Americans hate war. But once they are provoked to defend themselves against those who threaten their security, they mobilize with unparalleled swiftness and energy. While the battle is on, there is no sacrifice of men or treasure too great for them to make.

Once hostilities are over, Americans are as spontaneous and as headlong in their eagerness to return to civilian life. No people in history have been known to disengage themselves so quickly from the ways of war.

This impatience is the expression of a deeply rooted national ideal to want to live at peace. But the tragic experience following World War I taught us that this admirable trait could lead to catastrophe. We needed to temper and adjust the rate of the demobilization of our forces, so we would be able to meet our new obligations in the world.

The fighting in Europe had hardly ended when pressure began to build up for the release of men in the armed forces. With the end of hostilities in the Pacific, the public demand for the discharge of the millions of men in the service became insistent.

A “point” system for determining eligibility for discharge on the basis of length of service, combat duty, time overseas, and parenthood credit was put into effect shortly after V-E Day, and on the eve of the Japanese surrender, General Marshall sent me a memorandum setting forth the problem and how he proposed to handle it.

The War Department was confronted with the question of the morale of the soldiers who had undergone the longest and most difficult service, Marshall pointed out, and therefore they should be the first to be demobilized and have the first chance at civilian jobs. If this policy was to be put into effect, there were many service units with “low scores” that had already returned home from Europe that ought to be sent to the Pacific. We would have to do this in order to meet General MacArthur’s requirements for occupational troops.

In any event, Marshall told me, many of these low-point units would have to be held in service for some time as a reserve pending the development of events, and other low-point men already returned to the United States would be substituted in the Army administrative establishment in order to release for demobilization the high-point men still in service there.

The Army’s plan was to stop at once the flow of low-point units from Europe. Instead, high-point units in Europe would be sent home for demobilization. If this plan was followed, Marshall reported, there would be no cause for criticizing the policy of demobilization in so far as the men in Europe were concerned. While the Pacific Theater would still have a huge operational job to complete, the flow of high-point men home from there would continue, and low-point replacements would be sent out as they were needed. The soldiers who had fought so long in the Pacific would, in this way, have the same opportunities as those who had fought in Europe.

Nevertheless, the criticisms came. On August 23, only nine days after the capitulation of Japan, I took occasion to point out at a press conference that there had already been considerable criticism of the demobilization program. I explained, however, that I had conferred with the Secretaries of War and Navy, Chief of Staff General Marshall, and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral King, and that I was convinced that they were doing everything possible to expedite the undertaking.

At the August 31 meeting of the Cabinet, I asked Under Secretary of War Patterson to express his views on the movement of military personnel from foreign theaters. He stated that all that could be done to get men home as soon as possible was being done. The Army, he said, had plans for the movement of 5.5 million men back to the United States by July 1, 1946. Under Secretary of the Navy Gates reported at the same meeting that the Navy would be demobilizing at the rate of 260,000 per month after the program got under way.

Nevertheless, the demand for speedier demobilization continued to increase. On September 18, I issued a statement assuring the American people that the return of servicemen from the fighting fronts of the world to their homes was proceeding as fast as the circumstances permitted. In less than one month after the day of Japan’s surrender, the number of men discharged each day from the Army had risen from 4,200 to more than 15,200. Our soldiers were being returned to civilian life at a rate in excess of 650 per hour. This rate, I announced, would be steadily increased to more than 25,000 discharges per day by January 1946.

Only those who were in a position to understand the over-all operation could realize what an enormous task confronted the government in demobilizing and redeploying almost 12 million men within a period of a few months. While our own numbers were staggering when it was considered what they meant in terms of ships, rail transport, and the extensive staffs required to carry out processing before discharge, our problem was compounded by the obligation to consider the demobilization needs of our Allies, particularly Great Britain.

Since early in the war, we had been making full use of Britain’s three largest vessels - the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, and the Aquitania - for the transportation of American troops to and from the battle areas. In October 1945, however, the British government requested the return of these ships, or provision of equivalent American transport facilities. Prime Minister Attlee called my attention to the fact that many of their men had been on active service and away from their homes for five or more years and that the demands for their early return, now that hostilities were over, had become loud and insistent. The Prime Minister also reminded me that the arrangement to loan us the two Queens and the Aquitania had been conditioned solely on the urgency of redeploying American forces for the war against Japan. With the unexpected early termination of the Japanese war, Attlee pointed out, these conditions had ceased to exist.

