Conscription of men for military service is of long standing and has been resorted to by most nations at one time or another. The means of drafting all able-bodied male citizens, of 18 to 45 years of age, for military service, has been included in our State militia laws since the early days of the nation. This requires the States to enroll the men, who may then be called forth by Congress “to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions” (U. S. Constitution) . It appears to have been intended that this militia plan would require only a low minimum of troops in the federal regular army, which probably appealed strongly to the home rule sentiments of the erstwhile thirteen colonies which had attained State sovereignty as a result of their successful revolution against England, and may also have been inspired in part by a widespread dislike of the conscript standing armies. As it was interpreted that the limitations on the use of the militia did not permit of its employment beyond the territorial shores of the country, and probably because some of the more radical ideas of State’s rights gradually gave way to greater confidence in the Union, and as the importance of the central national government being maintained on a strong basis became recognized, the simpler method of conscription under exclusively federal control was accepted as logical.
We employed federal conscription from 1863 onward in our Civil War, and the Confederacy employed it somewhat earlier. When the World War broke out in 1914 the United States and Great Britain were the only great powers that were not maintaining conscript armies. Voluntary recruiting soon proved itself inadequate for the British in that conflict and conscription was finally undertaken in 1916. This wartime means of drafting military man power lapsed upon the close of the war, but in view of the serious tensions in Europe during recent years, conscription was reluctantly re-established by the British in 1939 by following the example of other European powers with compulsory peacetime training.
In the United States we benefited by studying our own experience with the draft during the Civil War and that of the British in 1916, so that shortly after we entered the World War, when Congress established war-time conscription by the Selective Service Law of 1917, many of the weaknesses of the earlier similar legislation here and abroad were avoided. Principally by means of Selective Service, supplemented by voluntary recruiting, our armed forces were increased to a total of some 4,500,000 men by the close of the war on November 11, 1918. This war-time Selective Service Act lapsed after the war. Several years later a Joint Army and Navy Selective Service Committee made studies and plans to be in readiness for the enactment of another war-time Selective Service Law when required, and of course provision was made for the elimination of defects found in earlier laws. Action along this line was, however, anticipated by introduction in Congress early in 1940 of the Burke-Wadsworth Bill providing for peace-time selective training and service as advocated by the Military Training Camps Association of the United States. That legislation, entitled the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, provided for registration of all men between the ages of 21 and 36 years and made them liable for training and service in the land or naval forces. Enactment was completed by the President’s approval of the law on September 16, 1940. Pursuant to prior planning, by the Joint Army and Navy Selective Service Committee, the organization (according to illustration in Fig. 1) for administering this new law was promptly established. Over 5,000 local boards were established with at least one in each county. The first registration followed on October 16, 1940, one month after the law was enacted, when some 16,500,000 men were placed on the Selective Service rolls. Induction into the Army began with 30,000 men on November 18, 1940, in response to the first call of the War Department, and a total of 800,000 men had been inducted by July 1, 1941. The law provides that not more than 900,- 000 inductees might be in training in the Army during peace time and it was necessary to keep within that limit. On July 1, 1941, some 7,500,000 men, or over 40 per cent of the total number registered, who were over 28 years of age, were deferred by law through transfer to Class I-H, but this deferment was revoked after our tense relations with the Axis powers became an actual state of war on December 7, 1941.
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Dates of Registration |
Age Limits on Registration Dates |
Unofficial approximate number registered |
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First Age—Between 18 and 36 years |
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Oct. 16, 1940 |
Men between 21 and 36 years of age |
16,500,000 |
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July 1, 1941 |
Men who attained age of 21 years since first registration |
1,000,000 |
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Feb. 16, 1942 |
Men who attained age of 20 years on or before Dec. 31, 1941 |
1,200,000 |
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June 30, 1942 |
Men between 18 and 20 years of age |
1,250,000 |
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Second Age Group |
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Feb. 16, 1942 |
Men over 35 and up to 45 years of age |
7,800,000 |
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Total Registrants between 18 and 45 years of age… |
27,750,000 |
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Third Age Group |
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April 27, 1942 |
Men over 44 and up to 65 years of age |
18,000,000 |
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Total all Registrants |
45,750,000 |
Note.—The registrations of October 16, 1940 and July 1, 1941, conformed to the original terms of the Act of September 16, 1940. The registrations thereafter conformed to the terms of the Act as amended December 20,1941.
