We need more study, discussion, and planning to appraise properly our problem and to gage the probable effects of the measures proposed to meet it. Have we given sufficient consideration to meeting the need for a large army and navy by making voluntary service in the armed forces more attractive as a career, financially and otherwise? Are we sure that a more beneficial type of universal military training cannot be worked out through the schools and colleges, through the National Guard, and through summer military camps? A plan, which would utilize all these agencies and assign to each its share in the program, might even require by law the participation of all youth physically able and still avoid most of the dangers that seem inherent in the proposal now before Congress. Such a program might be more difficult and expensive to operate-and it is not the way that totalitarian nations would work it out-but would it not be more in accord with our ideal of maximum liberty for the individual?

Chairman WOODRUM. Thank you, Dr. Miller.

The next to be heard is Judge William Hastie, National Association for Advancement of Colored People.

STATEMENT OF JUDGE WILLIAM HASTIE, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE

Judge HASTIE. Mr. Chairman, gentlemen of the committee, my name is William H. Hastie and I reside in Washington. I am a lawyer and dean of the School of Law of Howard University.

From 1940 to 1942, I served as civilian aid to the Secretary of War. I am a member of the board of directors and chairman of the national legal committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It is on behalf of that organization that I appear today.

I have been authorized by the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to express to this committee the opposition of the association to the pending bill to establish a system of compulsory and universal peacetime miltary service and training and to State the reasons for that opposition. The formal resolution of our board expresses opposition to peacetime conscription

both because it is generally unsound in principle and because the present bill would permit the continuation of the present racial segregation and discrimination in the armed forces.

All of us should approach this grave issue with humility born of the tragic failure of this generation to prevent a world war, and our awareness that in supporting or opposing this measure we may be affecting, not just the course of American life, but the future of civilization. I say this because of my firm belief that civilization cannot survive another world war. If Rotterdom and Warsaw and Berlin and Toyko cease to exist as cities as a result of this war, it is not fanciful to predict that another world war would destroy organized human society as we know it. I believe the British who have felt the weight of the V-2 bomb and with it the prediction of undreamed terrors to come realize that we cannot stand another war. The Russians with their tens of millions of casualties must be aware of it. We, the most fortunate great nation with only

a million casualties to date, must at least begin to know that the geometric progression of destruction from World War I to World War II cannot proceed to World War III without world chaos. Loss of life, destruction of property, disorganization of governments and economics cannot go much further than they already have gone in this war without the total disintegration of modern cilization.

So as we consdier the legislation now proposed, intended according to its own language to promote "the peace and security of future generations," we must clearly understand and keep ever in the forefront of our thinking that our one common all overriding objective is the prevention of another world war. It is not the winning of another war but its prevention to which our energies must be devoted, because, if what I already have said is correct there can be no winner of such a war in the future-there can only be losers. If in fact another world war should come, our military preparedness would not save civilization. It would merely insure that we did our full share in destroying civilization. Therefore, if universal military training has any justification, that justification must be found in its effect as a deterrent of war. It is our beliefe that it would have no such effect.

If we launch a program of universal peacetime training and preparation for war, the only consequence reasonably to be anticipated is that all great nations will ttempt to equal or surpass our military program. Their people will be told, even as we are now being told, that peace and security require that they prepare for war. A race for armaments is the one immediate consequence surely to be anticipated from the building of a vast peacetime military establishment in the United States. International competition to see what nations can be ⚫ best prepared for war is the most certain path to war. The nations best prepared for war rattle the saber at the less prepared. If the lessprepared nations sullenly bow to the threat of force, it is only to gain time in which to make ready to match that force and ultimately to become strong enough for the rattling of their own sabers. The history of mankind is the story of the futility of this process as insurance against war. If temporary or immediate security is sometime won by vast military preparation, ultimate conflict is made only more certain and on a larger scale. Moreover, however pacific the mood in which universal peacetime military training and service may be conceived, there is the ever-present danger that the nation with tremendous peacetime military strength will become antagonistic rather than persuasive in dealing with its neighbors. Its international diplomacy, impatient with those too stupid or too stubborn to be persuaded by reason, comes to rely upon the implicit threat of armed might as the ultimate persuader. Its military men, confident in their strengh, become impatient to test the cutting edge of the weapon they have forged. Thus, those well prepared for war become war minded. Less-prepared rivals hurry to become well prepared so that they can afford to be war minded, too In my judgment we must make up our minds that there is no tolerable future in an international jungle in which each lion. calls himself the king of the beasts and keeps sharpening his claws to prove it. And it does not help for us to say we are a benevolent lion who sharpens his claws only for self protection. Neither the other lions nor the less powerful beasts will be reassured.

