Mr. AYRES. You say we followed the Korean bill in that respect? Senator YARBOROUGH. Yes, sir.

Mr. AYRES. Now, following up Mr. Adair's statement, we have spent a lot of time on the Korean bill and Chairman Teague worked day and night sparkplugging it and I doubt that without his drive and energy behind it we would have gotten it as soon as we did, and from all the testimony we have had, people have been happy with it, so why would it not be a lot simpler in the case of this peacetime educational program to just extend that bill?

Senator YARBOROUGH. Basically, that is what the bill was that I introduced. I say, "I," but I mean the 26 cosponsors. Basically, that is what we introduced.

Mr. AYRES. But could we not do it without having another bill? Senator YARBOROUGH. This is basically an extension of it. As I explained, we took it up with the legislative counsel and the Veterans' Administration. It was just a short bill extending this.

They said that administratively it would put all kinds of burdens on them and this would be easier in its administration.

The Veterans' Administration said it would be easier administrationwise to define it this way and they worked for weeks to get this bill, not to make it complex, but to simplify it. The loan provisions were put on on the floor of the Senate. That was not with the help of the Veterans' Administration. This was not put in to write a complex bill but to make the administration of it simpler and we had the Senate legislative staff draw it up with constant conferences with the Veterans' Administration and basically that is what it did, extend it. Mr. AYRES. Are you saying here this morning that under the national defense program where a high school graduate goes to college and has to pay the money back upon graduation, are you saying that under that program it will be impossible for very many veterans to get an education?

Senator YARBOROUGH. Yes, sir. You are putting a price tag on them. They have already served their country. They have already defended us and you want to hang and I do not mean to say "you," but those that say they have to lend that money and pay it back-it would be equivalent to hanging the three balls of a pawnshop on them when they come out.

I do not think we are getting the brainpower we need. I think Edison is about right. Ninety percent of the brainpower is wasted. The average man does that. I do not say we do. I am not able to mobilize my own life like I would like to.

Mr. AYRES. I was reading the other day that in our State universities throughout the country 30 percent of the freshmen fail to go back as sophomores so apparently we have a lot of people that have to be accepted because they have a high school diploma who really are not qualified to take this work.

Senator YARBOROUGH. I think that is one of the reasons why these veterans make higher grades than the others, even though they have had no college work. They have this training in the armed services which I think enables them to discipline their minds so that they can study better and do better work in their college training.

We are losing some of the best brainpower of all when we do not train these veterans, and the average time lost by the veterans now is 25 months and during the Korean conflict the veteran lost 24 months

Mr. AYRES. Then your position is not one of readjustment but of getting more people to go to college because our country needs more college graduates and since the veteran has served 2 years he is entitled to a little preference and whether he needs readjustment or not is immaterial, is that right?

Senator YARBOROUGH. No, I say he needs this readjustment. Here you jerk a young man out, and if you will pardon my personal experience, I served with one infantry division for 2 years and 11 months and for part of the time I was in G-1, which is the section in charge of personnel in the division, and I just feel, deep in my bones, based on my experience, that these men need this.

What I am pointing out is that you are not giving somebody something but you are building up for the country. The country is going to make money. These charts prove it. If we put this in cold dollars and cents the Government will make money off of their increased training, but we need them, too, for the defense of this country. We are not getting, as I say, enough trained personnel. We are not spending enough money. I say that our first money ought to go to those who have spent the best years of their lives in defending this country. Mr. AYRES. You would give the preference to the young man who now goes down to the recruiting center and enlists rather than the fellow who sits back and shakes in his boots for fear he is going to be drafted, is that right?

Senator YARBOROUGH. No, sir; we made it apply to all, the enlistees and the draftees both.

Mr. AYRES. Why should not the man who is going to volunteer for his country, if you are going to put it on your basis, volunteer to take 2 or 3 years out of his life, why should he not be given the preference over the fellow who just happens to be caught?

Senator YARBOROUGH. Well, then you get into one of these problems that has been mentioned here of administration. That would develop into an awful lot of complications with the administration.

Mr. AYRES. Well, they would know exactly who enlists and who is drafted.

