myself bring in coffee that was cold. He was told politely to correct his mistake, and when he brought in some hot coffee the colonel said, "Thank you." After the prisoner of war left the commanding officer remarked to me: "If that mistake had happened in the German Army the prisoner of war would have been humiliated. But that is not the American way." Thank God, democracy believes in the dignity of human life.

We have attempted to show in a cursory way that peacetime conscription is unwise, militarily, from the standpoint of health, from the standpoint of culture, and from the standpoint of the democratic way of life.

What solution do we suggest to safeguard our country and preserve the peace of the world? Our answer lies in the following direction:

1. We do not believe that peacetime military service should be decided upon at the present time, because, even after the war, the Selective Service Act will be in effect for a period of 6 months. This means that America is not without protection.

2. We believe that the servicemen, the millions of men in the armed forces, should have a voice in determining the policy in so important

a matter.

3. We cannot intelligently decide upon this issue until after the nature of the peace that is to be established is more clearly indicated. 4. We must recognize that the first requisite of the whole subject of conscription is a careful military and social study of the problem. Finally, look at the problem with an over-all viewpoint. We must remember that the blood that has been shed and the sacrifices that are still being made have been wrought so that we may prevent the occurrence of World War III.

If Dumbarton Oaks is to be a success, the world will need an international army for police purposes and not a large number of armies vieing amongst themselves for supremacy.

As far as America is concerned, we can still rely upon the indomitable support of our people for victory.

We suggest building an army made up of volunteers; and, through suitable inducements for pay, rank, and with opportunity for scholarships and bonuses, it will develop into a highly specialized military force. Let us remember that if such volunteer methods fail there is always the alternative of conscription; but over and beyond the idea of national armies is the creation of an international police force that, in the spirit of the best in the medical world, will strive to prevent the disease of war rather than cuer it once the sickness has spread. Let not the individual trees prevent us from seeing the forest.

Our hope for the future rests upon the faith that men and nations have in one another.

Chairman WOODRUM. Thank you very much, Dr. Zeitlin.

We next have Mr. B. A. Whitney, assistant general counsel, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen.

STATEMENT OF BYRL A. WHITNEY, DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION AND RESEARCH AND ASSISTANT GENERAL COUNSEL, BROTHERHOOD OF RAILROAD TRAINMEN

Mr. WHITNEY. Gentlemen of the committee, my name is Byrl A. Whitney, director, educational and research bureau, and assistant general counsel, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, Standard Building, Cleveland, Ohio. The president of my organization, Mr. A. F. Whitney, has authorized me to appear before your committee in opposition to peacetime compulsory military training. The Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen represents approximately 215,000 railroad workers, engaged in train and yard service, and bus operators, throughout the United States, Canada, Newfoundland, and the Panama Canal Zone.

As a member of the Cleveland Committee to Oppose the Wartime Enactment of Peacetime Conscription, I have also been asked to represent this committee before you today.

All good Americans favor maximum national security and all measures designed to improve the citizenship and well-being of our people. Peacetime military conscription must stand or fall on that basis, and it is on that basis that I wish to discuss this proposal.

Peacetime conscription does not embrace the concept of the ordinary requirements of good citizenship, such as compulsory jury duty, compulsory school attendance, or compulsory service in disasters like fires or floods, and in war. Peacetime conscription involves the restriction of fields of voluntary activity of adult normal citizens and restricts their freedom of person and movement. Thus, peacetime military conscription is alien to the American concept of democratic liberty and individual freedom, and if it is ever to be acceptable to the American people it must be only because of the most compelling and urgent necessity. Proponents have offered no persuasive evidence of such necessity.

I take it no one contends that peacetime military conscription is necessary to final victory in this war. Our apprehensions are, therefore, aroused by the speed with which the proponents hope to put this proposition over on the American people. The Selective Service Act fully provides for the manpower necessary for this war, and our great military power, of course, will not vanish immediately on the close of this war. Hence, why the rush for this legislation? The answer is clear. Proponents hope to gain the advantage of acting while peace-loving America is military-minded.

