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[[Newspaper article]]
Sentence Not Expected
It was considered unlikely this afternoon, in the event Col. Mitchell is found guilty of the charges and specifications made against him, that a sentence will be announced. The case when finally settle by the jury of generals will go before a board of review in the War Department and then to President Coolidge for final approval.
The defense counsel and the accused were stoical throughout the afternoon and showed every indication possible they had no interest in the proceedings as they drew to a close. Col. Mitchell, however, smiled from time to time as pertinent references were made to his character, conduct and motives.
Col. Mitchell this morning abruptly halted all plans for his further defense in the proceedings and refused to participate in the case any longer.
Defiantly, the accused airman personally announced in open court just after it convened today that his trial "is the culmination of the effort of the general staff of the Army and the general board of the Navy to deprecate the value of air power and keep it in an auxiliary position which absolutely compromises our whole system of national defense."
Furthermore, he declared, because the court had refrained from ruling whether the truth in the case constitutes an absolute defense or not, to proceed further would serve no useful purpose. He, therefore, announced that he had directed his counsel to entirely close his part of the proceedings without argument.
Dramatic Preface to Argument
The announcement of the accused came as a dramatice preface to the opening argument for the prosecution, delivered by Maj. Allen W. Gullion, in which he violently upbraided Col. Mitchell, his chief counsel and defense witnesses, and demanded "in the name of the American people, whose fears he has played upon, whose hysteria he has fomented, whose confidence he has beguiled and whose faith he has betrayed," that the accused officer be dismissed from the service.
Before Maj. Gullion began the delivery of his argument, Col. Mitchell jumped from his chair and declared in a loud voice: "May it please the court, I desire to make a statement as provided in the manual for courts-martial."
Col. Blanton Winship, the law member, assured Col. Mitchell it was within his rights, and the airman read from a paper as follows:
"May it please the court: My trial before this court-martial is the culmination of the efforts of the general staff of the Army and the general board of the Navy to deprecate the value of airpower and keep it in an auxiliary position which absolutely compromises our whole system of national defense.
Began When War Ended
"These efforts to keep down our airpower were begun as soon as the sound of the cannon has ceased on the western front in 1919. When we sunk the battleships off the Virginia Capes in 1921, and again in 1923, and proved to the world that airpower had revolutionized all schemes of national defense, these efforts were redoubled and have continued to this day.
"The truth of every statement which I have been made has been proved by good and sufficient evidence before this court, not by men who gained their knowledge of aviation by staying on the ground and having their statements prepared by numerous staffs to bolster up their predetermined ideas, but by actual flyers who have gained
their knowledge first-hand in war and in peace.
"I wish to invite particular attention to the letter of former Secretary Weeks to the President of the United States, asking that I be not reappointed as assistant chief of the Air Service on account of evidence given by me to a congressional committee.
Asks Case Be Closed
"I testified that the Air Service had only nine modern airplanes fit for war and that all others were obsolete and many dangerous. The evidence before this court bears out these facts in their entirety. It has been shown that at present we have only one standard plane in the service.
"Secretary Weeks and, indirectly, the President of the United States were wrongly and untruthfully informed as to the condition of our aviation and our national defense by persons furnishing the data on which his letters was based. 
"This court has refrained from ruling whether the truth in this case constitutes an absolute defense or not.
"To proceed further with the case would serve no useful purpose.
"I have therefore directed my counsel to entirely close our part of the proceeding without argument."
After the statement was delivered Maj. Gullion inquired if it was sworn or unsworn and Col. Mitchell replied it was the latter. 
Tense silence reigned for a few moments and then President Howze directed that the case proceed.
Begins Argument
Maj. Gullion arose and began his opening argument for the prosecution but he had not made much headway when Col. Sherman Moreland, the trial judge advocate, interrupted and announced:
"If the defense doesn't desire to address the court, we won't take its time with our argument."
"It is the sense of the court that the proceedings go ahead," replied President Howze.
Maj. Gullion then begin his violent assault on Col. Mitchell, his chief counsel and defense witnesses.
Maj. Gullion's argument, confined to the Navy feature of the case, was the second step in the day to lower the curtain on what has been heralded as the court-martial of the age. All evidence the prosecution and defense were prepared to offer was placed in the record late yesterday afternoon and the way was paved for Maj. Gullion's argument.
'Charlatan Type."
Col. Mitchell was characterized by Maj. Gullion as "a self-constituted critic and prophet" and "a good flyer, a fair rider, a good shot, flamboyant, self-advertising, widely imaginative destructive, never constructive except in wild non-feasible schemes and never overly careful as to the ethics of his methods."
"Is he not," asked the assistant trial judge advocate, "rather of the all too familiar charlatan and demagogue type--like Alcibiades, Catiline and except for a decoded difference in poise and mental powers in Burr's favor, like Aaron Burr?"
The evidence, Maj. Gullion said, shows Col. Mitchell was "absolutely wrong about the Shenandoah, the PN-9, the Arctic flight and all the specific charges he made. On cross-examination his lack of qualifications to speak as a critic of naval matters was glaringly revealed. The evidence shows he was wrong in his falsehood on the part of the Army and Navy officers. It shows he was wrong about his general allegations of incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration. Rarely has a cause so confidently asserted been found in the acid test of a trial to be so absolutely groundless."
