THE CONGRESS: Conscription's Chances

Congress displayed a soggy lack of enthusiasm; the public was remarkably silent. So it seemed possible that the debate over peacetime conscription, touched off by President Truman's message to Congress (TIME, Oct. 29), might sputter out like a damp fuse in the fogs of the first postwar autumn.

For this pallid reaction the President was partly to blame. He had shown courage in delivering his message in person, braving the uneasy reception his advisers had urged him to avoid. Yet out of deference to Congressional sensibilities—or perhaps merely out of the traditional...

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