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<text> <title> (40 Elect) The Draft:How It Works </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1940 Election </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> September 23, 1940 THE DRAFT How It Works </hdr> <body> Last week Congress passed the conscription bill. This week the President signed it. A new thing had entered U.S. life: although the U.S. had conscripted its citizens in two wars, never before had it conscripted them in peace. Some 16,-500,000 men, aged 21 to 36, forthwith became liable to compulsory military service. How, when, whether conscription would actually touch them was prescribed in 1) the bill, and 2) the selective system which the Army & Navy had long since prepared against a martial day. The Bill laid down the general philosophy, rules, scope of conscription: -- "In a free society the obligations and privileges of military training and service should be shared generally in accordance with a fair and just system of selective compulsory...service." -- No more than 900,000 conscripts can be called in any one year (the Army plans to call 800,000 a year). They will be kept in training for one year, will then enter an enlisted reserve where they will be subject to recall for emergency service for ten years or until they are 45. They will not be subject to periodic recalls for further training. But if Congress finds the nation in peril before their initial year's service ends, they can be held under arms indefinitely. -- Prospective conscripts can volunteer for one year if they dislike being drafted (the Army prefers three-year terms for its volunteers, will continue to recruit on that basis). By law, both conscripts and one-year volunteers must be accepted "regardless of race or color." The Army nevertheless can (and probably will) use its powers of selection to keep down the proportion of Negroes to whites (present ration: 1 to 53). -- Ordained ministers and theological students must register, but will not be drafted. College students also must register, may be drafted after (but not before) next July. -- Objectors "by reason of religious training and belief" will be classified for non-combatant service. If they object to any form of military service, and prove their sincerity, they can still be drafted for assignment to other "work of national importance, under civilian direction." -- Wholly exempt are: the Vice President of the U.S. (the President is not specifically exempt, because he is Commander in chief of the Army and Navy), members of Congress, State Governors and legislators, judges in courts of record. State and Federal employes are exempt only if the President finds their work essential. -- Nobody can pay a forfeit to escape the draft, pay a substitute to serve for him, or buy his way out once he is in service. Nor can the U.S. offer special bounties to any conscript or volunteer. Reason: the Army's doleful experiences with bounties, substitutes, and attendant corruption in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. -- After registration, but before actual induction into the service, conscripts remain subject to civil laws. After induction, they are of course subject to martial law. The Department of Justice will nab and prosecute men who evade registration or falsify statements at this stage (civil penalty: imprisonment up to five years, a fine up to $10,000, or both). But if they fail to report on the day and hour specified for induction, they will be classed as deserters, tried by court- martial. -- After a conscript or one-year volunteer has had his twelve months of training, his employer must give him back his old job "unless the employer's circumstances have so changed as to make it impossible or unreasonable to do so," Returning trainees who are not rehired can appeal to U.S. district courts, get the free services of Federal attorneys. Net effect of this provision: draftees will have to depend more on the prosperity, good will and patriotism of their employers than on the expressed (but weakly implemented) good will of the U.S. Government. -- Known members of 1) the Communist Party, 2) the Nazi Bund, cannot be hired to replace draftees in civil jobs. Aliens can be so hired. They are subject to the draft only if they have filed their first papers and made application for citizenship. -- Congress declared in principle that draftees and one-year volunteers can vote in person or by absentee ballot. But the States determine who can vote; Congress actually has nothing to say about it. Twenty-nine States forbid soldiers on active duty to vote while 19 others restrict but do not outlaw balloting by soldiers. (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia.) The System owes much of its precision and detail to onetime (World War I) Draft Administrator Hugh S. Johnson (who is not bashful about taking due credit in his daily column). Its present spark plug is tawny-haired, blue-eyed Lieut. Colonel Lewis Blaine Hershey. A descendant of anti-militarist Mennonites who migrated to Pennsylvania in 1709, Lieut. Colonel Hershey has specialized on Army conscription plans since 1926. His technical superior on the joint Army and Navy Selective Service Committee is the Navy's Lieut. Commander