Our point of view is not pacifist or isolationist. We believe that conscription was fully justified in this war, since only through it could we have brought our full strength to bear against our enemies, who are also the enemies of mankind. We believe that the United States should enter wholeheartedly into a world organization to preserve peace. Speaking not as a representative of any group but as American citizens, we oppose enforced military training or service as a peacetime policy for the following reasons:

We believe that peacetime conscription is alien to and hostile to the American tradition and spirit. Many of the ancestors of our best citizens came to this country to escape the burden of enforced military service. Freedom from such enforced service is a part of our heritage which has been envied by the citizens of every country whose young men have been forced into the army in time of peace. We should consider long and carefully before we give up this precious part of our inheritance of freedom. Advocates of the present proposal must show that this radical departure from American ways is necessary, and that its necessity is so obvious that it should be adopted now. The burden of proof clearly rests upon those who advocate this revolutionary change in the American way of life.

No convincing evidence of such a necessity has been offered. We are being asked to hang this millstone around the necks of our children and grandchildren on the word of our military leaders. Apart from their opinion, no evidence is possible, because no one can know what will be the situation after the war. The testimony of the military men is honest but biased, as the report of the United States Chamber of Commerce committee against conscription says. They naturally believe in their own kind of training, and their interest is obviously in keeping up a large Military Establishment. They urge adoption of their plan now, because they know that now is their only chance. The natural feeling of the American people is so strongly against conscription that it could never be adopted except under the stress of war emotions. This is admitted in the pamphlet issued by the Citizens' Committee for Universal Military Training.

This is not a question to be decided by the authority of the generals. It is not a matter of strategy or tactics, but of national policy. It reaches into every home and affects, directly or indirectly, the life of every American. It must be decided by the American people, through their representatives.

We believe that peacetime conscription should not be adopted now for three principal reasons. First, its advocates admit that the need for it is not and will not be immediate. We shall come out of this war with the strongest Air Force and by far the strongest Navy in the world, and with one of the two greatest Armies. A third world war, if it comes, will be at least 20 or 25 years in the future. There is no reason to justify a hasty decision on a matter of this importance.

In the second place we have no right to make such a decision while millions of young American citizens are fighting abroad. They have a right to a say in the matter. They will bear much of the cost of conscription; their younger brothers and sons will be conscripted. To adopt conscription now would be as unfair as it was to adopt prohibition in 1918, and probably more disastrous.

In the third place, the adoption of conscription by the United States before the peace settlement would certainly, as President Dodds of Princeton has said

prejudice the peace. It would tend to force other peace-loving nations to military preparedness on the same scale, and would be in fact a public avowal to the world that we expect nothing truly constructive to come out-of the war

or as the committee of the United States Chamber of Commerce against conscription says in its report:

If the United States should at this time adopt a policy of conscription it would undoubtedly be considered a notice to the world that we do not think an enduring peace can be established, and it might indeed be the very action which would prevent a proper accord among the United Nations.

We are fighting this war not merely to defend ourselves against unprovoked attack, not merely to defeat our enemies. We are fighting to establish a world order which will protect ourselves and all nations from such periods of bloodshed and agony in the future.

To adopt conscription now would discount every such profession of our purpose; it would jeopardize the future of the United Nations; it would risk the loss of the peace. It would set a disastrous example to other nations, great and small. The effect upon Latin-American countries would be particularly unforunate. It would revive all their fears of the "Colossus of the North"; it would force them to fasten the shackles of conscription on their impoverished peoples. It would disappoint and turn to cynicism such hopes as were expressed by the delegates to a recent international gathering in Philadelphia, who declared that "one of the greatest boons which would come from an international organization would be the freedom from the cost and the curse of universal military service."

Should we not rather adopt the suggestion of President Hutchins and others, and urge upon our allies the abolition of conscription when the permanent United Nations organization is set up?

