(Headlines on the front page)

SUBJECT TO CALL
Obligation of Guardsman Under the Federal Law

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    Webster City Journal: Owing to the many misinterpretations placed on late laws dealing with the national guard, many people, and especially the guardsmen themselves are at a loss to explain definitely the exact status of the troops after mustering out. Thorough information obtained from acts of congress, enables the Journal to publish the facts concerning the matters most under debate.
    All national guardsmen are subject to a call of the president, to defend the nation, until their enlistments expire. This applies to all men,  whether under the federal oath or not. In case of war, every man, civilian or military, would of course, be subject to a call for volunteers, but the guard units would be called first, and would go as a unit wherever the president sent them.
    The take of the federal oath known to army men as the "dual oath" places men under federal juris - diction, and they participate in federal pay, which is more than the state pays. Under this oath a man pledges himself to three years active service and three years in the militia reserve. Those not taking the oath are not in the reserve, except those who enlisted after the June movement of the militia. These men, enlisting after the movements, are automatically under the dual oath, by virtue of the law going into effect at that time.
    The dual oath does not, as its enemies have claimed, prescribe any great amount of responsibility onto the civilian soldiers. They are subject to special calls of the president, while those not taking the oath are not. Special calls, however, involve only duty for defensive purposes, and in such event it is very improbably that the federal oath men would be called before any other guard unit. An advantage of the dual oath is that when under jurisdiction of the federal government the pay is much more, and the men are not subject to call to put down strikes and riots of local natures. The state troops are subject to such calls.
    In case of another call those companies declining the dual oath would be compelled on the first call to go through the red tape of another mustering into federal service, the same procedure which took up so much time at the call to the Mexican border.
 

~source: The LeMars Semi-Weekly Sentinel Newspaper, Plymouth Co., Iowa, Tuesday, 20 March 1917