Chairman RUSSELL. You are just in the process of organization now? Mr. WUGALTER. Yes, and we were somewhat disappointed with how quickly these hearings have been rushed, since the law is due to expire June 30, 1963. We expected more time to organize Chairman RUSSELL. You expected what? Mr. WUGALTER. More time to organize a more effective campaign. and more lengthy testimony. Chairman RUSSELL. I see. I do not suppose you have any definite objective as to the size of your membership. You would be willing to accept your objective is to get everybody in the organization? Mr. WUGALTER. That is right. We would like to have everybody in this organization. Chairman RUSSELL. Senator Inouye? Senator INOUYE. Mr. Chairman. It is the contention of your committee that it is not necessary to maintain a military force in the United States? Mr. WUGALTER. No, that is not the contention of the committee. The contention of the committee is that it is not necessary to maintain the draft in the United States. Senator INOUYE. But you feel that we must have a military force here? Mr. WUGALTER. Well, I am not here to say that. I am here to represent my opinion as related to the draft. As to the military force, I am sure that there are people in our committee who are pacifists, both religious and nonreligious, and who are also opposed to any sort of military service. Senator INOUYE. Thank you very much, sir. The representative of the other End the Draft Committee, End the Draft in 1963, Rev. Montgomery Shroyer, of Westminster, Md. STATEMENT OF REV. MONTGOMERY J. SHROYER, ON BEHALF OF THE END THE DRAFT IN 1963 COMMITTEE Reverend SHROYER. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, gentlemen, permit me to thank you for the privilege of testifying here before your committee on the bill, S. 846, to extend the provisions of the Universal Military Training and Service Act. I am Montgomery J. Shroyer, of Westminster, Md., a member of the Advisory Committee of End the Draft in 1963, an ad hoc committee set up for the purpose indicated in the name. This testimony is made with a sense of responsibility of the individual American citizen. The British physicist and Nobel Prize winner, P. M. S. Blackett, writes as follows in Harper's magazine (January 1963): I would like to see more effort by individuals to persuade their countries to adopt national policies on armaments, which would produce a more favorable atmosphere for these all-important multilateral negotiations*** it is necessary for individuals to subject their own government's defense and disarmament policies to a critical examination ***. Perhaps the next decisive battle in the campaign for disarmament will be won or lost in the mind and heart of the American people. The argument for the end of the draft in 1963 is based on the common observation that the system is not working. John C. Estey, Jr., in an article in the Nation (February 23, 1963), "We Don't Need the Draft," has pointed out that every male on reaching the age of 18 is subject to the draft but that very few are called into service. Because there are so many eligible males and because the draft quotas are so small relative to the available manpower, the system needs reach in no further than the third category, and is operating there at about the 22.5 age level. On account of the numerous deferments available, relatively few of the eligible men are actually drafted. Further, it may be pointed out that very few of these drafted actually go into military service as such, but perform such duties in supplies, transportation, and maintenance as might well be done by civilians. Representative Curtis has shown that the percentage of nonmilitary occupations may run as high as 80 percent. In the light of the nonmilitary role of so many draftees, it is maintained with good reason that it would be far better not to use the draft at all, but, rather, to secure the men needed by voluntary enlistment and at wages in keeping with the American civilian scale. And since the problem of defense has become so highly technical, it is difficult to see how the draft system can supply the manpower adequate to the new situation. The draft system needs to be analyzed in the light of the most important move toward disarmament which we have made. It is a sound principle laid down by psychologists (and Prof. Jerome Frank, of the Johns Hopkins University, has been a spokesman for the view) that individuals and nations must learn the way of give and take. Concessions can be made at points where the sacrifice is not great, and yet the result in the relief from tensions is significant. So, in view of the inefficiency of the draft, it would seem that the program might be abandoned with no loss of national safety, and the effect on the international situation would be salutary. Arthur I. Waskow, former legislative assistant to Congressman Kastenmeier, writing on "The Limits of Defense," in the Atlantic Monthly (February 1962), says: A series of initiatives could be planned, starting with minor acts that would mean only a tiny peripheral loss to basic American security. Each act would be followed immediately by worldwide