272 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



Director of Selective Service entitled Selective Service as the Tide of War 

 Turns: 



. . . On February 26, 1944, the President sent to the Director of Selective Service 

 and to the Chairman of the War Manpower Commission a memorandum which 

 read in part: "The present allocations of personnel to the armed forces cannot be 

 further reduced, and there is a very real danger in our failure to supply trained 

 replacements at the dme and in the numbers required. Selective Service has not 

 delivered the quantity of men who were expected ... we are still short approxi- 

 mately 200,000 trained men . . . Today, as a result, we are forced to emasculate 

 college courses and trained divisions and other units. The Army will not reach its 

 planned January strength until sometime in April, or even later if Selective Service 

 continues to fall behind on its quotas. The Nation's manpower pool has been 

 dangerously depleted by liberal deferments and I am convinced that in this 

 respect we have been overly lenient, particularly with regard to the younger 

 men . . . Deferments for industry include over a million nonfathers, of whom 

 380,000 are under 26 years of age. Of almost a million nonfathers deferred in 

 agriculture, over 550,000 are under 26. Agriculture and industry should release 

 the younger men who are physically qualified for military service. The present 

 situation is so grave that I feel the time has come to review all occupational 

 deferments with a view to speedily making available the personnel required by 

 the armed forces." 



The President's memorandum was sent to all Selective Service local and 

 appeal boards with an instruction to review^ all cases of registrants aged 18 

 through 37 who held occupational deferments, "giving particular attention 

 to registrants under 26 years of age." A telegram of March 24 from national 

 headquarters required the calling of all registrants under 26 to report for 

 preinduction examination whether or not they still held occupational de- 

 ferments (other than those in agriculture). On March 25 OSRD con- 

 tractors were instructed to submit a new form 42A Special for each man 

 under the age of 26 for whom they desired deferment regardless of pre- 

 vious requests for deferment. 



Naturally all this had an upsetting effect upon OSRD contract opera- 

 tions. In the fields in which OSRD was operating most actively many of 

 the key men were under 26 largely because they were dealing with rela- 

 tively new techniques in which older men had not been trained. Many a 

 conference was held by OSRD officials with Selective Service, the War 

 Manpower Commission, the Army, and the Navy to insure that too literal 

 a compliance with the President's instruction of February 26 should not 

 completely wreck large segments of the OSRD program. The contractors 

 were vigorous in their statements as to the work which they could not do 

 if key individuals were lost, and the men themselves were considerably 

 disturbed in their own minds as to where their duty lay. The pressures 

 against occupational deferment designed primarily to squeeze out unneces- 

 sary deferments tended to throw a shadow over all occupational defer- 



