 It's time for the Lawn Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, a presentation of the Lawn Jean Wettner Watch Company, maker of Lawn Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wettner, distinguished companion to the world-honored Lawn Jean. Good evening. This is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Lawn Jean Chronoscope? Larry Lassur and Kenneth Crawford, National Affairs Editor of Newsweek Magazine. Our distinguished guest for this evening is the Honorable Frank C. Osmers, United States Representative from New Jersey. No war has ever been so well publicized as the possible conflict between this country and Red China, over those little islands called Kimoy and Matsu off the China mainland. And such are the conflicting estimates of enemy capabilities that we don't know whether the war will ever start, or indeed whether the guns have opened up while we're doing this very broadcast. Representative Osmers, as a veteran of World War II and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, just what would happen if we were engaged in a conflict over those islands? Is our army capable of handling it and winning it? Well, I don't believe, Larry, that if we became involved in any situation involving the Chinese mainland, I don't believe that our army as such, our ground forces would invade the mainland of China, but it would be primarily a naval and air force action. Do you believe that we would bomb the mainland of China? It certainly is my belief that we would bomb the tactical air bases which were being used to attack our forces in that area. Would they bomb? I would say from what the President said the other day that we would use the small nuclear weapon for that purpose. Well, Representative Osmers, if we use these tiny A-bombs on the heads of Chinese adversaries, isn't there a possibility we might bring some very big ones down in our own heads to Russia's alliance with them? There is always that possibility that if we fight fire with fire, we may have fire used back against us. That is true. What about our alliance potential in India and Indonesia, countries with tremendous populations? The very fact that we had used nuclear weapons against asiatics for the second time might lose us these friends forever. I believe that our great danger in the Orient does not stem from the type of weapon that we might use in a given situation. Our great danger there, in my opinion, lies in the possibility that we would not be decisive in our actions and that we would therefore lose face as we have already done in several situations. Mr. Osmers, what is your judgment about what will happen there? There seems to be some doubt as to whether this attack actually will take place or not. Well, Mr. Corbett, I think that there will be a great deal of backing and filling, but no actual hostilities in the accepted sense until the Big Four conferences and the Bandung Conference and so on are held that it will be used as a talking point and probably be brought before the Big Four conference as one of the items upon which we might negotiate with the Reds. Well, Congressman Osmers, if, as you say, it doesn't seem strategically possible that we would employ the United States Army on the mainland of Asia, especially from those ports of Amoy and Fuchow that since there is no strategic point directly behind them, why indeed would we use the nuclear weapons if there were nothing to be gained by? Well, I am assuming that we accept the government's policy to defend the Formosa and the Pescadori Islands and if we do make that assumption, it then would be assumed that we would use our nuclear weapons against the mainland of Red China for the purpose of preventing them from taking the objective which we have sworn to defend so that we would be assuming an aggressive defensive attitude in connection with knocking out those installations. Well, Mr. Osmers, is it not possible that the nationalist Chinese will be able themselves to defend those islands so the question of our intervention may not arise? Well, I don't believe that while I do have confidence that the nationalist Chinese in a ground-four sense in an infantry sense would be able to defend the islands against any normal type of over-water operation. The Chinese Reds do not have, as I can learn, the type of marine support that they would need to cross that water unless they had complete air superiority and naval superiority and I feel sure that our forces in both of those fields there are superior to theirs. Well, Representative Osmers, it seems to me that in World War II, which we all remember and indeed in which you took a part in the Pacific, that we warned the Japanese moving against British Singapore or against the Dutch Indies not only moved against them both but hit us at the same time what is there to prevent or to make one think that this action against the Formosa and or against the Komoya Matsu would be an isolated action. It might hit in Korea, in Indochina and in that direction at the same time would our army be capable of handling it? I would say that our army and our ground forces at the present time would not be capable of handling an operation such as you've outlined where they had a free-pronged ground-force attack. We would not presently have the ground forces that could do that but we would have to do exactly what we did in the situation that you referred to. We would have to suffer initial losses and then go back as we did in World War II. Well, as a veteran and a Republican, then why have we cut back the army to the extent we have 140,000 men if we're not capable of handling any of the missions which the army is called upon to perform? Well, I suppose that no matter what army figure should be decided on whether it is the 2,850,000 that has been proposed by the administration or whether it was any other figure from 1 to 10 million that there would be agreement that that was the proper size of the army. This figure of 