There is one step now proposed, supported by federal government propaganda, which seems to me to strike at the extremely basis of freedom. It is the proposal that we establish compulsory military training in time of peace. The power to take a young boy from his house and subject him to complete government discipline is the most severe restriction on flexibility that can be thought of. Lots of who have accepted the concept favor a similar government-controlled training for all ladies.
There is no doubt that the government, and particularly the War and Navy departments, are straining every nerve to protect the enactment of this legislation. Secret conferences are being kept in the Pentagon Structure and elsewhere. Recently the president of some forty or more women’s companies were welcomed there, and it is said they were attended to by the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the Under Secretary of State, General Marshall, Admiral King, and other high-ranking officers. The girls were requested not to divulge the substance of the speeches made or recognize the War Department or its officials with the sponsorship of the plan …
Federal government propaganda is bad enough when it is open, but it is untenable when secret. We might anticipate a flood of open propaganda after the ground has been prepared, and everybody who is opposed to the strategy will be pictured when it comes to war and for unpreparedness.
We have battled this war to preserve our institutions, not to alter them. We have actually battled it to permit us to exercise our problems here in your home on a tranquil structure, not on a structure controlled by military preparations for another war. The question of the very best form of military company need to not be an emotional issue. It ought to be handled by argument and not by propaganda. However the methods being used threaten the flexibility of this nation, for if they achieve success they can be used to attach upon us every sort of regulation, rate control for company, wage control for labor, production control for farmers … Military conscription is essentially totalitarian. It has actually been developed for the most part in totalitarian countries and their totalitarians led by Napoleon and Bismarck. It has actually heretofore been established by aggressor nations. It is stated it would ensure peace by emphasizing the incredible military potential of this nation. Definitely we have actually highlighted that enough in this war. No one can doubt it.
On the contrary, if we develop conscription every other nation worldwide will feel required to do the same. It would establish militarism on a high pedestal throughout the world as the objective of all the world. Militarism has always led to war and not peace.
Conscription was no insurance coverage of triumph in France, in Germany, or in Italy. The nations with military conscription found that it was only an event and not the determining consider defense or in victory.
Military training by conscription implies the total regimentation of the person at his most formative duration for a period of twelve months. If we confess that in peacetime we can deprive a man of all liberty and voice and liberty of action, if we can take him from his family and his house, then we can do the same with labor, we can order the farmer to produce and we can take control of any company. If we can draft males, it is tough to discover an argument against drafting capital.
Those who enthusiastically orate of returning to capitalism and at the same time advocate peacetime conscription are blind to the implications of this policy. They are absolutely inconsistent in their position. Because of its psychological impact on every person, since it is the most extreme type of obsession, military conscription will be more the test of our entire philosophy than any other policy.
Some state it is unconstitutional. It makes extremely little distinction whether it actually violates the regards to the Constitution. It protests the basic policy of America and the American Country. If embraced, it will color our whole future. We will have fought to abolish totalitarianism on the planet, just to set it up in the United States.
From a speech provided by Senator Taft at the Gettysburg National Cemetery 1946.