PREFACE. This compilation contains all statutes of the United States now in force directly affecting the War Department and the Military Establishment, including the legislation enacted by the Sixty-sixth Congress, which adjourned March 4, 1921. In addition, there are a few sections which contain provisions falling into one of two classes: (1) Statutes in force on June 4, 1920, impliedly repealed or rendered inoperative by the amendment to the national defense act of that date; (2) statutes, perhaps temporary or obsolete, inserted for the value of the precedent established or as indicative of the kind of treatment given the subject by Congress in the past. In the first class of cases an annotation is added, as a suggestion to the inquirer that the provision is perhaps no longer law, giving the reference to the section or sections which are assumed to have repealed it. In the second class of cases there is usually an annotation pointing out the supposed temporary or obsolete nature of the provision, but no attempt has been made to pass on doubtful implied repeals, this work being merely a compilation and not a codification. Therefore, the inclusion of an act, or part of an act, in this book is not necessarily to be considered as indicative of a conclusion that the same is in force at the present time. Very recent repeals of sections already given a place and number in this book have made it necessary to mark such sections "Vacant." Each numbered section of this book is a faithful quotation from the statutes. Asterisks are used to show any omissions. The annotations have been taken chiefly from the "United States Compiled Statutes, 1916” and “Federal Statutes Annotated," second edition, and opportunity is here taken to acknowledge the courtesy of the publishers of these excellent works in granting permission to make gratuitous use of, and reference to, their notes. These annotations have been brought down to April, 1921, in respect to Federal cases. Attention is invited to the frequent use of bracketed notes, e. g., “[C. S. p. --],” referring the reader for further notes to the specified page of the United States Compiled Statutes. A comprehensive table of statutes is included, so arranged, with reference to citations to sections in this work, that where particular excerpts have been taken from a statute and placed herein according to subject-matter the reader may gather the whole text of the statute used by assembling the numbered sections and placing them in the order given. MILITARY LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776. The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America. When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becoines destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, ano organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw oft such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world: He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation to the legislature; a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the danger of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislature. He has affected to render military independent of, and superior to, the civil power. He has combined, with others, to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment, for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; For imposing taxes on us without our consent: For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury: For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies: For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the powers of our governments: For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose |