legislature one day.

They got a very good reception there.

The speaker took an interest in them. We have had trips

We are

of many of the service schools to Washington. emphasizing that now. The Attorney General is particularly interested in talking to these groups. Some Members of Congress have done so, too. "144

A review of the history of the training program for Latin American military personnel reveals what has been accomplished. Between 1940 and 30 June 1964 a total of 22,398 students graduated from Army and Air Force schools in the Panama Canal Zone. 145 During the same period the United States trained another 20,000 in various schools of all the services at installations within the continental United States, 146 And it was expected that the United States would train an additional 6,000 Latin American

students during FY 1964.147 For the training of those students who remain for a full-year course at Canal Zone installations the estimated cost to the United States

Government is $3,000,148 by all accounts a relatively small amount to pay when compared with the dividends it returns in advancing the cause of the United States in inter

American relations.

Civic action assistance and programs, later to be so wholeheartedly endorsed by both congressional friends and foes of military assistance programs, received their first endorsement, although not then so identified as such,

in Senate hearings in 1951. On that occasion Lieutenant General Charles L. Bolte, the Deputy Chief of Staff, Plans, U.S. Army, and also the Chairman of the Inter-American Defense Board, called attention to the fact that in the spring of 1951 the Department of Defense had made use of reimbursable aid to supply Bolivia with engineering equipment, such as bulldozers and road machinery. With this equipment, he pointed out, a Bolivian Army engineering battalion "could work on the roads during peacetime and also be equipped for wartime employment. "149

Congressional interest in what came to be described as civic action employment of armed forces units was displayed by Representative A. S. J. Carnahan in April 1954 when he inquired what the possibilities were for using military forces in training situations other than those of a purely military character. In reply, Major General George C. Stewart, Director, Office of Military Assistance, Department of Defense, pointed out how the Brazilian Army

over a long period had taught its illiterate personnel
to read and write and how U. S. technical training teams
were in effect often engaged in normilitary educational
programs in preparing foreign personnel so that they
could qualify to perform maintenance and other types of
technical training.
150

In May 1959, two years before the term civic action came into vogue, Brigadier General Frederick 0. Hartel, Director of Western Hemisphere, Office of Assistant

Secretary for International Security Affairs, told a Senate committee that some of the battalions being supported with MAP funds in Latin America were "being utilized by the countries on a dual basis,

battalions of engineers,

which are constructing roads, and helping their countries

technically in developing their economic situation.

151

In June of the same year the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also looked with favor on such employment of the military in its report which stated: "The waste which is inherent in military programs can be reduced to the extent that military forces are used for productive purposes such as public works. The committee has in mind in this connection the example of the Army Corps of Engineers and the great contribution it has made to

example which could profitably be followed elsewhere in the world."152 In a hearing of the same committee on 28 March 1960, Chairman Fulbright inquired whether any of the "regional military forces" were used on "engineering projects" as were "our Army engineers" in the United States. In reply, Roy R. Rubottom, Jr., Assistant Secretary of

State for Inter-American Affairs, pointed out: "There are programs now under the military assistance program for what we call engineer battalions in four countries I believe, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. In addition, the ICA [International Cooperation Administration has engineering construction units, what they call ECU, in three countries, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Honduras. So of the 12 countries in which we happen to have military programs between ICA and the military, there is a total of 7 countries where these units are now working. 1153

Antedating the U. S. Government's decision in 1961 to endorse the principle of civic action was the action of the Inter-American Defense Board which approved the concept

in a resolution of December 1960 which recommended:

"That

the governments of the American States take into consideration the advisability of employing organs of their armed

developed, in order to: (1) Undertake highway and settlement work, and promote the establishment of technical services; (2) Broaden the economic bases directed toward raising the standard of living of the peoples; and (3) Educate the native populations in their own surroundings and create reserves of specialized labor for specific types of work. "154

It was not until the advent of the Kennedy Administration, however, that the term "civic action" became a fixed phrase in diplomatic and congressional terminology. Secretary of State Rusk was the first to employ the term in its new context, when, in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on 7 June 1961, he spelled out the Administration's ideas as follows: "I think also that a military effort under such circumstances cannot be strictly military in the old-fashioned sense of the term but has to be combined with civic action. Civic action of a sort which the military itself must be sensitive to and aware of and help with. "155 On the following day Secretary of Defense McNamara more specifically discussed the subject when he told the Committee: "We cannot of course dictate to

recipient nations how they shall use their armed forces.