just have to make the point that the clip is of vancouver in Canada, and Canada was part of England during wwI... not saying we are europeans up here or anything but we didnt have a choice about going to war
Well that shows you how dumb we are mate, we didn't have to go (there was no conscription or "draft" in Oz back then) but we went anyway. My Grandfather, Great Grandfather and Great Uncle (in other words, a father and his two sons) all joined up in 1915. My great uncle was only 14, so he had to put his age up to get in.
Surprisingly they all survived, and my grandfather and great uncle signed up again for WW2. (My Great Grandfather, who'd also served in the second Boer War in 1899-1902 was too old) There was no "draft" in WW2 either, that only came about during Vietnam, and my Grandfather actually joined in with some hippies to protest against it, because his opinion was that if young people didn't want to risk dying for someone else's beliefs, then they shouldn't be made to.
A lot of Americans wanted to fight at the outbreak of WW1 too, so many joined the Canadian, French, or British Army, and a lot of young American pilots joined the French Air Service, and the "Lafayette Escadrille" was a French unit made up mostly of American volunteer fighter pilots. So while the American government might have dithered for several years, many thousands of Americans made a personal decision about what side of the fence they'd sit on. Cheers, Terry.