data is extrapolated from expenditure curves of the number of dollars needed for each engineer out of various categories of expenditures. Clumsy at best, gentlemen.

Senator KENNEDY. I want to thank you very much, Mr. Young, for appearing before the subcommittee. Mr. Lacklen did you have any comment you wished to make?

Mr. LACKLEN. No sir.

Senator KENNEDY. I want to thank both of you gentlemen for appearing before us.

Mr. Esty?

Mr. Esty, the subcommittee welcomes you and your testimony will be included in the record. If you would proceed on your own and summarize for the benefit of the subcommittee the basic outline of your statement we would certainly appreciate it.

(The prepared statement of Mr. Esty follows:)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN C. ESTY, JR., HEADMASTER, TAFT SCHOOL, WATERTOWN, CONN.

My appearance before this subcomittee presumably relates to my recent article in the New York Times magazine (October 20, 1963), entitled: "The Draft: Many Threatened, Few Chosen." I was asked to do the article apropos of President Kennedy's order exempting married men from the draft. My credentials are 10 years' experience as military service adviser to students at Amhurst College (as associate dean), my own experience in the Air Force (I am now à captain in the Reserve), and a series of articles I have done in the past on problems of the draft for young men. What follows is a transcript of the Times article with the addition of a final paragraph, which summarizes my argument.

When President Kennedy exempted married men from the draft a few weeks ago, it was evident from the news stories that most reporters and most readers did not fully comprehend what was going on. Yet the reaction to the President's announcement was typical of the shallow understanding which has characterized most reports about the draft for the past 12 years. It is unfortunate that a national policy which affects so many lives does not yield more readily to simple exposition.

In this instance, it was announced that the manpower pool now contained 1.7 million eligible men available for military service. Since draft quotas for this coming year are expected to average about 7,000 per month, there was obviously a vast oversupply for a limited demand. The solution seemed reasonable enough: defer the category with the greatest claim to an uniniterrupted life. Thus married men, who comprised 3 out of every 10 draftees and 340,000 of the 1.7 million men on the waiting list, are free. These were the facts, and the only real news interest seemed to be the possibility of a rash of precipitant marriages. A few polls were taken, a few interviews were sought, and everyone seemed to agree that 2 years in the Army was better than a lifetime of KP duty with a wife you didn't love.

This kind of oversimplification obscures the fact that the Executive order is just the latest in a series of jerry-built measures designed to remove some of the inequities, some of the inadequacies, some of the strains, and some of the ridiculous internal inconsistencies in our present manpower procurement system. There are alternatives to the Selective Service System, but we seem too attached to this faithful old machine-held together with baling wire to consider seriously some other way to man our cold war garrison. In order to understand the present weakness of the draft mechanism and consider new solutions intelligently, it is necessary first to understand how the system works and what its impact is on individual young men.

By act of Congress, every American male is required to register with his local draft board on his 18th birthday or within 5 days afterward. If he is away from home he may register with any convenient board, which will then forward his papers to the home board. Within usually a year he receives a classification questionnaire, from which his board learns of his occupational status and his immediate plans. At this point most young men are classified 1A-available for

service unless they are clearly deferrable by virtue of work in essential industry, farming, ministerial, or medical study, and in some cases continuing general school or college. One's classification doesn't matter anyway until he approaches his 23d birthday, at which time his status is reviewed again to see if he is deferrable. If he is not, he is ordered for preinduction physical and mental tests, and if he passes these, induction into the Army follows by about a month.

The vulnerable period begins at age 23 because of the priority of draftable categories established by Executive order. A local draft board has been required to exhaust all of its men in each of the following categories before moving to the next:

(1) Delinquents—that is, draft dodgers;

(2) Volunteers in the order in which they volunteered;

(3) Nonfathers between 19 and 26-oldest first;

(4) Fathers between 19 and 26-oldest first;

(5) Men over 26, whose liability has been extended because of a previous deferment;

(6) And finally, those between 18 and 19.