2,850,000, roughly a million men in the army, a million in the air force and 850,000 in the Navy and Marines is the result of the estimate of the Department of Defense as to the army that we will need and can support during the period of uneasy peace that we seem to be in at this time. Is this new reserve plan of yours going to build up the army and beef it up or is it like universal military training? The reserve plan will have little or no effect on the active forces of the army. The main change that will be made under the new reserve plan is to provide an additional category of training and of providing for a reserve. At the moment we have a nominal reserve of nearly 3 million. However, of the 3 million we have about 700,000 of them including the National Guard in an active status and the proposal is to take volunteers a minimum of 100,000 and a maximum of 250,000 at any one time train them for six months and then give them after that seven and a half years of reserve training which they can work out in either 48 drills and two weeks of camp or in 30 days of active duty or if they fail to do that the bill provides that they may be ordered to 45 days of active duty. If they fail to honor that call they would then become subject to military justice. Mr. Osmers, this falls far short of universal military training, does it not? Well it falls completely short of universal military training. At first place it is not universal. It is volunteer in providing the forces that go into it. We now produce a class each year of young men approximately 1,100,000. We need approximately 700,000 men each year to keep our armed forces at the level that with the settlements and the failure to re-enlist and the end of draft terms we need 700,000 men and we will only use at a maximum of 250,000 so there will still be some young men who will not receive any call at all under the proposed program. Congressman Osmers, the world board of the Methodist Church is dead against any form of military training which in any way resembles universal military training. What assurances of you that your reserve plan is ever going to pass against that sort of opposition? Well I would say that the reserve plan has an excellent chance of passage because it is not universal military training. If it were universal military training I think it would have a very hard job of getting through but it is not in fact universal military training and many church groups have opposed the use of compulsion for religious grounds. We have a number of people in this country who are honestly pacifists such as the Quakers and who object to the carrying of arms and those groups of course object to any type of compulsion at all. Well may I ask Congressman Osmers, what exactly are the differences between your plan of training reservists and universal military training? Well universal military training in its classical accepted sense would mean that at some age in a young man's life let us say 18 years of age every young man in the country who was physically fit would be called up for a stated period of military duty. Every young man regardless of his background, his education, his situation, his life as opposed to that we now use a selective service basis. Now we do not need a million one hundred thousand each year so that we don't need universal military training. Well already there have been complaints we haven't got enough engineers in this country to run our technical machine. Is your plan going to take care of screening out people of such a talent so that we can have a technical army such as you forecast in a war against China? The selective service, the selective service system of course takes that into account to a considerable degree now and that will continue to be so. In connection with the new program of the six month enlistee with seven and a half years of reserve duty subsequent to that you have young men who have not yet attained the scientific skills. I have introduced a bill which of course we are not discussing here tonight which would provide for a system of defense scholarships for scientific students and would exempt them from normal military duty and would provide them with scientific education at the cost of the government and would provide for at least a thousand of them each year. Thank you very much for everything Frank Osmers of New Jersey. The opinions expressed on the launch in Chronoscope were those of the speakers. The editorial board for this edition of the launch in Chronoscope was Larry Lesser and Kenneth Crawford. Our distinguished guest was the Honorable Frank C. Osmers United States representative from New Jersey. If you ever buy an automatic that is a self winding watch please bear in mind that an automatic is even more complicated than a hand wound watch and for that reason it'll pay you to make sure that the automatic watch you select bears the name Laun Jean because Laun Jean makes the world's most advanced automatic watches. Now here are the facts. An automatic watch is wound by a tiny pendulum called a rotor which swings back and forth with the motions of your wrist. Now this diagram represents the winding rotor of an ordinary automatic. See how it moves only in half a circle. And this diagram represents the Laun Jean automatic. Every Laun Jean automatic watch contains the 360 degree full swing winding rotor. A development pioneered by Laun Jean engineers. 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We invite you to join us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening at this same time for the Laun Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour, broadcast on behalf of Laun Jean, the world's most honored watch and Wittner Distinguished Companion to the World Honored Laun Jean. This is Frank Knight reminding you that Laun Jean and Wittner watches are sold and serviced from coast to coast by more than 4,000 leading jewelers who proudly display this emblem, agency for Laun Jean Wittner watches.