by David A. Bell

Following up on Darrin McMahon's interesting post, I have a question for my American historian colleagues. What is the longer pattern of elite service in the armed forces? In 1956, Darrin reports, a majority of Princeton students served in the armed forces (presumably through ROTC). But what was the percentage in 1936? In 1906? In 1856? In our great national crises--Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War II--the country's social and cultural elites have served along with everyone else. I would see 1956 as part of that last "crisis" period: just a few years after the Korean War, barely a decade after World War II, and in the middle of the Cold War. But what about non-crisis years? In other words: Is the current pattern of a large-scale disconnect between elites and military service a recent phenomenon, an abandonment of responsibility by cosmopolitan liberals? Or is it nothing more than a reversion to historical type? Now, of course, since 2001, we are back in a crisis period. But it is very much unlike earlier ones. There has been no large-scale expansion of the armed forces, no serious talk about moving from a professional army to a citizen army, and very few serious appeals to the patriotism of young men and women in our elite universities from our political leadership (how many speeches, if any, has the typical college student heard urging him or her to join the armed forces?). In 1941, students from the elite universities poured into the armed forces in the context of a large-scale mobilization of American society for the war effort that has no equivalent today. So even today, the situation may not be so unusual in long-term historical context. But what was the pattern before World War II? Can anyone help out here?