The grand total of registrants in both drafts was 23,456,021. Youths who had not completed their 19th year were set apart in a group to be called last and men between thirty-six and forty-five were also put in a deferred class. The government’s plan was to have approximately 5,000,000 men under arms before the summer of 1919. The German armistice on November 11th found 4,000,000 men actually under arms and an assignment of 250,000 made to the training camps.
A most important factor in the training plans of the United States was that incorporated in the organization of the Students’ Army Training Corps, by which 359 American colleges and universities were taken over by the Government and 150,000 young men entered these institutions for the purpose of becoming trained soldiers. The following are the conditions under which the S. A. T. C. was organized:
The War Department undertook to furnish officers, uniforms, rifles, and equipment, and to assign the student to military duty, after a few months, either at an officers’ training camp or in some technical school, or in a regular army cantonment with troops as a private, according to the degree of aptitude shown on the college campus.
At the same time a circular letter to the Presidents of colleges arranged for a contract under which the Government became responsible for the expense of the housing, subsistence, and instruction of the students. The preliminary arrangement contained this provision, among others:
The per diem rate of $1 for subsistence and housing is to govern temporarily, pending examination of the conditions in the individual institution and a careful working out of the costs involved. The amount so fixed is calculated from the experience of this committee during the last five months in contracting with over 100 collegiate institutions for the housing and subsistence of over 100,000 soldiers in the National Army Training Detachment. This experience indicates that the average cost of housing is 15 to 20 cents per day; subsistence, (army ration or equivalent,) 70 to 80 cents per day. The tuition charge is based on the regular per diem tuition charge of the institution in the year 1917-18.
A permanent contract was arranged later under these governing principles:
The basis of payment will be reimbursement for actual and necessary costs to the institutions for the services rendered to the Government in the maintenance and instruction of the soldiers with the stated limitation as to cost of instruction. Contract price will be arrived at by agreement after careful study of the conditions in each case, in conference with authorities of the institution.
The War Department will have authority to specify and control the courses of instruction to be given by the institution.
The entity and power for usefulness of the institutions will be safeguarded so that when the contract ends the institutions shall be in condition to resume their functions of general education.
The teaching force will be preserved so far as practicable, and this matter so treated that its members shall feel that in changing to the special intensive work desired by the Government they are rendering a vital and greatly needed service.