STATEMENT OF MR. RICHARD K. CAMPBELL, COMMISSIONER OF NATURALIZATION.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Of course, you will understand, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that the views I express are my own individual and personal views, and that I am not attempting to commit the department in any respect. I must confess to some little surprise at some of the remarks made here this morning in regard to the number of men who have gone abroad into the armies of other countries. Mr. Rogers stated that there was a total of from 40.000 to 45,000. Quite a number of those will never come back and I can not help but think that those who do come back-among them the most generous and among them the most self-sacrificing advocates of democracy, acting well within their rights-that of the few that will come back, crippled, maimed, and disabled, very few, if they come to the port of New York, will stay there for the city or for the State of New York to care for. All of those men have homes here: they have gone from all portions of this country and they have enlisted in that service and have done the identical work that we are now trying to make those do who heretofore have done nothing. Now, the question arises: What are we going to do about these people when their military term of service is ended? Here is an elaborate arrangement requiring them to go and register before a consul and get some kind of a certificate, and right away, the more certificates you issue the more opportunities there are for fraud and imposition; it is provided that they must come here and go to a court and have a lot of proceedings gone through, and papers have got to be filed in the Department of Labor.

Mr. JOHNSON. That is all under this proposed bill?

Mr. CAMPBELL. Yes. Now, why not treat these men as they ought to be treated? There is not one of them that had the faintest idea that he was sacrificing his American citizenship. I do not believe that this committee, when it passed that law early in 1907, had the faintest idea that a military oath would result in expatriation. The bill was hastily drawn in the Department of State with reference more particularly to our international relations and civil difficulties that had arisen, and it had no relation to this question whatever. These young men have gone abroad, and it matters not whether they took an oath of allegiance or whether they did not take an oath of allegiance. However, in the one case it brings them within the letter of the law, but in the essence of it is there any distinction, because do they not have to be absolutely loyal, during the time of their military service, to the country they are serving? It seems so to me. Mr. RAKER. What would you do with the fellow that joined the German Army?

Mr. CAMPBELL. Wait a moment. We are talking about the men who went abroad to engage with our allies, and I am not treating the subject outside of the bill. But it seems to me that these young men ought to be allowed, upon the expiration of their military service, automatically to resume their citizenship. Now, we have an analogy. If any American woman marries an alien she becomes an alien, and if any alien woman marries an American citizen she becomes a citizen by the very fact of the marriage. Now, an American

woman who has lost her citizenship is really in the position of one whose citizenship is suspended or merged in that of her husband, but when he dies, if she stays here, or if they are divorced, and if she remains here, or, if abroad, if she registers within a reasonable time or takes a boat to come back here, our laws construe her to have resumed her American citizenship. Now, it seems to me that this oath of allegiance for temporary military service is in the nature of a suspension of a man's obligations to his country during the time. that he is fulfilling those obligations to some other country.

Mr. WELTY. Mr. Campbell, our neutrality laws were passed with the view of keeping us neutral until the Government, through its duly authorized agent, speaks?

Mr. CAMPBELL. Yes.

Mr. WELTY. As to whether or not we want to go into war or recognize a state of war.

Mr. CAMPBELL. As a country.

Mr. WELTY. Now, then, what business has a citizen of any country to attempt to swing that Government away from its neutral course? Mr. CAMPBELL. He has not any.

Mr. WELTY. Now, then, under our law everyone who does that by any act of his violates a criminal section of our statutes.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Do you mean to say to me that an American citizen violates any criminal statute-I do not know of such a statute— who goes abroad and engages

Mr. JOHNSON (interposing). He violates the President's proclamation.

Mr. CAMPBELL. No, sir; I beg your pardon. The President's declaration referred distinctly to the conduct of American citizens in this country.

Mr. SIEGEL. I do not think Mr. Campbell would care to have in the record any discussion as to what he thinks the President's proclamation provided one way or the other, and I would suggest that it be stricken out.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I am making this statement simply as my individual view at the request of Mr. Raker.

Mr. WELTY. Here is what I want to get at: We have a neutrality law, and that neutrality law, for some reason or other, was copied from the old English law, the penalty of which was death; we modified that penalty and made it only a felony. The reason for that is that they may swing, or, at least, that several persons might swing, a person out of that neutral course and involve all of us in war.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Personally, I do not see how that is possible. That would involve a different question.

The CHAIRMAN. The statute you refer to is against enlistments here or persons organizing here."

