thought there were 15 officers. I was on that subcommittee when we acted on that matter, and felt we had practically no choice because we were limited to three officers; and for us to refuse to confirm one would be tantamount to demanding the assignment of another, which we felt would be completely an unreasonable position for the committee to take.

Admiral RUSSELL. That law would have been even more restricted in its initial form. I objected to the way they had it written the first time. They were going to have a 3-year requirement in the Judge Advocate General's office immediately preceding his appointment.

Senator LONG. It has seemed to me we should liberalize that requirement in order that a greater number of officers could be considered to the appointment of Judge Advocate General, and not necessarily meaning that the appointee would be one who did not meet the present qualifications, but to feel that the list of eligibles should not be so limited.

Admiral RUSSELL. Yes, sir. I pointed that out when this law was enacted, and if Congress was kind enough to leave me out of it-they said, "You can stay on as you are"-but I pointed out at the time that there were only-there was only one at that time, I think, who could have qualified.

Senator LONG. I have a bill drafted that I hope will attempt to correct that situation. I hope the Navy Department will go along with it when it is introduced.

We will now hear from Commander Schwab on this subject.

STATEMENT OF COMMANDER HERBERT S. SCHWAB, OFFICE OF THE JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY Commander SCHWAB. I do not have a prepared statement, Sena

tor.

HISTORY OF LAW SPECIALIST PROGRAM OF NAVY

I would like to preface my remarks with a brief history of the law specialist program, because I feel without an understanding of that history we cannot understand the views of the Navy or Commander Akerman's views, for that matter.

I entered the Naval Reserve in 1938. I am fairly typical of most of the law specialists. At that time there was no formal legal program in the Navy. You went to an office of naval procurement.

To show the interest in the Naval Reserve program, they were not interested by virtue of the fact that you were a lawyer, they were interested in you as an officer candidate in some other category. They had no law category.

As it turned out, I was commissioned in 1938 as an ensign at the age of 26, as these Reserve officers were commissioned that Commander Akerman spoke about.

I was commissioned as an ensign in the Supply Corps and I remained on inactive duty from 1938 until I was ordered back to duty in 1941. During the years prior to being ordered to active duty I was engaged in the practice of law in New York. The Navy had no use for that legal talent except in that it might have equipped me to do some other job better.

The Supply Corps has always tended to procure either certified public accountants or lawyers. They find that they are adaptable to that sort of work. I went through the war in the Supply Corps.

When the war ended I remember the commanding officer of my ship asked me whether I planned to stay in the Navy, try to go Regular Navy. I told him no because I wanted to do legal work. I wasn't interested in supply work as a career.

I later learned of the law program prior to going off active duty and applied for transfer to the line as a law specialist. I was transferred to my grade without loss or gain of rank. I then ranked with the class of 1938.

Subsequently, Public Law 210 of the Eighty-first Congress was passed, which in effect gave me 3 years' constructive service and advanced me to rank at the bottom of the class of 1935, and I recite this so you will have an understanding of how Public Law 210 did work.

Why was the Navy behind Public Law 210? They did not oppose it as we are opposing the sections now. The law-specialist category had no legal sanction until the passage of the Officer Personnel Act of 1947, which set up the 709 specialists, including specialists available to the Navy for law-specialists appointments in the Regular Navy. There were 17,000 lawyers in the Naval Reserve. By the time the Officer Personnel Act was passed most of those 17,000 lawyers had gone off active duty and were generally practicing law. The Navy started to procure its law specialists in 1946, prior to the passage of the Officer Personnel Act, and they found that they were having a hard time filling their target. They procured about 200, but the rest of the 75 or 80 they procured was quite difficult because the lawyers then on active duty had been commissioned at a rank commensurate with one thing only, age. The fact that a man was a lawyer didn't impress the office of naval personnel or procurement. His rank was set solely on this table. If you were from 20 to 24, you were an ensign; from 24 to 28 you were a junior grade. I used those figures to illustrate the point.

The Navy felt that because of that these officers whom they were appointing as law specialists, most of them line officers, had not been given rank commensurate with their legal experience. We took some men in after the war who had actually practiced law for more than 15 years and had achieved some eminence in the legal profession.

