Selective Service.

When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the armed forces were made up of about two hundred thousand volunteers. Because an insufficient number of men signed up in the days following Congress's declaration of war than for any other war in American history, clearly reflecting the public's ambivalence about the war, Congress passed the Selective Service Act. All men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty were required to register for the draft. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker stressed the democratic nature of the process: no one could buy his way out or send a surrogate, as was common practice during the Civil War. On 5 June 1917 nearly 10 million American men registered. During the course of the war the age span was widened to eighteen to forty-five; by the end of the war...