Benjamin Stacey Killmaster. But the Navy has little need of conscripts, will leave the job of running the first peacetime U.S. draft largely to Lewis Hershey. By law, either a civilian or a military man may have the $10,000-a-year post of Draft Administrator. The Army hopes that President Roosevelt will appoint Lieut. Colonel Hershey, will not be surprised if a big-name civilian gets the honor and the salary. Lewis Hershey likes to stress the fact that, during the whole process of drafting, prospective conscripts need have no contact whatsoever with the Army. Reason is that the Army made a thorough hash of the Civil War draft, proved in World War I that civilian operation was better. Key civilians in the next draft will be the members of 6,500-odd county boards, registrars at some 125,000 voting precincts, who will actually interview and select the draftees. The system is based on existing election machinery, in many instances will be manned by local election officials. For getting this machine into motion, the Army has a carefully timed schedule. National Registration Day comes first (Oct. 16). On that day all male citizens between 21 and 36 must report in person to registrars at the local voting precincts, fill out simple information blanks (name, age, address, occupation, etc.). Five days later, local boards will assign a serial number to each registrant (thousands will have the same number). Then follows lottery day, when a suitable dignitary (Franklin Roosevelt, for instance) will reach into the same glass bowl from which the first World War I number (258) was drawn in 1917, will pull out one of thousands of jumbled capsules. Each capsule will contain a numbered slip. Registrants holding the drawn numbers will be the first to receive detailed questionnaires, probing into every aspect of jobs, dependents, special qualifications, reasons (if any) for requesting exemption. Other lotteries will follow. Questionnaires must be returned to the local boards within five days (they can be mailed in). The board members then study the data, subdivide the registrants into four classes: 1) eligible for immediate service; 2) deferred because they hold necessary civilian jobs, where they will be more useful than in the Army; 3) deferred because they have dependents; 4) ineligible because of physical or mental incompetence. (The mere fact of marriage does not guarantee exemption from the draft, although the first 400,000 will be mostly single. If a registrant objects to his classification he can appeal to regional boards (one for every 600,000 population). In theory, he can even appeal to the President. But the Army does not propose to let appeals and delays gum up the draft ("War is not going to wait while every slacker resorts to endless appeals...."). In effect, the word of regional appeal boards will be final. From the 16,500,000 registrants, the Army expects to get about 5,000,000 will go into the Army. Those finally selected must first pass a physical examination. This should be neither bar nor safeguard to most young men: conscripts can be blind in one eye, partially deaf in both ears, minus one big toe or two little ones, and still be technically eligible. Since the Army plans to take only 400,000 by January 1, another 800,000 next year, some will be overage before they are called; some may never be called anyway. Those who are 1) summoned for physical examination, and 2) pass, will be told when and where to report, will from that day & hour be in the Army for twelve months. They can state their preferences or special fitness for a given service, but must serve wherever they are put. Is the Army Ready? "Time is fleeting," Chief of Staff George C. Marshall fretted two months ago, begging Congress to speed up conscription and the appropriation of money to pay and house his new soldiers. He and other officers then estimated that if Congress acted quickly, 400,000 draftees and 240,000 newly mobilized National Guardsmen could be adequately cared for this winter. This week the first 60,000 National Guardsmen reported for duty, before workmen had finished knocking together wood-&- canvas shelters. Many were put up temporarily in their local armories. The Army last week planned to call up its first 75,000 conscripts November 15, to have "adequate" housing for them by then, shelter for the rest by year's end. President Roosevelt asked Congress for $1,600,000,000 for pay, tents, barracks, mobilization expenses. War Department officers uneasily declared that no Guardsmen, no draftees would be wet or cold this winter, frantically pressed ahead with temporary housing projects to make the promise good. Industrial Conscription Last week Congress, the President, Army-Navy underlings finally let U.S. businessmen know what they might expect in the way of industrial conscription: little or none, if they behave according to Government lights. If they behave otherwise (i.e. balk at taking defense contracts on Government terms), President Roosevelt can invoke conscription in its stiffest form: immediate, outright seizure of plants and products, to be paid for when and as he pleases. Congress wrote this unqualified power into the Army conscription bill, after swaying all the way from outrage at the idea to enthusiastic