(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I agree, of course, that appellant was properly convicted under U.S.C.A., Title 18, § 753h, regardless of the validity of his conviction under U.S.C.A. Title 12, § 588b.
I cannot, however, agree that he was properly convicted under U.S.C.A. Title 12, § 588b, i.e., that entering a bank with intent to commit a forgery is a federal crime. The majority’s interpretation of that section is not necessary to accomplish the Congressional purpose (indeed it ignores that purpose as shown by the legislative history) ; calls for federal enforcement of a huge number of state criminal laws, imported by mere implication into the federal system, with respect to more than thirteen thousand banks; leads to highly awkward consequences; and involves the unusual method of broadening a penal statute by latitudinarian construction. To make clear my reasons for dissenting, it is desirable that I first restate some of the facts relating to the history of that section.
1. In 1934, 12 U.S.C.A. § 588b was first enacted. It provided, among other things —subdivision (a)—for federal punishment of one who “by force and violence, or by putting in fear, feloniously takes, or feloniously attempts to take, from the person or presence of another any property or money or any other thing of value belonging to, or in the care, custody, control, management, or possession of, any bank.” In 1934, the section was amended to include in the definition of bank not only national banks but all banks insured under Title 12 U.S.C.A. 264c; it thus covers not only national banks but numerous state banks—in all, as of the end of last year, 13,427 banks.
This section was further amended in 1937. The legislative history (discussed briefly below) shows that the Congressional purpose in adopting these 1937 amend*520ments was to add, to the existing federal crime of bank robbery, (a) the federal crimes of felonious stealing from and petit larceny from a bank; (b) the federal crime of burglary of a bank; and (c) the federal crime of peaceably entering a bank with the intent thus to steal bank property. These objectives were achieved by the following 1937 amendments to § 588b:
(a) Taking or carrying away, with intent to steal or purloin, property of or in possession of a bank was then made a new federal crime.1 If the value of the property stolen is more than $50, the punishment includes imprisonment for not more than ten years; such stealing is made a federal felony, as felony is defined in 18 U.S.C.A. § 541, i.e., an offense which may be punished by imprisonment for more than a year.2 If the value is $50 or less, the punishment includes imprisonment, but not for more than a year; such stealing is thus made a misdemeanor, as that term is defined in 18 U.S.C.A. § 541. (It should be noted that stealing, when it is less than a felony, is commonly called petit larceny. See, e.g., 36 C.J. 800.)
(b) The other chief change made in 1937 in § 588b was the inclusion of a sentence making it a federal crime to “enter or attempt to enter any bank * * * with intent to commit in such bank * * any felony or larceny * * *.”
These two changes nicely correlate: The first change made stealing from a bank either a federal felony or federal petit larceny. The second made it a federal crime to enter or attempt to enter a bank with intent to commit such a federal felony or federal larceny. And such an entry was constituted a federal crime whether peaceably made or by breaking in; it thus includes burglary of a bank, i. e., breaking and entering with a felonious intent.
That it covers more than “burglary” obviously does not prevent it from including “burglary.” And that it includes breaking and entering with less than felonious intent —i. e., with intent to commit petit larceny —again does not prevent it from covering what has been traditionally known as “burglary,” i. e., breaking and entering with felonious intent.