Presently, half the draft quotas are filled by volunteers (the period of service is the same), and the remainder has come from nonfathers from age 26 down to age 23. When draft quotas were sharply increased during the Berlin crisis of 1961, the additional men came from category (3) down to age 22%. The new Executive order splits up category (3) and promotes bachelors ahead of married men. Since there will now be few men (just bachelors) in the third category, the age of vulnerability will certainly drop-perhaps to age 221⁄2.

The priority charts shows some of the ways to avoid being drafted: marry or turn 26 or don't turn 19. It doesn't show the possibilities of deferment for other reasons, and it doesn't indicate how many men are involved in each group. To get this information we must take a different approach and examine what will happen this year to the men who will turn 23. The following figures are only approximate, but they do indicate the order of magnitude. The projection is based on the situation before the new order deferring married men: 1,300,000 men will reach age 23;

650,000 of these will not qualify on physical and mental grounds;

400.000 will have served or be serving in the Armed Forces by virtue of a previous enlistment;

130,000 will be deferred as students, teachers, or for other reasons;
80,000 will be drafted;

40,000 will be in uncertain status.

About 3 in 10 draftees recently have been married, so the new order will defer about 24,000 of the 80,000 men who would have been drafted. There will probably not be enough qualified bachelors among the 40,000 23-year-olds in the uncertain category to make up the difference; hence the need to move to a younger age level. A projection, similar to the one above, for the age group from 221⁄2 to 23 suggests that this age group will produce at least 60,000 qualified bachelors. With less than half that number actually needed, we can predict that the new age of vulnerability will probably be around 22 years and 10 months. The only clarity that really emerges from these figures is that every physically and mentally qualified bachelor who reaches his 23d birthday will be drafted, unless he has reason to be deferred.

The reader who has had the patience to study these charts (and part of the problem is that very few do) will begin to see why many are threatened but few are called. Of the 1,300,000 men who will turn 23 this year, only half will qualify for the draft and a quarter of those will not have to serve. By the time this age group reaches age 26, only about 40 percent will have served in the Armed Forces. But the major implication of the figures is that only 80,000 men out of a potential of 1,300,000 (less than 10 percent will actually be drafted). The new Executive order will not alter this incredibly low ratio; it will serve mainly to remove uncertainty from the lives of the married men. To make matters worse, the number of men who turn 23 each year is dramatically increasing, so that if draft quotas remain about the same, the ratio may drop well below 1 in 10. The inequity is obvious.

Even though many of his peers actually have served in the Armed Forces (by earlier enlistment), the average draft-eligible 23-year-old sees only the majority of his friends getting deferred because of a personal situation which differs only slightly from his own. One friend happens to have found a girl who will marry him. Another has enough money to go to graduate school. Another happens to incline to medicine or the ministry. The inevitable result is that he wonders

why he should be the one to get "hooped." Five years ago I wrote that this posed a moral problem for many young men ("Draft-Dodger or Patriot: The Dilemma of the College Student," the Nation, Jan. 10, 1959). Now I am afraid there is no more dilemma; the choice is easy. Instead of feeling guilty at not serving, the young man today feels somewhat inept if he can't work out a way to avoid the draft.

This observation is corroborated in the report of a 10-year study by the conservation of human resources project at Columbia University. According to the director, Eli Ginsberg, "most young Americans grow up without the understanding of military obligation, with the consequence that if and when they are called to duty they view it as an imposition, an annoyance, or a stroke of bad luck that they should get caught while so many others escaped." Professor Ginsberg concludes that the present attitudes of American youth toward military service are an "invitation to national disaster."