publicity for a request that the Communists reciprocate ***. Many intense clashes of interest are also involved, and some softening of these clashes will be necessary to reduce fear and hatred to the point at which disarmament will look attractive to all. Members of the End the Draft in 1963 movement are concerned over the moral and religious implications of the whole trend of armaments. It is not merely that the draft is inefficient in its present form. We look beyond it to the great threat to life itself for us and for the peoples of the earth. There are sound reasons for every possible step in the direction of disarmament and releasing men from the military life. A word spoken by William C. Foster, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament, demands our attention: The present arms race can continue unabated as each side strives to achieve and maintain what is usually called a "balance of terror." *** All of this may be quite obvious, but I feel it needs to be underlined that rational men have a reason, more compelling than ever existed before, to seek arms control, arms reduction, and arms elimination. This fact tends to be obscured by a certain disenchantment with international conferences, a certain cynicism concerning the intelligence and even the good intentions of mankind in general and the Russians in particular. There arises a type of fatalism, an atmosphere of "kismet," about disarmament which can result in a passive acceptance of the menacing present and its implications for the future of all of us. It is in this light that we urge a gesture toward a more peaceful world which could do our Nation no damage, but would inspire some hope in the hearts of mankind. May I thank you again, gentlemen, for the courtesy extended in the permission to appear before you. I should like to submit for inclusion in the record a statement of principle and purpose of the End the Draft in 1963, also the article, a reprint, by John C. Esty, Jr., from The Nation, "We Don't Need the Draft." Mr. Esty is associate dean at Amherst College and a captain in the Air Force Reserve. I should also like to have included a statement by William H. Meyer, former Representative from Vermont, in his testimony to the House Committee of March 4, 1963. (NOTE.-Former Congressman Meyer submitted a statement for inclusion in the record, which appears elsewhere in this hearing.) Thank you. (The documents referred to follow :) [From The Nation, Feb. 23, 1963] WE DON'T NEED THE DRAFT (By John C. Esty, Jr.) 1 On June 30, 1963, the Universal Military Training and Service Act will expire. It is under this authority that the Government has been empowered to draft young men into the Armed Forces for the last 4 years. But no one thinks the law will quietly die; sometime this spring Congress will resume its quadrennial debate on a subject which may well surpass tax relief and welfare programs in impact on this country's future. With all the current talk about legislative programs and priorities, the administration has been strangely quiet about selective service-unlike 4 years ago, when the draft bill was one of the first items on the agenda of the 86th Congress. As the opponents of military conscription muster their (religious, constitutional, moral, practical and even military) arguments, manpower officials pore over demographic charts trying to determine how to man our peacetime garrison. If the final debate follows recent history, proponents will argue on the basis of present needs, while opponents will cite damaging, long-range effects and matters of principle. The former will have an advantage, for present needs always seem more impressive. Therefore it is important to examine the present state of military conscription and its effect on young people, why we have maintained it so long, and why and how it might be feasible to do away with it. Under present law, every male, upon reaching his 18th birthday, must register with the Selective Service System. Some time later he receives a classification questionnaire by which his local board determines whether he is likely to be available for service or not. At this point, almost all young men are classified 1Aavailable for service for the question of actual induction or deferment does not arise until one approaches his 23d birthday. The reason for this is the priority of draftable categories as they were established by Executive order: delinquents first, then volunteers, then nonvolunteer nonfathers between 19 and 26 (oldest first), then fathers (in the same fashion), then men over 26 whose liability has been extended beyond that point because of a previous deferment, and finally those between 1812 and 19. Because there are so many eligible males and because the draft quotas are so small relative to the available manpower, the system needs reach in no further than the third category, and is operating there at about the 221⁄2 age level. In addition to the escape hatches evident in these priorities—that is, fatherhood, or reaching age 26-one can make himself unavailable during the vulnerable period by getting a deferment: to attend school, to be a minister, to be