Senator ALLOTT. And I do not see a statement, so we will be happy to hear your testimony.

General HERSHEY. I have no statement, Mr. Chairman.

The budget is for about 160,000 inductions. Our budget last year was for 125,000. We are going to be about 340,000 this year instead of 125,000. And if we should go next year anywhere near where we are in this budget, we will have about the same relation of what we will eventually spend as we did last year. But I have not the slightest idea of what we might have or might not have. There is not anything I can say that I think would be particularly helpful to the committee. I would be glad to answer any questions I can.

Senator ALLOTT. Your budget of approximately $10,310,000 less than last year is only for 160,000 inductions?

General HERSHEY. That is right, sir.

Senator ALLOTT. What were the inductions last year?

General HERSHEY. We were budgeted for 125,000 and they are going

to be about 340,000.

Senator ALLOTT. For last year?

General HERSHEY. For 1966.

Senator ALLOTT. That will be 340,000?

General HERSHEY. Approximately; yes, sir.

Senator ALLOTT. Now, you say you do not know what we are facing?

FLUCTUATING CALLS

General HERSHEY. No, sir. We have the July call but beyond July, I would not even want to speculate because the calls for the last 3 or 4 months have been up and down and there is no pattern that I could project that would be helpful, I am afraid.

Senator ALLOTT. What numbers have you inducted each month this fiscal year so far?

Colonel ILIFF. I have not got them by month. They have been running around between 30,000 and 40,000 since September. Some of them dip down to 20,000.

General HERSHEY. Well, then, June happens to be a low one, which will be below 20,000. And yet May was a high one. April was a low

one.

Senator ALLOTT. Do you have the figures for the months of this calendar year?

Colonel ILIFF. No, sir, I do not. I did not bring them with me.

General HERSHEY. The highest was in December, about 40,000. But before we get through with May, May will probably equal it or maybe exceed it by a thousand or so. We had a call for 45,000 and it was cut in December to 40,000. So 40,000 has so far been the top. And the lowest one will either be that of last July, which was around 17,000, or June of this year, which will be somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000.

Senator ALLOTT. Am I to infer from this that the draft policy of this country is so uncertain, or the Secretary of Defense is so uncertain, that he does not know what the draft demands are going to be in the next year?

General HERSHEY. I could only answer that probably on prophecy rather than on knowledge. I have not found any way of anticipating what we are going to be asked for. Of course, I realize that the fluctuation has not been any greater than approximately 20,000. That is, our lowest has been just under 20 and our highest has been about 40. But within those limits we have had continual fluctuation. And I am not informed on all of the information or any information the Armed Forces have, because we get the calls when we get them and not before.

Senator ALLOTT. Let us go into the mechanics of this for just a moment, General. Who do you receive your calls from?

General HERSHEY. The Assistant Secretary of Defense, and there is an Executive order that says they are to be filed 60 days ahead of the beginning of the delivery date. But during the past year, up until the last 3 months, that was not observed very closely which leads us to believe that there is uncertainty. We have had calls as much as 30 days late.

Senator ALLOTT. So that, other than your calls that you receive from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, theoretically but not actually, they are 60 days before the month?

General HERSHEY. We made a great deal of noise some 6 months ago and it has been better the last 3 months.

STUDENT DEFERMENT

Senator YOUNG. What is your draft policy now with respect to exemptions? Are they just based entirely on those with higher marks? General HERSHEY. Are you talking about students?

Senator YOUNG. Yes.

General HERSHEY. The Congress of the United States, I think very wisely, delegated to the local board, the decision as to whether a student was full time and satisfactory. In 1951 the President of the United States put out an Executive order which set up certain criteria that were guidelines. No attempt was made to have anything permanent, but the two guidelines were a national examination and a standing in class that was furnished by the institution.

The Congress of the United States did two things in legislation after that Executive order.

First of all, they extended the obligation to 35 for anybody that was deferred for any reason, but primarily it was aimed at taking care of extending the liability of students.

The second thing, they reiterated the policy, which I think we have had all along from the Congress, that no local board should be compelled to postpone or defer any student because of any grades made in a national examination, any standing in class, or any other evaluation made by contractors or even the Federal Government itself.

So that leaves the local board with several ways to get evidence on a student. First, is he in school? Second, is he full time? Third, is he satisfactory to the school? Fourth, what kind of courses are they taking, and what sort of standing is he making in them?

If he chooses to take an examination, which he does not need to do if he does not want to-but if he chooses to take it then that is additional evidence of what he can do in an examination. And he is privileged, if he wants to, to get his school to tell the local board where he stands. There is some discussion about that at the present time. That is entirely voluntary. It is probably being a little facetious, but he does not even need to tell the local board that he is in school if he does not want to.

Obviously, he will not be charged as being in school if he does not tell them. So he is perfectly free to either submit evidence that would tend to get the local board to defer him or not, but the local board is not bound.

Senator YOUNG. The students with the higher marks are being deferred all over the United States; are they not?

