Abstract
Military conscription has always been a hot issue in American politics. Debates about conscription, however, do not always revolve around the same issues. In this paper, arguments for and against the draft offered in World War II are compared with arguments offered during the Vietnam War. An important difference between these arguments is documented: while argument pro and con during the Second World War was based on assessments of the draft's impact on society, it was based during the Vietnam War on assessments of the draft's impact on individual citizens. This shift in focus is explained as the response of broad sectors of public opinion to long-term trends in patterns of social integration that are not directly related to the immediate problems (or requirements) of raising an army for war.
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