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Show Some Things Are Worse Than Being in the Army By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. WASHINGTON. Less than a month from now the draft . will hit young Americans, but it will be a nudge, not a wallop. One of its chief immediate purposes is to deflect the flood of enlistments of young men from the national guard and the reserves re-serves to the regular services. It is expected that so many eligibles will enlist rather than wait until they are invited that only between 200,000 and 250,000 will actually be requested to report or . It isn't at all strange that there is a certain amount of reluctance on I f I !; , 1 the part of so many young Americans to leap to arms the moment they ascertain as-certain that their country has decided de-cided they are needed. There are no bugles blowing. No foreign for-eign tyrant has soiled the nation's na-tion's honor, there is no visible vis-ible sign of a "military necessity" neces-sity" to disturb Baukhage unreasonable distance from where he lives. There are three kinds of deferments defer-ments for those planning on going to college (1) for all full-time students, stu-dents, until academic year ends; (2) advanced students in certain specialties; (3) four years' deferment defer-ment for college students enrolling in a full four-year fiOTC course or other military courses under special spe-cial conditions. There are exemptions under certain cer-tain conditions for married men, high school students, scientists, engineers en-gineers and reservists. So not many young men who don't want to are going to have to serve in the armed forces of their country. At least at present pres-ent there seem to be enough ready to step forward before they are actually called. As I remarked, it is easy to understand un-derstand why the average youth would rather not accept the restrictions restric-tions and discipline of army life. A part of the lack of enthusiasm for soldiering is due to the long tradition tradi-tion in the United States that soldiering sol-diering is a wartime business for aU those who don't make it their fulitime business. And I use the word business because it describes a career honored in this country far above that of the professional man the artist or the writer and the homage rendered is even greater in comparison if a member of the military profession is involved, excepting, ex-cepting, of course, war heroes. This is something hard to change. But the thing we can and should combat is the propaganda referred to earlier propaganda which is put forward in many cases for far different dif-ferent reasons than even the proponents pro-ponents realize. Far too often objection to military mili-tary service is made on the basis that it in itself is a bad thing or a wasteful thing, when the real reason behind the argument argu-ment is a selfish unwillingness to take the risk or sacrifice the time and effort which the service serv-ice involves. Frequently this false reasoning stems entirely from the influence of a parent whose purely selfish pos-sessiveness pos-sessiveness has perverted the mind of a youngster who otherwise would accept his responsibility and take his training in his stride with no more than the ordinary, harmless grousing which is as much a part of military service as the alibis at the 19th hole. It Wasn't Like This In the Old Army The army psychologists have been working double time ever since they discovered that it took more than guts and gunpowder to win wars, and that the winning was easier on something besides hardtack and whiskey. In World War II, besides the best food an army ever ate, better medical med-ical attendance than the average civilian can get, and a lot more superlatives, su-perlatives, the armed forces went in for yards and yards of colored ribbon. It did no harm, even if the British did say the Yanks got a new service stripe every time they saw a battle in a newsreel. And it helped morale. And now something new has been added. A whole new system sys-tem of chevrons in two colors have been devised for combat and non-combat ' non-commissioned officers. Combat leaders lead-ers squad sergeants and platoon pla-toon sergeants, for example get an inch-wide tab of green in the middle of each shoulder ' loop. Despite all this, I can't help thinking think-ing of the verse that came out of a war where the prevailing color was olive drab with the drab predominating. predomi-nating. It goes like this: Oh the general with his shiny stars, leadin' the parade, the colonel and the adjutant ad-jutant a-sportin' all the braid, the major and the skipper none of 'em look so fine as a newly minted corporal cor-poral a-comin' down the line!" Ike Couldn't Say Anything Before the Democratic political convention, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower Eisen-hower couldn't sit down to write a letter without reading in his newspaper news-paper the next day that that letter had been translated into an acceptance accept-ance on his part to run against Truman Tru-man for the presidential nomination. nomina-tion. Had Eisenhower written a letter saying that he often leaned back to dream about the North African campaign or to think about the decisions de-cisions at Casablanca, someone would have been sure to come forth to say: "See that? He talks about a campaign obviously hinting at the presidential race and 'decisions 'deci-sions at Casablanca' get that? Casablanca Cas-ablanca is Spanish for White House I the even tenor of their activities sandlot, movie, poolroom, work, study or play. On the contrary, there has been an almost steady anti-military propaganda prop-aganda from all sorts of sources, all the way from the paid agents of the Kremlin to the innocent idealists ideal-ists or the doting mothers who think that if fighting must be indulged in, it certainly should be done by some other mother's boy. The polls show these propagandists are in the minority, mi-nority, but they are a loud minority. Personally, if I were advising a. teen-ager I never would recommend rec-ommend close order drill or tossing together a batch of firing fir-ing data which would produce almost as many shorts as overs, as the one most terrifically scrumptious method of whiling away a couple of years. On the other hand, I have had more adulterated pleasure in doing quite a number of things in which were not included learning the mul- tiplication table, cutting the lawn, 1 making a trial balance, working a paper route, translating the chapter chap-ter which begins "Caesar trans Rhenum pons fecit," or even carving carv-ing the Thanksgiving turkey the first time "her" relatives came for dinner. As I say, I can imagine several things many people would rather do than these mentioned, including military service, but having done them, most people are better for it. I admit that for one of a delicate nervous disposition, unable to ad-Just ad-Just his personality to groups, carving carv-ing a turkey for the first time before be-fore in-laws might be the worst thing imaginable. It might be the one particular thing that the particular par-ticular trauma affecting that particular par-ticular individual couldn't stand. Extreme psychosis might result even a psychotic condition that would lead to homicide or some other oth-er emotional outburst that a stronger strong-er psyche could have repressed or sublimated into kicking the dog or dropping molasses on his wife's girdle. gir-dle. I grant all this freely. There are men so unable to meet the simple challenge of the crowd, for instance, even those only mildly afflicted with agoraphobia, agorapho-bia, that they never could stand a simple formation like pay-call. pay-call. I have known the type in civilian life so sensitive to the -presence of others that although he had been drinking peacefully for hours and accepting the hospitality hos-pitality of say two or three acquaintances, ac-quaintances, when an additional addition-al member appeared (just when it was our subject's turn to buy a round) he would jump through a plate glass window, four stories sto-ries to the street below. Someway, he lacked the group instinct. in-stinct. I admit that type probably wouldn't get on in the army long. However, I claim these are exceptions. excep-tions. The majority of the problems which the youth of our land is going go-ing to have to face soon are not too tough. And they are good exercise like parading in full kit. Meanwhile 694,000 men, without giving more than a thought to the hardships ahead of them (197,000 of these, according to the experts, are re-enlistments and therefore should know what they are getting into) will already have joined up, thus reducing the number of those who bashfully await their Uncle's nod this year. Thus out of the 924,000 new men needed, less than 250,000 will be drafted. And many of those who are called will not be chosen because be-cause of the number of exemptions granted. Veterans with combat records, rec-ords, with 90 days service between be-tween Pearl Harbor and VJ-da7, VJ-da7, or with 18 months' service siuce September, 1940, will be exempt, as will anyone who has earned a combat infantryman's badge, a Purple Heart, Air Medal, Med-al, or any combat medal. Exemptions will be granted to any veteran joining an organized reserve unit, or if the nearest one which he otherwise might join is an |