Excerpt from Military Justice During the War: A Letter From the Judge Advocate General of the Army to the Secretary of War in Reply to a Request for Information

March 1, 1919.

My Dear General Crowder: I have been deeply concerned, as you, know, over the harsh criticisms recently uttered upon our system of military justice. During the times of peace, prior to the war, I do not recall that our system of military law ever became the subject of public attack on the ground of its structural defects. Nor during the entire war period of 1917 and 1918, while the camps and cantonments were full of men and the strain of preparation was at its highest tension, do I remember noticing any complaints either in the public press or in Congress or in the general mail arriving at this office. The recent outburst of criticism and complaint, voiced in public by a few individuals whose position entitled them to credit, and carried throughout the country by the press, has been to me a matter of surprise and sorrow. I have had most deeply at heart the interests of the Army and the welfare of the individual soldier, and I have the firmest determination that justice shall be done under military law.

I have not been made to believe, by the persual of these complaints, that justice is not done to-day under the military law or has not been done during the war period. And my own acquaintance with the course of military justice (gathered as it is from the large number of cases which in the regular routine come to me for final action) convinces me that the conditions implied by these recent complaints do not exist and had not existed. My own personal knowledge of yourself and many of the officers in your department and in the field corroborates that conviction and makes me absolutely confident that the public apprehensions which have been created are groundless. I wish to convey to you here the assurance of my entire faith that the system of military justice, both in its structure as organized by the statutes of Congress and the President's regulations and in its operation as administered during the war, is essentially sound.

But it is not enough for me to possess this faith and this conviction. It is highly important that the public mind should receive ample reassurance on the subject.

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