World War I was just as brutal as the Civil War and both wars relied heavily on conscription (Mueller). Many Alma College students wrote back to their hometown and Alma Mater after entering the Great War. The college wrote a positive article to how proud they were about their former students and in response they sent them back copies of their paper “The Almanian” to show the troops how much they cared.

The training camp which is named after George Armstrong Custer, Camp Custer, prepared good alumni like Sgt. A. G. Papworth “Pap”, Corp. Forest Martelle, J.A.B for war. McAuley. These men were football players and fraternity members. Another student, M.C. Davies says that “We have been treated like kings in hotels one day and the next we are drinking rusty, oily water and eating flies too”. He later shows his faith by saying “We are in the biggest piece of Christian work the world has ever seen”.

While many Alma College students mentioned in the news article that they were at Camp Custer, others were already traveling the world like Corporal “Tac” Gies who was in Paris, France with the U.S. Expeditionary Forces. Others in Washington D.C. and Petersburg, Virginia along with those back in Camp Custer, Battle Creek Michigan not far from Alma College in Alma, Michigan were all conscripted. Even though according to Leon Friedman of the Michigan Law Review Association says that conscription goes beyond the powers of the government that the framers of the constitution originally set up back in 1787 (Friedman).

The First World War was also the first war to rely heavily on conscription. In that war, men could not pay for substitutes to take their place and enlistment bounties were prohibited thanks to the Selective Service Act of 1917.

Citations

• Friedman, Leon. Conscription and the Constitution: The Original Understanding. Michigan law Review. JSTOR. Alma College. 25 Mar. 2009 .
• Mueller, John. “Changing Attitudes towards War: The Impact of the First World War .” 1991. JSTOR. Alma College. 25 Mar. 2009 .