Alternative to the Draft

Winning over its youthful critics and antiwar antagonists has long been a major aim of the Nixon Administration. One move in that direction was the forced retirement of Lieut. General Lewis B. Hershey, 76, as director and aging symbol of the Selective Service System. The White House has also held out hope that the draft might be abolished altogether, but that notion is not highly popular on Capitol Hill. The President's choice to succeed Hershey, Pentagon Consultant Charles DiBona, 37, was scuttled by Senators who did not approve of his advocacy of a volunteer Army. Nevertheless, the Administration last week released a presidential commission's report urging that such a volunteer system be created within 16 months.

The 15-member group, headed by former Defense Secretary Thomas Gates, presented a range of cost estimates and strength scales, but seemed to favor a roster of about 2.5 million men. To hold that level without conscripts, said the Gates Commission, would cost about $3.3 billion a year more than is now spent to support an active-duty force of 3,300,000 men. The extra funds would go toward raising military salaries and increasing such fringe benefits as housing and food allowances. Men with special skills would also be given extra pay. The commission's figures are sharply at odds with previous Pentagon estimates, which put the price of ending conscription as high as $17 billion a year.

Under the Gates proposal, the volunteer force would be gradually recruited before the current Selective Service law expires in June of 1971. Young men still would register for induction, but would be subject to call only if Congress specifically authorized resumption of the draft.

The concept of a volunteer army has significant backing from both conservatives and liberals (though some argue, unconvincingly, that it carries dangers of militarism). It is a highly innovative plan, and if Nixon fights for it vigorously, the effort could be one of his most popular moves. He took several other steps last week that, had they been taken by a Democratic President, would have drawn unhesitating applause from most liberals.

-- Asked Congress to approve a constitutional amendment that would require a nationally uniform voting age of 18 for the election of the President, Vice President, Senate and House of Representatives. Other proposals before the Congress would include state and local elections in the lowered age group. -- Ordered a ban on the production and use of military toxins, which are dead but poisonous products of bacteria. He had earlier renounced the use of bacteriological warfare but had left the status of toxins in doubt. -- Urged the Senate to ratify a long-pending agreement worked out in the United Nations that would make genocide an international crime. The proposal has been languishing in the Senate since 1950, hung up in part over doubts as to its constitutionality. -- Announced, in a different vein, that he will not make any immediate changes in the nation's current policy on oil imports. A Cabinet task force had urged dropping import quotas, which are now assigned to each oil company, and instituting a system of protective tariffs instead. Such a change would have the effect of lowering domestic fuel prices. To the delight of the U.S. oil industry, Nixon said there must be talks with foreign countries and further study before any change is made.

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