2. The legislative history shows that, to achieve the Congressional purpose in enacting these amendments, it is not at all necessary to accept the interpretation adopted in the majority opinion, i. e., to define “felony” as including all felonies under not only federal but state law; it is amply sufficient to hold that “felony,” in the phrase, “enter or attempt to enter any bank * * * with intent to commit in such bank * * * any felony or larceny * * *,” means (a) any federal felony (b) affecting a bank covered by § 588b:
(a) The original Act, enacted in 1934, grew out of proposals of the Attorney General. As stated in a footnote in the majority opinion, his draft of the statute, then proposed, included the offense of breaking into a bank with intent to commit any felony under federal or state law. Congress rejected that proposal when it passed § 588b in 1934. Significantly, when, in 1937, the Attorney General proposed amendments to 588b, he did not again suggest any reference to “state law”—obvious verbiage if the purpose was to include state-law felonies. It is, then, apparent that Congress knew the apt words to accomplish that purpose. Indeed, in 18 U.S. C.A. § 468, 'dealing with crimes on lands over which the federal government has jurisdiction but within the territorial limits of any state, Congress explicitly stated that if anyone does an act which is not made penal by federal statute, but where such act “if committed * * * within the jurisdiction of the State * * * in which such place is situated * * * would be penal,” he “shall be deemed guilty of a like offense * * *.” There is, therefore, pertinent here the familiar rule that a statute is not, by interpretation, to be given an extended meaning when, had the legislature intended that meaning, it would have been so “easy to say so.” 3
(b) Without referring in any way to “state law,” the Attorney General, in his *521letter to the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, proposing amendments in 1937, said that his purpose was to add to § 588b “the crimes of burglary and larceny of a bank.” [It will be observed that he said “of” not “in” a bank.] He also said that the fact that the statute “is limited to robbery, and does not include larceny and burglary, has led to some incongruous results.” He gave, as a “striking instance,” a case where a man had walked out of a bank with $11,000 of the bank’s funds, of which he had gained possession during a momentary absence of one of the bank employees, without displaying any force or violence and without putting any one in fear; since those were necessary elements under the statute as it then stood, the Attorney General pointed out that the man could not be prosecuted “under any federal statute.” Now it is clear that, without any necessity of construing “felony” to mean state-law felonies, bank-burglary and bank-larceny and the specific kind of case cited by the Attorney General are all fully covered by the 1937 amendments.
(c) It is to be observed that nowhere did the Attorney General say or even imply that he wanted the statute amended so as to include (1) crimes not affecting banks; or (2) any federal crimes in addition to burglary and larceny; or (3) all state felonies or larcenies. He did not so much as mention forgery. And still less did he suggest that he desired to convert into a federal crime the entry into or attempt to enter a bank with intent to commit a forgery— while omitting from the category of federal crimes the actual commission of such a forgery.
The title of the 1937 Act containing the amendments of § 588b is “To amend the bank-robbery statute to include burglary and larceny.” That objective—which surely indicates no purpose to include entering or attempting to enter a bank with intent to commit forgery or all state-law felonies —is now fully covered by the section, thus amended, without lugging in state-law felonies.
(d) This also is significant: § 2 of the statute proposed by the Attorney General in 1934, and introduced as a Senate bill, made it a federal felony to take money from a bank with its consent when such consent was induced by fraud. Representative Hatton Sumners, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, “sought throughout the session to confine extensions of federal power to situations where the need to supplement state and local enforcing agencies had become imperative”; and it was “evident that to have brought all cases in which money is taken fraudulently from banks within the scope of federal criminal jurisdiction would have placed a heavy enforcement burden upon the federal government.”4 As a result of Representative Sumners’ opposition, the fraud provision was eliminated. It is important to note, then, that the 1937 amendments sponsored by the Attorney General were included in a bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Representative Sumners whose objections in 1934 had led to the elision of the fraud provision. It is highly unlikely that, in 1937, without explanation, he abandoned those objections and urged legislation which not only covered the crime of fraud on a bank (for, in most states, that is a felony) but went much further. And it is not to be believed that the Attorney General so intended, for, if so, his letter explaining those amendments was most misleading, as it stressed bank “larceny and felony” and contained nothing indicating a purpose to reintroduce the fraud provision. Yet the majority’s interpretation of those amendments has the effect of including it 5—and does far more besides by way of placing a heavy enforcement burden on the federal government to prosecute persons for entering or attempting to enter any one of 13,427 banks *522with intent to commit any act which is a felony or larceny under the law of the State in which such bank is located. (In effect, it makes each one of the 13,427 banks covered by the Act, to a large extent, the equivalent of a territory within the jurisdiction of the United States, as if included within Title 18, Chapter 11 [§ 451 et seq.], which brings all state laws into play as to such a territory.)
3. Not only is the majority’s definition of “felony” not needed to achieve the purposes of the 1937 amendments, but that definition leads to awkward and, in some instances, irrational results:
(a) An outstanding awkwardness in so defining “felony” is illustrated by the indictment and conviction of appellant: He was not charged with committing a forgery, but with entering a bank with intent to commit a forgery in a national bank.6 In truth, no one would think of trying to procure an indictment and conviction in the federal courts for forgery victimizing such a bank—for the very good reason that such a forgery is patently not a federal crime. Under 12 U.S.C.A. 596, it is a federal crime to make a false statement to procure loans, etc., from the 12 Federal Reserve Banks and their 24 branches. But neither that nor any other federal statute covers forgeries vis a vis national banks or any other of the 13,427 banks covered by § 588b. It is obvious then that, if the majority opinion correctly construes 12 U.S.C.A. § 588b, a man who enters any of those 13,427 banks with innocent intentions and then, when in the bank, commits a forgery, is guilty of no federal crime, but he is thus guilty if he enters or attempts to enter any such bank with intent to commit the state crime of forgery—even if that intent is frustrated. He is, moreover, guilty of no federal crime if, while not in the bank building but in the office of the bank’s lawyer (two blocks away), he forges a note, delivers it to the lawyer as the bank’s representative, and procures money thereby. The curious consequence of the majority’s interpretation is that the minor offense is a federal crime and the major offense is not.
(b) The majority opinion asserts—mistakenly, as I think I have shown—that it is necessary to interpret “felony” as including state-law felony, if § 588b is to carry out the Congressional purpose of making bank burglary a federal crime. But the majority interpretation does not achieve that purpose: Under that interpretation, no one can properly be federally indicted for a bank burglary, but only for entering or attempting to enter a bank with the intent to commit burglary; to be sure, the practical result is the same, but the necessary circumlocutory wording of an indictment for burglary under the majority’s interpretation goes to show that .Congress could not have intended to punish burglary in any such roundabout way.
(c) The majority’s interpretation leads to even more surprising results: The most serious state felony is, of course, murder. If a man enters one of the 13,427 banks with innocent intentions but, while in that bank, becomes engaged in a quarrel and shoots and kills another man in no way connected with the bank, no federal crime has occurred. But, according to the majority’s interpretation of § 588b, if a man attempts to enter such a bank with intent to murder such a person, and is prevented from doing so, he is guilty of a federal crime.
(d) The awkwardness of the majority’s interpretation becomes more marked when one considers the numerous acts which are felonies under state laws—rape, and adultery, for instance. [The majority opinion itself indicates that it is laughable to suppose that Congress meant to include in § 588b the entry into a bank with intent to violate the federal White Slave Act (Title 18 U.S.C.A. § 398).]
4. All those disturbing consequences vanish, if “felony” in the sentence in question is limited, as I would limit it, in two ways: (a) To mean only those acts which are felonies under federal law, i.e., defined, in Title 18 U.S.C.A. § 541, as federal crimes punishable by imprisonment for more than a year, (b) To mean only such federal felonies as affect the banks covered *523by § 588b—in other words to mean felonies against and not in such banks.7
The majority opinion surprisingly says that there is no reason to believe that that second limitation was intended by Congress. That comment ignores the title of the 1937 statute (“To amend the bank-robbery statute tp include burglary and larceny”) and the Attorney General’s 1937 letter (which spoke of burglary and larceny “of” a bank).
In the field of government as well as in the field of science, the so-called “law of parsimony” should generally govern: One should, ordinarily, not use an elaborate method of accomplishing a result when a simpler method is available.8 And so here, the direct route to the accomplishment of the Congressional purpose should be employed instead of resorting to the roundabout method of traveling through state law.
5. The majority opinion stresses the fact that the Attorney General, in 1937, proposed to make it a federal crime to enter a bank with intent to commit any “depredation.” I fail to see the significance of that fact: (a) In the first place, the word “depredation” has no special legal connotation. The treatise, Words and Phrases, which includes all judicial definitions of words from 1658 to 1942 has no citations of any judicial use of that term. In lay usage, it means the act of plundering, preying upon, pillaging and the like, implying perhaps the use of violence, (b) And Congress rejected that word in enacting the 1937 amendments.
