Evening star., 1944-01-13
Duty and the Home Front

1t is difficult to find much logic or
a balanced sense of values in the
hurt cries and the shouts of alarm
elected by the Presidents call for
national service act. From the stand
point of urgent need, of course, it
<may reasonably be argued that the
adoption of such a measure at this
late date might prove to be a kind
of ineffective anachroniSm. But that
is not the ground upon which its
most vocal critics are attacking it,
for the hurt cries are class -angled
and the shouts of alarm are full of
smear words like "fascism."
The head of the United Automo-
bile Workers. for example. says the
idea of national service legislation
"smacks of slave labor" Senator
Wheeler calls the proposal "a very
definite, if not final, step toward
fascism." Senator Reynolds of North
Carolina sees it "enslaving the Amer
lean people" And Philip Murray,
president of the Congress of Indus
trial Organizations, describes 1t as
"quack medicine" and finds in it an
attempt to resort to compulsory
labor" But what is it actually? What
is it if it is not simply move to
redress in some degree-in rela-
lively slight degree-the balance OF
olo hn
front and the armed forces?
Under the selective service law,
every American of draft age can be
called into the Army or Navy and be
sent off into battle. No one questions
the rightness or the justice Of this
law. No one calls it "fascism" or
slavery" No one will charge that
it is not administered democratically
or that it is not essential to the Sc
curity of our free Nation. How, then,
can any one say that similar law
designed merely to make it obliga-
tory for all draft-free Americans to
serve on the home front in whatever
way their talents may best be used
is not right and is not just but is
instead dangerously unfair and un-
democratic?
There is something mixed up in
our national thinking when men in
prominent places argue that duty
In wartime applies to one group but
not to another, that what is good
and proper as far as our armed
forces are concerned is wholly i'm
proper on our home front, and that
everything is as it should be when
draft-age Americans and Americans
beyond the draft govern themselves
according to two entirely different
standards. 1t is miXed-up thinking,
too, to- give an theological twist to
the idea of national service or to
make it seem discriminatory as be-
tween our citizens. The fact is that
such a law-long in effect in free
and democratic lands like Britain
and Canada would be no more
fascist" than selective service and
would cover everybody in this coun-
try, irrespective of economic or So
cial status.
True, national service would prob
ably have a special bearing on our
Industrial workers, but only because
that group makes up a vast army in
key enterprises. Labor leaders are
raising a false issue, therefore, when
they speak darkly about slavery"
for nothing in the Presidents pro-
posal can be even remotely asso-
ciated with that word. National
service would not undermine the
wage-andhour structure; at most
it would control the flow of manpow-
er where necessary and help to pre-
vent paralyzing strikes. And GER
tainly, in the midst of this terrible
war, that would not be imposing a
hardship on anybody. not when we
consider that other Americans are
duty bound to fight - and die, If
need be-on the battle fronts of the
world
Juo 70 of