Now and then Columbia’s summoning finger brought to the training camp a slacker, or a religious or a conscientious objector. Patient and careful inquiry was given to every case and no effort was spared to make sure that each was receiving exact justice. The official report of the Provost Marshal General for the first draft reckoned that out of the more than 3,000,000 called for service no more than 150,000 of those who failed to appear on time were not accounted for by enlistment, transference or death. The reports of the local boards showed that the bulk of this residue was composed of aliens who had left this country to enlist in their own armies. Out of the remainder of 50,000 a great many of the failures to report were due to the ignorance or heedlessness of workingmen who had moved, between registration and the call, from one job to another in a different locality. The exemption usually given to religious objectors was extended, after a few months, to include those who based their objections to sharing in warfare upon grounds of conscience even if they were not members of a religious organization. Out of the 3,600,000 men inducted into the service a little less than 4,000 were accepted or recognized as conscientious objectors. A large number of these were assigned to work on farm or industrial furloughs. Some entered non-combatant service and a few were allowed to join the Friends’ Reconstruction Unit. Several hundred refused any service whatever and were sent to prison. In the training camps the conscientious objectors were segregated and placed in the charge of an army officer who was often able by tact and persuasion to influence them to a different point of view. Some swallowed their objections very soon, took up the work of training more or less sullenly, and presently, seeing a better light and feeling the influence of the patriotism and enthusiasm surging round about them, became as good soldiers of Uncle Sam as any of their comrades. The problem of the slacker and the objector was a small one in the making of the great army that was sent overseas, but it was a vexatious one for the honest-hearted men who had charge of it and who took infinite pains to dispense even-handed justice in every case. “My company,” said the captain in one large cantonment under whose command were grouped the slackers, the religious objectors and the protesters for conscience’s sake, “is the most interesting one in the camp--and the most trying.”