6. The majority opinion, in support of its interpretation of “felony” as including every state-law felony, refers to the fact that § 588d provides: “Jurisdiction over any offense defined by this Act [sections 588b and 588c] shall not be reserved exclusively to courts of the United States.” But that provision was in that section when it was originally enacted in 1934 ■—at a time when the word “felony” was not contained therein; no one would suggest that its provisions as they stood in 1934—i.e., those relating to taking by force and violence—had the effect of importing any state-law crime. The federal Employer’s Liability Act, 45 U.S.C.A. § 56, provides that suits brought thereunder may be brought in state courts; yet no one would think of suggesting that that extension of jurisdiction to the state courts affects the meaning of that statute.
7. The majority opinion suggests that the interpretation which I give the statute will render difficult prosecution for burglary of a bank, because, it is argued, under that interpretation, it will be necessary to prove an intent to steal or purloin bank property. But prosecution for burglary—even state-law burglary—always necessitates proof of a criminal intent; and it is an easy inference for a jury that a man caught while breaking into and entering a bank had the intent to steal the bank’s property.
8. The majority opinion concedes, in effect, that “larceny” in § 588b must mean petit larceny, as otherwise “larceny” would be superfluous (since larceny which is not petit larceny is already covered by “felony” in that section). But the majority builds on the use of the word “larceny” the following argument designed to show that both “larceny” and “felony” in § 588b must include state-law larceny and felony: “Larceny,” it is said, is nowhere defined in the federal statutes; it is only by referring to common-law that one can learn that to “steal or purloin” connotes petit larceny (i.e., larceny when it is not a felony) ; for the common law one must turn to state-law; consequently “larceny” must at least include state-law petit larceny. And, so the argument runs, if “larceny” in § 588b includes state-law larceny, “felony” in that section must include state-law felony. To that argument there are several answers:
(a) In defining “felony,” there is no need to refer to state law, as a felony is defined in the federal criminal code, 18 U.S.C..A. § 541. [I do not understand the majority to go so far as to say that “felony” in that section includes state felonies.]
(b) The word “larceny” is as fully defined in § 588b as is the word “robbery.” And the majority opinion states that the word “robbery” is defined in that section *524■without recourse to state law, reasoning that the use of the word “robbery” in the title of that statute, as enacted in 1934, plus the description of the crime of robbery (i. e., taking by force and violence, etc.) in the section, constitute such a definition. By the very same reasoning, larceny is defined in § 588b without recourse to state law; for the word “larceny” is used in the 1937 amendatory statute and the crime of larceny (i.e., stealing or purloining) is described in that section.
Moreover, “larceny” is found elsewhere in the federal criminal code in an old statute, 18 U.S.C.A. § 466, relating to acts on land under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States; the title of that section has always referred to “larceny” and the federal crime there described is to “take and carry away, with intent to steal or purloin, any personal property of another.” So that, staying within the confines of the federal statutes, we find an old use of larceny to define the crime which is described in § 588b.
(c) Both the Constitution and the federal statutes employ many terms which are not there defined and the meaning of which can be ascertained only by turning to the common law. But that common law thus utilized for that purpose is not the common law of any particular state; and no one would argue that recourse to common law for that purpose imports into the federal' Constitution or statutes the laws of any particular state. See the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Jackson in D’Oench, Duhme & Co., Inc., v. Federal Deposit Ins. Corp., March 12, 1942, 62 S.Ct. 676, 86 L.Ed-; cf. United States v. Forness, 2 Cir., 125 F.2d 928.
So it seems clear to me that “larceny” as used § 558b means the federal larceny of stealing or purloining from the banks therein referred to, and that “felony” as there used means any federal felony affecting such banks.9
9. The majority opinion suggests that this interpretation which I give to the sentence in question reduces it to a mere “attempt” provision, ineptly worded. That is not correct. The sentence itself explicitly makes a federal crime of the “attempt” to enter with the specified intent. The entry (or attempt to enter) with such intent constitutes the federal crime of burglary (or attempting to commit a burglary). It also constitutes the federal crime of peaceably entering (or attempting to enter) with such intent; to that extent, 588b contains an “attempt” provision.10
10. The 1940 amendment to § 588b makes it a federal crime to “receive, possess, conceal, store, barter, 'sell, or dispose” of any property, knowing it to have been taken from a bank in violation of the other provisions of that section. The majority opinion argues that the effect of not defining the phrase “entering or attempting to enter a bank with intent to commit any felony” so as to include all state felonies will be to “sadly limit” that 1940 amendment. Why? It will include receiving, possessing, etc., any property stolen or purloined from a bank. That is not a “sad” limitation.
