Henderson Daily Dispatch

Before Fathers Go

Unless Congress acts in time to forestall the plans mothers lay, begin putting into effect after October 1 deadline designs Washington.

While it is possible that last minute returning in mid-September in a two months session will have a voice in this procedure, Congress probably works slowly, and will have only two weeks in which to enact prohibitive legislation. It does so at all in time to benefit unmarried men with children.

No definite statistics are available as to the exact size of the nation's military establishment at the present time. Rough guesses are that some six million men are under arms. Somewhere we have seen statements that two million of these are overseas. We have also seen estimates that at the present rate of shipments abroad there would still be two million men left in camps in this country at the end of 1943. In other words drafted after the present time. We were watching the figures, but we've read them.

Likewise, no accurate count is available as to the present supply of men who have been released for military duty. It is known, however, that thousands have been turned down because of physical defects, some of them minor, and including syphilis infection. Statements have appeared in print, too, that a new virus has been discovered which virtually cures the disease, or at least brings it beyond the contagious stage in the brief period of two weeks. At least it can be cured.

Why not, then, take men so infected and submit them to the treatment and put them into service before digging into the reserve pool of fathers, thus breaking up legitimate families and in many instances removing men from useful employment in civilian life? Instead, single men thus incapacitated, some by deliberation, are rejected for military service and sent back to civilian life, necessitating calling of fathers who are needed at home and ought to be permitted to remain there. The procedure doesn't make sense to us. Congress would be fully justified in looking into the situation. But it must act with greater speed than usual if it is to rescue fathers from the grasp of the selective service.

Congress will return to Washington a month hence fresh from the people—at least those members will who have made it a point to contact their constituents instead of launching out on junkets at public expense. They will know what the people are thinking, and more than one bureaucratic apple cart may be upset when the legislators get into action again.