acquiescence. Without proclaiming any further or special emergency, or going through tedious condemnation proceedings in the courts, the President can now "take immediate possession of any...plant or plants, and through the appropriate...bureau...of the Army or Navy...manufacture therein such product or material as may be required...." he can either rent the seized plants or buy them, paying whatever he determines is "a fair and just price. "Only important limitation is that he must first find (but prove only to himself) that the owner had failed to cooperate voluntarily. (Further penalties for failure to cooperate: up to three years in prison, fines up to $50,000.) That Franklin Roosevelt or any other President would wish or have to use such power to the full appeared unlikely. Its mere existence serves the purpose: to scare a recalcitrant few. Assistant Secretary of War Robert Porter Patterson assured industry that the power would be applied to only "one case in a thousand." But he left no doubt that the Roosevelt Administration was prepared to crack down on the thousandth. In a message to Congress last week, the President outlined his National Defense Advisory Commission's plans to get first call on industrial facilities for defense. Theme of these plans (and of all the War & Navy Departments' industrial mobilization charts) was voluntary cooperation. Nevertheless a hard vein ran through the Commission's silky word ("There should be...honest and sincere desire to cooperate...in producing what is called for, and on time, without profiteering; to assume some risks...rather than attempting to shift all such risks to the Government..."). Formulator of these standards was not Mr. Roosevelt, but business-minded Donald Marr Nelson, on leave from Sears, Roebuck & Co. to serve the President and the Defense Commission. Last week the Navy bought a steel mill in San Francisco, Calif., to turn out armor plate for ships. Then the Navy did approximately what would have to be done with any conscripted plant. Delegated to run the Navy plant was Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s subsidiary Union Iron Works which was already making destroyers and cruisers on a voluntary contract. STRATEGY Naval Policy, 1940 Official bible of naval officers is their U.S. Naval Policy. The Navy's sacred General Board periodically compiles and revises this document, requires officers to follow it religiously in their public utterances. Issued last week was Naval Policy, 1940. Officers and informed civilians eagerly scanned it, looking for any changes in Navy thinking since the last revision in 1937. Only important new statement of policy was "to organize and maintain the Navy for major operations in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans." In 1987 few dreamed that British sea power might be endangered by German air power, and the U.S. Navy's chief interest was in the Pacific alone. In that same year the British debated whether to put less emphasis on battleships, more on air power. They decided to concentrate on battleships and lesser surface craft, left naval aviation a sickly second. Last week the U.S. Navy in its new statement of policy took the same tack, backed it up by contracting to spend $700,000,000 on seven new, 45,000-ton battleships. Also ordered (for delivery by 1945) was the rest of the $3,900,000,000 second-ocean Navy: eight aircraft carriers, 27 cruisers, 115 destroyers, 43 submarines. Changed not whit was the Navy's basic conception of air power ("to maintain and develop naval aviation as an integral part of the naval forces"). Translated, this meant that in the perennial war for supremacy between officers of the Air and of the Sea, the Sea did not mean to give an inch. <list> <l>October 28, 1940</l> <l>THE DRAFT</l> <l>The Day</l> </list> Last week, in the 14 hours between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. of Oct. 16, the U.S. put its man power and its democracy to test. Both passed, with honors. Some 17,000,000 free men, aged 21 to 25, did what they had been told to do: register for the draft. They went to appointed places. They stood in line. They answered questions. They signed small, imperious cards. They buried a tradition: that the U.S., in peace, never requires its men to take up arms. Henceforth, whether or not they were destined for actual service, they had submitted themselves to a kind and degree of supervision which the U.S. citizenry had never known. All this they did with precision, discipline, dignity, good humor. It was not a day for cynics, or for defeated democrats, or for journalists looking for jaundiced "color," or for Hitler, or for those in the U.S. who had come to believe that only a Hitler could make such a day and such a turnout. It was a day for men who obeyed a law, yet knew well enough that in all the U.S. there were not enough soldiers, policemen, judges, prison wardens to compel their obedience; for the rich, the poor, the salaried, for men with names, creeds, skins, tongues from all the earth. On their day: -- "Don't scribble!" a draft registrar in Chicago begged. "I can't read your first name." "Can't help it," the registrant mumbled. "First names's Ignatius. Never could spell it." -- Yet Yow, a distinguished