It is the cancerous growth of military control, coupled with the recession from reality by the military organization which undermines and threatens to pervert our essential character.

For the sake of millions of citizens who are or will be in the service, I urge you to set up a scheme which will insure that every citizen exercises his right of self-defense under conditions which are traditionally American in concept and which will develop not hostility for the service but personal abilities and a deep regard for the country in which we live.

Chairman RUSSELL. You have given this matter very profound study, Mr. Johnson. We are glad to have the benefit of your thinking and study.

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, sir.

Senator STENNIS. A very good statement, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman RUSSELL. Has Mrs. William E. Brainard arrived? All right, Mrs. Brainard.

STATEMENT OF MRS. WILLIAM E. BRAINARD, IN BEHALF OF THE WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM

Mrs. BRAINARD. Mr. Chairman and members of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, I am Mrs. William E. Brainard, Providence Road, Towson, Md. I am here today at the request of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, United States Section. This organization was founded by Jane Addams 36 years ago.

I come to you today, also, as the mother of three boys, ages 12, 16, and 18 years. For many years I have had a deep and abiding interest in the welfare of our Nation and of the world. I am aware of and appreciative of the tremendous responsibility that this committee has in making decisions that will greatly affect not only my sons, but the youth of our Nation and of the world. I appreciate this opportunity to present our testimony.

Our testimony of opposition is based on the National Security Training Commission's report to Congress, October 1951, which states that universal military training is "the foundation of enduring national strength" and "an essential to national existence."

UMT NOT ESSENTIAL TO NATIONAL STRENGTH

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom believes that universal military training is not a "foundation of enduring national strength" and that it is not essential to the defense of the Nation; but in fact will be a detriment and a handicap.

Since the program as outlined by the National Security Training Commission represents an outstandingly different approach in American policy, it is very important that the American people have a clear understanding of what universal military training really is, and what it is not. The general impression that universal military training is simply a 6 months' training program is altogether misleading. Universal military training as proposed is not just a 6 months' program but conscription for 8 years, including 6 months' military training, the possibility of young men being drafted for 18 months' military service and the remainder of 8 years in the Reserves, subject to call

by Congress. The Commission's report emphasizes and reiterates— no less than 11 times-that a 6 months' training program alone is neither adequate nor intended, that hard, continuous training in an intensive reinvigorated Reserve program is vital to the success of the proposal.

What universal military training is not, is also very important. While not intended to meet the present crisis, every advantage is being taken to make use of the present emergency to persuade people to support legislation they would be loath to accept in less troubled times.

HISTORICAL LESSONS OF COMPULSORY SERVICE

A study of twentieth century history indicates that compulsory military training has never helped to avert war nor guaranteed victory to any nation. Defeated nations that have had compulsory military training include Germany, Japan, Poland, France, Italy, Russia (in the Russo-Japanese War). The only large nations that did not suffer defeat or collapse in World War I or II are Britain and the United States, the only two great nations which have not had a long history of peacetime conscription. It is unfortunate that the disease of the conquered has infected the victors. It seems clear that other factors than peacetime conscription are significant for national strength.

It is a curious fact

says Felix Morley—

that this Republic has survived and prospered for close to 170 years without benefit of what is now called an essential foundation.

EFFECT OF MILITARY ENVIRONMENT ON YOUNG MINDS

As a mother, I cannot help but be concerned about the effects of military camps on our young people. Universal military training is for 18-year-olds. From my own experience such youngsters need freedom to learn to supervise, manage, direct, and control their own schedules, activities, studies, and finances in a favorable environment. In the armed services there is no such freedom, and the environment is likely to be unfavorable.

But more important is the conflict which universal military training raises in the minds of our young men. All the training we have given them in home, school, church, and synagogue has emphasized creative constructive work, independent thinking and judgment, and, most important of all, a high sense of the value of human life. What happens when he is submitted to a program of rigid and blind obedience to military orders which are ultimately directed toward transforming these boys of ours into a mass of unthinking killers?

Is it any wonder that of those World War II veterans receiving aid and treatment now as neuropsychiatrics, 89 percent never saw combat duty?

WILL UMT REDUCE CASUALTIES

As a mother, I appreciate also the hope that other mothers have in universal military training as a method of reducing casualties. It has been suggested that it is training or lack of training that is

decisive in causing casualties. Official Army studies indicate that the greatest number of casualties are caused by fragments of highexplosive shells; that more significant than training are factors such as a man's nearness to the front, whether he happens to be where a shell explodes, whether he is in infantry or armored unit.

Official Army studies further indicate that:

1. Heavy casualties are also caused by preventable disease, poor intelligence work, blunder of commanders, and accidents, all of which cannot be prevented by universal military training.

2. The incidence of disease, including mental, is five times greater in the military forces than among civilians, despite the fact that only healthy specimens are inducted.

3. World War II casualties occurred most heavily in countries with universal military training; countries without universal military training suffered far fewer casualties than countries with such training.

It has been suggested that universal military training will make possible a reduction in our Armed Forces. However, there are no plans either tentatively or specifically stated for such a reduction. On the contrary, each branch of the armed services indicates in the Commission report that all universal military training personnel is in addition to their authorized strength, and this support personnel includes one person for each two trainees. These facts, plus the 71⁄2 years in the Reserves, indicate an enlarged Military Establish

ment.

