A $64 QUESTION
A $64 Question THE drive to impose compulsory peacetime military conscription on America has resulted in 2 very puzzling political irreconcilabilities: 1. The recent hearings before the House...
...While There's Still Time LOUIS CLAIR'S excellent article on Italy in this issue stresses again the staggering task America faces in Europe...
...Support came from a few brass hats and the overage warriors of the East...
...America has a real job ahead if we are to help Europe to find its way out of the ruins ofc fascism to an era of democracy...
...Then let the final public opinion survey be taken in the polling booth...
...After 2 decades of Fascism and the ravages of a losing war, Italy at best could hardly have adopted and sustained an all-out democracy on our exact model...
...This question was asked in the same survey in which 72 per cent of the opinion favored conscription...
...For us the significance of this turn is not simply that Italy is 'going Communist' or that Italy is rejecting the forms of democracy as we know it...
...The meaning for us is that the Italians are losing their confidence in us and the democratic spirit...
...The NORC asked the following question: "If the government had 2 billion dollars a year to spend, would you rather have it spent on a program of better regular education in the schools or on a program of compulsory military training in the Army or Navy...
...We cannot expect the world to pattern itself after a diluted democracy...
...Total American casualties—747,000...
...The NORC survey underscores the need for careful and complete deliberation before America takes action on this vital question...
...Allied encouragement of the Parri government indicates at least a recognition that the people of Italy were just as much the victims of fascism as the people of those countries overrun by the fascists...
...Lives lost, American troops—150,000 men in combat...
...There are no signs that an equally intelligent view has marked our policy in Germany...
...Cost in cash to all participants—$1,000,000,000,-000 (1 trillion...
...It's obvious that these 2 indicia of public opinion do not jell...
...Full employment, education, health, and abundance for all under free government is the most compelling ideology we can disseminate...
...In subsequent articles Mecklin points out that America is really following no policy at all and that occupation officials speak of definite objectives as something that will spring up miraculously sometime in the distant future...
...This, of course, is exceedingly harmful to any chances for German democracy...
...LOUIS QLAIR has pointed up the issue in Italy...
...Indeed, all indications point to the contrary...
...Let the issue be thrashed out before the people in a campaign in which they will be informed of the alternatives, the merits and demerits of conscription...
...A $64 Question THE drive to impose compulsory peacetime military conscription on America has resulted in 2 very puzzling political irreconcilabilities: 1. The recent hearings before the House Military Affairs Committee demonstrated that opposition to conscription came from the groups in America with a large, mass base—church groups, parent-teachers associations, labor unions, and others...
...Contrasting our own stupid policy of -treating all Germany as a vast camp of Nazi zealots to the enlightened, policy of Russia, which distinguishes between Nazis and non-Nazis, Mecklin wrote that Russia is rapidly winning goodwill and friendship while our own prestige wanes alarmingly...
...THE Progressive called attention last week to the superb series of articles on American policy in Germany being written by John Mecklin, staff correspondent of the Marshall Field dailies, the Chicago Sun and PM...
...Osborne's comment then that the Italian people are "turning away from us...
...2. Public opinion polls showed a majority as high as 72 per cent favoring conscription...
...Before our reservoir of good will runs dry, there is the utmost urgency for an affirmative, aggressive American foreign policy that will match the superb success of American men, materiel, and money in the military destruction of fascism with a positive policy to help pro-democratic forces in Europe's peacetime reconstruction...
...Only 25 per cent favored conscription...
...Few Americans in time of war will reply no when asked if they favor conscription FOR THE DEFENSE OF AMERICA...
...Our example of political democracy is the envy of the world...
...Our economic democracy must be enlarged and strengthened, however, if we are to prove that the 2 are not incompatible, as our own reactionaries and defeatist liberals would have us believe...
...The clouds of British imperialism and pro-mon-archism, buttressed by our own obeisance to those policies, hover over the Parri government, threatening restriction and dissolution whenever "military necessity" dictates...
...An explanation of the conflict was supplied in a recent public opinion survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center of the Uni-" versity of Denver...
...It is well worth repeating Mr...
...Lest We Forget THE full accounting of the bloodiest war in all Europe's bloody history will not be available for a long time, but tentative figures released by official authorities show the following costs in men and money: Total casualties, all nations—40,000,000...
...They are turning to Russia...
...The lesson of the past decade shows us that a desperate, hungry people will not be impressed by promises of political democracy alone if totalitarianism—Red or White—offers in its place food and a measure of economic security...
...Lives lost, all nations—6,000,000 men in combat...
...In wartime they automatically think in terms of military defense...
...When, however, they are confronted with a constructive alternative, such as was presented in the NORC survey, the results are different...
...We will not begin to do it until we call a halt to the weak-kneed policy of postponing vital decisions that will help pro-democratic and anti-fascist forces in the "liberated" countries to help themselves...
...Clair brings up to date the Italian muddle that John Osborne, senior editor for Life, reported after his trip there last Winter...
...Cost in cash to America—$275,703,000,000...
...As he points out, the establishment of the new Italian government, though faltering and feeble, is a short step in the right direction...
...But these same people, when given an alternative, were 56 per cent in favor of "regular educa-» jtion...
...Nevertheless the establishment of the government denotes a far more promising attitude in our relations with conquered people than our sterile policies of negation in Germany have shown...
...The results of the survey proved, as it has before when sample opinions on broad public policy are taken, that the answers depend on the way in which the question is asked...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 28
