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Show Military Training Doubtful, Draft Likely, Says Ufahn IN a week crammed full of big news, the most important was President Truman's message to Congress, according to Senator Arthur V. Watkins m his weekly week-ly radio broadcast to Utah listeners. lis-teners. "The surprise speech, highly over-rated by advance publicity, cicated the reaction among many Senators that the Chief Executive Execu-tive didn't say anything new and consequently fell flat," stated stat-ed the Senator. "But with all its shortcomings," shortcom-ings," Mr. Watkins admitted, "it was an important message in that the President publicly and officially branded Russia as an aggressor." As to Truman's requests for universal military training and a limited selective' draft, it was the opinion of Utah's Junior Senator Sen-ator that UMT would face a hot fight in both houses of Congress, with successful passage doubtful. On the matter of the draft, however, how-ever, Mr. Watkins thought it would be forthcoming. "Revival of limited selective draft is entirely possible; in fact, I think it will be adopted," he opined, while pointing out other defense measures: "The House will undoubtedly pass within a few days the European Recovery Program substantially as it left the Senate. Appropriations for the Armed Services will also be stepped up." y MR. Watkins spoke also of the tax relief bill which passed the Senate in such strength, revealing reveal-ing the popularity of personal income tax revision among lawmakers. As a wind-up in his talk, Mr. Watkins reviewed the progress of legislation favorable to Utahns in making possible procurement pro-curement of Fort Douglas by the State and Salt Lake City for educational and civic purposes and the speedy passage of the Provo River bill which now awaits only the President's signature sig-nature to legalize far more favorable fav-orable terms for completion of the Deer jreek project. To round out an unprecedented unprecedent-ed legislative week, the Senator brought news of a favorable report re-port from the Bureau of the Budget on his bill appropriating $250,000 for construction of the Eastern Utah Union High school, to be located near Roosevelt. |