<Dist Ex Bd.>

War Department
Official Business, Charge to Federal Government.

Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 26, 1917.

W. B. Gibson,
Chairman Western District Board,
Statesville, N.C.

On the Thirteenth day of September your Board certified to Union County board one hundred and thirty-one names as not exempted or discharged. Of these men one hundred and sixteen were sent to Columbia on the Nineteenth and are now in military service of the United States. I am advised that notwithstanding this record your board is granting certificates of discharge to men embraced in the list certified by you on September Thirteenth. In granting such certificates you are acting entirely outside of your authority, as you have no jurisdiction as to men already ordered into military service. You will discontinue granting certificates to any men whose names appear in the list certified by you on September thirteenth, and recall all certificates already issued by you to men embraced in such list. There may be some general plan devised within a few days to grant relief in cases of this kind, but at present you are wholly without authority to change the status of these men.

T. W. Bickett, Governor.