" All able-bodied
citizens between twenty and forty-five years of age were to "perform
military duty in the service of the United States, when called on by the
President for that purpose."[50] This was strenuous earnest, for it
portended a draft.
The situation certainly was not to be considered without solicitude
when, in a war which peculiarly appealed to patriotism, compulsion must
be used to bring involuntary recruits to maintain the contest. Yet the
relaxation of the patriotic temper was really not so great as this fact
might seem to indicate. Besides many partial and obvious explanations,
one which is less obvious should also be noted. During two years of war
the people, notoriously of a temperament readily to accept new facts and
to adapt themselves thereto, had become accustomed to a state of war,
and had learned to regard it as a _condition_, not normal and permanent,
yet of indefinite duration. Accordingly they were now of opinion that
the government must charge itself with the management of this condition,
that is to say, with the conduct of the war, as a strict matter of
business, to be carried on like all other public duties and functions.
In the first months of stress every man had felt called upon to
contribute, personally, his own moral, financial, and even physical
support; but that crisis had passed, and it was now conceived that the
administration might fairly be required to arrange for getting men and
money and supplies in the systematic and business-like fashion in which,
as history taught, all other governments had been accustomed to get
these necessaries in time of war.
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