Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

opposition to slave soldiers; think of me as Old Blood-and-Guts willing to use any

means whatever to win.

Reinstating the draft would not get us out of trouble, even with the changes

Dr. Gabriel suggests to make the draft “fair.”

As everyone knows, we were in the frying pan; shifting to AVF, instead of

producing an efficient professional army, put us into the fire. Dr. Gabriel urges

that we climb back into the frying pan-but with improvements: a national lottery

with no deferments whatever for any reason.

I can’t disagree with the even-steven rule. . . but my reason for thinking

that Dr. Gabriel’s solution will not work is this:

A lottery, even meticulously fair, cannot make a man willing to charge a

machine-gun nest in the face of almost certain death. That sort of drive comes from

emotional sources. Esprit de corps and patriotism cannot be drawn in a lottery.

Conscription works (among free men) only when it is not needed. I have seen

two world wars; we used the draft in each.. . but in each case it was a means of

straightening out the manpower situation; it was not needed to make men fight. Both

wars were popular.

Since then we have had two non-Wars-Korea and Nam-in “peacetime” and using

conscript troops.

And each non-War was a scandalous disaster.

I don’t have a neat solution to offer. If the American people have lost

their willingness to fight and die for their country, the defect cannot be cured by

conscription. Unless this emotional condition cnanges (and I do not know how to

change it), we are whipped no matter what weapons we build. It could be overnight,

or it could continue to be a long slow slide downhill over many years-ten, twenty,

thirty. But the outcome is the same. Unless something renews the spirit this

country once had, we are in the terminal stages of decay; history is ending for us.

Our foreign masters might graciously let us keep our flag, even our national

name. But “the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” will be dead.

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Time Span-Inflation

The Winter of ’23-’24 I paid a street vendor 5~ for a five billion mark

German note and I paid too much; 5,000,000,000 DM was worth a trifle over 1 ç~. A

bit later it was worth nothing.

In 1955 at the foot of the Acropolis I bought a small marble replica of the

Venus of Melos for 10,000 drachma. I wasn’t cheated; that was 35~ USA.

There are the British pound, the Turkish lira, the Italian lira, the Mexican

peso, and several others; all mean one pound of silver. Look up “exchange” and

“commodities” in your newspaper; grab your pocket calculator and see how much each

is inflated.

When I was a child of four or five my brothers and I used great stacks of

hundred-dollar bills as play money. Confederate- After two centuries, “Not worth a

continental,” still means “worthless.” Memory is long for the damage done by

inflation.

Before paper “money” was invented, inflation was accomplished by adding base

metal to silver and/or gold while retaining the name of the coin. By this means the

Roman denarius was devalued to zero during the first three centuries A.D. But

inflation did not start with Caesar Augustus. In the early days of the Republic

before the Punic Wars the cash unit was the libra (libra = lb. – pound = 273 grams,

or about 60% of our pound avoirdupois, 454 grams). That’s too large a unit for daily

retail use; it was divided into 12 unciae (ounces).

A “lb.” of silver was called an “as.” 1/12 of that, struck as coinage, made

efficient currency. Now comes war and inflation-

Eventually the “as”-once a pound of silver-was so debased that it amounted

to a penny, more or less. Augustus, by decree, went back on a silver/gold standard

and created the denanius, 3.87 grams of fine silver. He made 25 denarii equal in

value to one aureus (7.74 grams of gold), or a ratio of 12.5 to one. (“Free and

unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio of sixteen to one!” The Great Commoner and

the august Emperor had similar notions about hard currency.)