Chairman RUSSELL. From your standpoint you made a very fine statement, Mrs. Brainard. You do not think it is necessary to have some military strength to hold back forces that might destroy us before we could put through this program that you suggest?

Mrs. BRAINARD. May I reiterate that UMT is not for this present emergency, that it is a permanent policy planned for the rest of the years ahead, and that for this immediate emergency we are already giving thought and attention, and these other problems, basic problems, as General Eisenhower says, that we are neglecting to our peril the military needs being met now, let us give a little more attention to what is really basic.

Chairman RUSSELL. I suppose the American taxpayers are finding some of them rather expensive, too.

Mrs. BRAINARD. Well, quite a bit could be said about that.

Chairman RUSSELL. Brig. Gen. Herbert C. Holdridge, representing the American Rally.

STATEMENT OF BRIG. GEN. HERBERT C. HOLDRIDGE, UNITED STATES ARMY (RETIRED), REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN RALLY, ACCOMPANIED BY BURR MCCLOSKEY, CAMPAIGN MANAGER OF THE AMERICAN RALLY, AND FATHER CLARENCE E. DUFFY, MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL BOARD OF THE AMERICAN RALLY

Mr. HOLDRIDGE. Mr. Chairman and members of the Armed Services Committee, I am Brig. Gen. Herbert C. Holdridge, United States Army, retired. My associates are Mr. Burr McCloskey, a machine gunner in General Patton's army, and now campaign manager of the American Rally, and Father Clarence E. Duffy, a Catholic priest who is a member of the national board of the American Rally.

In presenting this statement I am speaking for myself, for the American Rally which is sponsoring my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States, and for millions of inarticulate American people who hate universal military training and whose views have been arrogantly ignored by the Pentagon and by the Congress of the United States.

Chairman RUSSELL. Do you desire to have these gentlemen sit with you?

Mr. HOLDRIDGE. If you wish, sir. If they may, I should like to have them with me on either side of me.

QUALIFICATIONS OF WITNESS

I wish to interpolate here, I wish to thank you for the additional time you have given me this afternoon. I asked for this extra time only because I feel that I present a special point of view which the people will not receive otherwise.

If my language sounds harsh at times, I hope that you will believe that it is only because the truth makes it so and not because I intend any offense this afternoon. any

I am a graduate of West Point, class of 1917. Generals Ridgway, Mark Clark, and Collins are classmates. I served in the Army for a total of 30 years, largely as an instructor and an administrator. I hold a B. S. degree from West Point, an M. A. degree in social sciences

from Columbia University, and two doctors of laws degrees for my achievements in training and administration.

As an instructor I taught social sciences at West Point and became assistant professor of history. I taught history briefly at Columbia University. I served on the academic staff of the Cavalry school at Fort Riley, Kans, where my duties were concerned with the preparation of training programs for the civilian components of the Army. I am a graduate of the Command and General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Kans., and was listed on the General Staff eligible list. As founder of the Adjutant General's School, the Army School of Administration, at Fort Washington, Md., and director of its many branches at leading colleges and universities, I graduated some 35,000 trained administrators for World War II-enlisted, officer candidates, WAC, and officers.

As an administrator I served at major headquarters in the United States, in Europe, and in the Philippines. At the beginning of World War II, I served as plans and training officer in the Adjutant General's Office in the War Department, where I was credited with having streamlined the administrative system of the Army, which was generations behind the times, and saved the Army from administrative chaos.

Since my retirement I have spent my time in close contact with the people at the "grass roots" in connection with my determination to help preserve our democratic institutions, and to find practical solutions for the problems of social and economic disintegration. I testified before the House and Senate Military Affairs Committees in 1946 in opposition to UMT, and was credited by the Pentagon with having killed the proposal at that time-which I take as a great compliment. In view of my special experience I believe that I have a thorough knowledge of the issue of UMT, and am qualified to discuss the problem from a special technical background as no other witness is prepared to do.

