Armed Forces," _American Journal
of Sociology_ 72 (September 1966): 132-48;
Ginzberg, _The Negro Potential_, pp. 127-31.]

Paralleling the influence of the law, the quest for military
efficiency was another institutional factor that affected the
services' racial policies. The need for military efficiency had always
been used by the services to rationalize racial exclusion and
segregation; later it became the primary consideration in the decision
of each service to integrate its units. Reinforcing the efficiency
argument was the realization by the military that manpower could no
longer be considered an inexhaustible resource. World War II had
demonstrated that the federal government dare not ignore the military
and industrial potential of any segment of its population. The reality
of the limited national manpower pool explained the services'
guarantee that Negroes would be included in the postwar period as
cadres for the full wartime mobilization of black manpower. Timing was
somewhat dependent on the size and mission of the individual service;
integration came to each when it became obvious that black manpower
could not be used efficiently in separate organizations. In the case
of the largest service, the Army, the Fahy Committee used the (p. 613)
failure to train and use eligible Negroes in unfilled jobs to convince
senior officials that military efficiency demanded the progressive
integration of its black soldiers, beginning with those men eligible
for specialist duties. The final demonstration of the connection
between efficiency and integration came from those harried commanders
who, trying against overwhelming odds to fight a war in Korea with
segregated units, finally began integrating their forces. They found
that their black soldiers fought better in integrated units.

[Illustration: MARINE ENGINEERS IN VIETNAM. _Men of the 11th Engineer
Battalion move culverts into place in a mountain stream during
"Operation Pegasus."_]

Later, military efficiency would be the rationale for the Defense
Department's fight against discrimination in the local community. The
Gesell Committee was used by Adam Yarmolinsky and others to
demonstrate to Secretary McNamara if not to the satisfaction of
skeptical military traditionalists and congressional critics that the
need to solve a severe morale problem justified the department's
intrusion. Appeals to military efficiency, therefore, be