FIG. 2.—FIRST FIVE REGISTRATIONS UNDER THE SELECTIVE TRAINING AND SERVICE ACT OF 1940
After our declarations of war against the Axis powers, legislation amending the Selective Service Law was passed and approved by the President on December 20, 1941, which, among other changes, increased the pool of man power subject to registration under the Act by including all those between the ages of 18 and 65 years, and made all men between 20 and 45 years of age liable for training and service in the land or naval forces. There have been five registrations under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, and these have been set forth in Fig. 2 with the approximate numbers registered according to unofficial estimates which have appeared from time to time in the public press but are not understood to have been confirmed in any way. There may possibly be some men, liable thereto, who have failed to register due to ignorance, intentional evasion, or other causes. An index as to the extent of failures to register or other discrepancies would probably be available, in approximate terms, by comparison with published accounts of the population census. It is believed that Selective Service is probably guided by such comparisons as to any extensive discrepancies. The matter of checking as to men who have failed to register is undoubtedly having attention, just as it was in the operation of the Selective Service system during 1917- 18.
Under peace-time operation the existing Selective Service Law requires that men who arc inducted shall serve for a training and service period of twelve consecutive months and shall thereafter be transferred to a reserve component of the land or naval forces until they attain the age of 45, or until the expiration of a period of ten years after such transfer, whichever occurs first. This condition, as well as the limit of 900,000 men who might be in training or service at one time, was suspended, as provided in the Law, as soon as a state of war was declared by the United States on December 8, 1941. Since that time the Army has been increasing its calls on the Selective Service for men, and voluntary enlistments for the land and naval forces have been accelerated so that, as announced by the President in July, 1942, there were over 4,000,000 men then enrolled in our armed forces, which is eloquent evidence as to the adequacy of our Selective Service.
To understand the routine followed by Selective Service Local Boards in processing registrants, a reference to Fig. 3 will be of interest. This shows a diagrammatic flow of the registrants in the order in which they are considered for each classification. The Selective Service Regulations, Section 623.21, provide that when undertaking classification of a registrant, a local board shall first determine if he is eligible for assignment to Class I-C and failing in that they shall next determine if he is assignable to Class IV. If not eligible for that, he is next considered for assignment to Class III, then for Class II, and finally for Class I. Any classification may be revised and a registrant may be reclassified whenever a local board determines that to be in order, provided he has not been ordered to report for induction. Appeals from classification determined on by a local board may be presented to a Board of Appeal and, as a last resort and under special circumstances, may be submitted to the President. It is, of course, necessary in making appeals, as well as any other actions taken in connection with the Selective Service, that the Regulations be studied as a guide to the requirements. Discussion of the subdivisions of each of the classes referred to above, such as Classes I-A, I-B, II-A, etc., is omitted as involving details which need not be considered in this brief outline.
There appears to be no classification which will positively insure any man of combat age against induction into the land or naval forces. Local boards are required to fill the calls made on them for men to be inducted into the Army and if enough Class I men arc not available, it is required that additional registrants be channeled from other groups to Class I so that the calls may be filled. Men available in Class I are, of course, inducted according to sequence of order numbers. The channeling of men from Class III to Classes II or I is done in the inverse order of the urgency of their responsibility for dependents. As a sort of governing principle, the National Headquarters for Selective Service recently set forth the priority of its objectives in a Memorandum to All State Directors (1-416) in terms to the following effect:
First priority—Supply men required for the land and naval forces.
Second priority—Avoid impeding war production and other essential industry.
Third priority—Protect as long as possible bona fide family relationships and actual dependents.
