The Draft: Luck v. the Calendar

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While groping for peace, Richard Nixon still faces the grim business of managing war. Last week he sought to humanize the machinery by which his soldiers are conscripted. "The present draft arrangements," he said in a message to Congress, "make it extremely difficult for most young people to plan intelligently as they make some of the most important decisions of their lives, decisions concerning education, career, marriage and family."

The President asked for reforms that would replace an inflexible calendar with random chance. The plan, based on a lottery principle, would start with the youngest eligible men rather than with the oldest, as at present. Men are now liable for induction between the ages of 19 and 26. The new system would reduce the seven-year twitch to one. Among men of roughly the same age, the iron rule of oldest first, even if the difference is only a few days, would be removed.

Scrambled Year. The government would establish a "prime age group" of 19-year-olds and draw from its ranks. Birth dates would determine the order of priority, but they would be arranged randomly instead of chronologically. A "Selective Service year" would be constructed annually. It could begin with any date, say Oct. 17, followed by other ad hoc choices: Jan. 4, July 20, April 27 and so on. The 365 dates would probably be drawn from a fishbowl, as were the numbers of the first draftees in World War II. Young men born on the first date in the scrambled year would be the first to face induction.

If a man knew that his birth date fell in the latter half of the sequence, he could pretty well forget about military service at present draft levels because only about half of the potential 600,000-man pool would be taken. If he made it through his 19th year without being drafted, he would be free unless a national emergency occurred that exhausted the supply of 19-year-olds.

The proposal would retain undergraduate college deferments, a "wise national investment" in Nixon's view. A student would be draft-proof until he graduated or left school. Then he would go into the prime age group for a year as if he were still 19.

Rivers' Role. The proposals were hardly original with the Nixon Administration. Lyndon Johnson put forward a similar plan, and several bills in Congress have the same general goals. The obstacle has been the House Armed Services Committee and its chairman, Mendel Rivers of South Carolina. Rivers fears that most draft-reform plans are the first step toward centralizing Selective Service and reducing the autonomy of the nation's 4,000 local draft boards. However, he now professes to have an open mind, and his conversion could be crucial. The reforms have a good chance of making it through the Senate.