Let’s Get the Job Over With

The chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee hunched over the microphone. He pointed dramatically to the flag behind the Speaker’s chair. Soberly, forcefully, Andrew Jackson May of Kentucky bit out each word:

“That flag is trailing in many parts of the battlefronts of the world. The 18-and 19-year-olds of another generation may be slaves to another country. I tell you today that the nation you love—the nation that is the hope of all the world—is on trial, and Congress is on trial before the whole country and the whole world. Let’s get the job over with and let’s get the job of whipping Hitler and Tojo over with.”

This was the man who three months ago assured the country the war would end in 1943—there was no cause for alarm. The Congress he addressed was the same Congress that 14 months ago haggled and wrangled and squeezed out an extension of the draft by a hair’s breadth. But now war’s reverses had tempered and sharpened the Congress as it was sharpening democracy itself.

Up rose grey, lanky Majority Leader John W. McCormack. He wanted to make a few “temperate statements” about New Yorker James W. Wadsworth’s bill to lower the draft age to 18 years—a bill on which Franklin Roosevelt and the War Department had given the go-ahead just five days earlier. Almost impersonally he began: “This Congress is going to be judged by what we do today, as to whether we have preserved our trust—as to what we do to protect America today. We should vote with vision and courage. If we lose this war, we do not retain our country, the country we all love.”

There had been only four hours of debate: quickly the House voted down a crop of amendments, quickly the House passed the bill, 345-to-16.

Speed Record. Never in World War I had Congress acted so swiftly. No Congressman could remember any equal in ramming so important a measure through committee and chamber—and that two weeks before election, just four months after Franklin Roosevelt had said drafting youngsters would be unnecessary until 1943.

The Senate was acting almost as fast on the companion bill that South Dakota’s able, stable Republican Chan Gurney introduced in September. (He was the first in the Senate to dare to talk truth about drafting the young.) In the bill the House passed were several points not in the Senate measure, but Congress’ new mood of work-and-win was expected to resolve the differences quickly.

Sober satisfaction is what most citizens felt with their Congress—which seemed to have been spiritually reborn. None were more pleased than most of the adventuresome 2,500,000 youngsters now eligible for Armageddon. Many (one estimate: 400,000) already were in the armed forces. Many more this week were storming recruiting centers to enlist, inspired more by knowing this is a young man’s war than fearing the draft.

Among the 1,000 who stormed a Philadelphia recruiting office, books under arms, was Charles F. Thompson, 18, who got forms for all members of his football team. Detroit opened five new recruiting centers. Enlistments of boys jumped 50% to 75% in New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland and other big cities. Most frequent reason given by the youngsters: Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chat had won Mom’s and Pop’s consent.

Said one recruiting officer: “It looked like the day after Pearl Harbor.”