During earlier operations under the present Law a registrant’s dependents may have been stranded if no financial provision was made for their maintenance, and local boards were no doubt very careful to assign such men to deferred classifications. Under provisions of the Service Men’s Dependent’s Allowance Act of 1942, positive arrangements have been made for monthly allotments to dependents, with an added contribution by the government, and many men heretofore deferred because of dependents may now be reclassified. This legislation has undoubtedly made the responsibility for dependents much less acute.
Though the Selective Service system is the principal means by which our Army is presently being expanded, voluntary recruiting is still operative for all of our armed forces, and it continues to be the sole means by which man power is being supplied to the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. This situation might easily lead to an erroneous conclusion that the Selective Service Law is not necessary for building up the man power of the Navy. It is well, therefore, to recall that men who are eligible for Class I of the Selective Service, and are currently enlisted in the Navy, are acting largely under the compulsion of the Selective Service Law. That is probably the principal pressure by means of which they are channeled into the armed forces. If they voluntarily enlist in the Navy, it is because of that being the alternative chosen by them in preference to induction into the Army. An immediate financial advantage may also result from this choice because the Navy allows qualified men a higher rating on initial enlistment than is given them if they are inducted into the Army. That right of exercising a preference for voluntarily enlisting in one service or another is reserved by the Selective Service Law in its Section 14(c) which provides that:
Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed to repeal, amend, or suspend the laws now in force authorizing voluntary enlistment or reenlistment in the land and naval forces of the United States, including the reserve components thereof.
This reservation appears to keep in full effect the process of voluntary recruiting for the armed forces without any abridgement. Probably under that authority, an attractive illustrated book, published by the U. S. Navy Recruiting Bureau in July, 1942, solicits applications for enlistment from men 17 to 50 years of age and reminds prospective candidates that,
Even though you have received your orders to report for induction under Selective Service, you may still volunteer for the Navy right up to the moment of your induction.
There are occasionally protests at men being voluntarily enlisted in seeming disregard of orders to report for induction, because it causes the State to fall short of filling its calls from the Army and for other reasons, but many local boards are governed by the logic that, since a man has been enrolled in one of the armed forces, the purpose of Selective Service to channel them into military service has been accomplished, and provisions for closing of these cases and taking credit for men so enlisted are contained in the Selective Service Regulations. Some local boards recognize that it would be a denial of a registrant’s rights, under the quoted provision in Section 14(c) of the Law, for a recruiting officer to refuse to enlist him because he had received induction orders.
All things considered, it seems reasonable to assume that the Navy’s accelerated rate of recruiting is, to a large extent, creditable to the operation of Selective Service. If the number of registrants who currently exercise their right to choose the Navy should fall substantially below the Navy’s man-power requirements, it is presumed that the National Director of Selective Service would arrange for some positive method of allocating a quota of men to the Navy from registrants who are due for induction.
Another phase of Selective Service of great importance to the Navy is the arrangement for deferring the induction into the armed forces of civilians whose withdrawal from government activities or from private industry would impede the war effort. Local boards may defer employees in that situation by assignment to Class II until the employer can replace them, but not for a longer period than six months. If during such a deferment, the employer has made bona fide efforts to replace the registrant by a shift in his organization or by a new employee, or by both of these means, without success, he may ask a further deferment and this may be granted. Further renewals of deferments may be granted if the difficulty of effecting a replacement continues. The testimony of employers as to irreplaceability of registrants engaged in war production is usually given to local boards under oath in an affidavit. While it seems trite to say that such a sworn statement should conform to the facts, and probably does in most cases, the credence of local boards in such testimony and in the good faith of the employers is sometimes badly strained, as for example, when an activity carries on without missing a beat after losing the services of a man who was practically indispensable according to the affidavit. Incidentally, it is regarded to be the duty of the employer to promptly notify the local board when such a registrant leaves his service.
