Each of these vertical bars depicts the actual enlisted end-strength of the Army for a particular fiscal year. Composition is indicated by color: Red for inductees, yellow for National Guard, green for Army Reserve, and blue for Regular Army voluntary enlistees. The black horizontal bars indicate authorized enlisted end-strength for each fiscal year.

In 1946, before the draft expired and before our rapid postwar demobilization was completed, actual enlisted strength exceeded authorization. In 1947, without the draft, actual strength fell off sharply and dropped below authorization. In 1948 this gap between authorized strength and actual strength increased to the point where we were more than 100,000 men short of the force which even then was considered to be the minimum essential to this Nation's security. General Bradley's testimony that year in support of the Selective Service Act of 1948 emphasized that we were unable to attain the authorized strength ceiling on a volunteer basis, and, of necessity, had to ask for authority to draft.

In 1949, with selective service again in effect, we met our authorized strength, but in 1950 we fell far below it again following suspension of draft calls. Since 1951, with the draft in continuous operation, we have met our authorized strength every year.

At the present time the authorized enlisted strength of the Army is approximately 1,200,000 men. Current planning indicates that it will eventually be decreased to some 911,600. This figure is more than half again the 590,000 authorization which we were unable to achieve on a volunteer basis in fiscal year 1948. I am convinced that with no draft our voluntary enlistments would be reduced substantially and I see little possibility of maintaining a Volunteer Army in the vicinity of 900,000 enlisted men.

These, then, are the primary reasons why I believe we must renew our selectiveservice legislation: Mobilization preparedness and the maintenance of Army strength in being.

Now, in addition to these reasons I have given you why the draft must be extended, I wish to emphasize one additional point. I refer to the need for a 24-month period of service for inductees. Two years is the absolute minimum of time we need to take these men into the Army, train them properly, and then utilize them effectively for any appreciable length of time. If the period were shortened we should not be able to reduce processing, training, and travel time proportionately. Of necessity, these are constants. They also constitute the expensive ineffective period of an inductee's total active service. Therefore, any decrease of the induction period would be borne entirely by that portion of the inductee's service which we call effective; that is, the time during which he is actually doing a job which must be done and for which he has been trained. We cannot afford to reduce that time. It is already too short. I know from personal experience that one of the most difficult problems of the Army today is the maintaining of a state of combat readiness in the face of the high turnover rate of the men in ranks. I say this is all sincereity: Any reduction in the 24-month period of service will be reflected in a disproportionate lessening of the combat readiness of your Army, as well as added monetary expense to the Government.

There is one additional matter which I should like to mention very briefly before closing. I refer to extension of the Dependents Assistance Act, which is part and parcel of this legislation. I strongly recommend favorable consideration of this provision as an essential corollary to the draft.

In closing I should like to say once more than I consider a 4-year extension of the authority to induct men for military training and service to be a military necessity. Failure to renew this law could well result in the eventual crippling of our military posture, as regards our strength in being during this critical period. Even more importantly, it would mean a crippling of our ability to mobilize rapidly and effectively when and if the time comes that we must.

The CHAIRMAN. All right, General Booth.

General BOOTH. The Army feels that the legislation before you today, the extension of the authority to induct the men for military training and service, is a military necessity, for two reasons, one of which has already been covered. The first reason and the primary one is that it is basic and essential to all of our military mobilization planning that legislation on induction be in existence on the books if an emergency should occur.

The second is that, as brought up by several witnesses before, we will be unable to maintain the active forces in being without selective service.

I have to illustrate that point on some charts that you may want to see. On this chart, the vertical bars indicate the enlisted endstrengths of the Army for each of the years shown, with the blue showing the Regular Army enlistees, the red showing the draftees, the orange showing the National Guard, and the green the Army Reserve. The vertical bars for each year show the authorized strength at the end of that particular fiscal year. When we were going through the demobilization period at the end of 1946 and while the draft was still in effect, we were reducing the Army but had not come down to the authorized end-strength.

The next year, 1947, without the draft, we were unable to maintain the authorized end strength.

In 1948, we were 100,000 short, over 100,000 short of what was then considered the minimum essential Army force for our security. Again, with the draft in, in 1949, we were able to meet our end strength. In 1950, when induction was suspended, we were unable to meet our end strength. Thereafter, during the Korean war and since then, we have been able to meet our end strength every successive year.

Those are the only points that I wanted to bring up in addition to those that have been brought up by my predecessors.

The CHAIRMAN. Any questions from any members of the committee to the general?

Mr. RIVERS. One question.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Rivers.

Mr. RIVERS. It seems a sad commentary that the Army can't devise some way to glamorize itself to the American boy like these other services, and you can't even get them for 2 years, and these other services get them for 3 and 4. You tried it on the NIKE and you tried it on whatever else you got-the Honest John or whatever that other gadget was.

