Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 17 July 1937 — Page 10

PAGE 10

The Indianapolis Times

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SATURDAY, JULY 17, 1937

WHERE COURT PACKING LEADS The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers end effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall upon probable cause, Supported by oath or aFrmation, and particularly deseribing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

& 8 ” n » » E take that “your home is your castle” guaranty, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, as our text

. 1 soe hut INN E ON

for a discussion of court packing. Every Presidential election can be regarded as a mandate by the one who wins. Harding, for example, with 63 per cent of the popular vote in 1920, had as much reason to feel a mandate as did Roosevelt with 62 per cent in 1936. So let us turn back for a moment to the 1920 scene. Prohibition had come upon us. It was being resisted. Enforcement was becoming a fiasco. The drys, foiled, were frantic with anger. Wayne B. Wheeler of the Antisaloon

League, most powerful political figure in the nation at the time, stridently demanded action. Sizzling with zeal, and possessed of such prestige as seldom if ever has been witnessed in our political history, he scurried in and out of high places in Washington, ordering more and more ruthless efforts in behalf of “the cause.”

From him Harding accepted guidance in organizing an enforcement bureau and assembling the personnel. But things did not turn out well. “I venture to say,” warned Harding, though himself not personally a dry, “that if by reason of the refusal of any state to discharge its proper duty in such connection, the Federal Government is at length compelled to enter upon the territory and jurisdiction of the state and to set up those police and judicial | authorities which would be required, the most difficult and trying situations would inevitably arise.”

As frustration grew, came first the demand and then the effort to break down that constitutional guaranty we have quoted—-to circumvent that right, in the attainment of which so many centuries of struggle and bloodshed had been spent. In the fanatical drive to impose upon a nation a thing which that same nation a decade later so wholeheartedly repudiated, all manner of violations of that guaranty were attempted. It is necessary only to throw memory back to those hysterical times to envision once again the spying and the snooping, the breath-sniffing and the raiding, the hectic push to override the basic liberties in behalf of a crusade which then seemed to its proponents so monumental in importance, and for which there was such a welled-up political pressure as to sweep everything before it. Everything but the courts. Suppose there had been a precedent. Suppose a previous Presidential Administration, of whatever party, foiled in what it too had regarded as a mandate, had established a technique of court packing to achieve its objectives. What would Harding have done? What would Wayne B. Wheeler have done? They would have seized upon that | precedent to pack the court—not just one court, but what- | ever courts, Federal, state or municipal, might have been | needed to accompiish that aim which seemed at the time so “noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.” It is not necessary to elaborate, except to say—that is the trouble with mandates. Once admit that the mandate of the moment super- | sedes everything, once accept the court-packing habit, and nothing could stand in the face of it. Today it is due process and the commerce clause and the vaguer portions of the Constitution. But as the wheel of history turned it | would be search and seizure tomorrow, habeas corpus next, freedom of assembly there, right of worship vonder, and so on until as Mulvaney said, “You stick yer foot through every one of the Ten Commandments,” because of that deep and strong and usually sincere and always human impulse to say that the end justifies the means.

” » " un un " E see many dangers vital to our whole form of govern- | ment in this court-packing idea. That is why we have | heen dead against it from the start. But of all those dangers we think the danger of precedent is the greatest. We shan’t have Roosevelt always. And it will be only a matter of time before there is another Harding, another Wayne B. Wheeler, another mandate of a different kind, and then— out of the window will go that thing we call liberty. As the court debate resumes next week, let's think about that, and if you feel as we do, you might want to register with your Senator and your Representative.

ONE YEAR OF CARNAGE

TOPAY Spain celebrates its first full year of civil war. Upward of 300,000 people have been killed, many more wounded, ancient and cultured cities have been ruined. Hates that generations cannot wipe out have been loosed. From a fratricidal struggle within Spain itself, the war has degenerated into class war, on a world scale, with fascism and socialism trying to crush each other and making an early end of the carnage well nigh impossible. The only hope today for the world powers is that some such formula as Anthony Eden's “last chance” neutrality plan still may isolate the struggle and keep it from spreading into a great world conflagration. ' Who besides the vultures have benefited? No one. And no matter which side eventually “wins,” Spain will lose and so will civilization. One thing this war has done. It has given civilization a preview of the “next world war.” All the rules of “humane” warfare have been scrapped. Prisoners have been killed. Undefended cities have been bombed from ship and air, women and children slaughtered wholesale with the belligerents.

