I have already discussed in some detail the way in which the rule of segregation prevents the effective use of Negro specialists in the Air Forces and in the Medical Department. Such waste of special skills throughout the Army and Navy is the inevitable result of the policy which requires that Negroes serve with and for Negroes only.

From another approach, the time and effort wasted by high ranking officers in Washington and in the field in a vain attempt to make the segregated system work well is tremendous. I observed this process in the War Department for more than 2 years. Again and again new types of military units have been organized for white personnel. There have also been large increases in the number of units of preexisting types. Whenever any substantial increase in white personnel occurs the proportion of Negroes in the Army is thrown out of balance. Then begins a great expenditure of time and effort to find some place in the Army where the command is willing to use additional Negro soldiers. The various arms and services are canvassed to find who will take some more Negro units and of what type. At times, no one wants any more Negro units. Then someone must be ordered to take so many thousand Negroes and to work out a plan for their utilization. Thus haphazardly Negro units are organized. The exigencies of the policy of racial segregation rather than considerations of military advantage come to be the controlling factor in building 10 percent of the Army. All of this is too high a price to pay for the maintenance of a segregated pattern which serves no useful purpose.

One of the most ridiculous and extreme manifestations of this practice is to be found in Puerto Rico where the Army has introduced a system of separate colored and white Puerto Rican units. I do not know what test of racial identity is applied or can be applied, but the mere matter of practical difficulty does not deter those who made a fetish of racial segregation.

Racial discrimination is a matter of concern in still another connection. The proposed year of military training would not only provide a reserve, it would serve as a feeder for the Regular Army and Navy and National Guard. The pending bills so indicate by encouraging such active service as a substitute for the acceptance of reserve status. But the Negro after finishing his year of training faces serious and varied racial restrictions upon his opportunity for service in the Regular Military and Naval Establishments.

In only five States and the District of Columbia is the Negro admitted to the National Guard under any circumstances and in each of those five States there is but one small segregated Negro unit authorized. Regular enlistments of Negroes in the Navy are still limited to the messman branch. The Regular Army in fact, if not in theory, discriminates against Negroes in the matter of qualifying for commissions. I have seen a Negro graduate of the Reserve Officer Training Corps denied a commission because the Army would not have Negro officers in the branch for which he had qualified. I have seen a distinguished Negro Reserve oflicer after the last war denied a Regular Army commission, not because of any personal or professional deficiency, but on the stated ground that Negroes are unfit to be officers of the Regular Army. Negro college students in the North and West are almost never admitted to advanced ROTC where they

can qualify for commissions. And in the few Negro colleges where there are ROTC units the ranking graduates are in fact not permitted to qualify for Regular Army commissions despite specific regulations giving them that privilege. All of these are indicia of the basic pattern of discrimination which should be corrected in any event, and particularly if Negroes are to go into the peacetime Army and Navy by compulsion rather than consent.

A final thought and I shall have finished. Whatever private individuals may do, or even the States within their exclusive sphere, it is a basic concept that our Federal Government shall not make racial distinctions in the administration of the national business. This should be especially true of the Military Establishment whose very mission is the safeguarding of the institutions of a democracy. Under the proposed legislation the Army and Navy can say to every American youth, "You shall live 1 year of your life under a system of racial segregation and discrimination imposed and administered by the Federal Government." We gain little if now and in the future the military protects us from Hitler's brand of racism, yet itself exemplifies and by its own organization impresses upon the minds of our young men a domestic brand of racism equally at variance with democratic ideals.

To many of us the entire plan of peacetime conscription seems unsound. But beyond that I can assure the committee that Negroes generally, and large numbers of white persons, believe it to be the responsibility of Congress to require in unequivocal language that in the Army and the Navy the selection of individuals for training, the determination of the type of training which an individual shall receive and the organization of units both for training and for service shall be accomplished without regard to or distinction on account of

race.

Chairman WOODRUM. Thank you, Judge Hastie. We are very glad to have your statement.