In brief, if one nation plays the game of all-out peacetime military preparation, the likelihood is that all will play, and if all play, no one wins. It is psychologically impossible, even as it is a contradiction in words, for any nation long to preserve the peace by peacetime mobilization and training of men for war.

There is an additional unfortunate aspect of the proposal for peacetime conscription now. No thinking person can avoid grave concern as he observes signs of increasing distrust between the two nations with greatest resources and influence today, the United States and Russia. It is futile for us to say Russia is responsible or for Russia to say that we are responsible for the deterioration of our relations. Each has the task of convincing the other that they can exist and function in this contracting world in peace and mutual confidence, and no useful purpose is served by either saying the other must make the first move. By the same token any action by either tending to increase the distrust of the other is a grave disservice to essential harmony, particularly in the present delicate state of international relationships. It is worse than useless to say in San Francisco that international organization in the interest of world security supported by military forces sufficient for joint international action agaisnt an aggressor is essential to world peace if at the same time we act in Washington on the premise of the pending bills that we must be a greater military power than our neighbors so that we can take independent military

action.

We cannot build an effective organization founded on international confidence and at the same time take the most drastic peacetime military step in our national history as token of our lack of faith in international organization.

What I have said up to this point is but an outline of certain fundamental arguments against peacetime conscription. Other witnesses will, no doubt, elaborate and document these arguments. However, I wish to devote my remaining time to considerations of special importance in the mind of the Negro citizen.

The bill now proposed would be a signed but otherwise blank check to be filled in by the Army and Navy as they may desire from time to time. Specifically, all details of the year of compulsory military training are left to regulations to be prescribed by the President, and of course the function of working out the plans of training and other details to be embodied in such regulations is the responsibility of the Army and Navy. Indeed, the military command has already indicated informally at some length its present thinking about details of training.

The Negro citizen, for reasons which I shall elaborate, is unalterably opposed to legislation giving the military such blanket authority, uncontrolled by legislative safeguards against abuse.

It is no secret that the Negro today is deeply resentful at much of the treatment he has received at the hands of the Army and Navy. For present purposes, it is material to cite only aspects of that treatment which would be expected to carry over into peacetime military training, unless Congress shall impose appropriate legislative controls. In peacetime, and even until this war was well advanced, the Navy excluded Negroes from naval service, except as messmen. In 1935, Rear Admiral Andrews frankly expounded this policy to the

NAACP, saying that the restriction of colored men to the messmen branch "will best meet the needs and efficiency of the Navy" and that recruiting stations are instructed, not to accept Negroes as apprentice seamen. Even the partial relaxation of this rule in the exigencies of this war leaves large numbers of technical specialties closed to the Negro seaman. Entire areas of naval service, for example, naval aviation, are still completely closed to Negroes. We have no reason to believe that the Navy contemplates the use of Negroes in any capacity other than messmen when it returns to a peacetime basis.

