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Show NewsIx BEHINtm By PaulMaliaoIQ Released by Western Newspaper Union. MUST BE A MILITARY, NOT A MILITARISTIC NATION WASHINGTON. A strong, generally gener-ally thoughtful editorial writer who is against the Roosevelt, particularly particular-ly Mrs. Roosevelt, regime spoke out in several metropolitan papers recently re-cently (Note, I think the radicals called him fascist-minded during the last campaign, although the charge was of a political nature and therefore there-fore not intended to be believed literally) lit-erally) : "There is only one way to assure as-sure ourselves of military strength, whenever needed. That I way consists of a system of com- pulsory military training." That is simply not true. There are many ways of assuring ourselves our-selves of military strength, whenever when-ever needed. A logical, straightforward straightfor-ward way consists of putting military mili-tary training into the high schools and colleges to develop, and keep trained, the necessary officer personnel, per-sonnel, and enlarging and modernizing moderniz-ing the national guard, giving it weapons, including airplanes and tanks, artillery, ammunition and commissary to develop a private personnel. That would be the more efficient way, because it would be constant, always up-to-date, always ready to handle the latest implements of warfare war-fare scientifically and efficiently, although al-though there are of course many other things which must be done, including the maintenance of a greater permanent military inventors' inven-tors' council with laboratories, continuance con-tinuance of West Point and Annapolis Annapo-lis at war size or larger, and an alert, ever watchful and efficient war department to see that we do not fall asleep to dangers from with-ut. with-ut. These are democratic ways. The taking of a boy from his home, work and career for a year of service in the army is a Prussian method instituted by tlie Prussian militarists after the war of 1870. It must be an inefficient way of developing an army because the Prussians have never won with it, nor has it produced results in France and some other nations which took it tp. A RADICAL VIEWPOINT On the opposite side of the same fence a radical editorial writer in a metropolitan daily (I think he is the very one who called my above friend "fascist-minded" and certainly certain-ly he thinks the Roosevelt regime, and particularly the Mrs. Roosevelt regime, is just about right on everything) ev-erything) wrote recently: "The only way this country ran get away from maintaining maintain-ing a very large army and developing de-veloping a militaristic caste system sys-tem after this war is by compulsory com-pulsory military training." Is this not the strangest collection of bedfellows upon any world mattress? mat-tress? Radicals, conservatives, people peo-ple who think each other fascists or communists, Mr. Roosevelt and the chamber of commerce, PM and the N. Y. Herald Tribune, Mrs. Roosevelt Roose-velt and "the fascist-minded," all enjoying this same delusion insistently. in-sistently. For there is no more truth in saying say-ing this is the only way to "avoid a large army" than that it is the only way to maintain an army. It would be a large army of more than a million youths 17 to 21 years old, a new large army each year. But it would hardly be what we would call a skilled army. We would have to maintain another one for older men for defense. We would have to have an air force constantly alert, a corps bent on nullifying the effect of rocket bombs, and what other new weapons, daily, a whole war department of Just as much strength as if we did not have compulsion com-pulsion in training. These trainees would only be reserves re-serves reserves that might otherwise other-wise be obtained more efficiently by a real national guard. As a friend of mine puts it: "We must be a military, but not a militaristic nation" and we need a national guard which literally must be "a guard of the nation." But a great many other people are saying daily in the papers a year of national service would cure juvenile delinquency, promote youth-health, youth-health, make better citizens. These are all nonmilitary excuses for a military step, which lacks sound military mil-itary grounds. This is a new element which has entered into the private discussions here. It will become Important only as developments from Europe direct, and will simmer and die if those developments become more satisfactory. For the present, I would say congress con-gress is dividing into two canips: Those who say the Atlantic Charter was a war ideal which hardly could have proved acceptable to Russia. And those who suspect the people will be shocked to find now war hopes have been taken 60 lightly. |