Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 170, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1919 — BLAMES PERSHING FOR CRUELTIES [ARTICLE]

BLAMES PERSHING FOR CRUELTIES

IJ. BECKMAN DECLARES ARMY I HEAD TO BLAME FOR MILITARY POLICE ACTS. James W. Beckman, sbn of Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Beckmln, of this city,, and a former sergeant-major in the American army overseas, in writing a series of articles for the New York’ Globe charges General Pershing and Brig. Gen. Hart with being . responsible for the cruelties of the military police, and asserts that the two officers should be tried. The following charges of Mr. Beckman appeared under a Washington date line in the Chicago Tribune Sunday; Washington, D. C., July 19.—*-Gen. Pershing and «Brig. Gen. Hart, officers in charge of the American military • administration in Paris, should be brought to trial for the alleged brutal treatment of American soldiers in France by the military police,’ James W. Beckman, New York, former sergeant major, today charged in a letter to Representative Dallinger, Massachusetts. “General Pershing should be brought to trial for gross incompetence and negligence that amounts to .criminality,” Beckman wrote, “because the crimes of the Paris military police were committed right under his nose, and there is no excuse .or defense which he cam make for not having known of them and for not having them stopped, and because similar atrocities were the rule at several other places in France.' “Some of these cases involve General Pershing directly and others indirectly as commander in chief of the A. E. F., responsible for the hideous Prussion system which he permitted to develop and to disgrace the good name of America and American democracy in the eyes of the world.” IBeckman urges that Brig. Gen. Hart, who, he sayS, was President Wilson’s former aid, be brought to trial on the charge of manslaughter, as he is responsible for the crimes which were committed over a period of a year or more under his mand“I have the evidence to prove each case," Beckman concluded.