citizen of Manhattan's Chinatown, made it his business to round up Chinese who could not speak English, see that they registered (5,000 did). Said Mr. Yow: "I tell them they will get a chance to fight Japan. They come with me, quick." -- Said Ichiro Ito, a Japanese dental technician in Manhattan: "I am American. My friends are American. We like America." -- The Irish Horse Traders live & trade throughout the southeastern U.S., but hundreds chose to register in Atlanta. Reason: their friend and adviser, Undertaker Ed H. Bond, does business there. The Traders, who used to be one clan of Irish immigrants, have long since inter-married, send their dead to Mr. Bond, have him keep the bodies until April 28 each year. Then they assemble for a mass burial. Last week, day before registration, Mr. Bond received and stored the body of an Irish Trader, "a young man named Carroll," aged 21, from Lula, Ga. -- California Mexicans raised a row when they were first classed as "Indians," got reclassified as "white." -- Florida Seminoles had been advised by their tribal council to register. But most of 65 eligible Seminoles fled to the Everglades, refused to come out of their swamps. Most other Indians (including New York Senecas, who had objected at first) registered in due order. Said Davis Green, clerk of the Onondaga Tribe: "Well, we've fought to defend this land before." -- Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis Barrow, registering his full name in Detroit, was asked what branch of the service he would like to join. "I ain't choosy," he said. -- In Trenton, N.J., one John T. Cook came out of hiding, registered, then surrendered for trial on a murder charge. -- At Burwell, Neb., Sheriff George Brock recognized a registrant in line, tried to serve a warrant for assault, was shot and killed. -- Registered were the five sons of John D. Rockefeller Jr. (John III, 34; Nelson, 32; Laurance, 30; Winthrop, 28; and David, 25). Said David, who was just back from his honeymoon: "I don't think my wife is within the legal definition of a dependent." -- An expatriate Hindu in Manhattan appeared with two names, insisted upon registering twice for the draft. "Thus it was done in Washington," said Ali Aftab and or Mokram Ullam, exhibiting two Social Security cards, "thus it must be done here." Thus it was done. But only one of his names was counted in New York City's total (1,001,375). -- General John J. Pershing's son Warren, 31, registered quietly in Manhattan. The General's second cousin, George O. Pershing, also registered (in Westchester, N.Y.), announced that he will work for repeal of the draft act if he is elected to Congress (on the American Labor Party ticket). -- Hospital patients of draft age generally signed up in bed. One was 24-year-old Vincent Catroppa, in Philadelphia's Hahnemann Hospital. He was glad to tell about his operation: to correct flat feet, so that he could join the Army. -- Southern Negroes perturbed their white folks in only one respect: on Registration Day, they acted very much like the white folks. If anything, blacks outdid whites at clamoring to get into the Army. -- At Nahant, Mass., five schoolteachers drew lots for the honor of registering John Roosevelt, 24. Said he: "If I am drafted, I will be very glad to serve" (he has a wife and son, hence will probably not be called up this year). Franklin Jr. registered in Indianapolis. James, 31, was already a Marine Corps Reserve captain, did not have to register. Elliott, 30, was a volunteer captain in the Specialist Reserve. -- There were puns. A fire started during registration in a Waltham. Mass. school; inevitably, it was "fanned by the draft." From coast to coast, thwarted humorists announced that their next babies would be named "Weatherstrip" ("to keep me out of the draft"). -- Some hearts were troubled. Eight theological students refused to register in Manhattan. They were exceptions; most of the few thousand ministers, students, men of simple peace who had reservations were allowed to write "conscientious objector" on their cards, reserve their protests until they are actually called (when they will be exempted from combat duty, will still be liable to other "national service"). In the U.S. on Oct. 16, no man was jailed for refusing to register; none made any overt attempt to keep others from registering. Another notable fact: among Pennsylvania's peaceful, bearded Amishmen ("The Plain People") not one raised his voice in audible objection, conscientious or otherwise. <list> <l>November 11, 1940</l> <l>THE DRAFT</l> <l>Only the Strong</l> </list> One afternoon last week, on the stage of Washington's Departmental Auditorium, Brigadier General Lewis Blaine Hershey dipped his hairy hand into a brown wastebasket. He plucked out a cobalt-blue capsule, thrust it behind his back. A brunette young woman snatched the capsule, shook out a piece of paper, handed the paper to a blonde. The blonde attached the paper to a white card, passed the card to a male announcer at a microphone. The announcer spoke meaningless words (for practice) into the microphone, handed the card to a Boy Scout. The Boy Scout slipped it to another Boy Scout, and thus from hand to hand of four more Scouts to a blond, wispy young man at a photographic recording