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THE LITERARY DIGEST (Title registered in the U. S. Patent Office and in Foreign Countries) PUBLIC OPINION, New York, and CURRENT OPINION, New York, combined with THE LITERARY DIGEST (Titles registered with the U. S. Patent Office) Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 1 New York, January 2, 1926 Whole Number 1863 TOPICS OF THE DAY (This title registered in U. S. Patent Office) COLONEL MITCHELL'S GUILT IN A BARE, GARRET-LIKE ROOM in a ramshackle old red-brick warehouse in Washington, there came to a close on December 17 one of the most remarkable military trials in the history of the United States. The defendant was Col. William Mitchell, of the U. S. Army Air Service, formerly Assistant Chief of the Air Service, with the rank of Brigadier-General, war-time aviator with a string of citations and a breast covered with medals, charged with violating the 96th Article of War, which proscribes actions "to the prejudice of good order and military discipline." But the evidence heard during the seven weeks of this unusual court martial dealt as much with the alleged shortcomings of the General Staff of the Army and the General Board of the Navy in their attitude toward the Air Service as with the guilt of the defendant. The record of the trial, it is said, consists of 1,400,000 words. At the last Colonel Mitchell, after being denounced by the counsel for the prosecution as a "self-advertising demagog" and likened to Aaron Burr, was found guilty and sentenced "to be suspended from rank, command, and duty, with forfeiture of all pay and allowances, for five years." On hearing the sentence, Colonel Mitchell, we are told, sat motionless for a moment, "a blank look in his eyes." Then exclaiming: "Why these men are all my friends!" he walked up and shook hands with his judges, each of whom took he leave with a hearty "Good-by, Bill" or "Good-by, Billy." The picturesque military career, which will be interrupted if Colonel Mitchell's sentence is approved by President Coolidge and goes into effect, began twenty-seven years ago with his enlistment as a private in the Spanish-American War. He went to Europe as a military observer in 1914 and when we went into the war he immediately joined the French forces at the front, being, according to the statement in his own book, "the first American officer to participate in the attack with the French, as well as the first to cross the German lines in an airplane, and the first to be decorated with a War Cross for duty on the field of battle." With the temporary rank of Brigadier-General, he became Chief of the Air Service of the American Armies participating in the St. Mihiel offensive. After the war he served for four years, with the rank of Brigadier-General, as Assistant Chief of the Army Air Service. During these years, according to a statement in the New York Herald Tribune, he "aroused the ire of the Army General Staff and high officers in the naval establishments when he declared the superiority of the bombing airplanes of the battle-ships during the sinking of the former German warships off Norfolk following the Arms Conference." And again last winter at the hearings before the House of Representative's aircraft committee, Colonel Mitchell "lambasted the present air policy of the Government and advanced the theory of a united air service." When his term was up, President Coolidge refused to reappoint Colonel Mitchell, acting on the recommendation of Secretary of War Weeks, who wrote: "General Mitchell's whole course has been so lawless, so contrary to the building up of an efficient organization, so lacking in team work, so indicative of a desire for publicity at the expense of ever one with whom he is associated, that his actions make him unfit for a high administrative position such as he now holds. . . His record since the war has been such that he has forfeited the good opinion of those who are familiar with the facts and who desire to promote the best interests of national defense." He was then assigned to the position of air officer of the Eighth Army Corps at San Antonio, with he regular Army rank of Colonel. The story from this point is thus briefly told by the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "The great Navy dirigible Shenandoah was destroyed September 3. The flight of the naval place PN-9-1 was then supposed [[image - photograph]] International Newsreel photograph [[caption]] "ARE WE DOWNHEARTED?" Colonel Mitchell and his wife and baby daughter, photographed the day after his conviction and sentence by a court martial. [[/caption]]