Before the present wartime expansion the Army restricted Negroes to very limited opportunities of service in the Infantry, Cavalry, and Quartermaster Corps. And though the war has brought substantial relaxation of these strictures the types of training and service open to a Negro within a particular arm or service are still seriously restricted. For example, except for the so-called "attached" units Negro enlisted men in the Medical Corps have been restricted to sanitary companies. The work of these units is miscellaneous common labor in the field of health and sanitation. It may be common labor in and about hospitals; it may be drainage for mosquito control; it may be the digging of latrines in the theater of war or any other labor service required for sanitation. All of this is necessary work. Much of it is particularly unpleasant work. Certainly the Negro should do his share of it. But so far as I know, there is not a single white sanitary company in the Army. I can be positive that there were none in 1942, but there were numerous such Negro units. I also know that this particular discrimination was blocked for a time by a fair-minded and able staff officer. But when he went into the field, where incidentally he ultimately presided at the surrender of the German armies, someone else arranged to make the sanitary company the exclusive business of Negro soldiers. I mention this particularly because so long as Congress leaves the military with unfettered discretion to discriminate as it may please in training and service, the types and extent of discrimination will depend as a practical matter upon the will of the officers who are administering or supervising particular programs. This Congress should not permit.

But the sanitary company illustration is not unique. Early in the war the Air Forces organized certain special Negro labor battalions called Aviation Squadrons, Separate. There were no equivalent white organizations. So goes the business of making particular labor services exclusively or very largely the function of Negroes. At the other end of the scale, we find Negroes excluded entirely from certain much-sought-after types of training and service. For example, even today the Air Forces will not accept a Negro pilot in the Air Transport Command. I know a Negro pilot who for a considerable time ferried bombers across the Atlantic for Canada. But being a citizen of the United States he preferred to render this essential service for his own country. But our Air Forces did not want, and still do not want, Negroes in this work. Again at a time when the Army was trying desperately to recruit 10,000 young men with mathematical and other scientific training to learn to be meteorologists and weather observers, all qualified Negroes were rejected. The Army took the position that it had 7 Negroes in this field and that was enough.

To approach the matter somewhat differently, training opportunities are defined and limited by the number and types of combat and

service organizations already organized or authorized. Negroes are segregated into separate units. If no Negro units of a certain type are authorized, no Negroes will be admitted to that type of training. Or if one or two Negro units are authorized, only enough Negroes will be accepted for training to fill those units. Thus able and qualified Negroes are repeatedly denied training for which they are qualified, because the Army insists on racially segregated units but has established no Negro units in that area. It is to be anticipated that this discrimination in training opportunities will persist or even be aggravated if the Congress gives the military the unlimited discretion which the proposed legislation would confer.

I think it must be clear that the basic cause of racial discrimination in training opportunities is the insistence of the Army that Negroes be restricted to racially segregated combat and service units. Not only does this repeatedly deprive the Army of the services of the most able and best trained Negroes in the work for which they are best fitted, it also imposes a tremendous burden upon those who try to plan and organize the Army.

I believe any thorough inquiry will show that the over-all military policy of racial segregation is inefficient, uneconomical, and injurious to morale.

Let us see how the segregated system works. It works badly from the very beginning. To maintain the segregated system the Army is forced to racial discrimination in induction. If you choose men by chance as their names come up or under the proposed legislation as they become eligible for training, you cannot get just enough Negroes for an arbitrary number of Negro units. Sometimes there will be more Negroes in a particular time and place than the Negro units will accommodate, sometimes there will be less. So to make the segregated system work, the military must instruct those in charge-of selection to furnish a certain number of white men and a certain number of colored men at a given time. In Connecticut this almost caused the collapse of selective service when the local officials refused to call whites while Negroes were not being called. The racial quota system caused similar dissatisfaction in the South.

Once this first stage of calling men for training and service is passed, the proper placement of Negroes is handicapped by the scheme of segregated units. If we take the Army and Navy as a whole, there are almost always places where a man's special skills can be used. But when we consider the limited opportunities available at any one time in the limited number and types of Negro units, it will often happen that the available vacancies do not fit the caprities of the available men. When one group of Negro selectees arrives at a reception center, there may be vacancies in Negro labor units only. Men far more useful for other service must go in those units along with the totally unskilled. At another time there are numbers of vacancies where the more capable men are needed. If the then available new recruits are principally unskilled, they must be sent to fill these units. Thus, the practical administration of the segregated system is incompatible with the effective placement of the individual where he will be most useful. It is no more possible to provide opportunities in the segregated 10 percent of the Army equal to those in the remaining 90 percent than it is possible to duplicate in a Jim Crow coach the many facilities of a de luxe passenger train.