Letter from E. R. Adams to President Harry S. Truman

1153-1/2 Lincoln Ave. Toledo 7, Ohio October 23, 1945 Dear Mr. President: I have been writing my Congressmen and Senators regarding what I call the foolish idea of taking our young men out of college and forcing them into the armed services and your radio speech of today added to the turmoil of of my mind and the minds of all the fathers and mothers of the young men who have been drafted since the war is over. I think you have caused a lot of dissention by your double talk where you said in one breath that it would be a civilian army and in the next that it would be a years conscription. And conscription is the word and you cannot and will not be allowed to call it anything else. I have spent almost all of the last fifteen years convincing our young man that it was to his advantage to have a higher education. I have taken him to colleges, introduced him to college men and have done everything in my power to show him that a higher education is what he really needs. He just started this fall in a pre-med course in college and a week ago was yanked out into the armed services. He tells me that the men returning from the wars are not good students as a rule. That has been confirmed by his professors and other classmates and I think that a year in our armed services will not be good for young men such as he. I do think that if a boy is a problem at home or a problem to his community that our armed service is a wonderful place for him. That I believe with all my heart but I do not believe that our country should go into the class rooms of our colleges and force our young men to give up their education because some militarist in Washington has sold you on the idea that that's what we need. If you believe that a year's service in the armed forces is necessary for these young men wouldn't it be far better to encourage them to go to college and each summer for four years conscript them and give them a military training that they will remember for the rest of their lives. This point could be worked out so many different ways. We could take any youngster and make it optional with his parents whether the boy should serve twelve consecutive months or 2 six months periods or 4 three months periods. In that way you would not be breaking up the American home and would not be retarding or disallusioning these young men about their higher education. This would give them the military training at the time when they can best afford to spend the time, which in the case of the college men would be in the summer time or in the case of other boys who are not in college at the time they could best afford to spend it. This I believe would suit your labor unions, your church groups and the parents and relatives of the se young men in college such as I.