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PUBLIC BACKING LIKELY TO SAVE COL. MITCHELL
Baltimore Sun - 11/18/25
Observer Says Officer Has So Used Publicity He's Certain To Win.
ACQUITTAL IS HELD TO BE UNTHINKABLE
Dismissal, On The Other Hand, Would Let Him Pose As Martyr.
By FRANK R. KENT.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12.
THE most interesting question in Washington for the time being is this: Has the army got the guts to kick him out? That is what nearly everybody is asking everybody else. Needless to say, this means Col. William Mitchell, now on trial for attacking his superior officers with greater violence and verbosity than anyone heretofore recorded in the army annals.
WHEN this court-martial business is sifted it comes down to this: Has Colonel Mitchell, through the publicity so overpoweringly in his favor and with which he has skillfully played, created a condition that makes his dismissal inexpedient and which will compel a compromise verdict? That is all there is to it. If it were not for the newspapers, figuratively speaking, he certainly would be thrown out on his hard-boiled ear. There is not much doubt about that.
A more flagrant breech of army discipline, a more public smacking of his superiors in the face than that in which he has indulged would be hard to imagine. No effort at denial is made. The whole defense is to prove justification, a thing which in the strictly military sense does not exist. For the crime with which Mitchell is charged there is no such animal. He either did it or he did not. Why he did it is not the point.
WHOLLY aside from the merits of his views on the Air Service-and there are two sides to that question- the real issue before the court is whether any army officer, under any superiors across the knuckle and get away with it. If he can, unofficial observers say, then army discipline has degenerated into a pretty poor joke. 
  If he can, then there is no reason why any private should not bawl out his captain on the parade ground.
IM saying that if it were not for the newspapers Mitchell's dismissed would be assured, it is not intended to intimate that the court before which he is being tried will be influenced by the attitude of the press, but merely to point out that through the newspapers and movies Colonel Mitchell has created a situation that makes it exceedingly difficult to deal with him as he would have been dealt with had he not had-and still has-the facility and the ability to stir up an amazing public interest in himself and his theories.
  In short, through dramatic but calculated publicity and a darn smart lawyer, he has so maneuvered that it is hard to see how he can lose, no matter what the verdict.
SHOULD he be acquitted, it would, of course be a tremendous vindication-although acquittal is almost unthinkable under the circumstances, should the verdict be guilty and the penalty imposed a light one, it will be construed as a vindication both by Mitchell and the public, and the department left occupying the humiliating position of having been bested in a fight with an individual subordinate- not to say bluffed.
  On the other hand, should the verdict be dismissal from the service, it will enable Colonel Mitchell to pose as a martyr and, with a national reputation established by the publicity he has had, sweep across the country on a lecture tour hammering the War Department and the bureau chiefs in a way they were never hammered before.
IN other words, the War Department is in a hole-put there by publicity and not by the merits of the matter. They know Colonel Mitchell has broken military law and ought, for the good of the service, to be punished. They know that any possible punishment they may give plays squarely into his hands. He does not depend on the army for a living and has gained more reputation and got to be a bigger man by kicking the department in the face than all the other army officers have by playing the game according to the rules.
BEYOND doubt he has popular sentiment and press support to an extraordinary degree, due partly to his colorful personality and instinct for the dramatic and partly to the fact that he makes real news. No one can attend a session of his trial and not realize that both he and his lawyer are never for a split second unaware of those forty-odd newspaper correspondents sitting directly behind them. They are the court to which their real argument is made.

[[drawing]] Col. Mitchell [[/drawing]]

[[image - photograph]]
Underwood & Underwood.

There heroes of epoch-making flights by the navy, who appeared before the Mitchell court-martial hearing yesterday, ready to defend the naval air service against all charges. The men are, left to right, Comdr. Richard E. Byrd, who commanded the MacMillan arctic flight; Comdr. John Rogers, leader of the Hawaiian flight and now assistant chief of the bureau of aeronautics, and Comdr. H. C. Richardson, who flew across the Atlantic ocean in 1919.