Decision by Lottery

The National Security Training Commission last summer was told by President Eisenhower to bring order out of confusion in the nation's military draft and reserve system. Headed by Julius Ochs Adler, vice president of the New York Times and an Army Reserve major general, the commission went to work, last week submitted its report. Result: confusion compounded.

The commission had no trouble finding inequities of the present system, e.g., more than 600,000 U.S. veterans of World War II were called back to duty and thrown into the Korean war, while about 2,500,000 qualified nonveterans were not sent to Korea. But the commission brought forth some odd answers.

Bucking the logical trend away from emphasis on raw manpower as the basis of national defense, the NSTC plumped for universal military training. It urged that alternative programs be adopted: a six month training course for some 18 year-olds, and two years of actual military duty, to begin at not less than 18 1/2 years, for others. Whether a man would serve six months or two years would be determined by a continuing lottery.

Adverse reaction was soon forthcoming. Dr. John A. Hannah, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, took issue with the assumption that the half-trained UMTees would be valuable in any future war. To Missouri's Representative Dewey Short, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a longtime enemy of UMT, the idea was ridiculous. Said Short: "A lottery with dollars at stake is bad; a lottery involving control of human lives is doubly bad." For all practical purposes, House Speaker Joe Martin wrote a terse obituary for the plan. Said Martin: "I don't think the program would have much chance."

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