New Britain herald., 1918-01-26
SPIES PUT TORCH
 TO NEWARK DOCK
NEW TRIAL FOR MOONEY
 SOUGHT OF PRESIDENT
His Investigators Report Utilities Tried ''To Get"
 Labor Agitator.

Washington, Jan. 26.-Recommen- dalton that President Wilson use his good offices to induce California au- thorities to bring about a new trial of Thomas J. Mooney in case the Califor- nia supreme court sustains his con- viction for complicity in the San Francisco bomb outrages was made today by the presidents mediation commission
 In a report to the president the commission which has conducted an exhaustive investigation of the trials of Mooney, Warren K Billings, Mrs Rena Mooney and Israel Weinberg de- clared this could be done by post poning the execution of the death sen- tence imposed on Mooney awaiting the outcome of new trial based upon prosecution under one of the untried indictments against him.
 A history of the four cases is given in the report and the conclusion reached that the Mooney case soon resolved itself into a new aspect of an old industrial feud instead of a sub ject demanding calm search for the truth.
 After telling of the connection of Billings and Mooney, the report points out that Mrs. Mooney and Weinberg, facing the same evidence, were acquitted because the testimony of Frank Oxman, the main witness for the state has been discredited before their trials.
 , The commission in detailing con- ditions in San Francisco at the time of Mooney'S trial says:
 There can be no doubt that Mooney was regarded as a labor agi- tator of malevolence by the public 1 utilities of San Francisco, and the l utilities against which he directed his 1 agitation sought to get him. 1 No question of the jurys good faith l is raised in the report but it declares velopments that doubt is based on the 1 justice of the conviction.'
 1 The California supreme court is 1 confined in it's consid eration of the l appeal now pending, the report says, 1 to only matters found in the record and if the supreme court confirms the 1 conviction, the relief will have to be supplied through executive action. l In conclusion the report discussed I the international aspects of the case saying:
 t'It is now well known that the at 1 tention to the case was first aroused through meetings of protest against 1 the Mooney conviction in Russia l From Russia and the western states 1 protests spread throughout the coun- 1 try until it has received momentum l from many sources, sources to whose l opposition to violence is unquestion- 1 able and whose devotion to our cause 1 in the war is unstinted The ibera I sentiment of Russia was aroused the l liberal sentiment of the United States l was aroused because the circum- ! stances of Mooney's prosecution, 1T ! the light of history led to the belle
 that the legal and sacred instrum ent!
 Of criminal Jurisprudence were
 consciously or unconsciously madt
 use of against labor by it's enemies ir
 an industrial conflict
 However strange or however un
 expected it may be, the just disposi r ton of the Mooney case thus affect
 influence far beyond the confines O
 California and California can be de , pended upon to see the wider i'm
 iplications of the case. With tn mere moral aspects, with the politica and journalistic conflicts which tn . case has occasioned, neither tn commission nor the country at larg is concerned. But the feeling of dis ! quietude aroused by the case must b needed, for, if unchecked, it impair } the faith that our dem ocracy protect r the loWliest and even the unworth
 1 against false accusations. War
 fought with moral as we'll as materie
 resources. We are in this war t
 vindicate the moral claims of un
 stained processes of law, howeve
 slow, at times, such processes may b. - These claims must be tempered b
 the fire of our own devotion to ther at home.'