machine. With dainty flourish, the blond young man tripped the shutter of his machine, then handed the card to a pair of young women, who removed the numbered paper, pasted it on a sheet. In the vast auditorium pit, scores of newsmen and photographers paid practically no attention while the same rigmarole was repeated over & over. Finally, Brigadier General Hershey & team could handle 14 cards and numbers a minute. All this apparent mummery was serious: it was a rehearsal for the U.S. Selective Service commission's first draft lottery. Just before noon next day, Brigadier General Hershey's brunettes, blondes, Boy Scouts and young men took their places. The wastebasket had been replaced by the huge glass jar from which draft numbers were drawn in 1917. Photographers' lights beat upon 8,994 blue capsule in the jar, shedding a blue radiance on the stage. (There should have been 9,000. Six which were mysteriously missing were replaced and drawn in a later lottery.) Selective Service director Clarence Addison Dykstra and Brigadier General Hershey walked in. Slowly behind them came President Roosevelt, on the arm of his secretary "Pa" Watson. The blue-suited President looked tired, grey, exhausted by his campaign. Said he to the nation (paraphrasing a favorite phrase of Wendell Willkie) and to the 17,000,000 registrants who were about to have their numbers drawn: "...Only the strong may continue to live in freedom and in peace." Secretary of War Henry Lewis Stimson, 73, stepped to the jar. Fragile, twittery Lieut, Colonel (retired) Charles R. Morris, who blindfolded Newton D. Baker for the first draft drawings of World War I, did the same for Mr. Stimson (with a bandage made from the cover of a chair in Independence Hall, sanitized with a sheet of Kleenex). Secretary Stimson gingerly put his left hand in the jar, took the first capsule he touched, handed it to Mr. Roosevelt. The President, old stager that he was, glanced at the newsreel and radio men, got their nod before he intoned: "The first number is one--five--eight." Registration serial number 158, held by some 6,175 registrants throughout the U.S., thus became Draft Order No. I. In the crowded auditorium, Mrs. Mildred C. Bell gasped: 158 was her 21-year-old son Harry's number. A friend sitting beside her squawked with excitement, bringing newsmen, radio announcers and temporary fame upon the Bells and Harry's fiancee. There was another 178 in Mr. Roosevelt's audience: Herbert Jacob Ehrsam, 34, a civil service Commission employe. Said he: "I didn't know whether to stand up and salute, or just remain quiet." He kept quiet, and nobody knew he was there. Messrs. Roosevelt & Stimson made way for other dignitaries, who drew the next 18 registration serial numbers (192, 8,239, 6,620, 6,685, 4,779, 8,848, 6,262, 8,330, 5,892, 5,837, 5,485, 6,604, 8,946, 5,375, 7,674, 4,880, 4,928, 105). Then Brigadier General Hershey's crew took over, finished the job. It took them until 5:48 a.m. next day. Out over the U.S. by radio and news ticker, the numbers flowed, establishing the "national master list," which along with personal and local circumstances would determine the order in which 17,000,000 men, aged 21 to 35, might be called for a year of Army training. Draft folklore gained some items: -- Alden C. Flagg Sr. of Boston held the first number (258) drawn in 1917. His 27-year-old son held 158 last week. -- "As Always, Drennen Is First," Drennen Motor Co. advertised in Birmingham. One of its mechanics held 158. -- At Austin, Minn., Miss Reika Schwanke turned up as the only woman who had succeeded in registering for the draft. Registrant Schwanke explained that she misunderstood a radio broadcast, went to her local registration place and persuaded a woman registrar to sign her up. Said Reika Schwanke: "There ought to be some place for a woman in the Army." -- Joseph B. Kirby Jr., a Rockingham, N.H. race-track cashier who had 158 wired the President: "Am honored." -- Sergeant Alvin C. York, 52, World War I's famed hero, now chairman of his draft board at Jamestown, Tenn., was so successful in urging registrants to volunteer before they were drafted, that he overtaxed the Army's local recruiting facilities. "They are rarin' to go," said he. -- Among the names of Manhattan registrants who held 158: Farruggia, Cham Cody, Weisblum, Stazzone, Gordon, Lichtenstein. -- President Roosevelt's son John, 24, was 7,298th in the drawings, thus had some prospect of being drafted "for the Third World War" (favorite crack among high-number holders last week). -- Holders of Registration No. 13 were among those who had a fairly high order number (3,519). Draft Arithmetic. At first sight, it looked as if only the mathematically strong could understand the draft's complications. After last week's drawing, each registrant had two numbers. (In theory. Actually, several hundred thousand registrants had not received their serial numbers by Lottery Day. Additional lotteries will be held for them.) One was his serial number (which he was allotted after he registered on Oct. 16). Serial numbers allotted up to Lottery day ran from I through 7,836 (only one man in each local draft district had the same serial number). These were the numbers which were in the blue capsules for the