Monday, Aug. 13, 1917

Many of the local men whose numbers were selected in the July 20 military draft lottery are claiming exemptions from service for family reasons, but The Saratogian reports that they’ll have to prove that family members depend on them for their living.

Saratoga County’s first draft district, which includes Saratoga Springs, is obliged to provide 158 men to the U.S. military for the war against Germany. After calling in approximately twice that number for physical exams last week, Dr. Douglas C. Moriarta has found 177 men physically fit for service. Of that number, 85 have claimed exemptions.

Over the weekend, Moriarta sought guidance on how to handle exemption requests from the state adjutant general’s office. He’s told this morning that “Washington would expect and demand a literal ruling” on each claim, “insofar as the best judgment of the board can determine.”

Anyone claiming exemptions for family reasons will have to “prove to the satisfaction of the exemption board that if he is taken his wife – and children if he has any – will become public charges.” In other words, “men with wives or other relatives not actually and literally dependent upon them will have to serve.”

Moriarta tells reporters that “when the board commences to examine the exemption c laims, it will sit in private and not publicly, as some people have supposed. The board will decide solely upon the merits of the affidavits and neither the drafted men nor any attorney representing him will be allowed to plead his case.”

One reporter concludes that this policy “will undoubtedly greatly lessen the exemptions for this district.” 53 men from each draft district will be summoned to a mobilization camp on September 1.