Unskilled, Single Men Drafted First, 1918

“War Armies to be Made Up of Young Men Without Families and Unskilled, from the Jan. 24, 1918, issue of the French Broad Hustler

Washington, January—All men for the war armies still to be raised by the United States will come from Class One under the new selective service plan. That means the nation’s fighting is to be done by young men without families dependent upon their labor for support and unskilled in necessary industrial or agricultural work.

Provost Marshal General Crowder announces the new policy in an exhaustive report upon the operation of the selective draft law submitted today to Secretary Baker and sent to congress. He says Class One should provide men for all military needs of the country and to accomplish that object urges amendment of the draft law so to provide that all men who have reached their 21^st birthday since June 5, 1917, shall be required to register for classification. Also, in the interest of fair distribution of the military burden, he proposed that the quotas of states or districts be determined hereafter on the basis of the number of men in Class One and not under population.

Million Available

Available figures indicate, the report says, that there are 1,000,000 physically and otherwise qualified men under the present registration who will be found in Class One whose questionnaires have been returned and the classification period ends February 15. To this the extension of registration to men turning 21 since June 5 of last year and thereafter will add 700,000 effective men a year.

Surpassed Expectations

General Crowder finds that the first draft surprised the highest expectations of the friends of the selective service idea. He pays high tribute not only to the thousands of civilians who have given ungrudging service in making the plan a success, but also to the high patriotism of the American people as a whole.

“At the president’s call,” he says, “all ranks of the nation, reluctantly entering the war, nevertheless instantly responded to the first call of the nation with a vigorous and unselfish co-operation that submerged all individual interest in a single endeavor toward the consummation of the national task. I take it that no great national project was ever attempted with as complete reliance upon the voluntary co-operation of the citizens for its execution.

“This law has been administered by civilians whose official relations lies only in necessary powers with which they are vested by the president’s designation of them to perform the duties that are laid upon them. They have accomplished the task. They have made some mistakes. The system offers room for improvement.

“But the great thing they were called upon to do they have done. The vaunted efficiency of absolutism of which the German empire stands as the avatar can offer nothing to compare with it. It remains the ultimate test and proof of the intrinsic political idea upon American institutions of democracy and self-government have been based.”

Analyzes Draft

Analyzing the first draft, General Crowder shows that 9,586,508 men between the ages of 21 to 31 years registered themselves. Up to late in December, only 5,870 arrests had been made of those who have sought to evade registration and that number 2,263 were released after having registered and there remain only 2,095 cases to be prosecuted. The report declares that in the final analysis it will be shown that only 0.00026 per cent of the men within draft age evaded registration.

A rough figure of 8.2 per cent is given as the number of registrants who failed to appear when called by their local boards for examination, though General Crowder hastens to explain that most of these men already are in Europe in the American, British and French armies. They did not await the draft processes in their eagerness to get into action.

“The final data will undoubtedly sow,” General Crowder adds, “that the number of those who willfully failed to appear for examination when called is insignificant.”