The Spirit of Selective Service (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

Enoch Herbert Crowder

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0265171288 ISBN 13: 9780265171288

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

The Spirit of Selective Service by Enoch Herbert Crowder examines how a national draft reshaped war, industry, and a nation’s sense of civic duty.

This non-fiction study explains the aims, challenges, and outcomes of the United States Selective Service system during World War I, and it contrasts American experience with other nations’ approaches. Through official records, it traces how registration, classification, and mobilization were organized, and what those processes revealed about democracy in action.

This edition foregrounds the structure of the draft, the costs involved, and the manpower it produced. It also highlights key lessons that emerged from wartime experience, including how society balanced military needs with industry and family life. The text underscores the enduring idea that national service rests on both rights and obligations.
• How early draft systems were conceived and later refined
• The tension between voluntary enlistment and universal service, with lessons from England
• The scale, costs, and manpower implications of mobilization
• The impact of wartime drafting on postwar civic ideas and policy
Ideal for readers of military history, public policy, and 20th‑century American history.

Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0265171288
• ISBN 13: 9780265171288
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 383