National Affairs: Send Them Home

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With each new mail delivery, Congressmen got more jittery. The angry letters, pouring in last week from the folks at home and the boys abroad, were all but unanimous: speed up demobilization, or else. Sweating under the mounting pressure, Senate Military Affairs Committeemen talked nervously of "passing a bill." When General MacArthur, in Tokyo, guesstimated he could police Japan with 200,000 men (see INTERNATIONAL), the pot boiled.

In this situation there was only one thing for the Army to do. Sad-eyed General George Catlett Marshall, chief of staff, stepped up to explain. At the Library of Congress he faced 350 members of Congress, half a hundred G.I.s and WACs whom Alben Barkley, Senate majority leader, had told to come on in.

For an hour, General Marshall spoke with his usual even assurance, as usual without notes. Highlights: the point score for discharge will be down to 60 by Nov. 1; everybody with two years of service can hope to get out this winter; separations are running 17,000 a day, will shortly exceed 700,000 a month; the demobilization rate has nothing to do with the postwar Army's size.

When he finished, there was not a single question. The pressure went down, visibly. The Gallup poll found that most people were satisfied with the rate of discharge. But before long, Congressmen expected the heat would be on again.