Word: draft
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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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...wastebasket had been replaced by the huge glass jar from which draft numbers were drawn in 1917.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...
With the closing of the National guard to volunteers and the impossibility of obtaining a commission in the draft the Marine Reserves becomes attractive to all those whose order number make their call during the next two years likely...
...even than "A farewell to Arms." In harrowing days like these we live in, it is interesting to see just what kind of book it is that can catch men's attention, and light up for an instant the shadows that lie behind the day-by-day kaleidoscope of draft numbers, campaign speeches, and invasions...