As has been said, he must be very particular about the words that he or anyone else writes on the blank when he does get it. If he files his declaration in a court which has much naturalization business, it is likely that the clerk or his deputy will see that it is letter-perfect; but if it is his fortune to reside in a district where naturalizations are few, or where the clerk regards the whole transaction as a nuisance, he may be permitted to make a fatal mistake or omission and remain in blissful ignorance of that fact for anywhere from two to seven years--until he goes before the court with his final petition and finds that because his declaration was from the beginning technically defective he must file a new one and wait at least two years more. “DECLARATION INVALID” This, in fact, has been a very common occurrence. During the period 1908-18, 8.5 per cent of all denials of naturalization petitions in the United States were on the ground of “declaration invalid”; that this percentage is made up of figures[70] tragically high in some districts may be recognized in the fact that in Nebraska it was 23.8, in Indiana 21.3, in Oregon 18.7, in Kansas 18.6, in Massachusetts 14.4, in Montana 13.2, in Iowa 12.5, in Arkansas and Idaho 11.3, in Washington 10.9, in Oklahoma 10.4. The petition of an Englishman applying for citizenship in Colorado was denied upon motion of the government’s representative, because in his declaration seven years before he had renounced “King Albert,” when, in fact, the name of the then potentate of Great Britain was “Albert Edward”![71] As the court in that case truly said: The act of renouncing the allegiance which one owes to a government or sovereign, and taking upon himself a new allegiance, is too solemn and important an act to be loosely performed, or to be surrounded by any uncertainty or doubt. No presumptions are indulged with respect to it.... The declaration of intention must in all material matters comply with the strict letter of the Act. The court may not rectify _nunc pro tunc_, as in most other kinds of litigation, technical blunders made in good faith or inadvertently by the declarant, or even by the clerk of the court in which the declaration was filed. All the responsibility lies upon the alien.