In the future, even more than in this war, technoloy and science will fight wars. Technology and science will not be developed to the maximum by taking our aspiring young men from laboratories and peaceful pursuits, become conscripts in a military machine. Even in this war, as in World War I, we had men available before we had machines of war available. In the early days of training our armies for this war, dummy wooden guns and dummy tanks were employed for training. A peacetime military training program has been estimated to cost all the way from 2 billion to 4 billion dollars annually, and this does not include the cost to society of taking men away from productive peacetime endeavors that raise the standard of living. Men trained in 1945 would not be useful as soldiers in 1965.

In a period of 20 years of peacetime military conscription, we would spend from 40 to 80 billion dollars and some 90 percent of the men trained for war during that period would not then be efficient as trained soldiers for military service. For the cost of peacetime military training, using the minimum estimate, we could completely rebuild out entire railroad plant every 10 years or less. Such extravagant expenditures in preparation for war are not consistent with the ideals of enduring peace and the destruction of militarism.

We are as anxious as anyone that our country be fully prepared at all times, but we are not unmindful of the unconquerable spirit of free men. Though our men and women of the armed forces are not the products of years of militarism, who will deny their ability as soldiers? Locked in combat with the automatons of Prussian and Japanese militarism, we have marched steadily to victory and with far fewer casualties than our enemies have suffered. The American officer who, while on another assignment, discovered that the time was right to take the Remagen bridge in Germany and thereby open the way for our armies to pierce the heart of Germany, was acting with a resourcefulness and a spirit of independence that is expected of free men fighting for a great democratic Nation that has never believed in conscripting its citizens in time of peace. The machinelike, spontaneously obedient soldier of Prussian militarism would have passed by the opportunity to take such a strategic bridge, because he would not have found directions for taking it, either in his rule book or in the assignment he was ordered to carry out. No finer illustration could be cited of the invincible power of the spirit of free men, fighting for freedom. Soldiers of the people's Army, fighting for the goals of freedom, are more resourceful and dynamic than soldiers of a goverment which practices militarism and makes them mere cogs in a military machine.

Writing in This Week magazine for June 3, 1945, that great American general, Alexander A. Vandegrift, Commandant, United States Marine Corps, paid high tribute to the capacity for individual leadership of the soldiers of a nation that has never had or believed in military conscription, except in times of war or imminence of war. He emphasized the qualities of initiative and readiness to assume responsibility that are characteristic of the soldiers of this great democracy. He declared that "the essence and the strength of our democracy" is the capacity of our people to arise and take the place of a fallen leader. And then General Vandegrift described the Japanese soldier as follows:

The Japanese soldier has a mind, he has been well trained in the use of weapons, and he has a natural cunning that makes him especially dangerous in the kind of fighting we have had in the Pacific. But his background, and the nature of his training, have stunted his confidence in individual thought and action.

And along with the general's remarks, let me emphasize that Japan has had military conscription since 1872. The general appealed for leadership, leadership that is "confident, strong, and spontaneous." He declared that there was only one place where this leadership could be found. And that, gentlemen of this committee, is not in a military science book or in a drill sergeant's command over a people at peace, but "within ourselves."

I am deeply impressed by a particular statement by General Vandegrift, in the light of a statement by a British military expert, B. H.

Liddell Hart, in Why Don't We Learn From History (London: Allen & Unwin, 1944, p. 23). In the article referred to, General Vandegrift

said:

Never in the history of warfare has individual leadership meant so much. Land fighting has almost inevitably broken down into mobile action by small units, and the ability of junior officers, noncommissioned officers, and even privates to assume responsibility and initiative in a pinch has carried us through to victory. Mr. Hart said:

Conscription does not fit the conditions of modern warfare-its specialized technical equipment, mobile operations, and fluid situations. Success increasingly depends on individual initiative, which in turn springs from a sense of personal responsibility—these senses are atrophied by compulsion.

An author and a general who, from hard experience, certainly should know the qualities of a good soldier, seem to agree on the indispensable qualities of a soldier for a modern army. Peacetime military conscription is repugnant to the development of those qualities.