If this curtain-raiser on modern warfare does not

frighten the world and its rulers into peace, nothing will. |

The Bear That Flies

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Like a Bird—By Herblock

RSTRNT RON

Washington

By Raymond Clapper

Some Politicians Grab at Roosevelt Coat Tails While Others Deem Time Is Ripe to Cast Against Court Bill.

VV ASHINGTON, July 17.—There is growing indifference in Congress to the Master's Voice. Perhaps they just don’t hear well any more. Or maybe they are hearing other voices. Anyway some of the

smartest Democratic Senators are defying the Administration to do its worst to them for their opposition to the Roosevelt Court plan. In the

House. an overwhelming army of Democrats bolts and overrides the President's veto of continued low interest rates to farmers. But while this is going on, some Democratic politicians out in the country who are closer to the voters, geographically anyway, still think the Roosevelt coat tails are good for at least one more free ride, and they are climbing aboard in anticipation of the next campaign. Somebody is guessing wrong, either the Senators here who are fighting Mr. Roosevelt or the state politicians who are preparing to ride him in another election. There is talk here of a party purge and some of the opposition Democrats are a little nervous and overshrill in their defiance. Some of them talk bravely about being willing to go down to martyrdom and political death fighting for a principle. But they all hope that General Jim Farley will come to their aid. In fact he has been talking with the Indiana friends of one obstreperous court-bill opponent, Senator VanNuys, and he assures them that there'll be no party split in any state over any Senator's stand on the Court. A little cryptic but enough to give new hope to any worried Senator. Has Farley ever heard of the bill which was voted on in the Kansas Legislature some years ago? It was a regulatory measure for political bandwagons, requiring that they be equipped with grappling hooks which would drag behind to catch up unfortunate politicians who had missed the bandwagon as it

Mr. Clapper

| went by.

That's just a tip for what it may be worth. » u u

N Maryland, they have swung on the Roosevelt coat tails on their way toward the state election in November, 1938. The struggle for the governorship has begun and Democratic aspirants are hurling daily statements at each other. The issue in Maryland is, who loves Mr. Roosevelt most. Mayor Howard Jackson of Baltimore, first to announce, was immediately denounced as a “carping critic” of Roosevelt. The man who made this charge is Herbert O'Connor, Attorney General, who is itching to run for something, either for Governor or for the seat of U. 8. Senator Millard Tydings. In some of our better circles this charge of being critical of Mr. Roosevelt would be proudly acknowledged, but Mayor Jackson, who is one of Maryland's

| smartest politicians, hastens to deny it indignantly.

n " ”

N New Jersey, a young Congressman has challenged Boss Frank Hague over the governorship. Mr. Hague is a powerful boss and the young Congressman hasn't much to put up against this machine. So this young man, Rep. Elmer H, AWene, announces he will run for Governor against the Hague candi= date, U. 8. Senator Harry A. Moore, as a 100 per cent Roosevelt New Deal candidate, It hardly needs be said that Mr. Hague, who is a cool customer, is not excited over the issue being raised against his having on occasion said some good things about Mr. Roosevelt himself which will be duly recalled to New Jersey voters. On this basis, Mr. Hague dares the young challenger to do his Wene worst.

| Senators, counting | most distinguished leaders of the

The Hoosier Forum

I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

COURT REFORM CALLED DICTATORSHIP PRELUDE By Douglas Johnson, New York A battle of incalculable importance to the American people fis being fought out in the Senate. To one who has in a modest way served two Democratic Administrations the forces engaged in this struggle appear as follows: On one side is a group of Sena-

denounced the court scheme and many of whom are known to deplore it in their hearts, but all of whom have apparently decided to yield to Executive dictation. Because the President has refused to heed their urgent advice that he withdraw entirely a dangerous proposal secretly concocted for him by anonymous and irresponsible advisers, they feel that

they must pass a compromise nieasure containing all the worst features of the original bill. On the other side is a group of some of the

