Chairman Wadsworth

With the fate of Colonel Mitchell on the way to being determined by the reviewing authorities in the War Department and by the President, Congress began to bestir itself. It went about it in two ways:

Representative Black of New York (Democrat) offered a bill excluding wearers of the D. S. O. and Congressional Medal of Honor from being tried by court martial. Representative LaGuardia of New York (Socialist, former Republican) introduced a bill limiting sentences upon such medal wearers to 30 days --and made the measure retroactive so that Colonel Mitchell would be affected.

Congressman Blanton of Texas (Democrat) proposed a resolution 1) abolishing courts martial in times of peace; 2) making Colonel Mitchell a Brigadier General and Chief of the Army Air Service; 3) giving him $5,000 reimbursement for standing trial; 4) imposing on Brigadier General Drum (Assistant Chief of Staff) and Major General Nolan (Acting Chief of Staff) the same sentence given Colonel Mitchell by the court martial; 5) depriving Brigadier General King and Major General Graves, two of the Court, of half their pay for five years.

Representative Tillman of Arkansas (Democrat) contented himself by declaring:

"This Court finds Colonel Mitchell guilty of violating the 96th Article of War and harshly penalizes him by retaining him in the Army but suspends hm from work, command and duty with forfeiture of all pay for five years. The officers of this Court did not dismiss Mitchell from the Army, but retained him so that he could not pose as a martyr nor indulge in further criticism.

"The court martial seeks to inflict an unusual and cruel punishment. This sentence is a shameless one. If the Court dismissed the Colonel he could go to work, but he is retained without pay and cannot do so. This verdict insults free America.

"It seems that in this trial the usual military procedure was not allowed to take its ordinary course, but a Court was organized to 'get' the Colonel, and this spurred and booted inquisition 'got' him in double-quick time.

"I call upon the granite-faced and granite-souled President of this justice-loving nation to mitigate or quash this harsh sentence." Congress began to consider the more important question of what should be done about aviation in the Army and Navy. It had two options: to create a single united air service for Army and Navy under a Department of National Defense, as proposed by Colonel Mitchell and as proposed by a special committee of the House of which Colonel Mitchell's lawyer, Congressman Reid, is a member; or to follow the recommendation of the President's Aircraft Board, headed by Dwight W. Morrow, which recommended few major changes in organization except the creation of Assistant Secretaries in the War, Navy and Commerce Departments.

The first step taken was in the latter direction, when the Senate passed a bill creating an Assistant Secretary of Commerce in charge of commercial aviation (see LEGISLATIVE WEEK). But the debate had little to do with military naval aviation, and so the figure who will probably have most to do with determining the question did not ap- pear. He is the Chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Amid all the hubbub he has remained silent, venturing no opinions, making no speeches. His only actions worth mentioning in Congress during the past three weeks, have been occasionally to assume the gavel in the absence of the Vice President, and to introduce a resolution "authorizing the Secretary of War to receive for instruction at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point two Siamese subjects, to be designated hereafter by the Government; of Siam."

That is his way of going about matters. But he is a queer sort of politician anyhow, this James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. from Geneseo, N. Y. In the first place he comes from a family of Cincinnati-- farmer-soldiers. His family has been buying farm land ever since 1790. A few years ago they owned 35,000 acres in Livingstone County, N. Y. His grandfather, once an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of New York, was killed in the battle of the Wilderness. His father went into the Army at 18 and fought through the last year of the Civil War. He himself, when he got out of Yale in 1898 enlisted as a private and went into the Spanish-American War.

Afterwards he went back to Geneseo and farming; then went down to the Panhandle of Texas and ran a ranch there for a few years. In 1902 he married Alice Hay, daughter of John Hay, the Secretary of State. Back in New York, he was elected to the Legislature for seven years in a row, the last five of which he served as Speaker. In 1914 he ran for the Senate, defeating James W. Gerard and Bainbridge Colby. He has been in the Senate ever since.

He occupies a peculiar place among the hoary Senators. He is an acknowledged authority on military affairs, a thorough Republican party man, says little, works hard, and is strangely respected by all factions, although still comparatively a young man (only 48). The combination of being a "regular" leader and yet aloof is unique. He is a farmer without a bloc, but that is because he is not a dirt farmer, but something more like a landed aristocrat. He has no political glad hand, no oratorical or political tricks. As Clinton W. Gilbert describes him: "When he speaks, he talks.common sense in an easy, unemphatic way, with a slight touch of impatience in his voice."

What Wadsworth has to say and do about this matter of reorganization of aviation, is going to be one of the controlling factors. But Wadsworth has remained peculiarly silent in the hubbub. Evidently the time for business as distinct from the time for talk has not quite arrived.