Thus far we have been considering reasons why we should not adopt a policy of peacetime conscription now. There are further reasons why we should not adopt it at any time when it is not required by conditions of war or immediately threatened war. They are concerned with its effect upon us and the American spirit and way of life. Some advocates of conscription have urged its educational and health benefits. Undoubtedly it would bring improvement in health and physique to many boys, and a certain amount of elementary education to some. The chief causes of rejection, however, under the draft-eyes, mental causes, muscular and bone defects, cardiovascular defects, and so forth-would not be helped by a year of training at 18-22. But as Education Commissioner Grace of Connecticut and others have convincingly shown, these advantages could be gained at much less expense of money and time in other ways, by extending the health and literacy programs in our educational system. The more thoughtful advocates of peacetime conscription admit this. The complaints before Pearl Harbor give a suggestion of what some of the effects of peacetime conscription would be like. Even when a world war was visibly threatening us, American youth found it hard to submit to the routine, the regimentation, the tedium of military training. How would they be likely to react when no prospect of war was in sight?

But the worst effect of peacetime conscription upon the American spirit would come from the fact that it would be a public confession of the defeat of American ideals and aspirations. Let me quote on this point a distinguished student of national character, Margaret Mead:

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Our enemy is fighting for the right to keep on fighting indefinitely; we are fighting for the right to stop and build a stable world Unless we can say, yes, we are playing your game now, and we intend to beat you at it; but afterward we are going to invent a better game, and never again are we going to be caught playing yours, unless we can say that, we have no hope. Proposals in Congress for a great standing Army after the war are confessions of defeat, confessions that we cannot make the necessary inventions, that we are going to accept the enemy's definition of the world.

This was written before peacetime conscription had been proposed; conscription, of course, even more than a great standing army, is the basis of the German system, the foundation of totalitarian war.

If we win the war, but come out of it burdened with the incubus of conscription, though we may have conquered Germany and Japan, the German spirit will have begun to conquer us.

To insure adequate defense from possible attack, we agree that the United States should maintain a powerful Navy, a strong Air Force, and a highly trained and efficient Army of moderate size. This is essentially Hanson Baldwin's position in Harper's Monthly. Beyond this we should maintain an organization for scientific and technical research, which has given us perhaps our greatest advantage in the present war, and which would assure our defenders of the latest and most advanced types of weapons. But above all these things, we should strive to maintain the freedom of the American spirit, to which regimentation and enforced service are hostile, and which is the surest protection of the Republic.

Chairman WOODRUM. The Wisconsin Committee Against Peacetime Conscription, represented by Mr. Uphoff, will be heard next.

STATEMENT OF WALTER H. UPHOFF, OREGON, WIS., SECRETARY OF THE WISCONSIN COMMITTEE AGAINST PEACETIME CONSCRIPTION

Mr. UPHOFF. Mr. Chairman and members of the House Committee on Postwar Military Policy, my name is Walter H. Uphoff. I come from a farm near Oregon, Wis., to add my sentiments and the sentiments of the organization I represent, the Wisconsin Committee Against Peacetime Conscription, to those who have already testified before this committee. I don't know how long the proponents of peacetime conscription could continue with testimony, but I am sure that if the opponents were given a full hearing you would be in session for many months. I am sorry to see only 2 weeks being devoted to what we consider the most important change in American policy and tradition proposed for the postwar era. At the conclusion of this statement I would like to file with the committee a number of petitions asking for delay, signed by Wisconsin citizens from all over the State. The Wisconsin Committee Against Peacetime Conscription was organized last December by persons from all walks of life and from all political parties-Republican, Democrat, Progressive, and Socialists— all except the Communists who are, or shall I say were, ardently

espousing peacetime conscription. I don't know whether or not their line has been changed again recently. Among the members on the committee against conscription are people like Bishop Schuyler E. Garth of the Wisconsin Methodist Conference; Father Alvin Kuchera of St. Paul's University Chapel, Madison; Rev. Charles R. Bell, Jr., pastor of the First Baptist Church of Madison; George Haberman, Milwaukee, president of the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor; Harry Miller, Chippewa Falls, editor of the Wisconsin Farmers Union News; William T. Evjue, editor of the Capital Times; Morris H. Rubin, editor of the Progressive; Prof. William B. Hesseltine of the University of Wisconsin History Department; Stephen Darling, president of the Appleton Consumers Cooperative; and so forth. Certainly. the list of organizations on record against the adoption of peacetime conscription now is much greater and much more representative of American life than is the case with its proponents, who are largely confined to the military and a few college presidents.

