Apart from the foregoing explanations, however, which would suffice to show that such aliens did not desert in the ordinary sense, but merely failed to come forward to claim their exemption, there was undoubtedly a large exodus of aliens from some of the border states, and those near to the seaboard, where the easiest course for these ignorant and misguided persons seemed to lie in flight beyond the national boundaries. The figures upon which the Provost Marshal General thus comments are given by him in Table XXXIV.[142] TABLE XXXIV COMPARISON OF REPORTED DESERTIONS OF ALIEN AND CITIZEN REGISTRANTS ================================================================ DESERTIONS | NUMBER --------------------------------------------------+------------- Total alien and citizen registrants, June 5, 1917 | to Sept. 11, 1918 | 10,679,814 Total desertions | 474,861 Total alien registrants | 1,703,006 Reported alien desertions | 185,081 Total citizen registrants | 8,976,808 Reported citizen desertions | 289,780 ================================================================ It is clear from these figures, and regardless of the allowances made by the Provost Marshal General, as quoted above, that nearly 11 out of every 100 aliens registered, as against a little more than 3 out of every 100 citizens, who, in one way or another evaded or sought to evade the draft; also that it is simply not true that “the proportion of desertions among the native born was about twice as great as among the foreign born.” True, the citizen-deserter percentage of the whole number of registrants is 2.71, as against an alien-deserter percentage of 1.75 ... but there were _nearly six times as many citizen registrants as alien_. In order even to _equal_ the alien ratio, the citizen deserters would have had to be considerably more than three times as numerous as they were. But no such plausible excuses could have been made for them! There are no available figures to show how many of the citizens who thus evaded service were of foreign birth. WAR’S TEST OF “THE MELTING-POT” The essential quality of manhood in America was tested in all this business, and gave the lie direct alike to those Americans who were wont to sneer at the alien among us, and to the German autocracy which counted upon those of German descent in this country to prove disloyal to America. “The cosmopolitan composition of our population was never more strikingly disclosed,” says the Provost Marshal General, “than by the recent events of the World War. Then the melting pot stood in the fierce fires of the national emergency; and its contents, heated in the flames, either fused into the compact mass or floated off as dross.” And he goes on to say:[143]