against involuntary servitude...

...Several books and articles on the subject have also been published recently, among which Bruce K. Chapman's The Wrong Man In Uniform (Trident Press, 143 pp., $3.95) is probably the most persuasive and resourceful...

...Edwin Dahlberg, Representative Don Edwards (D.-Cal...

...All this activity leaves the serious social critic in a very ambivalent position: Surprised by the incisiveness and determination of much Duly Constituted Opinion, he feels on the one hand that it is still not incisive or determined enough, yet realizes, on the other, that without his strenuous midwifery even these modest labors are likely to be aborted by Congress...

...The Advisory Commission said it had studied "the need for the draft and all proposed variants and known consequences thereof...

...In addition to the chairman, his powerful colleague, Representative F. Edward Hebert of Louisiana (and to a lesser degree the ranking Republican, Representative William H. Bates of Massachusetts) are already opposed to a system of random selection...

...For example, this reform alone would effectively eliminate a major threat the military poses to educational philosophy, for there is simply insufficient data available on students of 18 or 19 to operate a selection process based on grades or class standing...

...General Clark and his group predictably submitted a know-nothing report which offered but one substantial suggestion—that the order of induction be reversed, with the youngest men in the draft pool going first—and airily concluded that the Selective Service System was, for the most part, getting along fine, thank you...

...and that it would lack the flexibility for quick response to sudden challenge...

...in Louisiana, 31.9 per cent Negro, none out of 442...

...The President in his message to Congress said he had thought about this a good deal, then he dismissed the subject in three short paragraphs and moved on to his usual pieties for peace...

...but since the Executive Order creating the commission did not specifically request an examination of the arguments for eliminating conscription, it is not surprising that they do not appear to have taken the prospect seriously...

...They have not so far...

...or, if not instantaneously, at least immeasurably faster than what passes for mobilization today...

...As of late spring 1966, draftees accounted for 352,000 of the slightly more than three million members of the Armed Forces...

...that it would fill the Armed Forces with "mercenaries...

...Two examples should be sufficient: In Alabama, where the population is 30 per cent Negro, no Negroes are among the 275 members of the local draft boards...

...it has made the draft an unavoidable public issue...

...Two government commissions and a Defense Department Task Force have been appointed, have deliberated for months, and have submitted reports...

...For in a nation that relies on conscription to meet its military needs there is simply no system of selection more equitable than a lottery...

...If the Advisory Commission fails in its attempt to reconstruct a vast and abusive bureaucracy, it may at least have succeeded in thwarting the establishment of a new one by rejecting all proposals for both national service and universal military service...

...The idea of a compulsory service, either military or non-military, is appalling, and none the less so for having been proposed by Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, Secretary of Defense McNamara, Harris Wofford, William Josephson and other altruistic social servants...

...A member of the Santa Cruz faculty who was allowed to appear at a Draft Board meeting to discuss the situation of his students gave this account: "Part of the Board was absent, only one member arrived on time, there were six feet of files in stacks on the table, and during the five or ten minutes in which I tried to speak with the Board the secretary was distributing and redistributing stacks, instructing the various members what to sign...

...Our manpower resources could be identified and recalled almost instantaneously in the event of a bona fide international crisis...

...President Johnson has encouraged broad public debate of draft reform, especially of those issues on which his Advisory Commission was unable to agree, and it is likely that he will create opportunities for informed discussion between now and June...

...This seems to be the primary concern of Johnson and McNamara...

...In the August 1, 1966, issue of this magazine, in an article entitled "The University and the Draft," I argued that no one seriously involved in the experience of liberal education could afford to cooperate in any way with the process of selecting young men for military service...

...they can also be expected to resist any incursions on the concept of "localism" so dear to Southern hearts...

...These overworked women were irritated that Santa Cruz had not supplied them with convenient data (grades, class ranks) in support of the selection process...

...As Chapman puts it: "The present atmosphere of official complacency, requiring that draft critics prove their case, is distinctly anti-libertarian...

...v. Seeger, the so-called "religious training and belief" test could now be replaced with a determination of "depth of conviction...

...Yet, the idea of maintaining an entirely voluntary army has gained currency during the past six months, and a few people have begun to look behind the rhetoric and to analyze the reality...

...This struck me as a wretched prospect when I first read it, and it still does...

...Some have argued that by deepening but narrowing the "pool" of 1-A bodies in this way, a larger percentage of a smaller age group would be affected, thereby ending the grossest inequities of the present system...

...For one thing, he points out, the readiness of the military would be greatly enhanced by the freeing of many "professionals" from the time-consuming task of training draftees...

...My appeal then was to a consideration of educational philosophy, and I dealt with such matters as student deferments and the compilation of class rankings only insofar as they impinged upon the realization of humane and independent (i.e., intellectually noncompetitive) values...

...And even this will probably produce very limited results in the current Congress...

...Moreover, Rivers has had ample experience conducting "hearings" to his own auditory satisfaction...

...On separate occasions in 1965 Secretary McNamara was asked to estimate the cost of replacing the draft with a volunteer system...

...Though I shudder to think of what "social" purposes this testing could serve, I can easily see the value of collecting all relevant military data and storing it in computers...