George C. Marshall Quotes

All able bodied male citizens … are hereby declared to be the National Forces.

Conscription may have been good for the country, but it damned near killed the country.

Congress have a right by the Constitution to raise regular armies, and no restraint is imposed on the exercise of it …. It would be absurd to suppose that Congress could not carry this power into effect otherwise than be accepting the voluntary service of individuals.

Nobody wants to go to war, but the burden of service cannot fall only on volunteers who, are attracted to the military for financial reasons.

In America, conscription is unknown; men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law.

Because conscription appeals to essentially no one, the United States has lived with the All-Volunteer Force since the end of the Vietnam War.

I was drafted during the Korean War.

I was honestly willing to accept compulsory military service, provided that the voluntary system had first been tried out, and had failed to supply the men needed and who could still be spared from industry, and were numerically worth troubling about.

Each man ... shall serve for a training and service period of 12 consecutive months unless sooner discharged, except that whenever the Congress has declared that the national interest is imperiled, such 12-month period may be extended by the President to such time as may be necessary in the interests of national defense.

They talk about conscription as being a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetery.

It will plow under every fourth American boy.

Pennsylvania is soon to participate in a profoundly solemn and historic departure from precedent when, for the first time in our Republic, there will be registration for peace-time conscription on Wednesday, October 16th, between the hours of 7 A. M. and 9 P. M. This date, designated as Registration Day by authority of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, and set by the President's Proclamation… is one of the most significant days in the annals of our Commonwealth and our Nation. All male persons in the United States, with the few exceptions which already have been made clear, who have attained the twenty-first anniversary of the day of their birth and who have not attained the thirty-sixth anniversary of the day of their birth, are required to present themselves and submit to registration for compulsory military service. Never before has America, through the Congress of the United States, found it necessary to take such a step. The impact and consequences of Registration Day make it an historic event to all of our people. Every family is affected. All means available must be used to apprise everyone everywhere of what must be done to complete the registration properly, accurately and fully.

Conscription would amount to the sacrifice of nine-tenths of our moral case in this war. It would not only amount to an admission—wholly unjustified—that the heart of the country is not in the war…. It will change the basis of our participation. It will no longer be the war of the British people; it will be the war of the British governing classes.

Only World War II, which mobilized 10 million draftees, could by any stretch of the imagination be called a people's war.

I think a draft produces a better Army than the one we would have with all volunteers, because I think you get average Americans if you have a draft. And if it's an all-volunteer Army, you get people who join up because of some problem in their own lives. They don't have anything else to do, they don't have a job, or they can't find what they want to do, so they join the Army. And it doesn't produce the best Army.

With respect to where we are now, we have a voluntary army. And if we ever go back to conscription I hope that at time it will be the kind of conscription that was put in at the end of the Vietnam War. And that is, everybody is equally liable to be called to serve the nation in time of conflict.

The weeping voices rise straight up and strike the clouds. A passer-by at the roadside asks a conscript why, The conscript answers only that drafting happens often.

Since far fewer people are recruited to serve in a voluntary military, the connection between America and its military is increasingly tenuous and less personal.

Conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription.

It is the duty of our men to enroll themselves in the national services. We need all our manpower for defence. For the military and... we need a quarter of a million men.

From twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel: thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies

There is now every indication that the whole force of ninety—four regiments called for by the President could be readily furnished by Illinois alone, and that the quota of six regiments assigned to Illinois could be obtained in Chicago almost at the tap of a drum.

Lord Kitchener and Mr. Asquith have both repeatedly assured the public that the response to the appeal for recruits have been highly gratifying and has exceeded all expectations. What the conscriptionists want, however, is not recruits, but a system of conscription that will bring the whole male working-class population under the military control of the ruling classes.

In the event of a war for the defense of our nation and its liberties, there shall be a conscription of wealth as well as a conscription of men.

The government has the right to the military service of all its able-bodied citizens.