I make this idea graphic to myself by thinking that every man has an imaginary uniform (as every German soldier and French soldier had in waiting his green-gray or his blue and red uniform), an imaginary uniform of his own measurements always in readiness in home or shop or office or in some public locker, that he may don at call of his community, state, or nation, or perhaps at world need, when under compulsion he goes to vote, to pay his taxes, to fight against dishonesty, inefficiency, or waste, to inform himself upon public questions, or upon his public duties, just as one studies tactics in order to help in his country's defense, or goes to school as an alien to learn the language and institutions of a new land, or joins his neighbors in promoting the health of his community, in conserving resources, in securing means of healthful recreation for children and youth, in improving the highways--when, in short, he performs any one of a hundred offices that are required of him as an efficient unit in an organized society. Those who oppose military training in the schools will be less critical of its requirements when they are open to the broader interpretation suggested in the amendment of 1917. Those to whom the thought of training the young in the carrying of arms is repugnant may here see the educative value of universal service. Early in the war Germany discovered that the relation of industrial to military service is 2.7 per cent; that is, to keep one man in the field, nearly three men must work in those occupations, industrial and agricultural, which support the nation at war.[5] It is the work of the New York Military Training Commission to select as a partial military equivalent such vocational training or vocational experience as will, in the present or in the future, serve the nation. What shall the nature of this work be? The decision is to be left to the state Military Training Commission. It is easy to weed out those occupations which have no national productive or defensive value, but there will be difficulty in selecting those vocations which may or may not be military equivalents, which under war conditions may belong to the work of an industrial or agricultural army, when in peace they seem entirely separate from national service. Such an occupation is that of a junior telegraph operator, which is not of a productive nature, and yet a very necessary factor in war equipment. The case of a printer's apprentice is less equivocal. Only in rare cases could his work be accepted as a partial substitute for the required service. [5] Authorities differ widely; some even state that the ratio is now as high as one to eight.