Democratic Party, who despite Ex-

ecutive pressure and threats of po- | litical reprisals have dared to place loyalty to American traditions of |

free government above loyalty to any party or any man. Many of them have been outstanding in their enthusiastic support of the President and his policies, but rece ognize that their leader made a fatal blunder in impulsively adopting the too clever device of his young lieutenants, On the issue of this battle depends far more than is apparent at the surface. The court-packing device of the anonymous young advisers was not designed as an end in itself, but merely as a means to a far more ambitious end. If it can be forced through a Congress which at heart is overwhelmingly opposed to it, the road will be wide open to a multitude of measures drafted by these same advisers and designed to concentrate in bureaus centered at Washington sweeping powers over the lives and activities of American citizens. Full control of these bureaus in turn, is to be concentrated in the hands of a single man, the President. Such bureaucratic domi nation of our people is, of course, unconstitutional. But with a Supreme Court controlled by the Executive and pledged to validate any measure passed by a submissive Congress, the citizen's last bulwark of protection, the Constitution, will have been reduced to a meaningless “scrap of paper.” It was a subservient and cowardly Reichstag which voted its own effacement and the destruction of German liberties, Can it be that a subservient and cowardly Congress will vote its own effacement and the destruction of American liberties? Or have we enough representatives who place patriotism above politics, and loyalty to country above loyalty to party, to save the priceless heritage of democratic government? The citizen's one recourse in the

General Hugh Johnson Says—

Midsummer Madness Over Court Bill Wrecking Other New Deal Aims; Congress Must Be Recessed Immediately if Death Blow Is to Be Averted.

ASHINGTON, July 17—If ever a conclusion was clear, it is that this Congress ought to recess now until Oct. 1. Recess! Pass such stop-gap appropriations as are necessary to carry on the normal work of government and get out of here.

Why? Because the fight within the Democratic Party is getting nastier hourly. It has already become an undignified squabble over the bier of Joe Robinson. It is breaking sincere friendships of many years’ standing—and some of these ties make the basic pattern which holds the Democratic Party together, Now that party is the party of liberalism. Like any party it has two wings—radical and conservative. The right extreme may be hard to distinguish from the Republican Party, but the weight of influence is to the left of that extreme. Break those two wings apart and the Republican Party instantly becomes dominant and it is the party of reaction.

s ® ” HAT danger will almost certainly descend from the present situation in Washington, whether the President wins or loses the immediate court, fight— if he insists on letting the tactics of the last few ave She

80.0 lusion. The sents" vier to send 4

from here until the sudden midsummer madness

is over,

That is not written as a Democrat. people who don't care what happens to that party, care very greatly what happens to the objectives of They know that if he doesn't move with speed to sidetrack this cyclone, he is going to split his forces wide apart. Opponents of this idea compare this session of Congress with others—the War Congress and 1933. They say these old Congresses did well enough through longer, hotter summers without air-cooling, and that this hullabaloo of killing men, tempers, reasons and principles with the heat of a Washington

Mr. Roosevelt and his New Deal.

July and August is baloney. » » »

HE difference is that in the war and 1933, men were working together and in mutual confidence, In 1937 they are tearing each other apart.

Why not recess?

The President's case will not be any worse if a truce is called until October. If he has the country with him he will be far better off to take a breathing If the country is not with him, he may be But it would be much better to take that time to prevent defeat from his party, Sab 15 win this victory but lose Administration,

spell. defeated. kind of beating with

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious controversies excluded. Make your letter short, so all can have a chance. Letters must be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)

present crisis is a personal appeal to

| members of the Senate, irrespective - ; | of State or party lines. tors, some of whom have publicly | of Jethargy in critical situations like

- packing |

One month

the present has recently, under our very eyes, cost two nations their freedom.