GROWING MILITARISM

As has been said before this afternoon, a growing militarism is democracy's greatest threat. Our leaders, from Washington on as well as the American people, have recognized the danger of military dictatorship. In his Farewell Address, September 19, 1796, the retiring first President warned his fellow citizens against

those overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers No. 26, gives reasons why according to the Constitution, Congress is actually "not at liberty to vest in the executive department" the permanent appropriations on which the Defense Department would obviously have to rely to carry out the proposed permanent universal military training program.

The greatest danger to the American system of government, the very insidious danger which those who really appreciate the meaning of the Republic have always fought, is the centralization of power, in this case in the hands of the military. Supposedly in the interest of the defense of our Nation, the proposed legislation for universal military training is actually a step in the direction of totalitarianism, and therefore not defense, but a threat to our idea of democracy. We have already gone a great distance in breaking down traditional safeguards to democracy, but the act of making every youth subservient to the military for 8 years is the biggest step of all.

American military leaders themselves insisted that conscription be abolished in Japan and Germany. Note these words from an Associated Press dispatch from Berlin which appeared in the New York Times, December 1, 1946:

The Allied Control Council, striking at the roots of German militarism, today signed a law prohibiting military training.

Too many people in this country seem to think that we can adopt the essential features of the system whose disastrous results we have seen in Germany and Japan, without ourselves experiencing any of its evils. The insidious influence of such a system would tend over a period of years to develop not freedom with responsibility, but subservience on the part of the people, and a confidence of power on the part of the military.

The strength of American democracy has been the independent and pioneering spirit of the American people. Permanent military conscription would stifle that spirit. From the bicycle shop of the Wright brothers, and not from the corridors of the Pentagon, have come the daring visions that have made our Nation great.

COST OF UMT

One of the further detriments of the proposed legislation is that its tremendous cost will drain our resources to the extent that serious and essential needs are neglected. Our armaments program, without universal military training, has already threatened to decrease educational and health facilities. We now have 3 million children who are not attending any school.

The Commission has frankly reported that the first year's cost of universal military training has been estimated at more than $4 billion. This is very nearly the sum spent for the public education of all our children through high school-30 times the number of universal military trainees. Its recurring yearly cost could otherwise provide a college education for every student now in college for an entire year— three times the number of universal military trainees.

These estimates are for the 6 months training program alone. Estimates on what the proposed 8-year Reserve program might cost indicate that in a few years we'd be spending billions a year just for the Reserve program, in addition to the above quoted figures. These estimates suggest why in the Wall Street Journal recently Lenin was quoted as saying:

We shall force the United States to spend itself into destruction.

IS THERE ONLY A MILITARY ANSWER TO WORLD PROBLEMS?

There is another reason why we believe that universal military training is not essential to the defense of our Nation but a threat to it and to the world. Our final protest is based on the words of the Commission's report as to the purpose of universal military training—

to provide young men with a basic understanding of the times in which they live and with the skills necessary to face with confidence the worst possibilities of a catastrophic age.

"To provide men with a basic understanding of the times." What is implied here is this: "Young men, you are living in times that require you either to kill or be killed, period; and here are the ways to be successful in killing." Is that the basic understanding required that these times?

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Look at the Near East. Communism is spreading there. Why? Two of the reasons, according to Charles Malik of Lebanon, are (1) the eternal conditions of misery of the masses; and (2) the widespread corruption and social irresponsibility. What is the basic understanding our young men need for the hard, real problems of this situation? Can young men who have only a military answer to a problem stop communism in the Near East?

Look at Asia. Fortune magazine, November 1950, in an article, Land Reform Our Ally in Asia, says that in China the only Province where there was determined peasant resistance to communism, was in that Province (Fukien) in which a land-reform program had been successfully carried out by ECA. India is struggling with the problem of communism today. She needs land reform, as do other areas of the world, as much as did China.

What is the basic understanding our young men need for the real, hard facts of this situation? Will the military answer ever touch the fringes of a solution to this acute problem?

We, of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, think our young men need the basic understanding of these times that our most thoughtful citizens are recognizing-that the key political issue of today's world is not Russia, nor the atom bomb, but the grinding misery of two-thirds of the world's masses. On that battleground may well be settled the fate of the whole world.

Would you not agree therefore that what our Nation needs is young men with thes equalities: Understanding, based on knowledge that the problems of this world are such that there is no military solution possible; a sense of responsibility; integrity of character, ability to think through problems unemotionally and to reach objective, nonpartisan decisions; a sense of what is vital in life?

Will universal military training produce any of these things? We believe it will produce the opposite. Instead of developing the ability to think through problems independently and to reach their own judicious decisions, they will be taught subservience.

If we do not bring up a generation of youth who are indoctrinated to believe that ultimate service to their country is more than military service, America is doomed. If youth is given these essentials for enduring national strength-understanding based on wide knowledge, a sense of responsibility, integrity of character, ability to think clearly and to reach objective decisions, and a sense of what is vital in life— they will give this Nation the kind of leadership its size, its greatness, its significance needs, and we will not need to use their compul sory military service.

The problems of the world have never been solved by military methods; in our times, the result of every war is greater chaos and more problems than the world has ever known before. What we need are young people, as we have said, with knowledge and training fit to meet the basic problems of the world so that solutions, not chaos, will result.

What do you really think this country needs; what is essential for our country's security? Capt. J. J. O'Donnell, who heads the Armed Forces educational drive, says:

Our front line of defense is the quality of our citizens

The more

our men are trained by civilian education for the responsibilities of citizenship, the stronger our country.