Mr. WELTY. That is true, but it is the intent; it is a question of where the man forms the intent, and here is the only difference: If I form the intent to murder in one county and carry out that murder in another county, because I find my victim there, I formed the intent in the first county, and I really violated the law there, but I can only be prosecuted in the county where the act was committed.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Do you think there is an analogy between the two cases?

Mr. WELTY. It is simply a matter of criminal law.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Do you think that any man that went abroadMr. WELTY (interposing). Wait a minute. So that I think intent must govern. I think that most of the men who enlisted in the English Army formed that intent upon American soil, and if they formed that intent here they in spirit violated our neutrality law. Mr. CAMPBELL. Do you think you could get any jury in this country to convict such men?

Mr. WELTY. No; I am merely showing the analogy between the two cases; where a man intended to commit murder and formed the intent in one county and carried it out in another county, and he must be prosecuted in that other county-the county in which the overt act was committed. Now, all of these enlistment papers were signed in Canada-on foreign soil or in England.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Still, I do not see the analogy between the two

cases.

The CHAIRMAN. The purpose of that law was not to punish the intent to violate neutrality, but the consummation of the act, and under that statute there was no criminal act committed unless it was consummated here.

Mr. CAMPBELL. It will not take me long to wind up what I have to say. I suggest that if the committee really contemplates making a bill which will restore citizenship to these people after the expiration of their temporary service in other lands, that they do it automatically and not require all of this elaborate process. You do not need to make them wait five years, because they do not come here and have to learn about our institutions, and it does not seem to me necessary to require that there must be an investigation as to their character, and I do not really think you could make such an investigation, because you would have to send officers abroad.

Mr. JOHNSON. As a matter of fact, the probabilities are that they will not be considered to have lost their citizenship.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I believe that most of them are as good American citizens as you and I, and not any of them had the faintest idea that they would lose their citizenship by the act of enlisting in the armies of the allies nor did they think that they were violating any neutrality law.

The CHAIRMAN. Your suggestion is that there ought not to be this red tape necessary for their restoration?

Mr. CAMPBELL. Yes; there is enough of that now under our general law.

Mr. CAMPBELL of Pennsylvania. Could we make a declaration in the bill declaring that they have not forfeited their citizenship?

Mr. CAMPBELL. Certainly; and you could modify the original act so that it would not apply to that oath of allegiance because, as I have said, that was a matter which arose out of certain civil difficulties.

Mr. RAKER. Will you formulate your idea of the matter and send it to me so that I can give it to the committee?

Mr. CAMPBELL. If I can get a chance, but it is very hard for me to get an opportunity to do anything of that sort.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you not think there ought to be some discharge from the military service of the other country?

Mr. CAMPBELL. Surely. Before anything is done in the matter at all, their service in the foreign country should absolutely terminate. There is no question, gentlemen, that during the time a man is engaged in the military service of a foreign country he is acting as a citizen of that country, and he certainly is violating all his obligations as an American citizen, because it is not beyond the range of possibility that that very country with whom he has taken service might get into trouble with us and they would want his service and we could not get him, because he would be fighting with our enemy. The CHAIRMAN. Therefore there ought to be a termination of that service?

Mr. CAMPBELL. Yes.

Mr. RAKER. That is the crux of this whole thing. It may be all right when he enlists but, as Mr. Campbell says, this country might get into trouble with the country he is serving and we could not get his service.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Yes; and, therefore, there should be a termination of the service. But there certainly has been no law passed that gave a private citizen any doubt as to his right as an individual to dispose of his services as a soldier at any time outside of his own country.

Mr. WELTY. I know that when that neutrality law was framedand it was framed rather loosely-it was framed for the purpose of meeting a situation like this; that it would prevent a man from leaving our country and giving offense to one of the belligerents by engaging in the armies against them.

Mr. CAMPBELL. But it did not use language that expressed that view?

Mr. WELTY. No; it did not; and, as I say, it was very crudely framed; but I think that intent is there.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I really believe that the young men who enlisted abroad were very much amazed at the decisions made in these cases. and the very first case that arose was that of a young man who had finished his military service and, as a wise act of Providence, had written home and secured a good job, but under the alien-contract law he was excluded. That is the first case that arose under this law. Now, I thought that was a strange interpretation, and I did not think it was meant to apply to any such case, but still that was done. The man took an appeal and, I believe, was released.

(Thereupon the committee proceeded to the consideration of other business.)