” » » ASHURST'S INCONSTANT CONSTANCY LAUDED

By W. Ss. A monologue by Senator Henty Fountain Ashurst of Arizona. .. One week before President Roosevelt proposed his court-packing plan, speaking hefore the Senate in favor of a constitutional amendment: “I have no sympathy with attempts t0 whittle or to chisel, by indirection, circumlocution and peri=phrasis, and ‘house-that-Jack built’ methods in order to get power . . . The way to reach the desired objective is by bold frankness, by asking the people of the states to ratify the necessary amendments.” Bight days later, telling the press he would sponsor the President's bill: “I never let what I said yesterday bind me today. No Senator can change his mind quicker than 1.” In the heat of hearings on the packing bill, speaking as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee: “I will accept no compromise. We must have knees of unwedgeable oak. My ideas are fixed.” On the day committee voted down the packing bill: “Moderation, forbearance and restraint are the virtues of victory, whilst patience and fortitude are the virtues of disaster . . . I hope to endure victory with becoming humility.” On the day the Senate Adminis

OLD NEW WISH

By POLLY NORTON Star bright, star bright, First little star I've seen tonight . . .

If you should meet in that clear sky A flying someone in your path, Tell him if he should hear a sigh It's but his visit's aftermath , , .

[I wish you may, I wish you might My wish would come true, this very night!

DAILY THOUGHT

Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people. Genesis 25:8.

EATH is as the foreshadowing of life, We die that we may die no more.—H. Hooker,

Plenty of

\

tration leaders (Ashurst included) switched their support to the Hatch-Logan compromise, when asked if he still stood for six judges: “I always utter the sweetest

words in order that I may swallow |

them the more easily.” I submit this chronology

it may offset the misgivings which some people feel as they contemplate the spectacle of a Senate starting a filibuster in the heat of July. Ordinarily a filibuster is a pretty nasty affair. And this one has all the makings of a bad-tem= pered, name-calling row, But there is one cheering thought that brightens the dark picture. It is that Henry Fountain Ashurst, as chairman of the Judiciary Com= mittee, has nominal charge of the legislation. And certainly he is one who measures up to Kipling's standard--one who can keep his

head though all about him are los- | ing theirs, Though other debaters |

hurl bitter invectives, he can be depended upon to remain serene, This long and purple controversy over the Supreme Court has tried many Senators’ souls, but the gentleman from Arizona has not lost an inch of his hide, nor shed a drop of blood nor a bead of perspiration. When it is all over, even though

he be trampled in the dust of de= |

feat, I expect to see Henry Fountain Ashurst rise, and with engaging smile and courtly bow, sigh that he regrets the conclusion of the friendly tete-a-tete but rejoices in a glorious triumph. ” ” » HERE'S A SLICE OF POOR ADVICE By R. M. L. An expert on marriage advises: It's humor the boss is craving. 80 I joke, crack wise, and what do I get? “Will you shut shaving.” ” ” ” DENIES JANITORS PAID MORE THAN TEACHERS By Disgtisted Custodian 1 am the custodian that wrote to you once before, Now I wish to answer “M. 8.” M. 8. states that there is a shortage of apprentice help. He stales that white collar opportunities are scarce and underpaid while more secure skilled workers at higher wages go begging. “For instance, last year head janitors of city schools averaged 25 per cent more in wages than elementary teachers and 5 per cent more than high school teachers.” What he should have said was that the head janitor in the city schools received 35 per cent less wages in a 12-month year than the elementary teachers receive in a nine-month year, Every janitor in the schools should voice his opinion. Perhaps theh we could induce the commissioners to give us a decent salary adjustment,

up when I'm

of | Ashurst utterances in the hope that |

SATURDAY, JULY 17, 198%

A Swell Hot Weather Diet !—By Talburt

S| SENOR -

THE SPANISH STEW Sue NEVER

sy

It Seems to Me

By Heywood Broun

Robinson Is Lauded as a Martyr to Battle for Democracy Rather Than The Fight Waged Over Court Issue,

| NEW YORK, July 17.-It is being said now in many quarters that Senator Joe Robinson died a martyr to the New Deal's passion for court reform. This hardly fits the facts. Senator Robinson was fighting

hard to force a vote in the Senate. It seems to me that the people of the United States have a right to demand that their duly elected representatives shall have the right after due discussion, to put themselves on record. If democs racy is to endure it must be coms petent to function by vote and not be forever handcuffed by vocal obstructionism. It is well to remember that the filibuster is not an institution established in the Constitution and that the members of the origi= nal Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia contained no mems= bers, even among the opposition to the document, who dated to kill the founding of a Federal Governs ment by the simple process of talks

Mr. Broun ing it to death and preventing any show of hands.

