Article on the House of Representatives votes for H.R. 3545 - n.d.

Transcript

WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 5, 1918. -- The Democratic National Committee finds itself astonished at the tenor of letters of inquiry it receives as to what the so called “vote against conscription” really was. It would be almost exactly accurate to answer: “There was no such thing!” Now here are the facts stated so briefly that it will only take a minute to read them: The Committee on Military Affairs brought the big Military Establishment Bill into the House, favorably reported by the Committee through its Chairmen, Mr. Den, Democrat, of Alabama. It authorized the President to raise troops by two methods, volunteer and conscription. Mr. Julius Kahn, Republican of California, offered an amendment providing that the authority given the President to ask for volunteers be omitted from the bill, leaving him only the one method – conscription. That amendment won. 166 Republicans and 147 Democrats voted to sustain the Committee and to allow the President to use both methods. It will be seen that no one voted for or against conscription. They all voted for conscription, but some were voting for conscription only and the others were voting for both volunteers and conscription. Speaker Clark was among the latter number. Another vote came on the final passage of the whole bill. On that occasion, of course, they were voting on the bill providing for conscription only - no volunteers. There were 397 votes for the bill. One of them was the Speaker’s. So it will be seen that every one of them was voting for conscription. There were a few who voted against the bill, they were the only ones who voted against conscription.