Pursuing further the consideration of national security, I believe that nations achieve peace and the good life in the manner that individuals do. I have security in my neighborhood, not by a closet full of guns, or by indulging in pugilistic training, but by depending upon organized society's voluntary police force and by refraining from those belligerent acts which might induce my neighbors to become trained fighters and to fill their closets with guns as a protection against my belligerent attitude. My chances for personal security or for triumph in case of conflict with my neighbor are no greater if both of us are well-trained killers than if neither of us is. There is only one good thing about gangsters-they tend to eliminate each other. And I am not so naive as to assume that I can become a welltrained killer, armed with all of the instrumentalities of death, and expect my neighbor to continue unarmed and passive. If I am to become a well-trained killer, I must expect sooner or later to meet a likely trained adversary. Surely if my neighbor and I develop a war psychology and elaborately prepare for conflict, it is almost certain that conflict will come, for men do not make their beds except to lie upon them. Belligerent preparation excites, rather than allays, sudden surprise attacks. If peacetime military conscription promoted peace, then Europe should be the most peaceful place this side of heaven.

I am greatly persuaded by the fact that so many who specialize in the fields of human development are opposed to peacetime military conscription. Educators do not believe that conscription is the answer to the educational problems. Ministers of the gospel, priests, and rabbis do not believe that it is the answer to problems of morals. Health experts do not believe it is the answer to health problems, and well might they not so believe, for certainly it is too late to begin consideration of one's health after he has reached the age of 18 years. Certainly economists cannot rightly believe that peacetime military conscription is the answer to the problem of full employment. I hope we have not reached a state of such lack of confidence in our amazing productive capacity as to believe that making a conscript of a man in a satisfactory and desirable way to save him from the degradation of unemployment. And with reference to unemployment,

let me emphasize that a nation ill-fed, ill-clad, and ill-housed is not a secure nation, either economically or militarily.

If we would be a nation strong and secure we must have full employment of all citizens able and willing to work. We must have better food and nutrition for children, better medical care and publichealth service, better physical-education programs, and better housing. A year of compulsory military training that does not touch the lives of our citizens until they are 18 years old cannot correct bad environment and harmful living conditions resulting from a lack of social conscience. We could have all of these benefits to human living, without the extravagant waste of peacetime military conscription, and certainly we improve the Nation's security and well-being when we improve the minds and bodies of its militia.

We may also gain strength and national security by correcting some of the evil conditions of the past, which resulted in aiding our enemies to prepare against us, while hampering our swift and adequate preparation for war. A free, democratic government has an unquestioned right to call upon all of its citizens when the principles by which it lives are threatened. It is most regrettable that, in the years preceding this war, more Members of our Congress could not have realized this and more promptly responded to the leadership that was warning us. In his book, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler gave due warning that we would have to fight for our freedom. While American business, mainly through cartel and monopoly arrangements, was helping our enemies to prepare for their war against us, voices in this country were proclaiming that we could do business as usual with Germany and Japan. While Franklin D. Roosevelt warned us of the impending dangers, these selfish interests were denouncing him as a war monger. With the threat of war at our doorsteps, business interests bickered and delayed conversion of American industry to war purposes until generous profit concessions were made. By one slender vote our Congress saved us, almost on the eve of Pearl Harbor, from disbanding our Army under the Selective Service Act. Those who supported the "no" vote on that issue and may now be whooping it up for peacetime military conscription, to say the least, certainly go from one extreme to the other.

From its own investigations, this Congress is aware of the threats to our national welfare and security resulting from private commercial relationships between nationals of this country and foreign nations, through cartel and patent arrangements. Our Federal Constitution prohibits the sovereign States of our Union from making any agreements with foreign powers, but we still permit private corporations freely to enter into such agreements. Thomas L. Stokes, columnist for the Scripps-Howard newspapers, in his article of June 1, 1945, referred to such agreements as secret treaties, though not subject to inspection by our Senate or anybody else, although, as he says, they are "just as important, if not more so, than political treaties." Investigations by the United States Department of Justice and congressional committees have disclosed, according to Mr. Stokes

how these international monopolies operate outside the pale of Government, how they influence international politics without the people knowing anything about it or having anything to do with it, and how, in the case of Germany, they became instruments for building her war machine.