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"The Power against which we are arrayed has sought to impose its will upon the world by force. To this end it has increased armament until it has changed the face of war. In the sense in which we have been wont to think of armies there are no armies in this struggle, there are entire nations armed. Thus, the men who remain to till the soil and man the factories are no less a part of the army that is in France than the men beneath the battle flags."
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's statement upon passage of the Selective Service Act on this day in 1917, giving the government the right to draft soldiers.