University of Virginia Library

Hershey Kicked Upstairs

As the President in the White House observed
Friday, General Louis B. Horshey deserves
a hearty "well done" from a grateful
nation on the occasion of his being booted
upstairs from his position as head of the Selective
Service System. So here's ours.

Well done, General Hershey. You managed,
with the help of influential friends on Capitol
Hill, to stay in your job sixteen years beyond
the retirement age for Army officers, making
yourself well-nigh synonymous with the draft
we all love so much. You took something
completely foreign to the American ethic,
compulsory military service in peacetime, and
helped to make it a national institution.

Well done, General Hershey. Tears will always
well in our eyes when we think of your
opinion of the right to dissent. You instructed
your draft boards, which you rarely bothered
to make racially or residentially representative
of their communities, to immediately revoke
the deferments of anyone so bold as to protest.
But then you showed us the right way to
dissent when you flouted the Supreme Court
ruling that this practice was unconstitutional
by refusing to ask your draft boards to stop
doing it. We admire the way you refused to let
the fact that you never served in combat deter
you from sending those bearded pinkos into
the rice paddies.

But now you have been kicked upstairs because
the President didn't have the guts to;
stick by you when the going got a little tough
Well, you told us you would work best with
George Wallace anyway. It's only a shame that
there weren't enough of your kind of patriots
left in the country to elect him. Now you are
gone, and we can only console ourselves by
remembering that the work you did will live
after you and that the Armed Forces are still
full of men like you whose influence shows no
sign of waning. We trust that they can be
counted on to do their utmost to preserve the
ideals you stood for.

So as you fade away, (for old soldiers
never die) we hope it is some consolation to
you to have our heartfelt "well done" ringing
in your ears, General Hershey.