<P> German efforts to use its submarines ("U-boats") to blockade Britain resulted in the deaths of American travelers and sailors, and attacks on passenger liners caused public outrage . Most notable was the torpedoing without warning the passenger liner Lusitania in 1915 . Germany promised not to repeat, but it reversed its position in early 1917, believing that unrestricted U-boat warfare against all ships headed to Britain would win the war even at the cost of American entry . When Americans read the text of the German offer to Mexico, known as the Zimmermann Telegram, they saw an offer for Mexico to go to war with Germany against the United States, with German funding, with the promise of the return of the lost territories of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas . On Apr 1, 1917, Wilson called for war, emphasizing that the U.S. had to fight to maintain its honor and to have a decisive voice in shaping the new postwar world . Congress voted on April 6, 1917 to declare war, but it was far from unanimous . </P> <P> Congress authorized President Woodrow Wilson to create a bureaucracy of 500,000 to 1 million new jobs in five thousand new federal agencies . To solve the labor crisis, the Employment Service of the Department of Labor attracted workers from the South and Midwest to war industries in the East . </P> <P> In April 1917, the Wilson Administration created the Committee on Public Information (CPI), known as the Creel Committee, to control war information and provide pro-war propaganda . Employing talented writers and scholars, it issued anti-German pamphlets and films . It organized thousands of "Four - Minute Men" to deliver brief speeches at movie theaters, schools and churches to promote patriotism and participation in the war effort . </P> <P> In 1917 the administration decided to rely primarily on conscription, rather than voluntary enlistment, to raise military manpower for World War I . The Selective Service Act of 1917 was carefully drawn to remedy the defects in the Civil War system and--by allowing exemptions for dependency, essential occupations, and religious scruples--to place each man in his proper niche in a national war effort . The act established a "liability for military service of all male citizens"; authorized a selective draft of all those between twenty - one and thirty - one years of age (later from eighteen to forty - five); and prohibited all forms of bounties, substitutions, or purchase of exemptions . Administration was entrusted to local boards composed of leading civilians in each community . These boards issued draft calls in order of numbers drawn in a national lottery and determined exemptions . In 1917 and 1918 some 24 million men were registered and nearly 3 million inducted into the military services, with little of the resistance that characterized the Civil War . </P>

How world war i affected life on the homefront