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Show GENERAL HUGH S. Johnson Jour: Uu tmmm J WW Irti Washington, D. C. DRAFT EFFICIENCY A quick glance at the selective service administration's record to date indicates it is going forward efficiently and well and wKh general popular approval. When you stop to connider that what we are dealing with here Is outright conscription supposed to be in direct conflict with our Anglo-American traditions of democracy and personal freedom, this condition speaks volumes for the excellence with which the Job has been handled. This is a cause (It understandable satisfaction to this writer, because the whole system sys-tem follows without many impor- ( tant changes the plans and policies worked out by trial and error during dur-ing the World war. The biggest single causes of dis- i satisfaction are army medical rejections rejec-tions after draft boards' acceptance And the lack of uniformity among the thousands of local boards in taking tak-ing or deferring married men. In this respect the law leaves Mr. Dykstra with less discretion than we had. The fact of actual dependency of wives and children rather than the fact of marriage Is made the deciding circumstance. The question ques-tion of dependency is one of the relative rela-tive degree to which a family is dependent on Its head. The law puts that up to the local boards and not to the director. Where the wife and husband both have jobs, is she "dependent"? Where the wife and husband have ample income apart from his work, is that dependency? Where the husband hus-band is a no-good bum who never took the trouble to support his family, fam-ily, should he escape service on the ground that he is married? If the answer to such questions Is left entirely to the local boards, there Is bound to be a very wide difference in result. This created the toughest problem in the World war draft also. It makes more noise than the facts warrant. Then I there were 4.8 million married registrants. reg-istrants. About 4,400.000, or 90 per cent, were deferred. Many of those not deferred had no claim filed for them either by themselves or their wives. In hundreds of cases, a wife would drag some worthless loafer in and demand that he be taken. In some of these cases the demand was recanted on the ground that the threat of service -had made a perfect per-fect husband. The net result of that experience was a gradual and continuous relaxation re-laxation of the rule In favor of not breaking up families wherever It could be possibly and justly avoided. 'LOOSE-END' BILL Two apparent absurdities attend the arguments for the Morgenthau "loose-end" bill, now being so hotly debated. One Is the insistence of certain sincere congressional advocates that the bill does not surrender to the executive the constitutional safeguards safe-guards against dictatorship the famous fa-mous congressional "power of the purse." In our own and English experience, experi-ence, it is the strongest weapon of democracy. Our Constitution gives congress alone the power to declare war and to "raise and support armies." To this latter highly Important Im-portant grant the Constitution attaches at-taches a condition, "but no appropriation appro-priation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years." Under the "loose-end" bill, the President is given authority to transfer to another nation any "defense "de-fense article" he desires. The words "defense article'' are defined to mean any conceivable military or naval resource which the United States owns or may hereafter acquire. ac-quire. When this is attacked as a surrender by congress to the executive execu-tive of its power of the purse in war, the answer is made that the bill appropriates no money and hence, that congress, through its power to appropriate, still controls action under the bill. Right off the bat, it is apparent that as to the many billions of dollars dol-lars worth of military and naval equipment that this country now has, the answer simply is not true. The bill gives the President authority author-ity to transfer it with no further appropriation ap-propriation whatever. Neither is it necessarily true as to gifts of new equipment. It is true, under the bill, that before he could, for example, order a new battleship built, expressly announced as a gift to China, he would have to go to congress for authority. But there is a loophole that is as broad as a barn door. In this crisis, congress has refused no appropriation to build armament for the United states and it is as sure as sunrise that it will refuse none in the future. But, if this bill is passed, not a nickel can be spent on armament by this government, which would not automatically fall under the proposed pro-posed grant of presidential power, to transfer that armament to another country as soon as it is finished or even before. He doesn't have to go back to congress for appropriations before he can transfer American equipment and resources. It is an even more complete surrender sur-render of the power of the purse in favor of other nations than would even be openly requested by a Pres ident in favor of the United States. |