Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1918-12-15

 SYSTEM IS
 PERMANENT
Selective Draft Registers 23,74O,0O0, and Put in the Field These Million Fighters.

New York, Dec. 14.-Taps 10 the volunteer system of raising armies in war times by the United States was sounded here tonight by Major General Enoch H. Crowder. Provost Marshal General in an address to the retiring members of 1S9 New York draft boards. He earnestly advocat- ed that the selective service system should become the permanent method of raising American armies in the future.
 General CrowGer declared that the selective service law had enabled the government i'll this. war to register 23,740,0O0 Americans: put into the field nearly three million fighters and to have in readiness to entrain on November 11th, when the armistice was signed, two million more, all within a period of eighteen months. It would be a calamity he said. for the United States to revert to the volunteer system in view of such a successful test of selective service, adding that the American conscripts had shown their valor, aggressive ness and initiative of the most sea-. soned troops.
 The Provost Marshal General con- trasted the draft methods of the Uni ted States with those of England and showed how this country had profit ed by the mistakes made by the British, who, after three years or trial with the volunteer system and the disorganiZation of industry, were oh fn sr,fin
 When the United States War De- partment, in it's effort to heed the lesson learned by England, sought, the enactment of the selective service act" General Crowder said, that the traditional method of raising Amer ican armies by the volunteer system was so strong with the people that it was deemed eXpedient in the very oill the War Department presented to Congress for enactment to provide that limited volunteering might go on."
 He recalled the great opposition to the draft and how through the in- sistence of the President, ably sup ported by the stalwart and aggres- sive leadership of Senator Chamber lain and Representative Kahn. in the respective houses, the day was saw ed."
 Referring to the selective service system as the very essence of demo- cracy,' the General appraised the faluts of the volunteer system.
 "In it's very nature it is an in- divdidualists scheme dependent for it's existence upon the spontaneous fervor of the peole." he said.
 "It is a system which has an eye only to the. raising of armies. Un- der it the test of patriotism is en- listment in the nations fighting for ces. It takes no account of the ln- dustrial life which must be main- tained behind the battle front that armies may be fed, clothed and arm- ed
 /''If (the valor system) had it's origian in the days of chivalry when war was not a business or contest of industry or mechanics. but bat tie of brawn, when armies could live largely upon the country as they advanced and nations fate decid- ed upon the field of battle. ltsad- heres to the doctrine that the chem ist may be permitte to. lay aside his research and the trained mechanic his lathe, while the unskilled laborer and the fvagrant continue in their un- l productive paths. It is the antithe- sis of the conservation that the selec- tive service promotes"