HARSH MILITARY PUNISHMENTS CONDEMNED BY AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION
In the New York Tribune of January 4, 1919, the President of the American Bar Association, at a meeting in New York City on January 3d, condemned harsh and unjust judgments of military courts-martial, and stated that “our military laws and our systems of administering military justice are unworthy of the name of law or justice.” He also said that our army was still following rules copied from England in 1774, but which were abandoned long ago as better suited “to the armies of feudal times than to the citizen armies of a modern republic.” He also condemned “the outrageous punishments meted out by our courts-martial for comparatively slight breaches of military discipline.” And he further stated that “Punishments are not only grossly harsh, as compared with the penalties imposed for like offences by our criminal courts, but they also differ so widely that we find the same offence punished in one court-martial by twenty-five years in the penitentiary and in another by six months in disciplinary barracks.” ... “The accused soldier has no real legal protection.” ... “The maintenance of military discipline does not require this harsh and arbitrary procedure. The French army is a model of discipline, but an accused soldier has the protection of the law thrown around him at every stage of his trial. That a soldier in our army should have less legal protection challenges the attention of the lawyers of the country. The American people never will stand for Prussian methods even in disciplining the Army.”