The bitter truth was out: recruiting for the WAC has been such a failure that officials last week admitted they were hopeless of filling their quota, figure they will be lucky to keep even a trickle of recruits coming in. War Department officials are afraid they may have got virtually all the women volunteers they ever will get. WAC aim for 1943 was an enrollment of 150.000. Present strength: a little over 60,000.
WAVES, who did just a little better than their quota, have also been getting a cold shoulder in recent months from U.S. women. SPARS and Marine Reserves reached their smaller goals some time ago. But in recent weeks their recruiting has also been hamstrung by the same vast apathy.
A Woman's Place. Officials attributed the slump to the country's dangerous conviction that the war is already won.
Soldiers who have been in action want their women to join, but servicemen who have not yet been overseas still think a woman's place is home. The male civilian has come around to a lukewarm endorsement of the idea for others but balks at the thought of his "little woman" joining.
As for the women themselves, they are now increasingly reluctant to give up careers. They can make better money in defense jobs. They feel that they have sacrificed enough if son, husband or brother is in the service. Many have new finan cial responsibilities and obligations at home.
Cynical Report. The whole idea had got away to a bad start with a skeptical press and public. The mischief-making of the New York Daily News's Columnist John O'Donnell (TIME. June 21), who spread scandalous gossip of moral conditions among WACs, hurt all the services.
Publicity campaigns have flopped. The services got a first rush of recruits from the bored, the adventure-loving, the extraordinarily patriotic and the economically depressed. Among the rest, the majority, no kind of publicity ever got beyond first base. Women, who hate regimentation, refused to be persuaded of the country's need of them. Significant was a Gallup report on the best publicity approach: "self-interest by inference."
Conscription? Britain had the same experience. Not until England had national conscription was she able to fill the ranks of WAAFs, ATS and Wrens.
Said WAC Boss Colonel Oveta Gulp Hobby, underlining the dismalness of the flop by declaring that there were almost half a million jobs in the Army which women could fill: "Nothing leads me to believe that we are going to get a volunteer army of 400,000 or 500,000 women. We've never been able to get a volunteer army of men that big." War Secretary Stimson hoped that U.S. women would come to feel a personal responsibility "in this total war." But he did not have much hope. Mr. Stimson's recommendation: compulsory service.