The Draft All Quiet on the Western Front – Ch. 6

The Draft In 1917 the administration of Woodrow Wilson decided to rely primarily on conscription, rather than voluntary enlistment, to raise military manpower for World War I. Only 73,000 volunteers enlisted out of the initial 1 million target in the first six weeks of the war.

The Draft The Selective Service Act of 1917 established a "liability for military service of all male citizens"; authorized a selective draft of all those between 21 and 31 years of age (later from 18 to 45); and prohibited all forms of bounties, substitutions, or purchase of exemptions.

The Draft In million men were registered. This was deemed to be inadequate, so age ranges were increased and exemptions reduced, and so by the end of 1918 this increased to 24 million men that were registered with nearly 3 million inducted into the military services There was little of the resistance that characterized the Civil War, thanks to a huge campaign by the government to build support for the war, and shut down newspapers and magazines that published articles against the war.

The Draft The draft was universal and included blacks on the same terms as whites, although they served in different units. In all 367,710 black Americans were drafted (13.0% of the total), compared to 2,442,586 white (86.9%). Draft boards were localized and based their decisions on social class: the poorest were the most often conscripted because they were considered the most expendable at home. African-Americans in particular were often disproportionately drafted, though they generally were conscripted as laborers and not sent into combat to avoid the tensions that would arise from mixing races in military units.

The Draft Forms of resistance ranged from peaceful protest to violent demonstrations and from humble letter-writing campaigns asking for mercy to radical newspapers demanding reform. The most common tactics were dodging and desertion, and many communities sheltered and defended their draft dodgers as political heroes.

Protest Conscripts were court-martialed by the Army if they refused to wear uniforms, bear arms, perform basic duties, or submit to military authority. Convicted objectors were often given long sentences of 20 years in Fort Leavenworth. In 1917, a number of radicals and anarchists, including Emma Goldman, challenged the new draft law in federal court arguing that it was a direct violation of the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition against slavery and involuntary servitude. However the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the draft act in the Selective Draft Law Cases on January 7, The decision said the Constitution gave Congress the power to declare war and to raise and support armies.

The Modern Draft The draft ended in 1918 but the Army designed the modern draft mechanism in 1926 and built it based on military needs despite an era of pacifism. On July 2, 1980, President Carter issued Presidential Proclamation 4771 and re- instated the requirement that young men register with the Selective Service System. At that time it was required that all males, born on or after January 1, 1960, register with the Selective Service System. Registration forms are available either online or at any U.S. Post Office. The Selective Service registration form states that failure to register is a felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment or a $250,000 fine. In practice, no one has been prosecuted for failure to comply with draft registration since 1986, in part because prosecutions of draft resisters proved counter-productive for the government, and in part because of the difficulty of proving that noncompliance with the law was "knowing and willful".

The Modern Draft On December 19, 2006, President George W. Bush announced that he was considering sending more troops to Iraq. The next day, the Selective Service System's director for operations and chief information officer, Scott Campbell, announced plans for a "readiness exercise" to test the system's operations in 2009, for the first time since 1998.