Men Without a Country

I am beginning to think this Status of Forces article I have been urging you to commission might be a study in the decline of American honor generally, which might be accurately dated as starting with the imprisonment of Angus Ward. The permitted imprisonment, I should say. I need not recall Perdicaris, and in the nineties there was a great uproar about some American sailors arrested by civil authorities in some Latin American country.

I have just been reading—forgive me if I seem to skip around—the proceedings before the most recent meeting of the Senate Committee—Ervin-Flanders—which is supposed to look into this every year. A Defense Department lawyer, an Army lawyer, and a professional jailer employed by the Army, appeared and assured the Senators that it was practically a privilege to be imprisoned in a foreign lockup after trial under a foreign system of law. The jailer reported that his foreign colleagues (he didn’t get around to Japan) were practically making pets of the GI’s. The humor of the Senators, kidding this jailer (penologist he called himself) for not also promoting a junket to Japan calls for Dickensian treatment. Little Mr. Flanders was proud of himself because, though not a lawyer, he had heard of both Roman law and common law. Sam Ervin thought the old fellow bright as a button.

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Finis Farr

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I am beginning to think this Status of Forces article I have been urging you to commission might be a study in the decline of American honor generally, which might be accurately dated as starting with the imprisonment of Angus Ward. The permitted imprisonment, I should say. I need not recall Perdicaris, and in the nineties there was a great uproar about some American sailors arrested by civil authorities in some Latin American country.

I have just been reading—forgive me if I seem to skip around—the proceedings before the most recent meeting of the Senate Committee—Ervin-Flanders—which is supposed to look into this every year. A Defense Department lawyer, an Army lawyer, and a professional jailer employed by the Army, appeared and assured the Senators that it was practically a privilege to be imprisoned in a foreign lockup after trial under a foreign system of law. The jailer reported that his foreign colleagues (he didn’t get around to Japan) were practically making pets of the GI’s. The humor of the Senators, kidding this jailer (penologist he called himself) for not also promoting a junket to Japan calls for Dickensian treatment. Little Mr. Flanders was proud of himself because, though not a lawyer, he had heard of both Roman law and common law. Sam Ervin thought the old fellow bright as a button.