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THE CONGRESS: Death by Compromise

4 minute read
TIME

The case for universal military training is as old as the Republic and twice as strong today as it was when George Washington presented the idea to Congress in 1789. Again & again since World War II, Harry Truman has asked Congress for U.M.T. But in the asking, the Pentagon has watered down the strong case to a weak brew of political expediency and half-measures. Last week the enemies of U.M.T. in the House of Representatives pounced on the latest U.M.T. compromise, seized it by its inconsistencies, and shook U.M.T. to sudden death while the Administration watched with fascinated horror.

The bill before the House was little more than a formal “go” signal for the U.M.T. program which Congress passed “in principle” last summer. This provided for six months’ training for all males turning 18 years, and required them to spend the following 7½ years in the organized reserves or the National Guard. The bill up last week had some additional sugarcoating, e.g., UMTrainees would not be called to more than 30 days’ active duty without the consent of Congress, and would not be served beverages with more than 1% alcoholic content. At the start of debate last week, U.M.T.’s well-primed enemies in the House were well aware that the whole U.M.T. program could be shelved by defeating the current bill.

The Opportunity. Early in the proceedings, Carl Vinson, chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the Administration’s man in charge, tried to head off trouble for his bill by offering more concessions. He proposed an amendment 1) postponing the start of U.M.T. until the present draft is ended, and 2) setting an automatic expiration date on U.M.T. for July 1, 1958. “That,” said Vinson, “meets every criticism of major importance that has been lodged against this bill.”

In the sense that the bill was now virtually gutted of all logic, he was dead right. In rushed Missouri’s Dewey Short to make the most of the opportunity. “Mr. Chairman,” said Short, “we have just witnessed a complete somersault, a total handspring and an absolute about-face . . . We were told all during the hearings, by the proponents of this measure, that we must get U.M.T. started now in order to be able to build up this reserve, and as we built up this reserve gradually, then we would reduce gradually the number in the active service under the draft. [The Vinson amendment] is just a sop to get a few votes for the bill … If we never begin U.M.T., we will not have to end it.”

Carl Vinson’s amendment carried 126-19, but—as Dewey Short had divined—it was more a sign of defeat than of victory. By a roll call of 236-162, the House voted to send the whole U.M.T. bill back to committee, i.e., to bury it.

Crazy Quilt. There was still an outside chance that U.M.T. might be salvaged in the Senate. But the House verdict stood, nonetheless, as a monument to the futility of trying to make a soft, downy crazy-quilt out of hard military necessities. In 1945, General George Marshall pleaded for a U.M.T. with one year’s training, well knowing that anything less would make less than a qualified reserve. The Pentagon subsequently retreated to the six months’ short-course and the notion that UMTrainees should be treated more like Boy Scouts than soldiers. The Korean war stepped up the draft to build a standing army of 3.5 million men, and sources of young manpower for U.M.T. were virtually exhausted. But Assistant Secretary of Defense Anna Rosenberg kept plugging hard for the peacetime model of U.M.T. on the theory that this was the time to get the bill passed—for use at some unspecified future peacetime date.

The House vote was not necessarily a rejection of the U.M.T. principle. It was a rejection of slick salesmanship and illogical compromise.

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