Moral erosion and confusion in one's sense of duty are not the only negative effects of our highly Selective Service System. As more and more deferment categories are set up to drain off the manpower pool, more and more youthful decisions are influenced by the chance to escape the draft. About 10 years of counseling college students on military service, I have seen this effect first-hand. A student chooses his major field because it leads to a job in an essential industry. A senior plans to keep his student deferment by continuing on to graduate school even though it makes no sense educationally. A career field is chosen arbitrarily just because it will mean an automatic deferment. Some students are paralyzed for effective planning of their lives because they can't figure out where the draft fits in. And now, I suppose, the order deferring married men can't help but affect the thinking and planning of a great many young couples. It strikes me as ironic that with all the current concern over Federal control of education and interstate eating places, selective service may well exert a far more invidious and subtle form of control than we have ever suspected.

It has been necessary to renew the current selective service legislation every 4 years since 1951, but congressional debate has typically been desultory. The act has passed each time by overwhelming majorities mostly because of powerful bipartisan support from the House and Senate Armed Forces Committees. With the responsibility of raising an army for the cold war, these men have not been willing to take the risk of trying new approaches to manpower procurement, and they cannot admit that the situation may now be too complex for old answers. The principle of present needs has always overwhelmed the principles of constitutionality, universality, and equity. Unfortunately, the principles back of our military conscription have not been fully explored since the 1951 hearings. Confusion over principle is obvious from the fact that the Selective Service System is used to implement the Universal Military Service and Training Act of 1951. Present practice makes a mockery of the original intent that every ablebodied young man serve his country. Our present difficulties arise from the strain of maintaining a semblance of universality while armed service needs dictate greater and greater selectivity. The time has probably come when we can no longer reconcile these opposites and must choose between them. At this point new possibilities and proposals emerge rapidly.

If we determine as a matter of principle that every young man is needed in the service of his country, then we need only to expand our concept of national service to achieve universality and fairness. Clearly, only a few will serve by carrying a gun. Some sort of Civilian Conservation Corps could be created with a therapeutic division for erstwhile 4-F's. The Army's famous literacy courses could be invoked for the illiterates. The Peace Corps-both domestic and international-could count for national service, as could work in hospitals and social agencies. Perhaps, too, public school teaching for 3 years might be equivalent to Army service for 2. Surprisingly enough, this scheme is only the logical extension of what is going on now with all the kinds of deferments granted by local draft boards. It would only require a slightly broader vision of how a young man might serve his country.

On the other hand, it might be more feasible to develop a completely voluntary Military Establishment, and forget about compulsory service altogether. Here again we are not so far from this extreme as one might think. The annual replacement need for our present establishment of 2.7 million men is about 600.000. The Army could well get along without its 80,000 draftees,who aren't around long enough to train for any significant jobs and whose reenlistment rate is less than 15 percent, compared to an overall rate of 54 percent. The draft mainly exists to pressure those other half million men into enlisting, but no one is

exactly sure how many would fail to enlist if there were no draft. We have a new military service pay bill, and jobs are scarce in many sections of the country. Constant efforts to make service life attractive and professionally rewarding have steadily pushed up the reenlistment rate. Just a few more moves in this direction might well enable the Armed Forces to compete with the civilian economy for their manpower.

If we must continue with our present system, there are still a number of devices which would help to reduce the uncertainties and redress the inequities. Mental and physical tests could be given at the time of initial registration so that the half of each age group who are destined to be disqualified would not have to wait 5 years to find out. The GI bill (which is constantly before some committee but never seems to be reported out) could be reinstated as partial compensation to the few who get called. Since the Armed Forces would much rather conscript men under 22, the age of freedom might be lowered from 26 to 22. This would mean that many more men would escape the draft, but they are now anyway-except that now they don't know it until they are 26.

None of these proposals make any sense if one views the draft as operating satisfactorily or as the best answer we have to the manpower problem. But no one who has listened to the young men whose lives are involved can accept those premises. Even if the present inequities and inadequacies are accepted as sacrifices to expediency, it must be understood that they can only worsen in the future. As the Selective Service System strains and creaks under its impossible task, it must be understood that each stopgap measure to keep it working has sociological and psychological implications far beyond the immediate problem.

