youth, were to march side by side in the ranks and practice
marksmanship and trench digging together. Great Britain and France had
democratized their armies; the United States did the same.

The President increased the number of men to be drafted for the first
army from 500,000 to 687,000 in order to use drafted men to bring the
regular army and the National Guard to their full strength. Thus there
were 687,000 men to be selected from a registration of 9,649,938. The
quota required from each State, based upon each State's number of
registrants, was determined in that proportion.

The draft, which was practically a great lottery to establish the
order in which the registrants were to be called into war service,
took place on July 20, 1917, in Washington. As it was anticipated that
fully half of the men called would either be exempted or rejected
after medical examination, the exemption boards appointed throughout
the country, located in 4,557 districts, were required to call double
the number of their quota for examination in the order in which the
men's numbers appeared on the district list after the drawing. This
meant a call of 1,374,000 men.

The drawing itself was based on a system of master-key numbers in two
groups, written on slips of paper. These slips were rolled and placed
in a bowl, from which they were drawn one at a time by blindfolded
men. The picking of a single number out of one set of a thousand
numerals, or out of another set of eleven numerals, drafted each man
in the 4,557 districts whose registration card bore the serial number
picked. The method fixed with absolute equality of chance the order in
which all registrants--if called upon--were to report to their local
boards for examination and subsequent exemption, discharge, or
acceptance for military service. The local boards at once organized
for the examination and enrollment of the men called.

The new citizen force became known as the National Army, in
contradistinction to the regular army and the National Guard, and was
organized into sixteen divisions, grouped by States as under:

First--Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont,
and New Hampshire.

Second--Lower New York State and Long Island.

Third--Upper New York State and northern Pennsylvania.

Fourth--Southern Pennsylvania.

Fifth--Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and District
of Columbia.

Sixth--Tennessee, North Carolina, and So