The committee was organized to ask Congress to delay action on peacetime conscription until the war is over, until the peace terms are known, and until the millions of men now overseas can return and have a part in making the decision. Peacetime conscription in no way affects the prosecution of this war, so it cannot be argued that it is a military necessity to act hastily on this matter. And let us hope that we can live in peace for at least 5 to 10 years during which period we could more thoroughly and intelligently discuss and decide the question. And if we should be plagued with another war in less time than that, the millions now in uniform will have had military training and a new draft act would undoubtedly be passed to get the younger boys.

I have three small boys whom I hope will be permitted to grow up and do their part in building a better world, rather than being snatched at the age of 17 or 18 by the Army and taught that war is inevitable; therefore we must prepare to kill and be killed. I want to see them, and youngsters like them all over the world, able to live in peace and freedom.

I am a farmer. When I plant corn, I know that I am going to harvest a crop of corn, and when you plant the seeds of militarism you are going to get militarism.

I am convinced that the common people of all countries hate war and don't want to fight. Yet when war starts they find themselves helpless, unable to protest. This winter I had occasion to debate Lt. John Hilger of the Wisconsin State Selective Service headquarters on the question of peacetime conscription. One of the arguments he advanced was that people didn't want to fight. He stated, as evidence, that he was assigned the auditing of all the records of one local draft board and found that 92 percent claimed physical disability, which to him indicated a warped outlook, and one which could be corrected by the indoctrination provided by peacetime conscription. To me it indicates that the common man doesn't want to fight, yet when drafted they feel helpless and at least 91 percent of the 92 percent who claimed physical disability end up in the Army, if not rejected, and from then on wear the uniform, shoulder a gun, and go off to war. Is it not likely that, say 80 percent of German draftees also claimed physical disabilities, yet were inducted and "made to like it" and that say 70 percent of the Japanese felt the

same way, yet once thrown into combat, both sides act on the premise, and rightly so, that it is "kill or be killed" finding themselves in a position where it is not safe to wonder whether the other side might not also prefer to stop fighting? We are witnessing in America the development of a situation which I think is a dangerous threat to our democracy.

All of us object to having bureaucrats present their work in such a light that the facts are obscured and their work appears indispensable. Yet that is precisely what the "big shots" in the Army and Navy have been doing in pushing peacetime conscription. Naturally their chances of holding their jobs without reduction in rank and pay are better if they have a large number of men under them. I think it is high time for Congress to call a halt to all the phoselyting the Army and Navy have been doing to entrench themselves deeper in American life. Experts should be on tap, but not on top. As recipients of our taxpayers' money, the military should be our servants, not our master. Congressional committees should be free to consult with Army and Navy heads to get technical advice, but the matter of general peacetime policies for our Nation must be left to the people.

I challenge the politicians to make the question of peacetime conscription an issue in the 1946 elections. The only fair, decent, and democratic thing to do is just that. Why was it that neither of the two major parties even mentioned the question during the last campaign when bills calling for peacetime conscription had been introduced in Congress and were scheduled for reintroduction in the new Congress? Let's have the issue debated in the 1946 campaign. We have gone so far down the road of war and militarism that it is high time for us to take time out after this war and reevaluate war as a way of settling international disputes.

I saw a cartoon some time ago depicting a missionary talking to a group of African cannibals. A cannibal is asking the missionary: "Is it true, pahson, that in de white man's land, they kills mo' people den they can eat?" Hadn't we better take the time and effort to build a genuine international organization and establish just peace terms and avert World War III which would undoubtedly destroy most of civilization? If this committee is going to make any recommendation let it recommend that conscription be outlawed in all countries. as one of the terms of the end of this war, and that there be no privately owned munitions plants anywhere. Then, if war still comes, give the man in uniform $300 a month and the man working in a defense plant, and the man owning a defense plant $50 a month, and you won't need conscription.

Chairman WOODRUM. Thank you, Mr. Uphoff.

Mr. UPHOFF. Thank you, sir.

I would like to file with the committee quite a sizable number of petitions. I might say that the petitions were circulated during the spring months and are still coming in, but I thought I would bring in those petitions which had already been received and present them at this time.

(The petitions referred to were filed with the committee.)

Chairman WOODRUM. Mr. Royal C. Stephens is the next witness.