Now you are getting yourself a brand new Air Force. Why don't you try it on that? That makes five air forces, you know. Why not try it on that. Maybe you can get some enlistments. But it is funny that you can't, with all the genius and you got your share you can't devise some way of getting the boy to join the Army without the draft. The Marine Corps: If you have ever been to Parris Island, they read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest austerity. Yes, they do. I just don't understand it.

[Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, General. Now the next witness is the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Personnel, the Honorable Albert Pratt.

Gentlemen of the committee, I think this is the first time we have had the pleasure of having Mr. Pratt here, and I want to express to him the pleasure for the committee to have this opportunity of having his testimony. We will be delighted to have you make any statement that you desire to make, Mr. Secretary.

Secretary PRATT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I, too, have a statement which I prepared for delivery. I found when I heard Mr. Burgess that he covered substantially all of the points that I wanted to see covered. Therefore, with your permission, I will file

that statement and merely refer to a couple of the charts which may graphically bring out some of the questions which appear.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

(The statement referred to is as follows:)

STATEMENT OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE NAVY (PERSONNEL AND RESERVE FORCES) ON THE EXTENSION OF INDUCTION AUTHORITY (UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING AND SERVICE ACT) (H. R. 3005) BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

Mr. Chairman and Members of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity to state the position of the Department of the Navy in support of the extension of induction authority under the Universal Military Training and Service Act. We consider such an extension at this time to be essential to national security generally, and, specifically, necessary to the continued effectiveness of the Navy and Marine Corps.

At the outset, I wish to make it clear that it is the desire and intention of the Navy Department to maintain the planned strengths of the Navy and the Marine Corps by voluntary enlistments alone, so long as we can fulfill our assigned missions by this means of procurement. The history and nature of the two services provide intangible reasons for this preference. However, very solid considerations of economy of funds and manpower and of military effectiveness favor such a policy in the Navy and Marine Corps.

The longer periods of service in voluntary enlistments obvicusly increase the proportion of effective service rendered by each man and hold down our overhead cost of training. A critical consideration is that for many highly technical jobs a 2-year period of service simply would not give us time to train the man adequately and derive a significant amount of time on the job.

In the longer range we look to voluntary enlistments as the most promising source of personnel who are motivated for a career in the naval service. Continuing increase in the complexity of the instruments of war steadily enlarges our requirements for trained and seasoned experts. The hard core of professionals we have must be continuously replenished to provide insurance of leadership and technical knowledge and experience in the years to come.

While the Navy and Marine Corps do not actually intend to induct personnel unless it becomes necessary to do so, the existence of the induction authority provides a stimulus to enlistment which is important to us. In early 1947 when World War II induction authority expired, enlistments in the Navy and Marine Corps dropped off sharply. Enlistment rates remained inadequate in both services until the Selective Service Act of 1948 was passed when they showed a decided rise. While the exact extent to which the operation of selective service affects enlistments cannot be measured, our experience in 1947 and 1948 suggests that we would encounter difficulty in meeting our personnel requirements should induction authority expire. It might be worthwhile to note that our present and prospective personnel requirements for the next 4 or 5 years are about 50 percent higher than the requirements of the 1947-48 period. Consideration of the difficulty which we had in meeting our enlistment quotas at that time adds uncertainty to the prospect of meeting our personnel needs in the near future without the existence of the draft law.

Of course, while we are speaking of selective service as a stimulus for enlistments, we also recognize it as insurance of adequate strength for national security. Because a variety of conditions, such as civilian employment opportunities and pay scales, affect enlistment rates it is conceivable that in some circumstances voluntary enlistments might not maintain our personnel strength. Before any such deficiency hazarded the fulfillment of our missions we would resort to induction procedures to maintain required strength. Along this line, although the effect of the termination of eligibility for special GI benefits cannot be foreseen, it is possible that this may cause increased difficulty in obtaining first enlistments. It is anticipated that our manpower problems will continue to be acute for several years to come. The abnormal expansion during the period from 1950 to 1952 will produce an abnormal attrition in 1955, 1956, and 1957. While the expansion of the Navy and Marine Corps to meet the Korean threat was met in part by the recall of Reserves, there was a very substantial expansion of regular enlistments during that period. The enlistments of these men are now expiring. We are making and will continue to make every effort to build up reenlistments, but the large numbers of first enlistments now expiring force us to expect large losses of personnel. In the Marine Corps, the large number of 3-year enlistments

obtained in fiscal year 1951 and the inductees obtained in fiscal year 1952 resulted in about half of the Marine Corps being lost in fiscal year 1954. The extremely heavy recruit input obtained in fiscal year 1954 to replace these losses will result in another very heavy recruiting program for the Marine Corps in fiscal year 1957. As a result, we are faced with a big problem in obtaining larger numbers of replacements than we would generally anticipate under normal peacetime conditions.