drawing in Washington. The order in which they were drawn became the serial-number holders' national draft order number (i.e., holders of serial 158 had Order No.I) The order numbers thus became more important to the 17,000,000 registrants than their serial numbers. But the fact that a registration had a low order number by no means insured him an early call to the Army; either did a high order number necessarily guarantee that its holders would not be called soon. Many factors (age, dependents, occupation, health, etc.) determined each registrant's chances. Most vital factor (and least clear to registrants last week) was the composite make-up of the registered group in each local draft district. For example: The Army intends to call up 800,000 one-year trainees by next June 15 (the first 30,000 are to be called Nov. 18). Last week Selective Service headquarters first allotted gross quotas to each State, then deducted from these totals the number of men from each state who were already in service. Result: each state's net quota. (The net quotas up to June 30, 1941; Alabama, 13,711; Arizona, 3,098; Arkansas, 8,946; California, 38,017; Colorado, 3,837; Connecticut, 8,421; Delaware, 1,329; District of Columbia, 3,982; Florida, 10,370; Georgia, 12,792 Idaho, 1,954; Illinois, 62,223; Indiana, 21,087; Iowa, 11,738; Kansas, 8388; Kentucky, 9,154; Louisiana, 15,084; Maine, 3,081; Maryland, 12,564; Massachusetts, 20,556; Michigan, 47,282; Minnesota, 18,652; Mississippi, 12,759; Missouri, 23,619; Montana, 2,563; Nebraska, 6,456; Nevada, 624; New Hampshire, 1,579; New Jersey, 32,170; New Mexico, 2,962; New York, 114,796; North Carolina, 15,613; North Dakota, 3,401; Ohio, 52,497; Oklahoma, 9,365; Oregon, 2,806; Pennsylvania, 61,522; Rhode Island, 3,118; South Carolina, 5,957; South Dakota 3,525; Tennessee, 14,229; Texas, 33,283; Utah, 2,153; Vermont, 1,207; Virginia, 9,747; Washington, 5,821; West Virginia, 8,454; Wisconsin, 21,632; Wyoming, 1,047. United States: 789,000.) State draft administrators could then break up their Statewide quotas into the quotas for each local draft district. And that was where the registrants' actual, mathematical worries began. For each local board in effect has to set up its own list (from the "master list") of the order numbers held by registrants in its area. In the sequence in which these numbers appear on the local list, the board then sends out detailed questionnaires to prospective draftees. From the answers to these questions, each board then classifies registrants in four main groups: 1) those apparently eligible and fitted for service; 2) three groups of "deferred" men who are ineligible, unavailable or unfitted. Only group that will actually continue the draft for many months is Class I-A (single, physically fit, not at work in "necessary" industries). The board may have to send out several sets of questionnaires to get enough Class I-A registrants for its quotas. In a factory area, for instance, many holders of low order numbers on the national list may be classified in "necessary" occupations and thus deferred. Result: in such an area a registrant with an order number above 1,000 may find himself called ahead of his neighbor, with No. 20. Last week registrants could not know what their chances of being called actually were until their local lists were set up, the first batches of questionnaires had been answered. Draft Rules. In the patriotic hurlyburly of draft registration and drawings, many a draftee still had a lot to learn last week about what had happened to him. Something that had happened to all the 17,000,000, whether or not they were marked for armed service, was new in U.S. life: continuous, detailed responsibility to local draft boards. The members of these boards in fact had become among the most potent of U.S. citizens. Registrants must henceforth notify their local boards of any important change in their ways of living: a new job, discharge from an old job, a new baby, marriage, divorce, the death of a dependent, a change of address, even a prolonged visit to another locality. A registrant who wants to leave the U.S. must get his local board's permission beforehand. Reason: such changes would probably affect a registrant's liability or availability for service. Penalty for willful failure to "tell your local draft board" is the same as for any other violation of the Selective Training and Service Act: imprisonment up to five years, fines up to $10,000, or both. In practice, reprimands will serve for first, minor infractions (unless boardmen and courts are unco- testy). The oft-repeated phrase "21 to 35" had led many a registrant to believe that he would be beyond his local board's supervision, as well as out of the draft, once he passed 36. The fact: all men who were between 21 and 35 on Registration Day, and not otherwise exempt, will be legally liable to call until September 1945. This rule holds true even if a man turned 36 on Oct. 17. Practically, of course, as registrants near 40, their chances of being wanted for the Army will steadily lessen. But youngsters who turn 21 between now and 1945 will be subject to registration and drafting (when the President chooses to proclaim subsequent Registration Days for them). </body> </article> </text>