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in the corner. The knowledge of the machine gun and the 75 mm.howitzer will do the citizen in a democracy very little good when noone possesses these expensive toys save the state. And thus the NewRepublic came out for guns and butter. Actually it was with somesuch bait that the first conscription proposals were launched. Iquote from the New York Times, June 23, 1940, in an article byLuther A. Huston, describing the plan:The argument of proponents of the plan is that the nation must putitself under discipline within the framework of our democracy or it cannotescape an enforced discipline imposed by autocratic tyrants. They contendthat there is a place in democratic society for a communal effort whichwill enhance the educational resources of the country, strengthen itsphysical facilities, and preserve its essential democratic principles. Theirprogram, they contend, will provide industry with a reservoir of laborwhich will enable it to step up production to meet the requirements of thedefense program and provide millions of young people with training whichwill bulwark their position in the national economy. It will provide thearmed forces of the nation with the man-power needed to operate theexpanded military machinery for the protection of the nation.Here is a collection of words and ideas to make the angels gasp,but they were admirably adapted to oiling the consciences and reasoningapparatus of the pacifists and radicals who were rapidlysprouting muscles and fangs and raging for a great crusade of somesort. Here was a kind of economic equivalent for war—several millionyouths inducted by universal service into glorified, niilitarizedCCC camps which would turn them at the same time into skilledartisans and skilled soldiers for use in whatever direction they hadto be sent. This is what Mrs. Roosevelt and the New Republic wereasking for. And this is what Mrs. Roosevelt is asking for now andwhat Mr. Roosevelt has always been for from his earliest years.Fundamentally it takes its root in the search for some scheme thatwill enable the nation to drain off each year a million or two menduring peace from the unemployed by putting them into laborcamps and soldier camps while putting another three or four millionto work in a gigantic arms industry. All sorts of people are for it.Numerous senators and representatives—of the Right and Left—have expressed their purpose to establish universal military training211