The Week

■ Word is afloat that President Nixon, impatient with congressional reformers, will soon issue an executive order revising the selective service system so that all registrants for the draft will learn almost immediately whether the Army wants them or not. A draft lottery, which would make this possible, may be no fairer than the present system—only abandoning compulsory service in favor of a volunteer military or drafting absolutely everyone can be called fair. But a lottery would relieve many young men who choose not to volunteer of the nagging uncertainty that prevents them from planning their future until age 26, when the government relinquishes its option on their lives.

■ Mrs. Helynn Lewis, a former New York City antipoverty official, pleaded guilty last week to stealing $43,600 from the city’s Human Resources Administration, the Lindsay superagency that handles all local aspects of the dole. Yes, that’s HRA, the same outfit the New York Times has charged with “chronic corruption and administrative chaos.” The same HRA which in January prompted then Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, in a statement on antipoverty programs, to comment, “We’ve had problems in a few other cities, but nothing like New York.” And the very same HRA which, according to Mayor Lindsay, has “checks and balances and auditing and self-policing systems that are pretty good—that are pretty careful.” After all, what’s $43,600? To be sure, it’s only a fraction of the “uncounted millions” (the Times’ estimate) that have leaked through HRA. Certainly small enough potatoes to cause the Times, in the present instance, to remark judiciously that Mrs. Lewis is “the first major HRA official to acknowledge a role in the corruption. . . .”

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■ Word is afloat that President Nixon, impatient with congressional reformers, will soon issue an executive order revising the selective service system so that all registrants for the draft will learn almost immediately whether the Army wants them or not. A draft lottery, which would make this possible, may be no fairer than the present system—only abandoning compulsory service in favor of a volunteer military or drafting absolutely everyone can be called fair. But a lottery would relieve many young men who choose not to volunteer of the nagging uncertainty that prevents them from planning their future until age 26, when the government relinquishes its option on their lives.

■ Mrs. Helynn Lewis, a former New York City antipoverty official, pleaded guilty last week to stealing $43,600 from the city’s Human Resources Administration, the Lindsay superagency that handles all local aspects of the dole. Yes, that’s HRA, the same outfit the New York Times has charged with “chronic corruption and administrative chaos.” The same HRA which in January prompted then Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, in a statement on antipoverty programs, to comment, “We’ve had problems in a few other cities, but nothing like New York.” And the very same HRA which, according to Mayor Lindsay, has “checks and balances and auditing and self-policing systems that are pretty good—that are pretty careful.” After all, what’s $43,600? To be sure, it’s only a fraction of the “uncounted millions” (the Times’ estimate) that have leaked through HRA. Certainly small enough potatoes to cause the Times, in the present instance, to remark judiciously that Mrs. Lewis is “the first major HRA official to acknowledge a role in the corruption. . . .”