The British fully realized the desire on the part of the American people to welcome back their soldiers and airmen who had been fighting in Europe. Their own urgent necessities, however, said Attlee, now compelled them to request us to loan them, in return for the Queens and the Aquitania, an equivalent “personnel lift” in American-controlled troopships for use between India and Australia and the United Kingdom.

Our Chiefs of Staff had told the British that they regretted “that the necessity to return U.S. forces from Europe as expeditiously as possible requires all lifts scheduled under present agreements to December, 1945, and that therefore they are unable to provide assistance in U.S. controlled troop shipping before the end of 1945.” On the other hand, I was impressed by Attlee’s cable. “I shall speak with the utmost frankness,” his message concluded. “While so many of our troops overseas are awaiting repatriation after nearly six years of war and of separation from their families, I cannot continue to justify to the British public the use of our three biggest ships in the American service. I am reluctant to suggest the return of the Queens and the Aquitania. I must, however, ask you most earnestly, Mr. President, to provide us in the immediate future with an equivalent lift for these three ships.”

There could be no doubt that Attlee was right, and I cabled him:

“I have directed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to return to you the two Queens and the Aquitania or to provide equivalent personnel lift, the details to be worked out with your staff representatives here.”

The progress of our own demobilization program was reviewed at a Cabinet meeting on October 26. Secretary of the Navy Forrestal and Secretary of War Patterson outlined the program and expressed the warning that its acceleration threatened to jeopardize our strategic position in the midst of the postwar tensions that were building up around the world. I agreed entirely with this view and stated at that meeting that, so far as I was concerned, the program we were following was no longer demobilization - it was disintegration of our armed forces.

Despite the dangerous speed with which the program was being carried out, public pressure on me and on the heads of the services for even faster demobilization continued to mount. Many letters from parents and appeals from organizations came to me pleading for the release of various groups. Members of the Congress were reminding me that their constituencies were bombarding them with telegrams and letters. On January 8, 1946, I issued a statement in which I said that, while I recognized the anxiety and impatience of families, it was just not possible to discharge every member of the armed forces promptly. I pointed out that the Army had already released more than 4.75 million men and women since the European fighting had stopped. The Navy, out of a peak strength of 3.5 million, had returned almost a million and a quarter persons to civilian life. From the Marine Corps, which totaled nearly 486,000 at the end of the war, more than 183,000 had been discharged. The Coast Guard had demobilized over 74,000 of its 180,000 men.

I sympathized with parents still waiting for their sons, and with the wives and children longing to see their husbands and fathers again. I knew that many young men were eager to continue their education or return to their jobs. But my overriding responsibility as President of the United States was the security and welfare of the nation as a whole. We had an obligation as a leading nation to build a firm foundation for the future peace of the world. The future of the country was as much at stake as it had been in the days of the war.

On April 17, 1946, at a press conference in the White House, I called attention to the fact that discharges in the Army had reached nearly 7 million. I termed this “the most remarkable demobilization in the history of the world, or ‘disintegration,’ if you want to call it that.”

Our frenzied demobilization, in fact, grew out of our antagonism toward maintaining a large standing army. There was only one alternative, in my opinion, and that was a prepared soldier-citizenry. I have held this view for thirty years - ever since World War I. From the beginning of my administration in 1945, I had publicly favored a program of military training for boys and young men. At a press conference on August 16, I was asked if I would propose peacetime conscription. I replied that I would ask the Congress to enact a program of universal training for American youth.

At a Cabinet meeting on August 31, I presented a detailed preliminary plan for national military security which included universal training. I asked for the views and recommendations of each member of the Cabinet, and the general reaction was favorable. I have always believed that military preparedness is necessary to national security. History has proved that many times. President Washington instituted the first military policy of the United States when he recommended a universal draft as a guarantee of basic minimum military protection for the Republic against aggressors. Washington’s policy was not implemented until 1917, when President Wilson authorized the first compulsory draft. During the nation’s other great crisis in the 1860’s, the lack of a firm military policy resulted in disgraceful draft riots and mob actions and in the corrupt practice of selling draft exemptions to individuals who could raise the required sum.

I told the Cabinet that the time had come to initiate a new military policy. If we were to maintain leadership among other nations, we must continue to be strong in a military way.