I present herewith a tragic picture taken from the Detroit News of Friday, February 1, 1952, showing a GI of world war III, sitting in a wheelchair with both legs amputated, greeting his mother at the time of their reunion, and both weeping over his shattered life. Multiply this by hundreds of thousands, and millions, and you will find the reason for my determination to check the evil forces which have carried us into this brutal, senseless war, and are now conspiring to force UMT down the throats of the American people.

I should like to interpolate at that point that the caption on this in the Detroit News was, "Tears of joy on the face of the son and the mother," and that was a falsification, they were tears of tragedy.

UMT MUST BE CONSIDERED IN OVER-ALL PICTURE

In appearing before you as a candidate for the high office of President of the United States, I must regard this problem with the same sense of responsibility as I would have if I already occupied that office. We are face to face with the gravest crisis in the history of the United States and even of the world. We are beset by forces of destruction of tremendous power; many factors are involved in the situation. UMT cannot be discussed intelligently, isolated from the total situation of which it is a part. To understand UMT we must understand

our domestic and foreign policies, which it is designed to promote. Two forces are struggling for control within the United States. The first is our constitutional, legal government, founded on the principles of democracy and individual liberty as enunciated in our Declaration of Independence, and the Preamble and Bill of Rights of our. Constitution. The second is the force of fascism, of dictatorship, of regimentation which has been infiltrating into the American scene for many years, which has, since World War II, inherited the mantle of Hitlerism, and which is rapidly gaining complete control over the United States.

THE FORCE BEHIND UMT

It is this second subversive force which is behind UMT. It brazenly states its purpose on page 4 of the report of the National Training Commission:

We regard UMT as * * * tangible evidence that the ultimate obligation of citizenship-bearing of arms in defense of the community-shall now be explicit.

We deny that any such mission has been given by the people or by Congress to the Training Commission. This is the philosophy underlying all Fascist states from the time of ancient Sparta-that the individual belongs to the state, and not the state to the individual. It existed in the Italy of Mussolini, and the Germany of Hitler. It exists in Spain under Franco, with whom we are now copulating. It exists today in Russia. It is the philosophy of the Pentagon. And now the United States of America-this "land of the free, and the home of the brave"-has become its chief exponent, and is well along the road toward becoming a Fascist-police state.

It is this Fascist, invisible force that is behind UMT. I shall outline to you presently the name of the organizations and individuals who are promoting this un-American ideology.

The falsehood that is being planted in the minds of the American people as the excuse for imposing UMT upon them is that UMT will build up a military reserve which will assure our security. I wish to reemphasize that it is a question of security which is at stake. Let us examine this falsehood at its face value for a moment, and consider it in connection with the total problem of national security of which it is a part. Where would these trainees be expected to serve? Abroad or at home?

KOREAN DILEMMA

Abroad we have embarked upon an illegal, unconstitutional war. The justification given the people is that we must contain communism. It is clear that this mad military venture has failed, and that instead of containing communism, communism is containing us. We are overextended and pinned down all over the world. Our military and diplomatic fronts have collapsed. Our home frontiers are wide open. We are face to face with disaster.

In Asia General Ridgway finds himself in an impossible military situation. On the one hand he is prevented from making peace with the Koreans and Chinese, because the forces of fascism must have war to maintain themselves in power, and must have the tungsten and other minerals north of the thirty-eighth parallel to produce more

weapons to fight more wars, to kill more American boys and former friends. On the other hand he knows that if he attempts to move deeper into China he will be caught in the quicksands of Asia; and that if Russia should throw her full weight behind the Chinese armies his forces would be destroyed and his men slaughtered on the beaches. We have already lost the campaign of Asia. Financial colonialism has ended for us in Asia as it has for Great Britain in Indian, Iran, and Egypt. Soon we shall be thrown out of Korea, Japan, Formosa, and the Philippines. Our military situation is untenable.

