ABOLISH CONSCRIPTION NOW!
SEELY, Lt. Comdr. C. S.
Abolish Conscription Now! By LT. COMDR. C. S. SEELY NOW that the war is over conscription should be abolished at once. There certainly is no longer any excuse for continuing it, as volunteers can...
...Daniels recently came out strongly against conscription...
...I HAVE studied the arguments for and against peacetime conscription, and I feel that its champions are not on solid ground...
...The Navy, then under the leadership of the great liberal-progressive, Josephus Daniels, in my opinion the most democratic secretary the Navy has ever had, simply did not want conscripts around...
...Its disadvantages to American progress greatly outweigh the advantages...
...And not until late in World War II did our Navy or Marine Corps submit to conscription...
...And it is my opinion that we should withdraw our military forces from Europe at the earliest possible moment, and thus allow the Europeans themselves to carry on what policing is needed...
...And volunteers are much better suited for this kind of work than conscripts could ever be...
...There certainly is no longer any excuse for continuing it, as volunteers can easily be recruited for all the policing or occupying of foreign countries we need do...
...It is true that a handful of conscripts were taken into the Navy late in World War I, but it is my recollection, and I was on active duty at the time, that these conscripts were kept on menial jobs, such as cleaning toilets, etc., and were never placed in any position of responsibility...
...It is my desire to make our country strong, and certainly I will never do anything that may possibly make it weak...
...But this is not at all the situation within the United States...
...Both of these great and proud arms of our military service fought hard against conscription and, in my opinion, gave in only to keep peace with the conscriptionists— those who insisted on conscription of men but not of wealth...
...WHAT with the atomic bomb, and other technical advances in the art of destruction, it is beyond the bounds of probability that the United States will ever again have any excuse for conscripting men for war...
...Large armies are no longer necessary...
...It is entirely clear that peacetime conscription is incompatible with a true democracy, and for the United States would be a very long step backward—a very reactionary move...
...For 141 years our military services were based on a volunteer system...
...No doubt our military prestige can better be maintained by keeping large armies in Europe and Asia, but there, are other considerations...
...In fact, our Allies, especially the French, will be glad to relieve us of any military responsibility in Europe...
...There may not be any other way to raise a needed army...
...Of course, it must be conceded that for countries which never had a volunteer military system conscription is not necessarily objectionable...
...The time to change to a volunteer system may not have arrived...
...It is simply my opinion that conscription weakens the moral fiber of a democratic nation, and for that reason it should be abolished forever from the United States...
...I hope nobody will misunderstand what I have written here...
...I am sure that any thinking person will readily agree that a man who wants to do a thing is better suited for the task than one who does not want to do it...
...If 200,000 men are shortly to be enough to police Japan, as has been reliably reported, then certainly a much smaller force will be needed for our part of policing Europe...
...The opinions and assertions expressed above are the private ones of the writer and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Navy Department or the naval service at large...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 40