We have next Dr. Gould Wickey, of the Association of American Colleges.

STATEMENT OF DR. GOULD WICKEY, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, NATIONAL COMMISSION ON CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCATION, ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN COLLEGES

Dr. WICKEY. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, as the executive secretary, and as a member of a special committee appointed for this purpose, I am here by the authority of the National Commission on Christian Higher Education of the Association of American Colleges.

In this country there are some 780 church-related colleges, both Catholic and Protestant, both junior and senior. At this date, the membership of the commission includes 442 colleges.

On January 10, 1945, at the annual meeting of the commission, held in Atlantic City, N. J., the following resolution was unanimously adopted:

Whereas the Selective Service Act is adequate to provide trained manpower during the present war emergency; and

Whereas the shape of our foreign policy and future military needs is still indefinite; and

Whereas there is insufficient evidence that the proposed plan of a year of compulsory military training is the only satisfactory method of achieving the end of preparedness: Therefore be it

Resolved, That the Commission on Christian Higher Education of the Association of American Colleges urges that Congress postpone decision on the matter of compulsory peacetime military training until the war is over and the shape of the peace is clear; and

That in the meantime Congress create a commission broadly representative of education, religion, industry, the Army, the Navy, and others to study the best ways in which national security can be achieved without injury to democratic ideals, and to report back to Congress.

Mr. Chairman, I understand that it is the function of your honorable committee to recommend a postwar military policy. Accordingly, I understand that there is no bill under consideration, and that the only problem to be considered is compulsory peacetime universal military training.

What the proponents of compulsory peacetime universal military training assume:

1. It is assumed that the United States of America will be attacked in the relatively near future. I have heard two prominent Army officials discuss this subject, and back of all their statements was this assumption. If this be not assumed, then why propose compulsory universal military training now? When I take out a life-insurance policy, I assume that death may come at any time. If I were not to assume this, I would delay or postpone taking the insurance and thereby save a considerable sum of money. The assumption that the United States will be attacked has not been proven to the citizens of this country.

2. It is assumed that compulsory peacetime universal military training will prevent aggression. If this be not assumed, then why this proposal at this time? This assumption cannot be proven. The pages of history bear witness against it. Peacetime military training did not prevent aggression against France, against Italy, and against Russia. Such a military policy will not prevent aggression; rather, it will scare possible aggressors into a combination against us.

3. It is assumed that compulsory peacetime universal military training will prevent military defeat and guarantee military security. If this be not assumed, then why this proposal? Why not a system of volunteer military training? This assumption cannot be proven. Witness the defeats experienced by France, Germany, and Italy.

4. It is assumed that compulsory peacetime universal military training is necessary in order to obtain a sufficiently large number of individuals for military service. Has this been proven? Why not try the volunteer plan, coupled with desirable financial support? If the military authorities can then prove that they do not have enough men for military security, I am sure there would be little objection to a different plan.

5. It is assumed that compulsory peacetime universal military training is the only way to obtain national security. If this be not the assumption, then why the insistence on this plan at this time? Why this insistence on universal training of manpower when military analysts are admitting that warfare is passing from manpower to

machine-power? Why not a program of research and production of materials which make for peace?

Gentlemen of the Committee, to adopt as a postwar policy a program of compulsory peacetime universal military training is to admit we have been engaged in this World War II in vain; that we have lost the peace; and that we shall condemn our children and our children's children to the agonies, the burdens, and the horrors of wars untold. What a program of compulsory peacetime universal military training is not:

1. Compulsory peacetime universal military training is not realistic militarily. One does not need to be a military expert to see the fallacy in the proposal. It would train about 1,000,000 youth each year in military tactics. And yet, the records show that less than 50 percent of those called were actually used in active military service. Thus, we would be training each year 500,000 men for military service in which they never would enter. Why, then, the wasted expenditure of time and money? Further, if "future wars will be fought by marching science and machine resources, and not so much by marching men,' as the Warren Post, No. 23, of the American Legion, at Bowling Green, Ky., declared in a resolution appearing in the April 17 Congressional Record, why this proposal for universal military training? Further, it is admitted that the mechanical training given today will be out of date within 5 years. If the hypothetical war does not come within 5 years, millions of youth would need to be retrained. If retraining is necessary, why the wasted money and time of training now?