Had they not given them the 3 years' constructive service, they would have been starting a new career as Navy lawyers, suffering from the disadvantages of the junior rank they held because they weren't commissioned as lawyers, because they were commissioned as line officers.

That is the background for Public Law 210.

At the time Public Law 210 was passed there were on active duty in the Navy less than 30 officers who did not benefit from Public Law 210. Those were the Reserve officers, law specialists who were retained on active duty-voluntary continuous active duty-after the end of the war. The 165 Commander Akerman now speaks of have come on active duty since the Korean incident. At that time there were less than 30. Any discrimination worked by Public Law 210 was worked against those 30. I do not think Admiral Russell or I can make out a strong argument saying they were not discriminated against.

All of those 30, however, would have benefit from the constructive service had they been Regular Navy and why weren't they Regular Navy and why, as Commander Akerman said, were they older?

Many of them could not apply for transfer to the Regular Navy because of the age limitation. They were above the age limit for the grade in which they were carried on the Navy rolls. A few applied and were not selected, but as to those 30, we have no argument.

ATTORNEY SURPLUS IN NAVY

Let's come down to the present time and the present statutes. There are now on active duty in the Navy approximately 800 Reserve officer attorneys. Of that 800, 165 are performing legal duties in law billets. There are inactive in the Reserve in excess of 10,000 officer attorneys. The quota on officer attorneys and law specialists inactive is 1,000. The Marine Corps has on its rolls 10 percent of its Reserve officers who are attorneys. I am coming to this conclusion: We have more attorneys than we need. That is what I want to get across to you.

We feel that the function of the Navy is to operate ships and planes, not a law firm. The law specialists in the Navy are valuable to the Navy only insofar as they help to operate those ships and planes by handling the disciplinary matters, the moral problems, taking care of the man involved in some domestic relation fight, helping him to do a better job either shooting a gun or flying a plane.

Of the 800 officers now on active duty

Senator LONG. You do have a considerable amount of legal work in contracts, much of that being done by civilians, however.

Commander SCHWAB. Yes, sir. Of the 800 officers now in duty approximately 640 are not in legal billets. Where are they? They are at sea, most of them, involuntarily recalled. They were not necessarily attorneys when they came in the Reserve, but they have since acquired their legal education and have been admitted to the bar. That is the case with a large number of the 165 attorneys we have on active duty.

How did we pick those 165 to perform legal duties as opposed to the 640 who are not performing legal duties? When the Korean incident broke, we sent out an invitation to all law specialists, Naval Reserve, inactive, to apply for active duty if they so desired. We have set the requirements for Law Specialists Reserve at the age of 35, and 5 years' practice. The result was that in response to that invitation we had very few applicants. There were officers who were established in their legal practice. They were older. They weren't interested in coming back. A few did, not enough to fill the billets we had to expand by virtue of the two major factors, the naval expansion because of Korea and the law expansion because of the uniform code then coming up.

Senator LONG. What year did you do that?

Commander SCHWAB. They hit us about the same time. Korea occurred in June or July of 1950, and the uniform code was passed in May of that year to be effective a year later.

Senator LONG. Wouldn't it have been more reasonable to set the qualifications at 30 or 32 and 5 years' experience?

Many of your attorneys who would seem the best prospects to me would be men who came out of law schools about 1941 to 1942, at an average age of 23, who would have been about 26 when the war was over and about 31 at that time.

Admiral RUSSELL. May I answer that question, Senator?
Senator LONG. Yes.

Admiral RUSSELL. My predecessor and I worked on that very problem. We approached it from the standpoint of what was the most intelligent employment of a lawyer. In thinking it through, we decided that the older lawyer who might not be able to qualify for sea duty was the fellow who ought to go into a law billet because the people who could go to sea were almost invariably younger. They could do other things. We made that point to the Bureau of Personnel and they went us one better and said, "We have to have a rule to follow." So they established the 35- and 5-year line of demarcation. When it came time to ask for these fellows if they wanted to come back, I was surprised at first when we didn't get any response from the people who were given this SL designation on the retired list, but on second thought I realized why not. They were either at or near the peak of their practice and in the absence of an all-out war where everybody would drop what they were doing and come back, they didn't want to do it.

