Evening star., 1935-01-29
CROSS-QU|z HELD
NOT OUTSTANDING
Court Presents Spectacle of
Six-Day Bicycle Race.
Judge Mild.
BY ALEXANDER WOOLLCoTT.

(N.A.N.A).-Many avid spectators
and even a few incorrigibly romantic
journalists rose at crack of dawn and
hurried to Pennington in the fond
expectation that at some point in
the days proceedings Bruno Haupt-
mann would crack under the strain,
leap wild-eyed to his feet and cry
out in accents unforgettable, "Ques-
tion me no further. I can bear it no
longer. committed the crime. I
did kill the Lindbergh baby"
So naive an expectation could be
nourished only on a diet of Broad
way melodrama rather than on any
actual experience in our criminal
courts.
Cross-Quiz Not Brilliant.
What these disappointed ones did
see and hear was a shifty and in
articulate prisoner stubbornly persist
ing from very necessity in his own
desperate patchwork of story under
the withering barrage Of a not con-
splcuously brilliant exhibition Of the
art OF croSs-examination. Not that I
think masterpiece of that art would
have produced much more.
Whenever the State builds up. piece
by piece, so damning a case as is
implied in the circumstantial evi-
dence accumulated by the inyestiga-
tors OF the Hopewell mystery, the
failure of the accused to take the
stand-as happened, for example, in
the trial Of Charles Becker-is almost
certain to be construed by the jury
as a tacit confession.
Such failure on Hauptmann's
part would have been so construed
But from his submission of himself
10 croSS-examination, the prosecu-
ton could scarcely have hoped to
gain anything so startling as an
ABRUPT admission Of guilt, and could
nave counted only on exposing to
the glare of repetition the f1imsier
stretches in the fabric Of the pris-
oner's story. placing him again and
again in those uncomfortable posi-
tions which would afford the jury the
best view of his wriggling.
Retractions Repeated.
Thus, when it came out that he
had decided after all no longer to
admit that he had jotted down the
tateful memo Of the Condor address
ana telephone number found In
Hauptmann's bed room, the attorney
general made him keep repeating his
retract1on until he grew visibly VEN
omous with his hate of the man who
was so pitilessly rubbing it in.
Then, too, think the attorney
general may well have felt that
Hauptmann lost ground every time
ne Ientured to indulge in one of
those puzzling smiles of his which
constitute so strange a phenomenon
In this trial-curious smiles which
seem to be compounded in equal
parts OF complacency and contempt.
One particularly chill specimen
moved Mr.. Wilentz to ask HAUNT
mann himself to explain them. Why
all this inner mirth?. Why these evi-
| dences of secret amusement? Haunt
mann was obviously happy at the
| opportunity to ascribe his smiles to
a sustaining consciousness of his own
innocence.
Judge Protests Mildly,
During this session the court room
at Pennington continued to present
/ many OF the less elevating aspects of
six-day bicycle race A visitor
from Mars or even from some civil
lied community on this very planet
would find nothing in the trial more
puzzling than Judge Trenchard's
plaintive protest from the bench on
this subject. In the reproachful tone
OF a gentle and slightly distracted
old nurse who really doesn't know
what her drafted charges will be up
to next, he said: II should think that
those persons in court who have no
business here would at least have the
decency to keep quiet"
If among those listening to this mild
rebuke there was any visitor from
England, he must have wondered what
manner Of judge would have suffered
| so long the overcrowding of his court
room with persons who had no busi-
ness there, whether noisy or quiet as
mice. During the noon recess Judge
Trenchard apparently plucked up
enough spirit to announce that begin
ming Tuesday he would at least toler-
ate no more standees.
Women FIattered.
OF all the millions of words which
have been dispatched from Fleming
ton since Bruno Hauptmann's trial
began, no single batch of tasty prose
has given greater pleasure to the
rather GRUMPY habitues of this we'll
advertised and profitable entertain
| torixy fYtey
with which Edna Ferber enlivened
Mondays newspapers. 1t was this
emphatic novelist's point that a chic,
frivolous and sophisticated throng was
turning the Hauptmann ordeal into a
fashionable debauch. This was fiat
tering JUNCTION to all the sleazily-at-
tired wives of minor New Jersey poll
ticians who have never missed a single
session Of the trial. Having lived at
last to see themselves described as
heartless featherbrains of the haut
monde, they arrived at the court house
fairly scarlet with pleasure.
1t Is my own more sober notion
that never in modern journalism were
two mink coats stretched quite so far
and that the mere sight of a star Of
"As Thousands Cheer" swooning with
excitement in the court room Is not
in itself enough to transform a MUIR
der trial into an Elsa Maxwell party.
All, what a Clifton Webb we weave
when first we practice to deceive! OF
course, Miss Ferber, who has an en-
viable talent for making a great deal
out Of not much, had merely sue
cumbed once more to the old. familiar
temptation which always lures the cub
reporter into describing every forlorn
and shabby corpse slain in an alley
way as "the body Of a well-dressed
woman"
Copyright. 1885 by North American