As the result of blanket exemptions under the Selective Service in 1917-18 it is reported that “shipyards became refuges for thousands of able-bodied men with no special qualification for such employment except a desire to shirk their military duty” (Am. Sel. Service, Oct. 1939, issued by Joint A. & N. Sel. Serv. Committee). The Selective Training and Service Law of 1940 is understood to intend the forestalling of any wholesale repetition of such unfair deferments by its provision in Section 5(e) that,
No deferment from such training and service shall be made in the case of any individual except upon the basis of the status of such individual, and no such deferment shall be made of individuals by occupational groups or of groups of individuals in any plant or institution.
Partly to implement this provision the National Headquarters for Selective Service has promulgated lists of critical occupations for which it is difficult to obtain men, and has also listed the activities, such as shipbuilding, manufacture of munitions, etc., which are considered to be critical for the war effort. While these are helpful as guidance to prevent granting of deferments which are not necessary, the local boards nevertheless appear to have full discretionary power, not only to deny postponement of induction for an unskilled replaceable man, but in the case of a man engaged in a critical occupation for a war industry, they may also deny a deferment if it is their judgment that he can be replaced within a reasonable time.
Since Pearl Harbor the policy governing deferments is becoming more stringent and the Selective Service is constantly urging that employers replace deferred men eligible for Class I with women, or with men not qualified for the armed forces. In the days previous to Pearl Harbor, when the Army was limited to a total of 900,000 inductees in service at any one time, employers may have been prone to request occupational deferments merely to avoid the inconvenience of making a shift in their organizations, although local boards are not authorized to allow these postponements for any purpose other than to prevent impeding the production of war materials. In the serious situation of our being engaged in a major war, the matter of causing an employer a little inconvenience is now having little or no effect on the local boards in their frequent night sessions for classifying registrants. Their task of channeling man power into the armed forces has first priority, and employers are expected to co-operate by releasing registrants when their numbers come up for induction. The public confidence in the fairness of the Selective Service could be seriously compromised if the local boards yield too readily to the persuasion of employers who seek deferments merely to avoid the bother and effort of procuring new employees to replace those due to go into the armed forces. There is another interested party concerned in this problem in the person of the registrant whose number for induction has not yet come up, but who will be inducted ahead of his time if he is called to replace a registrant who was due for earlier induction. If the calling of such a registrant ahead of time were merely to save an employer some inconvenience, it would certainly be contrary to what is understood to be the intent of the Selective Service Law. In view of first priority having been set for the obligation of the local boards to supply man power to the armed forces, it seems reasonable to expect that many instances of doubt about granting deferments will be resolved in favor of assigning a registrant to Class I.
To obtain the deferment of a registrant in his service it is necessary for his employer to submit an affidavit (DSS Form 42A) to the local board having cognizance, setting forth various particulars which may be helpful in arriving at an equitable decision. While in the case of a civilian employee of the Navy such an affidavit may be made by his head of department or other comparable senior officer, the request to the local board for deferment, supported by the affidavit, should be signed by an officer acting under authority established for that purpose by the Secretary of the Navy in his letter of February 12, 1942, to the naval service. While it is understood to be the Navy’s policy to co-operate with private industry in obtaining deferments of men whose induction into the armed forces might impede the Navy’s war effort, it seems important that the affidavit re- questing such deferment should, in the first instance, be made and presented to the local board by the employer, he being generally the most competent to testify as to the extent to which an employee might be presently irreplaceable. It seems advisable, therefore, that careful discretion be exercised to insure that Navy co-operation to obtain deferments for private industry is limited to supplementing, or supporting, the initial request to the local board made by the employer.
It is a matter of great interest that in the Selective Service system such officials as the members of the Local Boards, Government Appeal Agents, members of Boards of Appeal, members of Registrant Advisory Boards and many other officials perform their services without compensation. The fine civic spirit of these officials and their unselfish service for the nation seems most praiseworthy and affords an inspiring example of patriotic sentiment of the people of our country.
This presentation of a few particulars about the Selective Service has necessarily been limited to very general terms, with principal emphasis on features of special interest to the Navy. The Selective Service Regulations and Navy directives should be consulted for information on any specific question affecting the Navy which obviously cannot be answered by the general particulars contained in this outline.