The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-01-09
RESULT IS WITNESSED

| It is easy to see the result of this. At least we saw it at Funston for at once towards, pro-Germans, I. w. W's and
 bolsheviks claimed personal scruples against war, and with the exception ot
 those who refused to do even noncom batant work were fully protected in their l, stand by the orders of the war depart
 ment-
 There are many instances of attempts on the part of the pacifist element of the war department to obtain discharges rom the army of conscientious objectors under one pretext or another. good example of this is the case of Nathan Berkowitz, who on his arrival at camp. ate the usual ration, but later claimed he was vegetarian On September 30, 1918, in connection with this case Mr. keppel, third Assistant Secretary of War wrote the sergeant general of the army,
 the suggestion has been made to me tha :
 1t might be worth while to have him ex-
 amined physically, with view to pos
 sible discharge from the army, as a solu-
 don of an embarrassing situation
 CHARGES FRAME-UP
 q am merely giving these few exam
 ples to show to what an extent cer-
 tain element of the war department in- terested themselves in these towards,
 -Germans and l. w. W.s But evident
 ly they were not content. In spite of the fact that both Major White, as camp judge advocate and Major Desorby, camp inspector, made investigations of the com plaints made by friends and relatives of the prisoners, Brig. Gen H. O. Will Hams, of the inspector generals depart ment. on orders from Washington, con- ducted third investigation. General Williams did not even attempt to obtain all of the facts. l, for one was only allowed to answer yes or no to many questions which could easily have been explained had been given the opportun- ity. Often when l attempted to fully relate or explain why a certain action was taken-or certain recommendation made, he would stop me with the re- mark I don't care anything about that, or Answer me .es or mo- Several times after l had succeeded in partially answ ering some of his questions he would turnSto his recorder and instruct him to erase my answers, notwithSta nding the fact that the answers included vital tes- timony. His attitude, during the en- tire time. vas one of extreme hostility He, at once, gave me the impression that he was attempting to frame my an- swers that he did not desire to ob- tain all of the facts. That this was the case is clearly indicated by his report which contains many false statements However, this report seemed to satisfy his superiors at Washington for they E. nored the two previous investigations and ordered the discharge of Major White Captain Whitman, Captain Negroto, Cap tain Young and myself. When we were informed of this action Major White and myself asked Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood, the camp commander and Lieut.. Col S. M. Williams, camp executive officer if there was anything against our records. and were officially informed that there was not, but that on the contrary both of our records were excellent
 HONORABLE DISCHARGE
 Our desire for a hearing was not granted, but due to the efforts of our friends Secretary Baker reviewed the case with the result that on Christmas Day we were both given honorable dis charges, instead of discharges without character, as was first contemplated. The | three captains originally ordered dis charged are still in the service. and as 1 far asrI am aware, no action has been | taken against them due to the fact that | all three hold provisional commissions 1 n the regular army, and cannot be dis charged without trial by court mar | ial
 "I, personally, have nothing to gain !