employed in essential industry, to teach science, and to do many other things. But even before these possibilities arise, somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of a given eligible age group have been deferred for inability to satisfy the physical and mental standards presently required for induction. So in any given year in the 1 John C. Esty, Jr., associate dean at Amherst College and a captain in the Air Force Reserve, will shortly become headmaster at the Taft School. age level at which men are being drafted (between 22 and 23), there are relatively few men (perhaps 150,000) who are eligible, and even fewer are actually drafted (something like 100,000). The total number of males in the age group has recently averaged about 1.2 million, so obviously the draft operates on a highly selective basis. For a variety of reasons this is necessary, but it remains the fact; and it is the source of the present weakness of the Selective Service System. This was almost exactly the situation 4 years ago, when I wrote in "DraftDodger or Patriot: The Dilemma of the College Student" (The Nation, January 10, 1959) that the many ways to escape the draft, and the relatively small proportion of his peers who were "hooked," eroded the sense of duty of the typical college male. Today many college students still make plans to attend graduate school prematurely in order to get deferred, today fatherhood is still hastened beyond reason (or love) to get a lower draft priority, today students are still warping their natural career bent so as to "beat the system." There are even some new wrinkles. One enterprising young man staved off his induction by marrying a widow with three children. Apparently his lurch into instant fatherhood proved too hasty and he was divorced 3 months later— and then drafted. In another case, an illegitimate child, who was about to be released for adoption, was suddenly legitimatized by marriage when the father learned this would provide ground for deferment. (These stories are a bit unfair to the local boards of the Selective Service System, who labor heriocally to preserve community and family continuity against impossible ambiguities; they, do however, illustrate the ambiguities.) Twice in the last 4 years two major international crises arose which revealed the weakness of the draft as an instrument of national policy. In the Berlin crisis of August-September, 1961, President Kennedy mobilized a number of reserve and National Guard units, and called for an increase in military conscription. During this period, the monthly draft quotas for the whole country rose from about 8,000 to 25,000, then to 20,000 and back down to about 10,000. The effect seemed to be mainly to lower the draftable age in category 3 from 22 years, 9 months, and to induce local boards to estimate their future potential by asking for preinduction physical exams as much as a year earlier than before. These moves caused a flurry of concern on the part of college students, but the moment soon passed with very little lasting impact. The other episode was the Cuban crisis last fall. Partly because the crisis had more to do with mobilizing existing combat and support forces for an operation which did not involve ground forces essentially, but also partly because Berlin had shown how ineffective increasing reserve and conscription activity really was, there was almost no change in selective service quotas or practice. Thus, instead of placing the country's young men in touch with the realities and immediacy of a national emergency-through the realities and immediacy of the Selective Service System-the two crises served instead to illustrate the irrelevance of the draft to national defense. It is this aspect of our present manpower procurement program that has the most damaging long-range effect. In World War II, almost every able-bodied male in the eligible age group served in the Armed Forces, and those who didn't had a hand in national defense if only indirectly. The whole populace was absorbed in a national effort, the goals of which-however destructive and negative-were nonetheless clear and impelling. Not to serve, in one way or another, was to incur a kind of guilt (which is still evident today). During Korea, the goals were much less clear and the burden of national service fell to a much smaller proportion of the population. Yet despite the inequities involved, with a relative few bearing the brunt of the fighting, there was a general feeling that there was no other way of handling the emergency. Now, 10 years later, the goals of the cold war are much more diffuse and the percentage of the eligible pool of manpower which serves involuntarily is much smaller than ever before. Lebanon, Berlin, southeast Asia, and Cuba seemed to have taught that highly mobile forces already in being, rather than the resources of Selective Service, provide the military leverage we need in time of crisis. The result is that 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. When I pointed out this attitude 4 years ago, I was basing the observation on my experience with college students. Not only has this situation