The Sentinel=record., 1918-01-04

1 the national task ] take it that no great national project was ever at- tempted with SO complete a reliance upon the voluntary operation of citizens for its execution. Certainly no such burdensOme and sacrifical statute had ever before been expected without a great hierarchy of officials
 This law has been administered by civilians whose official relations lies only in necessary powers with which they are vested by the presi- dents designation of them to perform the duties that are laid upon them. They have accomplished the task They have made some mistakes The system offers room for improvement But the great thing they were called upon to do they have done
 In analyzing the first draft General Crowder shows that 9,5SG, sos men between the ages of 21 and 31 years registered themselves. Up to late in December only 5.S70 arrests had been made of those who had sought to evade registration and of that mum OCT 2296 were released after hay ug registered and there remain only 2,095 cases to be prosecuted. The re port declares that in the final an alysis of the records it will be shown that only 000026 per cent of the men within draft age evaded registration.
 A rough figure of S2 per cent is given as the number of registrants who failed to appear when called by their local boards for examination lut General CroWder hastens to eX- plain that most of the men already arO in Europe in the American, Brit ish and French armies They did not await the draft process in their eag- 1 erness to get into action.
 "The final date will undoubtedly snow" General Crowder adds. that the number of those who wilfuIly failed to appear TOT examination when called is insignificant"
 Of the total registration of 9,5SG,- I sos the number called and examined was 30S2,9i9 and of these 1057363 were certified by the boards for mili- l tarr service. Since the first call was for only 6S7,000 men, there now re- main 370,563 men awaiting summons to the mobilization camps
 Of all men examined 730, ,7J6 or 23.7 per cent were rejected for physical reasons. That, it is pointed out, shows an encouraging improvement in the physical condition of the young men of the nation since civil war days, for at that time the draft au- thorities rejected g per cent of all men called on physical grounds
 About onehalf of all men called to draft or 1,560,570 claimed exemp- tion The claims of IS per cent of these were granted, showing in the opinion of officials that very few fraudulent claims were Tiled Of those exempted 7l per cent were re- leased because of dependnt relatives, 20 pr cent bcause they claimed alien birth and nationality and only per cent on vocational grounds
 Less than one per cent of the ex emptions were granted to religious oliector or to those morally unfit The figures are 3,SS7 exempted be- cause of religious belief their ex emption extending only to release from participation in actual combat and 2,O0l rejected for moral unfit ness The majority of the latter were conyicts now in prison.
 The total cost of the first draft, exclusive of the cost of the provost marshal generals office here,' was S5,2tt,965 This amount has been re- funded to the states by the federal government
 if represents an average cost of s493 per man accepted for military l service and with the provost marshal 1 generals expenses included g. per man against a cost of $24,4S per vol- untary recruit in 1914; s19.14 in 1915 and S28.95 in the first nine months ] of 1917 Prior to the draft act dur ing the civil war the cost per man