The Wilmington morning star., 1944-08-19

Editors N0te.-Tho Star and the News accept
responsibility for the personal views Of Mr. Pegler,
and often disagree with them much 5 many of
his readers His articles the good purpose Of
making people think.
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
NEW YORK, Aug. 18-During the last two
or three years it has been bruited about Wash
ngton that Felix Frankfurter has lost much
of his old power in the new deal. If this be
true, the fact remains that many of his old
pupils from Harvard, men indoctrinated by
Frankfurter during their impressionable years.
are still planted in government positions in
which they can impart to their judgments ard
interpretations the Frankfurter twist which,
in the minds of some, seem to give the law
a meaning contrary to the intent of congress.
1t is a fact worth noting, too, that the COM
munists have way Of going underground
as they put 1t, when they feel that they have
made themselves too conspicuous. The entire
communist party of the United States did this
few months ago when it disbanded and as
sumed the harmless guse of educational
society. A year before, the international COM
munist party or revolutionary movement, al
ways directed from Moscow went underground
by means of complicated and deliberately
confused document which appeared to an
nounce it's dissolution but actually announced
no such thing. However, the world reading the
itself.
Frankfurter's apparent retirement from pol
itics and informal but effective government
administration may be similar stratagem.
In his reply to the late ex-president Theodore
Roosevelts letter accusing him of writing
misleading report to President Wilson in the
Bisbee deportation case, Frankfurter denied
that the men deported from Bisbee, in 1917,
were planning instruction. He went into a
discussion of organized opposition to social
justice in the copper mines which seems to
have been beside the point on which Roosevelt
had challenged him.
Roosevelt's point was that there was inn
minent danger to an unarmed community, and
this contention was supported by much testi-
mony OF reputable men and finally proved in
a trial in the state court, of one of the depu-
tized citizens. In this test case, tried in 1920
Harry E. Wootton, a hardware dealer in Bis
bee, was acquitted in 16 minutes by jury
from which employees of the railroads, copper
companies and other big interests were barred
The case is celebrated for the charge to the
jury by Judge Samuel L. Pattee, expounding
law of necessity
The charge was kidnapping. The defense was
Imminent danger to the community.
Pattee told the jury they could acquit Woot-
ton if they believed there was real, threat
ened and actual danger of immediate destruc-
ton of life and property
After the test case the other indictments
were dropped and no person ever was punished
by the federal government because it was
found that no federal law had been violated.
Frankfurter ignored, or gave no weight to,
powerful evidence that many strangers had
sifted into Bisbee, that men and women had
been threatened, and that the IWW. the pre-
decessors of today's communists, were violent
ly obStructing this nations war effort in many
western areas. The IWW had seized upon this
country's intense preoccupation with the war
against Germany as an opportunity to make
revolution here at home. There were many
Germans, Austrians and other continentals
among them and, in the Bisbee trouble, there
were many Mexicans. The sheriff insisted that
these Mexcans included former Villistas who
of course, were violently anti-Amerlcan. He
said they had hidden their old military weap-
ons in the mountains
1.-THE apologists for anarchy are never con-
cerned for JUSTICE T. R: wrote to Frank
furter. 'They are solely concerned in seeing
one king of criminal escape justice precisely
as certain big businessmen and corporation
LAWYERS have in the past been concerned in
seeing another kind of criminal escape justice, -
He did not call Frankfurter an apologist for
anarchy in so many words but he did say,
fatty, 'syou are engaged in excusing men pre-
cisely like the bolshevik who are murderers
and encouragers OF murder.
"A recent issue of the Catholic Worker, a
radical. but, of course, not communistic paper
the organ of the Catholic worker movement
discusses Frankfurters friendship for Harold
Laski, the English communist whose writings
attack religion and who, also is well received
in Washington, and is more influential there
than any other Englishman except Churchill.
Arthur Sheehan, the editor, who spent long
time in Boston, writes that in 1887 he went to
forum at Ford hall, Boston, to hear Laski.
Sheehan says David K. Niles, now one of
President Roosevelts confidential and anony-
NOUS advisers in the White House, was manag-
err of these forums And he reports that Frank
furter introduced Laski to the audience with
the remark that the day he looked forward to
in the year with the most joy was the day
when Laski came to stay with him in his home
] in MASSACHUSETTS,