11. I agree, in general, with the dissenting opinion in Hudspeth v. Melville, 10 Cir., 127 F.2d 373, 377 ;11 I especially agree with the point there made that, since this is a penal statute, it should not, by construction, be generously construed in favor of the government.
The majority opinion relegates to a footnote this important part of the 1937 amendments.
That section reads: “All offenses which may be punished by death or imprisonment for a term exceeding one year shall be deemed felonies. All other offenses shall be deemed misdemeanors.
See, e. g., Farrington v. Tennessee, 95 U.S. 679, 689, 24 L.Ed. 558; Union National Bank v. Matthews, 98 U.S. 621, 627, 25 L.Ed. 188; Baltimore & P. R. Co. v. Grant, 98 U.S. 398, 403, 25 L.Ed. 231; Vicksburg, S. & P. R. Co. v. Dennis, 116 U.S. 665, 670, 6 S.Ct. 625, 29 L.Ed. 770; United States v. Chase, 135 U.S. 255, 259, 10 S.Ct. 756, *52134 L.Ed. 117; United States v. Koch, C.C., 40 F 250, 252, 5 L.R.A. 130; Harrington v. Herrick, 9 Cir., 64 F. 468, 471; Central Real Estate Co. v. Commissioner, 5 Cir., 47 F.2d 1036; Commissioner v. Beck’s Estate, 2 Cir., June 24, 1942, 129 F.2d 243.
True, in the National Stolen Property Act, 18 U.S.C.A. § 413f£, and the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act, 18 U.S.C.A. § 408, and certain other Acts, the words “steal” and the like are used and must sometimes be given their meaning under state laws; but such interpretation of those words is, in those Acts, essential, else those words in those Acts would be funetionless. But, as shown above, the words “felony” and “larceny,” in 12 U. S.O.A. § 588b are meaningful and have a function without importing state felonies and larceneies into that Act.
1 Law and Contemporary Problems (1934) 445, 448-449.
For, under many states laws obtaining money by fraud is a felony.
The indictment charged that appellant “did unlawfully, wilfully and feloniously ' enter The Howard National Bank & Trust Company, said bank being a National Banking Institution and a member of the Federal Reserve System, with intent to commit in such bank a felony, to wit, knowingly, wilfully and feloniously to utter and publish to said bank, as true, a promissory note in the amount of Five Hundred Dollars .($500.) with the endorsement thereon of ‘Henry S. Derby,’ which endorsement was forged. * * *»
And larceny means larceny from, and not in a bank.
Thus modern science, instead of adapting, by complicated elaboration, the Ptolemaic theory, has adopted simpler methods of explaining the movements of the heavenly bodies. Of. as to recent developments in physics, Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics. See Union Electric Co. of Missouri, 1939, 5 S.E.C. 253, 261, note 15.
Another federal felony affecting hanks is found in The Rational Stolen Property Act, 18 U.S.C.A.' § 413; see § 414(b). Entering a bank with intent to commit that felony is a crime under 12 U.S.C.A. § 588b as I interpret it. And if Congress should hereafter enact legislation creating other felonies affecting hanks, then entering or attempting to enter a hank with intent to commit the same will automatically be a crime under 12 U.S.C.A. § 588b.
In a sense, the crime of burglary is itself a crime which consists of an attempt to perform another crime; for burglary is breaking and entering with the intent to do an unlawful act and is punishable whether or not that other act is performed.
The majority opinion intimates that appellant’s forgery is perhaps punishable under that part of § 588b which punishes the taking or carrying away of a hank’s property or money “with intent to steal or purloin” on the ground that “purloin” includes forgery. Aside from the fact that here the appellant procured no money or property but merely attempted to do so—so that the crime, if any, would be that of an attempt to purloin—the short answer is that, in the federal statutes, “steal or purloin” have been used to connote larceny. See 18 U. S.O.A. § 466.
See also the dissenting opinion in Hudspeth v. Tornello, 10 Cir., 128 F. 2d 172.