remained unchanged, but we have additional evidence now that the attitude is not limited to college-going males. In a 10-year study by the Conservation of Human Resources project, its director, Professor Eli Ginzberg of Columbia University, concludes that the present attitudes of American youth toward military service are “an 95840-63-6 invitation to national disaster." Writing on "The Optimistic Tradition and American Youth," Professor Ginzberg suggests that 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 were caught while so many others escaped." The college student, 4 years ago, viewed the problem of when and how to do his military service as something of a moral dilemma. Now there is no dilemma; military service is simply no longer relevant. And for young men in general, the threat of the draft clearly poses a major disruption in their lives which they treat not as necessary but as gratuitous. But all of this must surely be evident to manpower policymakers and congressional leaders. Why, then, were these objections so easily brushed aside in the congressional debates over renewal of the legislation 4 years ago? Why were the proposals, then advanced, to extend the draft for only 2 years and to appoint a civilian commission to study the problem not even seriously considered? The answer is that at that juncture, the policymakers were not able to see beyond the charts, which spoke for forced conscription, to the broader social effects of this method of procuring manpower. Congressional leaders were so impressed by the basic need for manpower that they could not admit that the situation had become so much more complex that old answers would no longer do. Obviously, if national defense requires the draft, no matter what the inequities and long-range erosion, then we must have the draft. But what if national defense needs the draft only a little bit? Under such circumstances, isn't it possible that the deleterious side-effects would more than outweigh the need? What are the arguments for continuing the draft? What was so persuasive about them 4 years ago? And do these arguments hold today? First, it was argued that the draft machinery must be retained in case of large future need. But this kind of preparedness seems now to be too cumbersome and slow-moving for the kinds of demands we are likely to face. Anyway, it doesn't seem necessary to pass bodies through the machinery in order to keep it minimally operative. Second, it was suggested that inducting a certain proportion of the country's youth provided a way to strengthen the moral fiber of the country and possibly keep some young men off the streets. Unfortunately, the Army doesn't want juvenile delinquents, either. And if the Ginzberg report doesn't specifically refute the "moral fiber" idea, then one can turn to the comments of Congressman Roman C. Pucinski in debate on February 5, 1959: "I just completed * * * a very intensive survey in Chicago on teenage gangs and juvenile delinquency, and I find that the draft has a very important effect on the present development of our young people. *** Hundreds of thousands *** are forced to live in a shadow of constant doubt as to their future when actually only a few thousands are ultimately drafted. *** Many young men who graduate from high school and who do not, or cannot because of economic reasons, go to college find it impossible to get decent employment because the first thing they are asked by a potential employer is what is his draft status. *** I could not begin to tell you the hardships that this situation is causing.' A third argument aimed at critics who pointed to the inequities inherent in the draft-stated that 7 out of 10 men reaching age 26 in 1959 served in the Armed Forces; excluding those who couldn't qualify, the ratio was 9 out of 10. The same estimates, projected to June 1963, indicated that about half of all men reaching age 26, and 8 out of 10 who actually qualify, will have served. (It is my guess that the actual figures will turn out to be more like 40 percent of all men and 70 percent of those qualified.) There are three major weaknesses in this attempt to demonstrate the universality and fairness of selective service as it now operates. First is the fact that the inequity-whatever it is-is increasing: more men really are escaping the draft and more men are being held in suspense, that is, in the manpower pool. The second weakness is the manner in which "qualified" is defined. In order to keep a high ratio of men drafted to those "qualified," the Selective Service System needs only to "disqualify" large numbers, which is precisely what is happening. In one neighboring county, the rejection rate for mental and physical reasons is now 68 percent; any college student who wants to go to graduate school can be deferred whether he deserves to be or not. But the most serious condition, which the figures do not show, occurs in the ratio of those who are actually drafted compared to those available in the vulnerable age group. Of the men reaching age 26 in 1963, only about 1 in 10 will have been drafted; the great majority of the young men who enter the Armed |