that any person between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five regardless of race or color shall be afforded an opportunity voluntarily to enlist and be inducted into the land and naval forces (including aviation units) of the United States for the training and service prescribed in subsection (b), if he is acceptable to the land or naval forces for such training and service.[1-25] [Footnote 1-25: 54 _U.S. Stat._ 885(1940).] The Wagner amendment was aimed at _volunteers_ for military service. Congressman Hamilton Fish, also of New York, later introduced a similar measure in the House aimed at _draftees_. The Fish (p. 012) amendment passed the House by a margin of 121 to 99 and emerged intact from the House-Senate conference. The law finally read that in the selection and training of men and execution of the law "there shall be no discrimination against any person on account of race or color."[1-26] [Footnote 1-26: Ibid. Fish commanded black troops in World War I. Captain of Company K, Fifteenth New York National Guard (Colored), which subsequently became the 369th Infantry, Fish served in the much decorated 93d Division in the French sector of the Western Front.] [Illustration: HEROES OF THE 369TH INFANTRY. _Winners of the Croix de Guerre arrive in New York Harbor, February 1919._] The Fish amendment had little immediate impact upon the services' racial patterns. As long as official policy permitted separate draft calls for blacks and whites and the officially held definition of discrimination neatly excluded segregation--and both went unchallenged in the courts--segregation would remain entrenched in the armed forces. Indeed, the rigidly segregated services, their ranks swollen by the draft, were a particular frustration to the civil rights forces because they were introducing some black citizens to racial discrimination more pervasive than any they had ever endured in civilian life. Moreover, as the services continued to open bases throughout the country, they actually spread federally sponsored segregation into areas where it had never before existed with the force of law. In the long run, however, the 1940 draft law and subsequent draft legislation had a strong influence on the armed forces' racial policies. They created a climate in which progress could be made toward integration within the services. Although not apparent in 1940, the pressure of a draft-induced flood of black (p. 013) conscripts was to be a principal factor in the separate decisions of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps to integrate their units. _To Segregate Is To Discriminate_