Up In Arms

Hardly had Selective Service brought out its new scheme to defer bright college students (TIME, April 9) when everybody began talking at once. In all the din, it was hard to find anyone who was really for the idea. Presidents of the Ivy League's Big Three all declared against it: Harvard's Conant called it undemocratic; Princeton's Dodds said it was wrong for the nation; Yale's Griswold, less opposed to it, feared that all the hubbub would fan "anti-intellectualism."

Selective Service Director Lewis B. Hershey still insisted that the plan was flexible and fair, but quickly added that draft boards had only been told that they may defer bright collegemen; not that they shall. All was confusion again. The new plan provoked cries of favoritism, questions on whether aptitude tests are a proper basis for deferment, and a spate of radio comedians' gags. The outcry sounded as if Selective Service was planning to exempt college students, not merely defer them.

In the Senate, Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge led the opposition to the plan. The Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Catholic War Veterans attacked it. A Grand Rapids, Mich, draft board suspended operations in protest. One member, Robert J. Yonkman, Air Force major in World War II, said: "The Government wants to ... give tests to disclose whether a man is dumb enough to bear arms. Maybe they should put on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier: 'I couldn't pass the aptitude test.'"

The uproar came just as the House was settling down to a hot debate on Universal Military Training, which has already passed the Senate. Though U.M.T. is not directly involved in the new college deferment plan, it soon got caught up in the argument. The House, before it even got to a vote on U.M.T., made it illogically plain that it was inclined to drop the whole thing. Congressman Carl Vinson of Georgia, in charge of pushing U.M.T. through, hastily promised to support an amendment which would prohibit bright-boy deferments. But at week's end it seemed likely that his amendment had come too late to save U.M.T.

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