"The vast armies of men soon to return from the mud and foxholes of overseas combat will demand adequate incomes and assurance of continuous employment," Mordecai Johnson, President of Howard University, and guest preacher at Appleton Chapel, declared in an interview yesterday. "The returning serviceman will regard this security not as a bonus but as a prerogative implied when conscription itself went into effect."

"No state has the right," President Johnson continued, "to call men out of their civilian lives to an existence of privations and minimum pay without assuming the obligation to provide a reasonable hope of security equally to all its veterans. Negro, Catholic, and Jewish minorities will ask for job opportunities unmarred by discrimination."

Anti-Discrimination Bills

Expressing confidence in the effectiveness of the anti-discrimination bills pending in many state legislatures and already passed in New York State, President Johnson termed them "a very valuable index of growing insight on the part of American minority groups.

"Up to the present, these segments of the population have fought their battles independently of one another. For the first time," President Johnson asserted, "they are learning to focus on widespread common needs and to throw the entire weight of their social and political influence behind measures to further their common needs."

Minority Problems Similar

Alone, minority groups can hope for little; but, by combining to achieve their mutual goals, they can outnumber their adversaries and ultimately win their battle for recognition "as human beings."

"Anti-discrimination legislation will be successful," was the university president's opinion. "When laws of this type are enacted," he stated, "they are a crystallization of already existent public sentiment, not sticks in the hands of unwilling policemen. With the public firmly behind the law and against offenders, its effectiveness is insured."