General HERSHEY. At the present time, I do not believe we have inducted anybody that was full time and satisfactory. Maybe we have, but to my knowledge, no. There has been a great deal of discussion but most of it has been what we are going to do rather than what we have done. We have inducted individuals that were let out of school at the end of the first semester, or at the end of the first quarter, and we have probably inducted some people who were part-time students because the Congress in setting up the means by which a student can finish his course, had to establish he was full time and satisfactory. I realize both of them have definitions and we get into a discussion about that.

Senator YOUNG. You mean this is a national regulation by you? General HERSHEY. The regulation was issued by the President.

But I do not believe at the present time that there have been fulltime students who were satisfactory that did not, in some way, get perhaps delinquent and been inducted. In other words, I do not think we have been inducting students that are full time and satisfactory.

OTHER DEFERMENTS

Senator YOUNG. Are any other classes of people not being inducted? General HERSHEY. Oh, yes, we have got 200,000 individuals that are deferred because of what they are doing. Either in skills at the present time and I know that you, Senator, are particularly interested in-we have probably 25,000 or 30,000-this is just a guessthat are deferred for agriculture.

We have probably 100-and-some thousand that are deferred as engineers, scientists, or schoolteachers.

Senator YOUNG. Are these agricultural deferrals an action of the local board or some national policy?

General HERSHEY. No, the local board

Senator YOUNG. What is the local board action and what is your action?

General HERSHEY. In the first place, the national director classifies nobody ever. Not only that, he does not make regulations. The President issues regulations which govern the local board, but the local boards have a great deal of power delegated, directly, to them, to decide whether the individual is doing something that has got to be done in the national interest, whether or not he is perfectly capable of doing it, and, third, whether he could be easily replaced.

And if he can be easily replaced, obviously the local board can exercise, and they do exercise judgment, the judgment is not exercised otherwise. If he appeals, of course, it goes to the appeal board within the State. If he gets one vote in his favor, he can then appeal to the national board. Or the State director, or national director can appeal for him. That is not just something we talk about. The national headquarters during the last 25 years has made 30,000 appeals and we have never appealed one that was not for the registrant. We have never appealed one for the Government.

Senator YOUNG. What have your calls become? You had 150,000 a month, which is real heavy, double what they are now. Which deferred ones would be apt to be called first; do you have any priority at all?

SELECTION TO FILL CALLS

General HERSHEY. The idea of trying to determine the college situation, for example, this is where we have 1,800,000 people now deferred, and therefore, the big source of people initially is the 150,000 plus who are becoming 19 years old every month. But at this age they are exactly in the middle of their training period. Your college student, your high school student, not too many high school students, but a few are still in at 19. So, therefore, you are up against that. The next thing you are up against, if they cannot get into college, a great many times they cannot get into the Armed Forces, for the very reasons they cannot get into college; because they do not have enough educational qualifications, they are rejected by the Armed Forces.

Senator YOUNG. On the one hand, Selective Service is saying if you have a high enough mark, you do not have to go into the Army; and

on the other hand, if your marks are not good enough, you cannot go if you want to.

General HERSHEY. Yes; but first let me explain. Selective Service is always very much flattered by the thought of being endowed by the powers we do not have. In the first place, we have nothing to do with rejections. The Secretary of Defense, by the Congress, is empowered to set the standards for acceptability. We have nothing to do with that.

Senator YOUNG. The Secretary of Defense?

General HERSHEY. Yes, sir.

But, we are involved and must take the whole responsibility for the ones we defer. That does not mean they are going to escape service. The theory, whether it is right or is wrong, is that a college graduate is able to give greater service to his country than one who is not a college graduate. Therefore, it is not a question of not having him serve, it is a question of having him defer his service, first-let us take doctors-which is a good example. The only reason you have doctors to serve in the Armed Forces is because we defer them anywhere from 9 to 13 years, depending on whether they take premedicine, and their internship, or they may take premedicine, medicine, internship, and 4 years of residency to become specialists. And you must have both kinds.

Also our problem is an engineer in the making, and all of those scientists, take a terribly long time. And not only that, you have got to defer two or three times as many freshmen as you can hope to get graduates. But, one of the things we are trying to do with the examinations, if we much take somebody, then we take somebody who has shown some likelihood of not being able to be a graduate.

Senator YOUNG. What makes a lot of difference is the type of warfare we are engaged in. The warfare in Vietnam requires a little different type soldier than the mechanized warfare in Europe.

General HERSHEY. There is no question about that. Although I probably think I am more of an expert on warfare than anybody else does.

Senator YOUNG. You have a very difficult job. I do not envy you your task.

That is all.

SETTING OF POLICIES

Senator ALLOTT. General Hershey, we have been through this every year and I do not know about the feeling of the other members of the committee, I speak only for myself, but every time we have a hearing on this particular item in this committee, I come out of it feeling completely frustrated and, I must say, completely confused as to what the draft policies of the Government are. Let us start out, No. 1: I take it what you are saying this morning is you are not a policymaker, and that the only thing you are concerned with is the mechanics of pulling in the boys that the Secretary of Defense, in his infinite wisdom, or the President, decides on that month should be brought in?

General HERSHEY. I think that is essentially true. Of course, I am sure, Senator Allott, you know as well as I do, no matter what you have in the way of law or policy, that what the poor individual down at the end of the line does to the individual who he is working