Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1918-09-20
ARMY CHOOSES MEN
FOR SPECIAL WORK



year-o!d men-are starting their trip
through the elaborate draft ma
chinery that the United States has
set up to select those who can best
serve their country's cause in thu
fighting ranks and those whose duty
it is. for manifold reasons, to stay
at home in the civilian army.
That is the selective process OF
raising an army. The public is ia
miliar with this selection. 1t has seen
it operate in a surprisingly efficient
manner in handling the 100000
Young men who registered in the
first draft.
But The selective process does not
stop there 1t just begins. Choosing
by draft regulations. applied by the
thousands of local boards, those who
shall join Uncle Sans fighting ranks,
supplies the millions of men to make
up the army.
After they are selected from their
fellow civilians, sent to camp, given
their physical examinations and ac-
copied for the service, the great prob
lem remains of placing these millions
of men where they can serve most
efficiently.
Right there is where the seconQ
process of selection comes in, pro-
cess that has been vastly improved
as result of the experience of the
first draft The public is not as ia
miliar with it as it is the first selec-
tive process. 1t operates wholly in
side the army, not outside.
But it is a selection that bears
even more directly on the fighting
value of the divisions and the units
that America is to send to France
than the first selection.
This selective machine starts its
operation the minute registrant is
accepted for service. 1t carries on to
the battlefront in France. The new
soldier is sent before an interviewer.
There his civilian experience is taken
in most minute detail.
They do not just inquire If he is a
machinist or a lumberman or mer-
chant or a railroad man. They find
out just what he did in his trade,
how expert he was at it. There are
dozen different kinds of carpenters,
for example.
These trade tests are just what
their names signify. The cobbler or
machinist or auto driver io given an
J actual test of his trade to determine
just how proficient he is.
To accomplish this second process
of selection, there has been built up
in the adjutant generals department
of the army, with intelligent coop
Grafton of civilian aid and advice, a
machine that will pass upon the quail
ifcations of every single one of the
millions of new men about to enter
the army through the draft and Will
attempt to place him where he is
fitted to serve best.
This selective machine, built up
without any flourish of trumpets
and little publicity but by painstak-
ing study and research into the army
needs and requirements on the one
hand and the human material sup
piled by the draft on the other,
already has been at work for some
months in the camps.
Soldiers are specialists. Not only
has it been found that certain types
of men with certain previous expe-
rience make more efficient soldiers in
certain arms of the service. Far more
than this, for as the big military ma
thine is now operated so per cent OF
the army requirements are for spe-
cial training in certain trades or
lines of work.
You can dump men by the hun
dreds of thousands Unfortunately
into these jobs and get them done in
an indiscriminate or Indifferent sort
of fashion. Or you can select the
men whose civilian experience makes
their Transformation into some par
ticular army job an easy and quick
process.
On one hand, you have a long, te-
dious, inefficient training process
ahead, full of many griefs. On the
other you have quick jumps forward
to that stage of efficiency that means
a place in tho firing line.
Germany spent 40 or so years pre-
pairing for this war - the United
States must choose out of its millions
of men furnished the army by the
draft. those whose experience in
peace time pursuits enables them to
most quickly become an army spe-
cialist on some job or another That
it what the second big selective pro-
cess in building the American army
does
Supplementing this process of ST.
lection and placing of men in army
service, according to their peace time