2. It is not desirable for the physical, mental, and moral welfare of American youth. Reports from the Surgeon Generals of the Public Health Service and of the United States Army and Navy indicate that venereal diseases are more frequent among the military forces than among the civilians; that admissions to hospitals for nervous and mental diseases are higher in the Army and the Navy than among civilians; that suicide rates in the Army and the Navy are higher than in the general population. Clark Hetherington, formerly professor of physical education and recreation at the University of Wisconsin, declared military training

does not function in the school, or in business, or in social life, except as individuals are organized in routine responses to command. It does not give the power of self-control, self-initiation, or thoughtful judgment in the many situations of civil life.

3. It is not sound educationally as a means to produce international peace:

Militarism breeds militarism

wrote Senator Claude Pepper. Educators agree

that the enactment of legislation for compulsory military training at the present time for the postwar years would be a disastrous blow at the prospects for a just and enduring peace. (Executive Committee, Department of Supervision and Curriculum Development, National Education Association, Educational Leadership, October 1944.)

4. It is not American. The American way is one of freedom and not of compulsion. Throughout our history millions of persons left their European homelands to escape compulsory military training. These persons helped to build this great country. Compulsory peacetime

universal military training would transform our American life. We would become a warlike country. No longer would we be "the land of the free." Then the military authorities would control the civilian life, rather than the civilian authorities directing the military power. 5. It is not Christian. An Army officer, writing in the American Mercury, June 1925, p. 136, says:

An army exists to kill men, when ordered, in the Nation's quarrel, irrespective of its justice. * If we object to any of our citizens thus specializing on murderous and un-Christian activities, we should abolish the army. The Christian faith proclaims the reality of a living, personal God, whose guidance we human beings are free to accept or to reject. Compulsory universal military training denies to the youth of America the right to decide whether they should or should not be trained to kill. That is a basic right which must not be denied human beings. A suggestion for maintaining peace:

Men grow on what they feed. On what they feed determines the kind of men they will become. The kind of men determines the kind of nations. War, and the preparation for war, have aroused and and always will arouse the spirit and attitude of suspicion and hatred. Peace, on the other hand, lives only in the atmosphere of mutual trust and understanding. The present world atmosphere is one of confusion, distrust, suspicion, and uncertainty. Our task is not to be conformed to this world's condition, but to be transformed by a new attitude which recognizes the reality of a universal Father upon whom we are dependent; which respects human beings as creatures of that one Father, with divine rights and responsibilities; and which reveals daily, in all relations, good will and kindness.

Gentlemen, I suggest that of the billions which would be spent for compulsory peacetime universal military training, you plan to use not 100 percent, not 50 percent, but only 25 percent-say $1,000,000,000 annually in scholarships for exchange students and messengers of good will and neighborliness between the United States and the hypothetical enemy country, or countries. Within 5 years this plan would assure and guarantee that millions of citizens of this country and of the possible enemy countries would know one another better and would be willing to discuss calmly and constructively international problems. Then fascism would disappear. Then we would be assured of a spiritual basis for the democracy of America and of the world of nations.

To facilitate the preparation of such a program, our National Commission on Christian Higher Education respectfully suggests that Congress create a commission composed of representatives of education, religion, industry, the military forces, and others, to study, and to report back to Congress, ways in which such a program will achieve and maintain national security and international peace.

Chairman WOODRUM. Thank you, Dr. Wickey, we really appreciate your statement.

We will hear next from Dr. John L. Davis, executive secretary, board of higher education, Disciples of Christ, Indianapolis, Ind.