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Clustered around Burton Wheeler were a potent few who by background, conviction or inherent quirk, viewed U. S. conscription with alarm. Minnesota's ERNEST LUNDEEN (who voted against U. S. entry into World War I*) was as loud against conscription as he was for seizing Franco-British possessions in the Caribbean—a step which might eventually require all the trained man power the U. S. could muster. Nebraska's aged (79), revered GEORGE W. NORRIS (who also opposed World War I) has said that World War II is different. But he and younger, 45, Isolationist ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE JR. (whose late father voted with George Norris in 1917) opposed the draft because they considered Adolf Hitler a lesser, remoter menace to U. S. civil liberties. Professionally isolationist in more ways than mere consistency was North Dakota's GERALD PRENTICE NYE, who annually makes a tidy sum lecturing about the horrors of war.
In the herded House, conscription last week had fewer aggressive opponents than in the Senate. Leading the House opposition was New York's HAMILTON FISH, who last year thought he was ordained to be Hitler's Peace-Agent. Of all those who wished to prevent conscription, only one was wholly consistent—VITO MARCANTONIC, valiant, reddish radish from Manhattan's Harlem, who capped his unbroken record of opposition to Defense measures last week by casting a lone vote against a $4,963,151,957 Army-Navy Bill.
Paper v. Men. Of all the arguments heard against conscription last week, the most effective was that volunteer recruiting is enough, until & unless the U. S. goes to war.
Politics aside, this argument missed the point of the Burke-Wadsworth Bill. Its purpose was not to build up the standing Army and Navy, but rather to assure the U. S. a reserve of trained man power to be called when & if needed. Said the Army's Chief of Staff George Marshall last week: "Paper plans no longer will suffice. The security of our country depends on having trained men . . . and there is no other way to do it. . . ."
Where Were They? Last week a letter-writer to the New York Herald Tribune, Author David Cohn of Mississippi, put the case for conscription in five simple words. He dusted off the isolationists, Democrats, Republicans and congenital do-nothings in Washington, asked in the line-of-the-week: "Where are the Americans hiding?"
Other U. S. citizens might well have asked where Franklin Roosevelt's Administration leaders in Congress were hiding early last week, when the opposition was most vocal and active. Not until the Burke-Wadsworth Bill had been well com-mitteemandered did Mr. Roosevelt come out for conscription in principle, at week's end had yet to indorse the endangered bill specifically.
His nominal Senate leader, Alben Barkley, contributed only the observation that the matter would require several weeks of debate. Normally aggressive, adroit Jimmy Byrnes of South Carolina, who long since supplanted Bumbler Barkley as the majority's real leader, led off last week with the suggestion that the bill be well watered down.