So it was a good death which came to Joe Robins son. If he died a martyr it was not simply on the issue of unpacking the High Bench, but upon the even broader fight to preserve parliamentary governs ment from perishing from the earth, If the upper house is to be stopped from making decisions demo= cratic rule becomes a mockery, # # » ALTER LIPPMANN asks, “Would a filibuster be undemocratic?” and promptly answers, “No.” But it seems to me that Mr. Lippmann is less logical than usual. His case is built upon two factors—one, that the minority is composed of sincere men actuated by a passionate conviction, and, two, that the division seers close. But there 18 no machinery by which pass sion or sincerity may be accurately measured. Washs ington commentators have made much of the theory that Senator Robinson himself was not ardent for the legislation designed to end Supreme Court oligarchy and put the three co-ordinate branches of the Gove ernment back into balance. This may be so, but the theory rests upon sure

mise and opinion. Certainly Joe Robinson gave every outward appearance of a man who had enlisted for duration. He had been told that his health was pres carfous, but he cared and dared to make the fight, I am asked to believe a little too much if I must ace cept the theory that his death was a sort of gese ture or pose,

| |

» ® =» OREOVER, while it is quite true that political pressure has been put upon reluctant Senators to keep in the Roosevelt reservation, ft is naive to pretend that very powerful forces ate not working on the opposite side, It must be remembered also that there has already heen one filibuster against a vote on the Supreme Court proposals. The hearing before the Senate Judie clary Committee got down to being precisely that, The people were compelled to wait until a Mr. Cans non who had once been a State Senator from Illinois

had been given a chance to testify, and after him an Oswald Garrison Villard, who is a retired liberal, In the early days of New England the town meets ing system of government may have been democratie, But in the affairs of the nation any sueh system serves frenzy rather than freedom.

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Soviet Ambassador Troyanovsky, Sailing Toward Uncertain Fate in Answer to Moscow Recall, Leaves Most of Anxious Friends Behind.

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen ASHINGTON, July 17.80 silently that Wash= ington scarcely missed him, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States sailed for Russia last week, Mystery surrounds his sudden departure, Washington rumor, always anxious to make the worst | of any situation, reports that he faces the same fate which has befallen other Russian leaders, The Ambassador left behind him a multitude of friends who devoutly hope that this may not be true. But whether true or not, Alexander Antonovioch Troyanovsky never would have flinched. He would have sailed for home to face either a diplomatic promotion | or a firing squad with equal equanimity.

But

ROYANOVSKY was born the same year as President Roosevelt, being now 55 years old. He went to the "Tsar's cavalry school, later studying law and chemistry at the University of Kiev, When war broke out with Japan he served as an officer, resigning from the Army afterward, As early as 1907 he showed a real inclination for revolutionary activities by launching a revolt in Kiev, For this he was exiled to Siberia, but e ; was caught in another revolutionary attempt exiled

again, It was in Paris and

Vienna that

Iatd for his future ;

career, In the

Latin quarter he met Lenin, also in exile, and at ote time shared a furnished apartment with Stalin, Troye anovsky lived abroad for seven years, working with Lenin to plot the overthrow of the Tsar At last, in 1017, their efforts were successful. Troys | anovsky shot back to Russia to command a battery of | artillery in cleaning up the last remnants of the World War, serving on the southwestern front against the Austrian and German armies,

”n ” ” FTER the end of the war, however, Trovanovsky

found himself not in complete sympathy with the Bolshevik cause. For organizing a workmen's movement of Mensheviks he was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks on June 13, 1018, later being released, but rearrested on two more occasions, A chance meeting with Stalin on a street corner in 1921 made Troyanovsky what be is today. Stalin recognized the old friend and roommate of the Paris Latin Quarter, and soon made him President of the Board of Directors of the State Trading Corp, From it, in 1027, Troyanovsky jumped to Tokyo, where he became Soviet Ambassador to Japan until 1033. Then after a very brief interval as vice chair man of the State Planning Commission, relations were

resumed with the United States and he was made Ambassador to Washington, uid