In the _New York Tribune_ of January 4, 1919, the President of the
American Bar Association, at a meeting in New York City on January
3d, condemned harsh and unjust judgments of military courts-martial,
and stated that “_our military laws and our systems of administering
military justice are unworthy of the name of law or justice_.” He
also said that our army was still following rules copied from England
in 1774, but which were abandoned long ago as better suited “_to
the armies of feudal times than to the citizen armies of a modern
republic_.” He also condemned “the outrageous punishments meted out
by our courts-martial for comparatively slight breaches of military
discipline.” And he further stated that “Punishments are not only
grossly harsh, as compared with the penalties imposed for like offences
by our criminal courts, but they also differ so widely that we find
the same offence punished in one court-martial by twenty-five years
in the penitentiary and in another by six months in disciplinary
barracks.” ... “The accused soldier has no real legal protection.” ...
“The maintenance of military discipline does not require this harsh
and arbitrary procedure. The French army is a model of discipline, but
an accused soldier has the protection of the law thrown around him
at every stage of his trial. That a soldier in our army should have
less legal protection challenges the attention of the lawyers of the
country. The American people never will stand for Prussian methods even
in disciplining the Army.”