Los Angeles herald., 1910-06-10
The Attorney General of the u. S.
Golfers weekly


, reports, statements, papers or docu-
ments" as the president had acted
upon in reaching his conclusions
were scarce and fragmentary and
would not, In the eyes of the senate or
the public. Justify those conclusions.
Right here came the temptation to
the grosser forms of moral turpitude;
1t is not an uncommon situations; every
man in the course of lifetime may
find himself confronted with 1t. They
could have been frank and candid;
could have sent to the senate what
documents they had, and barred their
heads to such censure ms might FOLLOW
probably it would not have been Sc
we're But they did not.
What they did was this: Wickersham
sat down at his desk; he wrote docu-
ment which makes ninety printed pages
| at took him three weeks to do IT.; 1t
! took up alr the CLAWS charges and met
them, and 1t ended with the statement
that CLAWS charges (mark the present
tense-Glavs, when Wickersham wrote
these words had been dismissed three
months) are so unjust and unfounded
I as to merit his immediate separation
from the service"
Having finished this document Wick
ersham searched backward through his
calendar for the appropriate date and
wrote at the top: September H. 1907
Then he signed 1t George w. Wicker
sham attorney general" addressed 1t
formally to 1.-The President" and sent
| it to the senate as one of the documents
upon which the president had acted
in reaching his conclusions" Here was
plausible document cunningly con-
| triVed to look as If the attorney general
had laid 1t before the president two
days before the president wrote his
| September 13 letter.
Omit for the present-interesting
story though 1t is-the internal evidence
in this document, adroitly conceived
and elaborately executed though 1t was,
which gave Mr.. Brandeis the clew to its
fasity. There Is in almost every kind
of crime" says Wharton, "a swelling
of the upper coil, which shows the sub
| terranean road which the criminal
| travelled. It would seem as IL 1t were
germinal element of guilt that it can
not work without such memorials"
| Omit, also, the details of the long four
months of perjured resistance to Bran
| deis' efforts to confirm or dsprove his
| appalling MISUNDERSTANDING which
began with timld shuffling and ended
with the angry believing of men
pushed to the corner and in the wrong.
All that was the natural sequence of
the original situation-it duplicates the
| Dreyfus case: first, an injustice to an
honest subordinate, then suppression of
the facts In order to justify that in
Justice; then, from suppression and
evasion to direct affirmation of what
are not the facts, is a necessary and
easy step. But omit all that. 1t is fire.
duent and usual But for you, reader,
here is the important reflection: If you
ever found yourself in an embarrassing
situation, and saw how a falsehood
would let you out; if you ever contem-
plated the profits and emoluments that
could be yours through forgery; and If
| through fear or conscience you paused,
| then you were meant for lowly paths.
| Not out of such callow fiber as yours
are attorney generals made.
Moral If you havent's got the docu-
ments, make them.