516
Opinion of the Court
affected by reason of his military service." 9 The comprehensive character of the entire statute indicates that Congress included a prejudice requirement whenever it considered it appropriate to do so, and that its omission of any such requirement in § 525 was deliberate.
Finally, both the history of this carefully reticulated statute, and our history of interpreting it, refute any argument that a literal construction of § 525 is so absurd or illogical that Congress could not have intended it. In many respects the 1940 Act was a reenactment of World War I legislation that had, in turn, been modeled after legislation that several States adopted during the Civil War. See Boone v. Light-ner, 319 U. S. 561, 565-569 (1943). The Court had emphasized the comprehensive character and carefully segregated arrangement of the various provisions of the World War I statute in Ebert v. Poston, 266 U. S. 548, 554 (1925), and it had considered the consequences of requiring a showing of prejudice when it construed the World War II statute in Boone, supra. Since we presume that Congress was familiar with those cases,10 we also assume that Congress considered the decision in Ebert to interpret and apply each provision of the Act separately when it temporarily reestablished the law as a whole in 1940, and then considered Boone's analysis of a prejudice requirement when it permanently extended the Act in 1948.
Legislative history confirms that assumption. Since the enactment of the 1918 Act, Congress has expressed its understanding that absolute exemptions might save time or
9 Similar qualifications appear in § 520(4) (applying to the reopening of judgments against an absent service member); §§ 521 and 523 (providing for stays of legal proceedings, attachments, and garnishments); § 526 (regulating interest rates on obligations incurred prior to military service); § 530(3) (covering eviction and distress proceedings); § 531(3) (involving the termination of installment contracts); § 535(1) (involving the assignment of insurance coverage); and § 535(2) (limiting the right to enforce liens for the storage of personal property).
10 See Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677, 696-697 (1979).
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