FAILURE IN EUROPE

In Europe Eisenhower has failed as disastrously. It is futile to expect the countries of Western Europe to back our military madness, for Korea offers an excellent example of what happens to countries that offer themselves as the battlefields of our first line of defense. Winston Churchill has won his point that the British Isles shall not be used as an atomic base against Russia, for he knows that the British Isles would be blasted into the sea in an atomic war. Recent debates in Parliament show the fear of the British over our insane military policy. The same is true of every country of Western Europe. All of the billions of the Marshall plan are inadequate to bribe or blackmail them to serve as the chopping block of the Russian war machine.

We are already isolated militarily in the world. We haven't a friend or an ally. Our troops in Europe are already bypassed, and would be lost if war should come. Our western, as well as our eastern front, has disappeared.

We, a Nation of 150 million people, cannot, single-handed, fight a global war against the masses of Asia and Europe, backed by the productive potential of Russia and her satellites, plus the industry of Western Europe which would immediately fall into her hands, unless we plan to bomb our friends as well as foes, as we did in South Korea. Even if every boy, and every adult as well, in the United States were already trained under UMT and available in reserve, the result would still be the same. Thus it is clear that UMT can serve no purpose in connection with the gamble of a foreign war, which we have already lost.

We face disaster at home as we do abroad. Our borders are wide open. We have committed ourselves to a program of international violence, which leads inevitably to the use of the atom bomb, which leads in turn and inevitably to national and world suicide. We know that Russia has the A-bomb and perhaps worse, may already have planted her weapons in every major industrial center of the United States through saboteurs, and can certainly reach us with them by plane or submarine. Our industries are concentrated in a few centers, and could be bombed like shooting fish in a barrel. Our National Capital and the Pentagon would be the first targets. If so, we might-Heaven help us still have Harry S. Truman with us; he would be one of the few remaining. Mr. Truman, so they say, is constructing a Berchtesgaden in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Within a few hours, Government would cease to exist, military control would disappear, our industries and communications systems would be wiped out, 100 million people would be dead, and the rest

shocked, scattered, dying, and helpless, concerned with the sheer problem of survival of decontamination, water, food, and restoration of sanity, not with .30 caliber rifles and machine guns.

UMT HAS NO MEANING IN PRESENT SITUATION

UMT has no meaning in such a situation of catastrophe. It can do nothing to prevent catastrophe, except to give us a false sense of security-a Maginot Line complex-which can only hasten our undoing. Its Reserves would be dead, scattered, leaderless, and without supplies, and would be concerned with self-survival rather than with repelling invasion. Russia would be foolish to invade, for it would be far simpler to leave us to rot. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that it is moronic to speak of the movements of mass armies in such a situation, for it is clear that there is no defense, and mass armies would cease to exist. The authorities of Los Angeles, for example, admit this; for they have advised the people not to try to leave the city where they would be caught between the waterless desert and the salt water ocean. The only thing they could do would be to die on the spot.

It is clear to any thinking person, therefore, that UMT can in no way add to our security or our defense. Instead, by showing the world that we are committed to a program of all-out violence, it will align the nations of the world against our lunacy, and hasten the day of our doom.

The detailed plan of the National Security Training Commission for implementing UMT is utterly futile and senseless in relation to our world military situation. Any other program it might have presented as an alternative plan must, in the very nature of the case, be equally valueless.

AREAS WHERE UMT WOULD BE EFFECTIVE

There are two areas of military action in which UMT, with its masses of reserves trained with basic weapons, has validity, which the Training Commission very carefully refrains from mentioning. The first of these would be to promote the "American Century” in economically backward countries such as South America. The degree of our present economic penetration in these areas should give our Latin-American friends many a nightmare as they view a possible extension to include the use of armed force.

The second purpose would be to repress our own population. It is my firm conviction that this is the hidden purpose in the minds of the proponents of UMT. They must capture the minds of the Amer ican youth and indoctrinate them with their own repressive ideologies, and thus make our boys willing to march at command against those who might challenge the power of the invisible forces of repression. I know this to be true, for during the great depression of 1929-33 I was on duty in Chicago, and knew that the Army authorities were preparing their plans for street fighting to shoot down those who might protest against starving in a world of potential abundance.

I want to add there that the greatest fear there was from the colored population, the Negro population, and they were considering special military action against the Negro population of Chicago.