Of vital importance and significance, far beyond what would be gleaned from a superficial reading of the words, becomes in this connection what the Commissioner of Naturalization said in his annual report of July 1, 1912: The great bulk of the work of the Division [now the Bureau of Naturalization] consists of the examination of the naturalization papers filed in or issued out of the courts. It has never been possible, with the clerical aid supplied, to keep abreast of this work. Concluding the first year with a large number of papers not examined, that condition has grown more and more serious.... At the present time it must be stated that no examination of declarations of intention has been made since October, 1910, and not more than 30,000 certificates have even been examined. Correction of errors in the latter papers, [final] certificates of naturalization, are perhaps less necessary, but the declarations are used as the basis of petitions for naturalization, and defects in them may result in the denial of such petitions and a further delay of two years to the applicants for citizenship. Beginning with October, 1912, declarations which have not been examined will mature, and these aggregate 298,000 in number.[73] That the Bureau of Naturalization is aware of the desperate importance of this matter to the aliens appears not only in so many words in the Commissioner’s own utterances, but in legislation proposed by the Bureau which would tend to remedy it. In the same report (1912), after describing the strenuous efforts of the clerical force to catch up in particular cases with the dates of final hearings, Commissioner Campbell said: To any easy assumption that errors in a declaration may be corrected at the hearing of the petition, the answer is plain--that no change can be made if the declaration was filed, as it frequently is, in a court other than that in which such hearing is held. It has also been decided judicially that a declaration, complete in every respect, cannot be changed because of even conceded error in its averments. It is therefore important that the discovery by prompt administrative examination, of a defect, either in the way of omission or error, be brought to the attention of a declarant and the clerk of the court in which his declaration is filed, so that either the paper may be corrected or the declarant may file a new declaration, and thus save time, expense, and ultimate disappointment. All of which has the color of mockery in the light of the fact that at the date of that report there lay in the files of the Bureau nearly three hundred thousand unexamined declarations, all of which would mature within the ensuing three months! The legislative proposals to remedy conditions so far as inadvertent errors in the declaration are concerned, include, for instance, a proposed amendment[74] to Section 4 of the Naturalization Law, providing that