Men Over 35

On many a U.S. Main Street walked the lost generation last week--men who had been just old enough to get into one war and just too young to stay out of another.

The 36-to-44-year-olds, a bit paunchy, a trifle short in the wind, had been bombarded senseless with conflicting statements:

> Unless Congress lowers the Selective Service age limit to sweep in 18-to-19-year-olds, the draft will soon begin claiming men with dependent wives and children.

> A man must do war work or fight.

> When young men with dependents are available, older men will not be called.

> No one must think he is behind a Maginot Line of deferment.

> Local boards will draft old and young men in proportionate numbers.

Grumbled Ohio's Senator Taft: "There is hardly a man under 45 who is able to make plans for the future." (Taft's age: 52.) Essayist E. B. White wrote in Harper's: "We are the tough old campaigners--a little puffy round the girth strap, faltering a little at the top step of the long stairway, subsisting on bicarbonate of soda and ephedrine sulphate, our pocketbooks lined with silver and our back teeth with gold, but ready to go forth again to distant peninsulas against old enemies."

The slippered, balding millions were not complaining; they just wanted to know. Few had any notion where they would wind up in total war. Washington had given the nod to local draft boards for induction on June 1 of some of the oldsters who registered Feb. 16. But that meant little or nothing. An estimated 84% of them have dependents.

Many questions had to be resolved by Selective Service and Manpowerman McNutt before the harried local draft boards could get a common directive:

> When would men with dependents be called, and in what age order?

> Would a million unmarried men with dependents, and 3,200,000 childless married men, all in the 21-35 age bracket, be called?

> How many dependents can be given reasonable support under provisions of the Senate's dependency bill? (And what is "reasonable support?")

The Army was inducting 300,000 men a month. The fat layer of good U.S. manpower was melting fast. A 'teenage draft would cushion the oldsters against military service for a time at least.

Only certainties:

1) Selective Service is waging a psychological offensive designed to tease and prod men into the Army.

2) Eventually--meaning, in a long war--all able-bodied men under 45 not in essential industries will be in uniform.

3) Probably a lot of men over 35, even with dependents, will be called.

4) But Army figures show that not more than 5% from 40-45, not more than 10% from 36-40 are physically fit for soldiering.

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