There are two distinct points of view as to the slacker raids, so called, and criticisms as well as praise have come to the A. P. L. for its part in them all over the country. Naturally, no miracle was wrought in human nature. The families of the men who were hid or shielded were no more loyal after their men were taken than they had been before. The conscientious objector experienced no stiffening of fiber in his flabby soul. But even these would have felt otherwise towards the slacker drives had they known all the truth. Ask the men themselves who were inducted into the army what they think about it now. Nine-tenths of them will say that they are ashamed that they had to be asked twice to go into the army. The other one-tenth is the better for having gone, whether or not they will confess so much. As a saving influence, a mere reclamation enterprise, the slacker raids were a vast agency for the public good. They were not man-hunters, but man-savers, these men who conducted the raids.
Just one instance of this truth must serve for all the many communities who engaged in this work and who caught, in all, perhaps, a half million men for examination, and held a tenth of all they caught. It is only a little anecdote, but it makes the best answer possible to all the critics of the Selective Service Act.
A gentleman came into the National Headquarters with certain papers in the way of reports, and announced that he was the Chief of the Akron, Ohio, Division. He offered the usual apologies—by this time more or less familiar at the book desk—that he had been able to do so little when he had wanted to do so much in the work of the A. P. L. "But there is one thing that I wish you would put in this book," he said, "to show people what this League has done in the remaking of men. I don't care whether you say another thing for Akron, but I want to tell this story of a man we saved.
"A young woman came to my office and complained of her husband. 'I am almost desperate about Joe,' she said to me. 'He drinks and drinks, and hangs around the saloons. He hasn't given me a cent in eight months, and I don't know what to do. I—I love him. I don't want him to go. But do you think the army would do him any