Sims Is Flayed.
The "types of witnesses" produced for the defense were scored in detail by Maj. Gullion, who declared: "These is the opinionated, narrow-minded, hobby-riding, egomaniacal Admiral Sims type. Admiral Sims, who was eager to tell why he refused his country's D. S. M., who would place himself superior to Suffren and Nelson and Farragut and Dewey because they were not War College graduates. So long has he a\had his eyes fixed with intense and selfish stare upon his own career that it is impossible, fortunately, for him ever to turn  those eyes inward for purposes of introspection.
"There is the Maj. Hensley type, the shifty type, letting the court think that he had seen s 10,000,000 cubic foot type airship and only when cornered, explaining that he meant a model in a wind tunnel.
"This type is akin to the half-truth type, the Lieut. Sheridan type, telling the court of Admiral Williams' remark at the Hawaiian critique about his lack of confidence in aviators and not telling that Admiral Williams later explained his remark as a joke.
"Then there is the pseudo-expert type, the Lieut. Anderson type, describing the strain caused by the Shenandoah's breaking away from hermast: he was not in a position to know anything about it: the same Orville Anderson who told the court that the Shenandoah on her transcontinental Imperial Valley flight met only trivial wind currents. Later it developed he was not on the flight.
Reviving-Memory Type.
"There is the reviving-memory type, the Capt. Robert E. Oldys type. Oldys indicated in his testimony that Maj. Wheeler was so affected by Col. Chamberlain's criticisms that he took dangerous chances in order to save his plan, and so lost his life. Oldys was senior member of the board which reported on the accident. Not one word as to Col. Chamberlain is in the report. Instead Oldys waits four years until Chamberlain as well as Wheeler is dead and then tells the story.
"Then there is the flippant type--the Lieut. Col. William Gray Schauffler, Reserve Corps, type, who produced in court his telegram to the Adjutant General declining a captaincy, the telegram reading like this:
"Thanks a lot--you couldn't tempt me with a major generalcy, but if we get a separate Air Service controlled by men who fly by themselves, I'd be willing to be a plain ordinary Bon Pilot, as the French say.'
"The same Lieut. Col. William Gray Schauffler, Reserve Corps, who piloted and crashed a plane in which Capt. McAvoy was killed, March 18, 1925. The same Lieut. Col. William Gray Schauffler, Reserve Corps, was held by a board of three Army Air Service officers to have displayed poor judgement when he encountered the fog, and after that initial error of judgement again to have displayed questionable judgement in flying at a dangerously low altitude--an altitude shown as zero on his altimeter--this in connection with the death of Capt. McAvoy. We have finished with Lieut. Col. William Gray Schauffler, Reserve Corps.
Can't Describe La Guardia.
"Then there is the congressional expert. Honorable F. H. La Guardia, with '15 or 20 hours in the air.' He is beyond my powers of description. Thank Heaven, he is sui generis.
"Finally, there is the Maj. Gerald Brant type--the gay, gallant, lovable type. I have known and like Gerry Brant for 25 years. I still like him. I know he would lose his right arm before he would tell a lie.
"I think, though, that an evil influence has insidiously corrupted his opinions, and I fear, his loyalty. That corruption is made easier in Brant's case and in the case of a great many Air Service men by the inconsequential way in which they treat facts. John Locke, the famous English philosopher of the seventeenth century, describes this type of mind in his essay on the 'Conduct of the Human Understanding,' Locke says: 'Many people see a little, presume a great deal and then jump at a conclusion.' That fits Brant.
"When asked why he was sent to Hawaii, he plied: 'I think it was because they had no war plans.' Now the entire file as to Brant's going to Hawaii was read to the court while Gen. Eltinge was on the stand, and it showed Brant was rent there because the Air Service man there was inefficient. Brant knew that fact, but, being nothing to him. And it was has been proven, moreover, that there were war plans in Hawaii for Air Service and every other arm.
"This casualness as to facts, which characterizes so many of the gallant Army Air Service witnesses, springs not from dishonesty, but from temperament and habits of thought. The influence which the accused, with his grandiose schemes, necessarily involving rapid promotion, has had on these habits of thoughts is not hard to discern."
Replies to "Slurs."
In paying his respects to Representative Frank R. Reid of Illinois, chief civilian defense counsel, Maj. Gullion declared: "Some things have been said by counsel upon this floor in attempted reflection on the American Navy which I, as an American Army officer, resent. Holding no authority from the Navy, nevertheless I shall, to the limit of my poor powers, reply to these slurs." The "slurs" were cited by the major from the record, and concerned questions asked Comdr. H.C. Richardson, of NC-3 transatlantic flight fame; Comdr. John Rodgers of Pn-9 Pacific flight renown, and Lieut. Comdr. Richard E. Byrd of Arctic flying prominence. The questions asked these three officers were if they had made failures of their particular projects.
