The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-12-01

sonnet h ing m. portant enough to ask him, which is seldom. It is explained that when ever there is anything controver- Sial on which the Attorney General can't talk, he doesn't want to see the press. And when there isn't anything to talk about the press doesn't want to see him. So the Atty. Gen. goes his solitary, silent way, running an unofficial keeping mouth?shut race with Secretary of Agriculture Wickard, Secretary of Commerce Jones, War Food Ad- miniStrator Jones and a few others to see who can maintain thunders of silence the longest and loudest.
 Biddle'S miX-up with Littell is the third public ruckus which the Attorney General has had over his principal assistants. There was quite a to-do when Thurman Arnold step- ped out of the Antitrust division to take a federal judgeship and another when William Power Ma loney was promoted out of a posi- tion as special prosecutor for the sedltion trials. Both of these cases, like the Litteu case, didn't become celebrated through any doing of the Attorney General, who would no doubt have preferred to SC them disposed of quietly.
 CLASH OF PERSONALITIES
 In the Littel case, Riddle has ad- mitted that his assistant in charge of the Lands division was right as could be on everything - surplus property disposal, on the Navys Elk Hills oil lease case and the Army's Breakers Hotel case. But several of Littell's public speeches, in whichhe strayed over into the fields of antitrust, sedition and war activitieS-Which were none of his business-got the Attorney Gen. erals goat
 Aside from these personal mat ters, Attorney General Biddle's big moments have come through his participation in the Sedition cases, the suit against the fire insurance underwriters, the suit against the railroads rate-making practices, ordering the deportation of Harry Bridges, the Montgomery Ward case ordering admission to the U. s. of Mrs. Earl Browder, ruling that the c. l. O. Political Action Committee wasn't as Subversive or as much in violation of the Corrupt Practices acts as Representative Howard Smith and others claimed.
 The railroad and insurance cases weren't exactly the results of Rid dle's own initiative, but inherited. All the others are Riddle policies and, with the possible exception of the Bridges order, they represent the Attorney Generals ideas of ad- vanced liberalism.
 LIBERAL NEW DEAL LAWYER
 His real claim to fame as an Attorney General will probably rest on his policies for the handling of enemy aliens in this war. The witch hunting that characterized anti German sentiment in the last war has been missing from this. The relaly dangerous alien enemies have been locked up, and Riddle took pehsonal charge of prosecuting the saboteurs lander from a German sub early in the war.
 Decision to go ahead with the sedition trial is also his baby. Otherwise. he has insisted on re- tention of all civil liberties in war time and in the case of the Ital- ians in the United States he was responsible for seeing that they were not discriminated against, even though the U. s. was at war with Italy.
 AS an administrator, Riddle has tried to run his department instead of letting every division run itself. His bi-weekly staff conferences are regarded as great bore, but they do thresh out the departments problems. Riddle has gone along with the administration on every- thing, Soft-pedalling anti-tr pro- SecutionS, labor prosecutions or other actions when they interfered with the war eort, giving opinions that good New Deal lawyer would be expected to give.