Conscripting the Foreign Nationals: Blog Mirror, Mexico, Es Cultura; January 21, 1918: The Enlistment of Mexicans in the United States Army

 Registering for the draft.  1917.

An interesting article from the Mexican site, Mexico, Es Cultura, on the conscription of of Mexican nationals into the U.S. Army during World War One.

January 21, 1918: The Enlistment of Mexicans in the United States Army

For the government of the United States, all Mexicans who had lived in its territory, and even though they had left, were obliged to report for compulsory military service, so that the military command of that country sent questionnaires to former residents to report the arguments by which they could not be enlisted.

In the event that they ignored this requirement, the United States could deny their entry to its territory or even take them to a court-martial. The Engineer Alejandro R. Cota, who had been a legal resident in New York, denounced on January 21, 1918 in El Democrata that he had been enlisted against his will, because he had not renounced to the Mexican nationality.

Before this outrage, the newspaper demanded to the diplomatic authorities of our country a better defense of our countrymen and even more within the national territory.

A few notes about the article.

Usually the English section of this site is well done, but in this case the author was a bit confused.  What Mr. Cota was writing about was not the "enlistment" of Mexican nationals into the U.S. Army, but rather their conscription. That was indeed an enlistment "against his will", but not an enlistment in the way we normally use the word.

 Secretary Newton draws the first number, 1917.

Well, what about this?  

In fact, the United States has always held all permanent legal residents of the country liable for conscription and it does in fact conscript foreign nationals, when it conscripts.  It's always done this.  I knew that, so I wouldn't have regarded it as an "outrage", as the authors of Mexico, Es Cultura, apparently do, but I do get their point.

 Cartoon from the July, 1917 issue of the American Socialist magazine The Masses, which opposed the war and opposed conscription.  While drawing religious parallels in the The Masses is more than a little odd, here illustrator George Bellows did just that with a depiction of Christ in prison stripes.  While for the most part, Americans supported conscription, there were quarters of the country, including some rural quarters, that were massively, even violently, opposed to conscription during World War One.  The Federal government, for its part, was very heavy handed in suppressing opposition to conscription.

What I find surprising in the article is that the US apparently took steps to assess the military liability of those holding permanent resident status who had left the country and returned to their homelands, or at least to Mexico.  I'm unaware of the country doing that in later wars, but perhaps it did. What seems to be the case is that those who were not willing to serve lost their resident status, which also makes some sense.

Every country does this differently.  I'd be surprised (but I'm not certain) if the UK, for example, attempted to conscript foreign residents in the UK during World War One. As it was, British conscription was controversial enough and it never rally got around conscripting the Irish even though Parliament had passed a law to that end.  Conscription was massively unpopular during the Great War in Canada so I doubt it would have tried that either.

During World War Two the British only conscripted those who were in the country, so a British national living overseas could avoid British conscription, with some exception.  For the most part, however, they joined the forces where they were or even went to the effort to return to the UK for the war.  Be that as it may, some British movie actors sat the war out in the United States.  British conscription actually continued on after the war, under the same terms, until 1963.*

Indeed, most European nations re-instituted conscription following World War Two, but oddly at least a few recognized service in another NATO nation as fulfilling their own military service requirement.  A big exception is the non NATO, non EU, non UN nation of Switzerland which retains universal male conscription and which still holds that all Swiss, everywhere, are liable to it. As the sons of Swiss citizens are regarded as Swiss by the country irrespective of where they were born, this can and sometimes does have surprising results for vacationing young people who didn't think they were Swiss.

The US, I think, has always held that all of its legal residents and all of its citizens are liable to conscription, so being overseas would have no impact on a person's liability to service.  Interestingly, on this day in which Mr. Cota issued his compliant, we also find ourselves looking at a story that relates to that, in a way, from some fifty years later.

__________________________________________________________________________________

*Prince Harry, it might be noted, has recently called for a return to National Service: 

BRITAIN’S Prince Harry has thanked the army for keeping him out of trouble and has called for national service to be brought back.

In an interview published in the Sunday Times, the 30-year-old prince also revealed that he’s content being single and reflected on how the army gave him a chance to “escape the limelight.”

From News.com.au.