Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1919 — ARMY TRIALS SCANDAL AIRED [ARTICLE]

ARMY TRIALS SCANDAL AIRED

Alleged Injustices of Sentences Totd • Senate Committee. Washington. Feb. 14.—The story of how a young man only twenty-five days in the- military service of his country was sentenced to from twenty to thirty years’ imprisonment for a comparatively slight infraction of military law, was related to the, senate military affairs committee by Brig Gen. S. T. Ansell, acting judge advocate general. The committee began hearings on Senator bill to revise the military laws and change court-martial customs. The sample of military injustice referred to followed a reprimand administered to a soldier in one of the cantonments for smoking a cigarette while on “kitchen police” duty. When the reprimand, administered by a second lieutenant, was followed by a demand that the man hand over his cigarettes to the lieutenant, he refused, with what General Ansell characterized as “raucous” language and was placed under arrest. Charges of disobedience and disrespect to an officer were preferred against hlrp, and a count-martial found him guilty.