The younger lawyers were perhaps having a little trouble to get started, to earn a living, support their families, and we got the maximum response from them. The percentage was in the nineties.

Here were all the fellows with the SL designation on the Inactive Naval Reserve, and they are still there.

Senator LONG. That would be my impression.

At that time, on the average, a lawyer 35 years old would have been one who had not 5 but perhaps 10 years of experience, perhaps 8 years of experience. As pointed out by Admiral Russell here, he would have been one who was reaching the peak of his law practice and if he wasn't doing mighty well by that time, you probably wouldn't want him, anyway.

On the other hand, you take one of these younger attorneys who had been out for perhaps 5 years of practice, the basic minimum 5 years, you probably had thousands of those available and those would have been the ones most interested. A careful screening from those who had the best recommendations from their local bar and those familiar with their qualifications, it would seem to me, if you pick them below 35, you would have had a better chance to get the attorneys you wanted.

Commander SCHWAB. I am coming to that.
Senator LONG. Go ahead.

Commander SCHWAB. We received very little response, very few volunteers from the inactive law specialists. Admiral Russell and the Chief of Naval Personnel was still reluctant to order to active duty involuntarily any officer-attorney for duty in a law billet. So we issued an invitation to any officer-attorney in the Naval Reserve inactive who desired to volunteer for active duty in a law billet. At that time we had 70 billets to fill. We received in excess of 300 applications. They were screened by a selection board. They were sent over to the Bureau of Naval Personnel. These were all deck officers in the main. The Bureau of Naval Personnel released to us

all of those applicants except a few who had particular qualifications, electronics experts or ordnance experts. We ordered those people to active duty at their request in the order in which they applied, strictly chronological order.

Senator LONG. You made no effort to select those who appeared to be the most outstanding?

Commander SCHWAB. That was done by a selection board.

Admiral RUSSELL. That had already been done and then we put them on a waiting list in the order they applied.

Commander SCHWAB. We have since filled all our billets that way up until 6 months ago when we terminated the waiting list for active duty in the law billets. Why did we terminate it? We knew we had 640 other Reserve officers on active duty on destroyers, battleships, various sea jobs, many of whom used to write to the admiral or to me at least once a month and say, "We don't mind being back on active duty, but is there any way we can move into a legal billet?"

We discussed it with the Chief of Naval Personnel, and we decided that the most equitable way to handle it would be to give those people, when they finished their normal tour of sea duty, priority on moving into a legal billet as opposed to the Inactive Reserve who had done no time at sea. So we have filled all our billets now with volunteers who were originally released to us and with people coming to us from sea duty, the people coming to us from sea duty who have completed their obligated service and are eligible to get out but who have volunteered to stay on in a legal billet, exceed the number of Reserve officers in legal billets who are getting out. The proportion is about 2 to 1.

Senator LONG. Why would that be the case? Why would so many be willing to stay in a while longer in a legal billet?

Commander SCHWAB. I think it is primarily this-from my discussions with them. Many of them feel the world situation is so unsettled that if they get out now, regardless of what you tell them, assure them they are not going to be called again, they still want to wait and see how this Korean thing comes out. They would rather stay on active duty, improve their legal proficiency, than go out and start a law practice, buy books and set up a law practice, and then a year later feel we are getting into a war and have to go back again.

Senator LONG. They would perhaps feel they would have a chance to reestablish contact with their profession before leaving the Navy. Commander SCHWAB. I think that is a motivating factor. Last week I received a letter from a lieutenant serving on the cruiser Pittsburgh for the first 18 months of active duty as a gunnery officer. He is down in Norfolk doing trial work in general court martial, and his letter thanked us for moving him there and told us how much experience he was getting and how happy he was in his job. Under the legislation now being considered by this committee, if it is passed in its present form, you will take 165 Reserve officers who are all on active duty voluntarily, all doing the work they want to do and advance them 3 years ahead of 640 Reserve officers who are on active duty involuntarily, who are well qualified as attorneys, but whom we cannot use as attorneys because we do not have the billets for them. They are needed at sea. The officer on the destroyer, you, in effect, say to him, "We know you are a lawyer. We know you are.