... any averment required to be made in the declaration of intention that may be shown to have been made erroneously, but with no intention to violate or evade the requirements of the naturalization law, may be corrected by order of the court in which the declaration was filed, or by the court in which it is presented as a basis for a petition for naturalization. SHOULD DECLARATION BE ABOLISHED? Some belated survival of Commissioner Campbell’s earlier belief, as a member of the Naturalization Commission of 1905, that the declaration of intention should be abolished as superfluous and as a prolific source of errors, appears in his concluding paragraph under this head, wherein, after alluding to the increasingly urgent appeals for more clerical assistance, which had characterized virtually every one of his reports since the establishment of the Naturalization Service, he adds: If the object to be obtained does not justify the additional expenditure that it involves, then the declaration, as a matter of common justice to applicants for citizenship, if not for the practical reasons stated ... in the Report of the Commission of Naturalization to the President, dated November 8, 1905, should be stricken from the law. It may be suggested that the effect of such action upon the exercise by alien declarants of the elective franchise in certain states would be merely to cut off future supplies of such voters. It is indeed true that many careful, experienced, and judicious students of the naturalization problem have on many grounds favored the abandonment of the declaration of intention. The arguments in this behalf are plausible while there are states in which aliens holding “first papers” (declarations of intention) are entitled to vote. As for the others, the reasons to the contrary seem to the present writer to outweigh them. Regardless of the suffrage, in many states the declaration entitles the holder to certain property rights; many employers, and even municipalities, require at least the declaration before they will permit employment. The best reason of all, regarded by a majority of the naturalizing judges as of vital importance, is that the declaration, and the interval of at least two years which must elapse before the declarant can file his final appeal for admission to citizenship, afford a period of probation, not only of substantial psychological value as affecting the alien himself, but giving the government opportunity to observe the conduct of the individual and to investigate his antecedents, and the person’s neighbors and the public generally due notice that he is an aspirant for active membership in the community.