The unprecedented character of this undertaking is a matter of common knowledge. Congress, in the consideration of the act which authorized it, entertained grave doubts as to whether a plan could be devised which would apply so new a principle of selection for national service without much misunderstanding and unhappiness. But the results have been of a most inspiring kind and have demonstrated the universal willingness of our people to serve in the defense of our liberties and to commit the selection of the Nation's defenders to the Nation itself. The men selected have reported to the camps and are in course of training. They constitute as fine a body of raw material as were ever trained in military science. They are already acquiring the smartness and soldierly bearing characteristic of American troops, and those who once thought that the volunteer spirit was necessary to insure contentment and zeal in soldiers now freely admit that the men selected under this act have these qualities in high degree and that it proceeds out of a patriotic willingness on the part of the men to bear their part of the national burden and to do their duty at the Nation's call. [Sidenote: Ability of Provost Marshal General.] [Sidenote: This mode of selection made necessary by conditions of modern war.] [Sidenote: The democratic fairness of the plan.] The success of this great undertaking is, of course, primarily due to the painstaking forethought and the statesmanlike breadth of view with which the Provost Marshal General and his associates organized the machinery for its execution. But other elements have contributed to its success, and first among these was the determination to rely upon the cooperation of the governors of States and State agencies in the assembling of the registration and exemption boards. By reason of this association of State and local agencies with the National Government the law came as no outside mandate enforced by soldiers, but as a working of the home institutions in the hands of neighbors and acquaintances pursuing a clear process of selection, and resulting in a gift by the States to the Nation of a body of men to be trained. The press of the country cooperated in a most helpful way, drawing the obvious distinctions between this mode of selection and those punitive drafts which have sometimes been resorted to after the failure of volunteering, and pointing out the young men of the country that the changed conditions of warfare made necessary a mode of selection which would preserve the industrial life of the Nation as a foundation for successful military operations. Indeed, the country seemed generally to have caught enough of the lessons of the European war to have realized the necessity of this procedure, and from the very beginning criticism was silenced and doubt answered by the obvious wisdom of the law. Moreover, the unquestioned fairness of the arrangements, the absence of