Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1919 — How the Selective Draft Proved an Impossible Task Easily Possible [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

How the Selective Draft Proved an Impossible Task Easily Possible

I. Frovoct M«nbal General, U. S. A.

By GEN. E. H. CROWDER.

We are now too close to the events of the war to assess them accurately. How great a part the American selective service played in the drama of the world war history alone <fcn tell. ___ That a new and untried scheme of selection could succeed .St all was to many doubtful; that it should attain results beyond the fondest dreams of its most ardent supporters was unbelievable. To enroll for service 24,000,000 men, to mobilize a selected army of more than 2,800,000, a million of them in ninety days; to Vihve presently available for military duty 2,000,000

additional men; to classify this vast man power in the order of its military and industrial importance so as to preserve the domestic and industrial life of the nation, to speed up war-time activities, to maintain them in a state of maximum efficient production, and to pave the way to a speedy return to normal peace-time pursuits while recruiting the full fighting strength of the nation —these are results that would be instantly rejected as impossible did not the actual facts stand. Truly were we the melting pot of the world; and the- cosmopolitan composition of Our population was never more strikingly disclosed than by the recent events of the world war. Then the melting pot stood in the fierce fires of the national emergency, and its contents, heated in the flames, either fused into the compact mass or floated off as dross. The great and inspiring revelation here has been that men of foreign and of native origin alike responded to the call to arms with a patriotic devotion that confounded the cynical plans of our archenemy and surpassed our own highest expectations. No man can peruse the muster roll of one of our camps, or the casualty lisfr from a battlefield in Trance, without realizing that America has fulfilled one of its highest missions in breeding a spirit of common loyalty among all those who have shared the blessings of life on its free soil. I am certain that no great national undertaking was ever begun which depended so utterly upon faith in a people for its execution, and undoubtedly no faith has ever been more completely justified and no confidence more abundantly rewarded. %