In 1959 an amendment to the Draft Act was offered, which would have extended the law for only 2 years. A Presidential Commission was to conduct a full-scale study of all aspects of manpower procurement and report back within that time. The amendment was defeated because there wasn't time to ask such fundamental questions. Now we have 31⁄2 years before the present act expires. A Presidential Commission could be appointed now to reestablish the principles on which we base our military manpower procurement. It could explore the wider effects of our present system, and develop new concepts and alternatives more suitable to our changing needs. Then Congress would be in a better position to produce legislation sufficiently free from ambiguity and inequity to rekindle a concern for national service. Perhaps then it would not be considered slightly odd for a young man to ask what he can do for his country. Following is a summary of the main points of this statement:

(1) The recent Executive order exempting married men illustrates again how each move to adapt the selective service machinery to present needs furthers the inequities it creates.

(2) Physical and mental standards are such, and deferments are so liberal, that less than 10 percent of a given age group is actually drafted.

(3) This low percentage will get even lower.

(4) This low figure, and the wide variety of ways to escape military service, erode the sense of duty and service of many young men.

(5) The possibilities of avoiding the draft present an artificial factor in such important decisions as career and marriage, and this is a kind of insidious Federal control we ought to recognize.

(6) The strain in the Selective Service System comes from the attempt to preserve the notion of universal service at the same time the Armed Forces are requiring a smaller and smaller proportion of each age group which becomes eligible.

(7) We must now reexamine the principles behind our manpower legislation and question how well it serves our present needs.

(8) We must probably choose between the principle of universality and the principle of a voluntary Military Establishment. Our present system is so much a compromise between these extremes that either extreme might be a better possibility in itself.

(9) Even if we must continue to suffer with the present system, there are still many reforms possible.

(10) Perhaps a Presidential Commission should prepare recommendations now for congressional use in renewing the draft legislation in the spring of 1967.

STATEMENT OF JOHN C. ESTY, JR., HEADMASTER, TAFT SCHOOL, WATERTOWN, CONN.

Mr. ESTY. Mr. Chairman, my testimony has to do with the impact of the Selective Service System, that is, the draft, on the lives of the young men with whom I have had to do in the past 10 years, specifically at Amherst College, but which I take to be representative of young men in general.

As I have been sitting here listening to the testimony of the two previous groups I have been asking myself, Why was I asked to appear here? What is the real relevance of my particular concern to the general topic of the morning's hearings?

Perhaps first I could just suggest two areas in which I think my concern for the impact of the Selective Service System is relevant to the general problem.

The first is that we have seen clearly defined for us a considerable need for trained manpower, on the one hand, in the concern of the National Science Foundation for scientific and engineering manpower in general, and in the concern of the NASA for the particular governmental programs they are concerned with.

It appears as though the Federal Government should have some role in some way in helping train the manpower that is needed and, also, somehow to assist in attracting young men into these engineering and scientific fields.

Now, what that role is, is still underdefined. We are still evolving that particular role, but what I would like to call attention to is something which seems to me not to make very much sense. That is that part of the need in this particular manpower problem is for a kind of clarity in vocational goals and the appropriate steps to take as a young man moves into adulthood. Here is where I think possibly the greatest problems of the draft come in.

It makes so sense to me for the Federal Government to concern itself over the manpower problem in scientific and engineering fields when one branch of the Federal Government, I think, serves to confuse and make the waters murky as a young man tries to figure out what he is going to do with his life, and the burden of my argument in the prepared statement is that the Selective Service System as it presently operates makes it very difficult for a young man to get any great clarity, at least in the early stages of his career planning, as to where he is headed.

The second point of relevance has to do with the possibility of solving some of the problems that are now created by the draft by expanding our sense of national service and insisting on a greater universality of service. It is very clear from the previous testimony that there are all kinds of ways of serving the country by means of Federal service other than simply carrying a gun or putting on a uniform. That is, we see now the great extent to which young men are employed by the Federal Government in programs which are assumed to be very important for national defense and national development.