Word: draft
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...sake of my own curiosity, I asked as many as I could, what they thought of this whole business of signing up for the draft. Opinions of course varied but resolved into three general categories: 1) "Oh, it won't be so bad if the food's good. It's only a year anyway and I might as well be in the Army as any place else." 2) "I suppose with the war and Hitler and Fascism and all, it's the only thing...
...this apparent mummery was serious: it was a rehearsal for the U. S. Selective Service commission's first draft lottery...
...wastebasket had been replaced by the huge glass jar from which draft numbers were drawn in 1917. Photographers' lights beat upon 8,994* blue capsules in the jar, shedding a blue radiance on the stage. 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...
...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...