In the twenty-one-point message on domestic legislation of September 6, 1945, I notified the Congress that I would soon communicate further with respect to a long-range program of national military security, and on October 22, I sent to Capitol Hill my recommendations concerning one aspect of that program - universal training. What I was proposing, in brief, was a system of universal training during peacetime which would provide this country with a well-trained and effectively organized citizen reserve to reinforce the professional armed forces in times of danger, as decided upon by the Congress. I pointed out that the latent strength of our untrained citizenry was no longer sufficient protection and that if attack should come again, as it did at Pearl Harbor, we could never again count on the luxury of time with which to arm ourselves and strike back. Our geographic security was forever gone - gone with the advent of the atomic bomb, the rocket, and modern airborne armies.

I recommended that we create a postwar military organization that would contain three basic elements: (1) a comparatively small Army, Navy, and Marine Corps; (2) a greatly strengthened National Guard and Organized Reserve for the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps; and (3) a General Reserve composed of all the male citizens of the United States who had received training. This General Reserve would be provided by adoption of a plan for universal military training, but members would have no obligation to serve at home or abroad unless called to the service by an act of the Congress.

The plan was thoroughly democratic and was not intended to take the place of the Selective Service System. Young men who received training under the plan would not be members of the armed services, but civilians who could be mobilized into the armed services in time of danger, only to augment the strength of the regular and reserve forces. I suggested a period of training for one year for eighteen-year-olds, with no exemptions except for total physical disqualification. After one year of training, the trainee would become a member of the General Reserve for six years and, subsequently, would be placed in a secondary reserve status.

This was not a military training program in the conventional sense. The military phase was incidental to what I had in mind. While the training was to offer every qualified young man a chance to perfect himself for the service of his country in some military capacity, I envisioned a program that would at the same time provide ample opportunity for self-improvement. Part of the training was calculated to develop skills that could be used in civilian life, to raise the physical standards of the nation’s manpower, to lower the illiteracy rate, to develop citizenship responsibilities, and to foster the moral and spiritual welfare of our young people.

These were not theoretical goals. This was what was unique about the plan I contemplated - it was a universal training program, not just a military program. The educational and special training benefits were strong arguments in themselves for immediate legislation setting up the universal training program. But the basic reason for my proposed plan was still to guarantee the safety and freedom of the United States against any potential aggressor.

I am certain that if we had had a training program for American youth we would not have had a rejection of 34 percent of our young men because of physical defects. That is what we had among those drafted and those who volunteered during World War II.

I am sure that a large part of that 34 percent could have been made physically fit and self-supporting with the right sort of treatment. At the same time, under this plan we could teach citizenship to the teenagers and help show them how to get along with their fellow men and still stick to their own individual beliefs.

I am morally certain that if Congress had gone into the program thoroughly in 1945, when I first recommended it, we would have had a pool of basically trained men which would have made the Soviets hesitate in their program of expansion in certain strategic parts of the world.

Housing was one of the acute postwar problems with which I had to deal. More than a million families were living “doubled up” with other families in the fall of 1945 because of a critical housing shortage. This shortage had been building up over a period of years. We entered the war with a housing deficit, and the war had served to widen the gap. At the same time that building materials and manpower were engaged in the all-out war effort instead of home construction, marriages increased at far above the normal rate. Wars have always stimulated marriages, and with the return of millions of veterans and the additional marriages that followed, the immediate demand for new housing was far in excess of the industry’s capacity to produce.

In October, I directed the Federal Public Housing Authority to release for sale the 320,000 temporary housing units which the government had erected around war plants now shut down, along with 35,000 trailers. These units, which were sold at no more than the cost to tear them down, helped provide some emergency relief, but of course, had little effect on alleviating the general shortage. Nothing less than several years of peak production would really solve the problem. It would take time to get the construction industry into full operation, and I knew that we would do well to have more than 500,000 housing units built in 1946. Veterans were given preference in all federal housing units, but it was impossible to meet their needs at once or to solve the housing problems of millions of war workers and others who were still confronted with substandard or inadequate conditions.

In December 1945, I asked for a report on the housing situation from the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, and an outline of what was being done. John W. Snyder, OWMR Director, advised me that his agency was taking energetic action under a six-point program. The six objectives were; (1) to increase the supply of building materials; (2) to strengthen inventory controls to prevent hoarding; (3) to strengthen price controls over building materials; (4) to discourage unsound lending practices and speculation; (5) to enlist industry support in increasing production and fighting inflation; and (6) to provide information and advisory service on home values to the public.