"The conclusion is irresistible," continued Maj. Gullion, "that counsel meant to taunt these gallant officers and, through them, the Navy, as failures. Does he not know that many pioneer before the goal is reached? Do the vision, the courage and the hardship of these foundational efforts mean nothing to him?"
Maj. Gullion also indicated Mr. Reid was a "sham statesman" in relating how a "real, not a sham statesman," defended the Navy in Congress years ago against a matter "hurtful to the Navy."
Launching a final attack on the accused, Maj. Gullion cited many paragraphs of Col. Mitchell's cross-examination testimony from the record dealing with gunfire from submarines and gas clouds from torpedoes, and then declared to the court;
Intoxicated by Applause.
"How remarkable that is, sirs! In this 'mature' statement of his on September 5, in which he portrays the horrors of submarine warfare, to the great excitement of the people, he tells of this new terrible torpedo which produces gas clouds. On the stand he denies that torpedoes produces gas clouds. When confronted with his September 5 statement and asked the source of his information he mits a glittering generality--'studies I have made in the Northern Hemisphere and looking forward into the future.' Is such a man a safe guide?
"Is he a constructive person or is he a loose-talking imaginative megalomaniac, cheered by the adulation of his juniors, who see promotion under his banner, and intoxicated by the ephemeral applause of the people whose fancy he has for the moment caught?
"Is this man a Moses, fitted to lead the people out of a wilderness which is his own creation only? Is he of the George Washington type, as counsel would have you believe? Is he not rather of the all too familiar charlatan and demagogue type--Alcibiades, Catiline--and except for a decided difference in poise and mental powers in Burr's favor, like Aaron Burr? He is a good flyer, a fair rider, a good shot, wildly imaginative, destructive, never constructive, except in wild non-feasible schemes, and never overly careful as to the ethics of his methods.
"Mitchell Formula."
"This court has had opportunity to study those methods, not only as revealed in his statements of September 5 and 9, but also in his former statements which his counsel has read into the record. All of these statements, made over a period of years, follow what we may term the Mitchell formula:
"First, Exaggeration of national defense matter closely approaching falsehood.
"Second. Untrue and misleading  statements for the deliberate purpose of discrediting Army and Navy officers, thus
"Third. Creating distrust in minds of people as to War and Navy Departments.
"Fourth. Egotistic self-description as to experience and qualifications, coupled with
"Fifth. Protestations of absence of self-interest and expressions of willingness to be and expectation of being, a martyr, all leading to 
"Sixth. A united air service, with
"Seventh. William Mitchell as the only logical head of it.
"That is the formula he had followed: Every demagogue has followed a similar one, protesting unselfishness and secretly seeking self-aggrandizement, as he appealed directly to the people over the heads of constituted authority.
Must Be Dismissed.
"Would an admonishment fit the offenses of which the accused has been clearly proven guilty? For making statements which his counsel read into the record, statements similar but not as bad as those of September 5 and 9, the accused's chief, Gen. Patrick, recommended that he be admonished. Encouraged by such leniency, the accused has now gone to the ungorgivable extreme. Would a reprimand be appropriate? Paragraph 318 of our manual says: 'A reprimand is usually awarded to officers for minor offense where a mild penalty is to be inflicted.' Has the accused committed a minor offense?
"Would reduction in files by a suitable punishment? it would hardly be a punishment at all. The accused is a colonel and promotion from that grade is not made by seniority. 
"Sirs, the accused has been proven guilty of disorder to the prejudice of good order and military discipline and of conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the military service. What punishment would, under the custom of our service, be meted out to a soldier with only a sixth-grade education who had committed the offenses of which the accused has been proven guilty. Confinement at hard labor, most certainly. How, then, can this unrepentant accused, with all his advantages of education and position, be let off with less than dismissal?
Seriousness Not Known. 
"Just how seriously the accused's conduct has actually prejudiced discipline is not known at this time and need not be known in coming to a finding. It is sufficient if the record shows that the conduct is to the prejudice and of a nature to discredit. The statements of September 5 and 9 speak for themselves in that regard. 
"But can there be any doubt that the discipline of our Army will be ruined if the accused, in the expressive vernacular of the doughboy, is 'allowed to get away with it?' Every trooper in Fort Huachuca, as he smokes his cigarette with his bunkie after mess, is talking about this case. If the accused is not dismissed, the good trooper will be dismayed and the malcontent and sorehead will be encouraged in his own insubordination. Our soldiers are watching this case in Camp Statsenburg, in Schofield Barracks, in Teintsin, in Governers Island. Fail to dismiss him and you weaken the authority of every non-com in the service. Dismiss him, as he deserves, and you strengthen the arm of every single officer commanding a one-company post from Marfa to Nogales.
"Sirs, we ask the dismissal of the accused for the sake of the Army, whose discipline he has endangered and whose ideals he has shadowed and whose loyalty he has corrupted. We ask his dismissal in the name of truth, under whos aegis he has sought protection, but whose face he does not know. Finally, we ask it in the name of the American people, whose fears he has played upon, whose hysteria he has fomented, whose confidence he has beguiled and whose faith he has betrayed."