Should it become necessary at any time for the Navy and Marine Corps to take inductees, an induction period of 24 months is considered to be barest minimum compatible with effective utilization. A reduction below this period not only would be extremely costly but also it would reduce the readiness of the service below the minimum requirements of security. As I have mentioned earlier, the highly technical nature of our services makes the need for long-term experienced personnel mandatory. In addition, with our heavy overseas commitments, both afloat and ashore, short-time personnel create difficult replacement problems.

In summary, a prudent look at past experience and future requirements of the Navy and Marine Corps raises considerable uncertainty that the foreseeable needs of national security can be met unless the present induction authority is continued. The ever present possibility that these needs may expand suddenly and drastically emphasizes the necessity of having this element of readiness available to all of the Armed Forces as needed.

The extension of the Dependents Assistance Act, which is included in the same legislative proposal, has an obvious relation with the continuance of inductions under selective service. However, even though the Navy and Marine Corps hope to avoid the necessity for the use of induction to maintain activeduty strength, our procurement efforts also would be adversely affected if the Dependents Assistance Act were to lapse at this time.

We recognize that the allowances provided in the act were not intended to be permanent additions to the pay system. Nevertheless, the stringency of our present personnel situation and the situation which we foresee in the next few years would be aggravated greatly if these allowances or any other benefits now available were withdrawn. We strongly recommend that the proposed extension be enacted.

The CHAIRMAN. Go right ahead and refer to the chart. Go ahead, Mr. Secretary.

Secretary PRATT. In this chart here we show a red line which represents the quota that was set by the Bureau of Personnel for the number of people that were required to bring us up to strength at any time, any particular time.

The dashed line shows the actual number of recruits which were obtained. The gray area on the chart indicates those months when the draft law was not in effect.

You will note that immediately prior to the time the draft law expired, and until just before it looked as though there were going to be a new draft law, that in each of the months the actual number of recruits we obtained is less than the number that we desired, whereas during the periods when the draft law was in effect we had no difficulty in meeting these difficulties.

Now, I do not mean to imply by this chart that the draft law was the only factor that was involved in that situation, but the experiences of the past give us reason to question whether we could obtain the number of voluntary recruits we wanted to with our vastly enlarged forces over pre-World War II if the draft law were not extended.

Now, I will have the next chart. This chart indicates another aspect of the same problem. The top chart shows the average GCT score, which is a kind of intelligence score, for recruits obtained by period. You will notice the period the draft was not in effect that the average intelligence of our recruits did fall off.

The years of education and the percent of recruits in the lower mental levels are merely reflections of that same phenomena. We do not say the draft law is the full answer, but the experience has certainly indicated that it is a very important factor to us.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, of course, Mr. Secretary, I think we all understand if it wasn't for the draft law you probably wouldn't be as ready to get into the Navy or the Air Force as they are.

Secretary PRATT. I would hate to leave my testimony at that point, Mr. Chairman. We feel a great many of our recruits are motivated by very sincere, patriotic motives.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, yes; I understand that.

Secretary PRATT. We would hate to feel that it was merely the draft law that was responsible.

The CHAIRMAN. Of course, that may be true, but nevertheless if they don't volunteer then they will be subject to the draft. They say, "Well, we can select these other two services and we will just select the service." You know how the American boy acts.

Mr. GAVIN. Mr. Chairman, at that point I just want to say that naturally the youth would like to be in the air and on the sea, where they don't go through the cold and the heat and the filth and fatigue and the misery and mud of mechanized warfare, like the doughboy does. So I just want to say a word in defense of the doughboy, that possibly the other services appear a bit more attractive to the Army side of the question.

Mr. MILLER. Well, would the gentleman from Pennsylvania yield? Mr. GAVIN. Yes; I will be glad to yield.

Mr. MILLER. Would the gentleman feel that part of the glamor that the colleague from South Carolina was speaking of might be tied into the draft law, too?

Mr. GAVIN. It might be.

Mr. RIVERS. My friend from Pennsylvania ought to know that. He has been on the committee for 10 years.

The CHAIRMAN. Any other questions of the Secretary from any members of the committee? If not, thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Now, the next witness is Captain Martin, Assistant Chief for Personnel and Plans, Department of the Navy.

Secretary PRATT. Captain Martin is here, but he has nothing additional to say, unless you wish to have some more information, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. All right; thank you very much.

Now next is from the Air Force. The distinguished Assistant Secretary for Manpower and Personnel, the Honorable David S. Smith. I understand that he is ill and the testimony will be given by Mr. Goode, deputy to the Assistant Secretary. All right, Mr. Goode.

Mr. GOODE. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I have a prepared statement on behalf of Mr. Smith, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, which I will either read or make a matter of record, as the committee prefers.

The CHAIRMAN. Just make it a matter of record and give us the highlights of the Air Force's view with reference to the continuation of the Selective Service Act for 4 years.

(The statement is as follows:)