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Show Utah Senator I Terms Peacetime . Draft Un-American Occupation Army Should Be Volunteers, Says Thomas Service in America's occupation occupa-tion forces should be made so attractive that high school graduates grad-uates will jump at the chance of getting a round-the-world tour at government expense, says Senator Elbert D. Thomas CP) of Utah who, in a signed article in the December issue of The American Magazine, urges substitution sub-stitution of a voluntary system for conscription. Whereas President Truman and high Army officials favor universal military training, Mr. Thomas, chairman of the powerful power-ful Senate Military Affairs Committee, Com-mittee, thinks "compulsory military mili-tary service in peacetime is undemocratic un-democratic and un-American and . . . . should be abolished as soon as possible." "It will not provide the type of police force best suited to handling the sober responsibilities responsibili-ties of sustaining peace in the world," writes the Senator who believes the Army could get the right kind and number of volunteers vol-unteers needed to watch over Europe and Japan by offering good pay and other inducements. In glamorizing occupation service ser-vice Senator Thomas would make available to "American youth the broadening world travel that in pre-war days was for only the privileged classes and pay "each volunteer an attractive at-tractive salary (higher than present Army pay), part of which would be withheld against his return home, to complete his studies or to go into business." "We should confine volunteers to unmarried high school graduates grad-uates between 17 and 22," he states. "We should guarantee to volunteers for occupation service ser-vice that they will be in uniform only two years, part of which will be spent in Europe and part in Asia. This will offer young men just out of high school a grand opportunity to see the. world, without being confined to any one spot long enough to become bored. "At the end of his foreign service the volunteer would be given the option of applying for a commision in the Army Reserve Re-serve Corps. "Before the volunteers leave America we would give them a brief course in military forms and training similar to that developed de-veloped for FBI agents. . . . because a crucial part of the job of occupation is to see that no underground coalition of Axis financiers shall escape detection." detec-tion." A professor of political science for nine years at the University or Utah before going to the Senate, Sen-ate, Mr. Thomas doesn't think his plan would interfere seriously serious-ly with a youth's desire to get a college education. "As I see it," he relates, "most boys would volunteer for this service upon completing their high school education. The bulk of them would not go on to college col-lege anyhow, but even if they did plan to, the two-year intermission inter-mission for travel abroad would not set them back seriously." Moreover, that travel would give them the opportunity to learn the language and customs of foreign countries which, in the Senator's opinion, is a definite defi-nite asset which "qualifies them to represent American business abroad" at the termination of their military service. |