Circular Memorandum on Courts-Martial for use on Active Service

£1,750 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

“Convening Officers will see that a copy is laid before every Court-Martial” (insert between p. 2 3). An extensively annotated interleaved copy of a scarce WW1 official pamphlet on how to conduct Courts-Martial. Two versions were produced during the First World War, to provide reference and guidance to Officers in a format more transportable and less weighty than the Manual of Military Law. The first (S.S. 412a) was published in June 1917 (presumably in reaction to the large scale French Army Mutinies that took place in May of that year) and the second (S.S. 412b) in August 1918. The second was likely published to coincide with the Allied Counteroffensive. This copy, an excellent example of S.S. 412b, belonged to Major Francis Seward Laskey of the Tank Corps. It is filled with remarkably thorough ink annotations, concerning procedure, precedent and amendments. For instance, Laskey adds numerous examples to the “Charges” section, such as “False Pretences”, “Allowing prisoners to escape” and ‘Wilful damage”. Elsewhere he utilises the blank leaves to expand upon factors capable of complicating the following of procedure, such as “insanity”. There are also various ms. deletions of the printed text, with updated information copied in on the adjacent blanks. As a body of writing, Laskey’s notes show how the pamphlet was a working document: a basic text that needed to be built upon by the Officers; a text that altered according to new orders and continued to change as the war develo

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