Senator YARBOROUGH. That distinction was not made in the other bills. The World War II and Korean GI bills were without distinction as to whether they were volunteers or draftees and those bills worked very well. They were considered as two of our best bills and I want to take my hat off to the chairman of this committee for working the bugs out of the first bill during work on the Korean GI bill.

Mr. AYRES. I agree and I honestly believe those were the best readjustment bills for the veteran, but I cannot see that the peacetime bill you are proposing is for readjustment.

Senator YARBOROUGH. All right, if it is peacetime for the veterans why is it not considered peacetime as far as this $40 billion that we spend on defense? "That is cold war," we are always told, "that is cold war." But he is a peacetime veteran and let's not do anything more for him.

I say that if it is peacetime for him, it is peacetime with this $46 billion that we are spending on defense, too, and the only way you can

justify $46 billion on defense to defend this country is that it is a cold war.

I say it is just as cold for the men who are putting their sweat and blood and brains and their lives into it as it is for the manufacturers who are selling them the machines.

Mr. AYRES. I believe your bill is more of a bonus than a readjustment and if you are going to go that far why not give them a bonus when they get their discharge papers and say, "Go to college, go out and buy a business." Does not the man that does not go to college need just as much readjustment, if we are going to go that far? We have never gone that far and I do not say we need a readjustment bill for these boys at this time.

Senator YARBOROUGH. I submit, sir, without argument about it, these charts show it is not a bonus. It is a moneymaking deal, sir, not merely for the veteran but for the Government.

It has often been said we have never financed such readjustment benefits to so-called peacetime veterans. I call them "cold war veterans" because that is what our $46 billion is being spent on, the cold war. Because the Korean conflict stopped in 1953 and the President issued his proclamation terminating these readjustment benefits as of January 1955, a man could enter the service after the Korean fighting was all over, provided he entered before January of 1955 and if he came out in 1957, 1958, or 1959, he was entitled to readjustment benefits and we have actually had this period where it worked to the benefit of the country during a time that there was no shooting war.

Mr. AYRES. And you had the highest college registration since that time that we have ever had in the history of this country.

Senator YARBOROUGH. And that is the greatest hope for this country.

Mr. AYRES. What are we going to do for those boys who served and who had gone ahead and paid their own college education? Are they going to come in and say, "What are you going to do for me? I went ahead and spent all of my money."

Senator YARBOROUGH. I do not want to argue that, but I personally think the Veterans' Administration's estimate on that is high for that reason. Some of those young men have already gotten their college education and others are so far behind and have two or three children and I have been told they cannot quit and go to college, so I think that percentage is due to this lag here.

We have had this lag with no law effective since 1955. We need this badly now and I am hopeful it will be enacted this session so that we can stop losing some of the best brainpower in this country.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. George.

Mr. GEORGE. Is it not true that once a youngster drops out of school a year or two it is very difficult for him to come back?

Senator YARBOROUGH. Yes, sir. The educators have testified to this. Mr. GEORGE. Would not your bill give him an incentive to return? Or give him good cause to come back and resume his studies?

Senator YARBOROUGH. Yes, sir. I am glad you brought that up. This has been proven. We have had these deans and presidents of the colleges who have testified to that. When these boys fall out of high school, it seems the way to get them back to high school would be under the GI bill, to come back as a veteran sponsored by the Government,

you might say, and that is one way of getting these boys to come back to finish their high school.

The table shows that these young men in service now, 12 percent of them have had 4 years of college, 8 percent have had less than 4 years, or 1 to 3 years of college, 29 percent have had 1 to 3 years of high school, 35 percent have had 4 years of high school, and the other 16 percent have not been to high school.

Mr. GEORGE. And that would be true no matter what this bill would do.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Yes, sir. But we would have that incentive to come back, that extra urge, and I am glad you mentioned those intangible factors, such as the morale factor of returning to school.

Mr. GEORGE. I want to congratulate you on introducing a resolution such as this and I hope it will be successful, and hope you will get a chairman such as we have.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Thank you for your kindly remarks.

Mr. DORN (acting chairman). Sir, let me say that I am personally delighted that you could be with us today and I appreciate and have an unfailing interest in your testimony.

Now, Mr. Boykin has another engagement and would like to have the floor for a moment.

Mr. BOYKIN. Thank you.

Senator, I think you made a fine statement and brought out some points that I had never thought of before, and I was also very glad to hear you mention what you did about Senator Kerr and Senator Sparkman and I imagine Senator Lyndon Johnson also was behind that, was he not?

Senator YARBOROUGH. Yes, sir; he put the full weight of his efforts in back of this bill in the Senate.

Mr. BOYKIN. Senator Hill has talked to me a great deal about it. He has just about dedicated his whole life to this sort of thing, and his father was a doctor and his mother is from Mobile. I have served with Senator Hill for a quarter of a century and I am glad he is chairman of this committee.

Senator Sparkman has discussed this with Dr. von Braun. I just picked up a newspaper last night and I am writing him this morning. We had lunch with Dr. von Braun last Thursday. We meet every Thursday, our group, the delegation from Alabama, and Senator Sparkman made one of the greatest talks he ever made. I wish all of you could have heard it, and especially you. Senator. I am for your bill. I do not think that we can do too much for our veterans and I am really for this all the way. I do not think it will conflict. I know that a lot of these boys will never get the schooling. My friend brought out the fact about these boys getting all shot up but I think they ought to have just as much in peace as in war.

Chairman Teague has done a great job. This whole committee loves him, and he is really and truly doing an outstanding job, the same as you are over there, and I hope all of you will read this story in the newspaper of Dr. von Braun. He supports your statement that our trouble is that we need more brains. This item was in the paper and my wife called my attention to it this morning because she was at the luncheon, too.

The article says:

Pressed by the committee to suggest something that would speed the Saturn project, Dr. von Braun said that more "supergrade" jobs to boost the pay of top members of his team at Huntsville, Ala., was a "matter of very great urgency."

That is true. He said not to forget education. He told us what they were doing down there. He said we put billions of dollars of money down there to develop these great war weapons that they have and he says his people are quitting him and going into private enterprise because they are getting twice as much on the outside.

He said that in his statement here, and he said it before your committee. He did not tell that to us over there the other day but he did tell us not to forget this education.

I want to repeat I think you are doing a great job and I am glad you told us about his work and about Senator Sparkman, who has worked on it all his life.

I do know that if you give a boy an education nobody on earth can take it away from him. I certainly hope we can do what you state or something similar to it. We might possibly put a little more money or something else into it. However, I think we cannot do too much for these men.

I do think it would be good to put this in the record.
Mr. DORN. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The newspaper clipping referred to follows:)

VON BRAUN PLEA IS SNARLED

(By Jack Steele, Scripps-Howard staff writer)

Dr. Wernher von Braun's "urgent" request to Congress for more pay for scientists working on the Saturn space rocket has become tangled in Government redtape.

Von Braun told the House Space Committee February 2 that he had enough money for the Saturn project, the U.S. hope for a big rocket booster to catch the Soviets in the space race.

He testified that the United States had enough trained scientists and engineers for its missile and space programs, but that his "toplayer" rocketeers could command twice as much pay from private industry as they now get from the Government.

SUGGESTION

Pressed by the committee to suggest something that would speed the Saturn project, Dr. von Braun said that more "supergrade" jobs to boost the pay of top members of his team at Huntsville, Ala., was a matter of "very great urgency."

The pay ceiling for these supergrade jobs is $19,000 a year-and in a few exceptional cases $21,000 a year-compared to the top salaries of about $14,000 for most Government employees.

Dr. von Braun warned that some of his scientists might take industry jobs unless more supergrade jobs are provided for his team when it is transferred July 1 from the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) to the Civilian Space Agency (NASA).

TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY JOBS

He noted that present law gives NASA 260 such high-paying jobs for its 10,000 employees and that only about 20 of these are unfilled and will thus be available for the 4,000 members of his team.

Representative George P. Miller, Democrat, of California, without consulting Dr. von Braun, suggested that Congress give NASA 100 more supergrade jobs for Saturn. He urged this authority be included in legislation approving the transfer.

But the committee decided not to do this after Richard E. Horner, NASA's Associate Administrator, asked for more time to study the plan.

Since then a hassle has developed inside NASA and the administration over the proposal.