The Bemidji daily pioneer. [volume] (Bemidji, Minn.) 1904-1971, 1914-07-10
Will Be GIVEN FAIR
TRIAL IN FUTURE.
House Passes Law Doing Away With
Court Martial for Boys Who are
Guilty Of Fraudulent Enlistment
MANY DEALT WITH SEVERELY
Hundreds Compelled to Spend Years
Within Dark Prison Walls Won
der at Misjustice Of It All.

BY Congressman C. H. Tavenner.
Washington, July 10. The House
has done its share to- end an army
outrage which has existed for 20
years and more. It has passed Rep
resentative Gordon's bill repeating
the ancient law which gave army
courts martial jurisdiction to try
offenders for fraudulent enlistment.
Are Branded Felons.
Unler this law Mr. Gordon who
is from Ohio, claims that hundreds
of boys have been sent to federal
ipenitentiaries, branded felons, and
herded with murderers and thieves,
for the heinPus offense of making
false statements in the affidavits
submitted when applying for enlist.
ment in the army. Some of these
have been merely the outcome of.
overzeal of patriotism on the part of
minors who swore falsely that they
were Fl years of age. s.*
In the Civil War days this feat was
applauded rather than condemned,
and many Civil War veteran today
has as his proudest boast that he was
able to fool the enlistment officer
and get into the army when under
the legal age. Today for showing
the same zeal boys are given stiff
terms in the penitentiary. >..s~..--@ .-- I
!. Weapon of Officers.
Too often, Mr.. Gordon insists,
and he has studied the matter, this
law has been used as a weapon by
army officials to brighten off par
ents trying to secure the discharge
of minor sons from the army. When
these heartbroken mothers became
too pestiferous the army officer has
only to threaten court martial and
probable penitentiary sentence and
the mothers have abandoned their
efforts. . r. >.-,--. -...; y = ~ -
~ Is Almost Ridiculous.
Yet this law is so demonstrations
7af--thatsHtt kiixxzIe taaat
any Congress ever passed it. The
constitution guarantees to every
citizen not in, the military service a
trial by jury for any offense of which
may he accused. If an enlist
ment was fraudulent, it is obvious to
anything that the soldier was never
legally in the military. service.
Therefore he is entitled to trial by
jury for his offense, which in civil
law would be perjury. But it was
the experience of the army heads
that civil juries seldom if ever con-
victed boys for this offense. There
fore Congress was besought to pass
the law, and it complied. :
That this law could exist un-
challenged for so many years is but
another example of the unequal
chance before the courts of rich and
poor men. Had such a law been
directed against any corporation, it
would have been declared unconstitu-
tional in the first test case carried
to the Supreme Court. -
Victims Have Been Poor.
But the victims of the law have
been poor, SO poor that they have
not even been able to employ counsel
who might have sued out writs of
habeas corpus in the civil courts
and thus secured the release of their
clients. Instead of that the VIC
Tins have gone dumbly to prison
cells, hundreds of them, their souls
ranking under the injustice of it all,
and their brains telling them that
something was wrong with the world
that so slight an offense could bring
down such fearful penalty.
And some of them doubtless, many
of them perhaps, though their pri-
fson associations and their bitterness
against society, have become actual
criminals for life because of a
slight, and often excusable slip. +
Mr.. Gordon's report on his bill
| was so conclusive that it was not
even questioned. The House pass
ed the bill without debate by un-
animous consent. It will be in
teresting to see if the Senate will
act with equal swiftness.