Under this program, the executive agencies had combined their powers to meet emergency situations. Price increases, special manpower recruiting by the United States Employment Service, priorities and allocations of machinery and material were authorized in cases where more production was needed. During 1945, residential building rose from $56 million in June - normally a peak month - to $125 million in December, although this level was still extremely low in relation to the country’s home-building needs.

The federal government instituted a series of meetings with industry and with community groups during December in an effort to come to grips with the problem on a cooperative basis. Other meetings were held with home-financing institutions, with real estate boards, and with consumer groups. The National Housing Administrator requested the mayors of all communities with severe housing problems to set up emergency housing committees to work with the federal government for emergency relief in their areas.

In addition to this program, I encouraged a speed-up in the release of surplus housing units and building materials held by the government, with preference for veterans. I favored a regulation establishing priorities on building materials which would channel about 50 percent of all building materials into housing units costing $10,000 or less. Recognizing the threat of inflation in the field of housing to be the most menacing in our economy, I requested ceiling prices on old and new housing, curbs on unsound lending practices, and rent control.

To carry out these policies, I appointed Wilson Wyatt, formerly mayor of Louisville, to the new position of Housing Expediter in the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. To Wyatt was assigned the responsibility for coordinating and expediting the housing program and for recommending new steps that might be needed to meet new problems. I wanted him to search out all bottlenecks, at whatever level of industry or government they might be concealed, and to break them, in order to make the machinery of housing production run as smoothly and as speedily as possible.

In reviewing the housing situation in my talk to the people on January 3, 1946, I said: “Of the three major components which make up our standard of living - food, clothing, and housing - housing presents our most difficult problem.” I cited to the Congress our need for about 5 million additional homes at once, although the greatest number of homes that had ever been built in one year before the war was less than 1 million. It was clear, I told the Congress, that this was an emergency problem that demanded an emergency method of solution. And five weeks later, I presented to the Congress a veterans’ emergency housing program, with the request that legislation be promptly enacted for carrying out the program.

Meanwhile, the shortage had become acute, particularly where veterans and their families were concerned. Thousands were finding it impossible to obtain adequate housing, in spite of our best efforts to facilitate new construction. Feeling that every effort at relief was worthwhile, I discussed the matter with representatives of the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish faiths and suggested a nationwide “Share the Housing” drive to be conducted through the churches of the land.

Finally, on May 22, the emergency housing bill to provide for the construction of 2.7 million homes for veterans within two years became law. The original proposal submitted by Representative Wright Patman had undergone considerable abuse in both Houses of the Congress before reaching my desk in amended form, but it was nevertheless the first effective legislation designed specifically to cope with the housing shortage. The heart of the program was the appropriation of $400 million for subsidies to spur production of bottleneck materials. The act also increased by $1 million the government’s authority to insure home loans through private capital, thus protecting lenders against risks incurred by selling homes on small down payments.

This was only emergency legislation, and its provisions were not designed to take care of the long-range residential building needs. A permanent law which would implement the construction of 15 million homes over a ten-year period was being worked on by the Congress. This was the Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill providing government loans to small-income builders, slum clearance, and other general inducements to low-cost housing construction. I urged Representative Brent Spence, chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, to take quick action to help solve the problem, but despite my warning and Spence’s tireless efforts, the months dragged by with no decisive action from the Congress. By October, the nation was confronted with an emergency unique in its history.

The minimum goal set by Housing Expediter Wyatt for new construction in 1946 had been 1.2 million homes - mostly for veterans. In October, he reported 708,000 started, and 350,000 completed. Wyatt had performed prodigiously in accomplishing this, but there were many handicaps with which he had to reckon.

The chief deterrent to faster construction was the failure of the Congress to provide the enabling legislation. It had pared $200 million for subsidies from the emergency housing act before approving it in May. It had failed to give prompt enactment to the Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill to provide low-cost housing. It had refused to approve price ceilings on existing housing and had allowed the OPA to expire. Other almost insurmountable handicaps cropped up in the form of material shortages, work stoppages, and the persistent lobbying in Washington by groups from the real estate, lumber, contracting, and other special interests.

It became necessary for me to issue a proclamation on October 25 declaring a state of emergency because of the housing shortage and authorizing free importation of lumber into the country.