As for the new Reserve Plan, nobody here expects it to have easy sledding in Congress. It is still too early to make predictions. Neither the House nor Senate Armed Services Committees has yet scheduled hearings on the bill and it is at these hearings, which may last several months, that the real strength of the opposition will be shown.

UMT or Not UMT

It is generally agreed, however, that the bill has a considerably better chance in the Senate than in the House. This is because the label of Universal Military Training has already attached itself to the bill and the House has been shown to be much more vulnerable to anti-UMT pressure groups. Such, for instance, is the Methodist Church, whose Board of World Peace has already come out against the bill on the basis that it is a form of UMT.

Carter Burgess, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, said, in an interview with the CRIMSON, that the Defense Department does not consider the new plan Universal Military Training. It is distinguished from UMT, he said, by the fact that it is limited in time (it will expire in four years) and in scope.

The aspect of the plan which has chiefly drawn the charge of UMT is, of course, the provision for direct entry into the Reserve Forces with only a six-month training period. Under this plan, a militarily qualified man between the ages of 17 and 19 could, by entering a ten-year military obligation in the reserve of the Army, Marine Corps or Coast Guard, or in the Army National Guard, serve only six months of actual training. After this he would serve for nine and a half years in the Ready Reserves.

Such a program would be subject to strict quotas established by the President on recommendation of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The quota set for the first year is 100,000. While in training program, trainees will get $30 a month.

4 Down, 51/2 to Go

The fact is that there is nothing very radical about this aspect of the bill. In the 1948 Selective Service Act there was a similar provision which allowed enlistment for one rather than the regular two year service compensated for by one year longer in the reserves. This was not utilized to any extent by the Defense Department.

The present program would enable a high school graduate to take a six-month training period and then enter college, during which he would be required to attend something like 48 drills per year and a two week summer camp per year. On graduation from college, he would have fulfilled not only his tour of active service but also four out of his nine and a half years in the Ready Reserves.

In Time for '59

Since the bill will almost certainly not be passed before June and probably will not go into effect until later in the year, few present college students will be eligible for this program since they will have passed the age of 19. It is possible, however, that the program will be readied in time for the class of '59 to take advantage of it.

The hitch in the plan, of course, is the long-term obligation in the Ready Reserves. This means that if a man should fail to participate in the drills and summer camps he could be called back to serve out his additional year and a half on active duty. There is some feeling here that a requirement of nine and a half years of active reserve duty is too much, and some adjustment may be made in this by Congress.

First to Be Called

But the objection to the reserve demands on the six-month trainee will probably be much less than to the six year reserve requirements on the regular two-year inductee or enlistee. There is strong feeling that a man who serves two years of active duty, particularly in combat, should not be required to serve for six years in the Ready Reserve in which he not only must participate in training but is the first to be called back in time of war.

One of the chief objections to the plan will probably be that it fails to create a truly non-veteran reserve. The need for a non-veteran reserve became painfully obvious in the Korean war when many of the men who were being called to serve were World War II veterans participating in Ready Reserve units. Ever since then the need has been recognized for the development of a system under which the Ready or "Service Callable" Reserve would be composed of trained, but non-veteran, troops.