Commissioner McNutt understood the distinction and found the Navy's offer wanting for two reasons. The proposed schedule was inadequate to absorb the backlog of black registrants who should have been inducted into the armed services, and it did not raise the percentage of Negroes in the Navy to a figure comparable to their strength in the national population. McNutt wanted the Navy to draft at least 125,000 Negroes before January 1944, and he insisted that the practice of placing separate calls be terminated "as soon as feasible."[3-48] The Navy finally struck a compromise with the commission, agreeing that up to 14,150 Negroes a month would be inducted for the rest of 1943 to reach the 125,000 figure by January 1944.[3-49] The issue of separate draft calls for Negroes and whites remained in abeyance while the services made common cause against the commission by insisting that the orderly absorption of Negroes demanded a regular program that could only be met by maintaining the quota system. [Footnote 3-48: Ltr, McNutt to Knox, 23 Mar 43, WMC Gen files.] [Footnote 3-49: Ltr, SecNav to Paul McNutt, 13 Apr 43; Ltr, McNutt to Knox, 23 Apr 43; both in WMC Gen files.] Total black enlistments never reached 10 percent of the Navy's wartime enlisted strength but remained nearer the 5 percent mark. But this figure masks the Navy's racial picture in the later years of the war after it became dependent on Selective Service. The Navy drafted 150,955 Negroes during the war, 11.1 percent of all the men it drafted. In 1943 alone the Navy placed calls with Selective Service for 116,000 black draftees. Although Selective Service was unable to fill the monthly request completely, the Navy received 77,854 black draftees (versus 672,437 whites) that year, a 240 percent rise over the 1942 black enlistment rate.[3-50] [Footnote 3-50: Selective Service System, _Special Groups_, vol. II, pp. 198-201. See also Memos, Director of Planning and Control, BuPers, for Chief, BuPers, 25 Feb 43, sub: Increase in Colored Personnel for the Navy; and 1 Apr 43, sub; Increase in Negro Personnel in Navy. Both in P-14, BuPersRecs.]