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About The Columbia sentinel. (Harlem, Ga.) 1882-1924 | View Entire Issue (April 10, 1922)
Vol. 40 There is a bill pending in Congress which seeks to create eighteen new Federal judges, and to revolutionize the entire Federal system, by concentrating power in the Chief Justice. If this becomes a law, we will have a judi¬ cial despotism similar in many respects to mil¬ itarism. One of the features of the bill is, that the Chief Justice could decide when and where *a convention of Federal judges should be held, for purposes so vaguely mentioned in the measure that they could do almost anything. They could decide that Judge Sibley, of Georgia, for instance, should go to Maine to try cases, and that a judge from Maijje should take Judge Sibley’s place. % I cite this merely as an illustration of what the law would do, if put into .operation. The very first effect of it would be to have corporation judges, anti-labor judges, anti¬ lynching judges, and anti-saloon judges select¬ ed at the will of this judicial convention. It is astonishing that any such measure should have "the serious support of any consi d¬ erable number of members of Congress. During the splendid speech made against it by Senator Shields, of Tennessee,. he put evidence in the Record which shows that Wayne B. Wheeler, chief counsel of the Anti Saloon League, is making war upon those judges who, in his opinion, are not properly enforcing the Volstead Act. In the selection of the eighteen new judges, he.would do all in his power to ascertain be¬ forehand how the judge stood in the matter' of the enforcement of that particular law. . This is virtually asking a judge what will be his decision in a given case, provided he receives an appointment to the Bench. You can see at once how the independence of the judiciary would be undermined and de¬ stroyed. For many years, the coiintfy at Urge nas known that corporation lawyers receive judi¬ cial appointment because of their known bias of mind. We have seen corporation lawyers gradu¬ ated as Federal judges. Chief Justice Taft himself was one of these. The country has long been accustomed to seeing corporation lawyers lifted to the Sen¬ ate of the United States, where the interests of their clients can be better served than in the court house. Of this class of lawyers, Elihu Root is a distinguished example, just as the late Philan¬ der Knox was. But it is a novelty to propose to revolu¬ tionize, at one swoop, the entire Federal ju¬ dicial system, and to do this in a •way which concentrated power here in Washington. These eighteen judges would not be as signed to any particular district, and thev would not be required to reside in any parficu lar district, and they could be sent to any parr of the country, at any time, to try any sort of case. Such a prop’osition is monstrous, but fo all that, the hill may become a law. One of the abuses of the old English sys tern under the early kings was that the cour traveled around the kingdom in attendant upon the monarch. In other words, the liti gant was put to great expense and great trou ble, to find the judge who was to try his case The court was a roving court, because th< king was continually changing the place of hi abode. One of the reforms demanded of Kin John, in the year 1215, was that the court b located at a fixed place. In England, there is no such thing as rov ing judges and roving courts, nor is there air such thing in France, or any'other country o the civilized world. Should Congress adopt the measure nov pending, our system would present an anomal to mankind, and the abuses that might grov out of these unattached judges, roving ove the country, from sea to sea, and from Lake to Gulf, would he subversive of every principh of jurisprudence as heretofore known. The very idea of selecting a judge beeaus' of the knowledge of how he would decide . given question, is repugnant to the mind o. every true lawyer. IS* / v 4 mt — it'-. & Price $2.00 Per Year NOTES FROM THE UNITED STATES SENATE. Sir Edward Coke lives in judicial history as an example of courage and independence, because when King James II. of England asked him what would be his decision in a cer tain case which the King thought of bringing before ihe court over which Coke presided, the great lawyer answered: "I will decide that, when the case comes before me.” According to Mr. Wayne B. Wheeler, the Anti-Saloon League is determined to select men whose decisions they can count on before the cases come into court, Why should the Anti-Saloon League be continuing its strenuous and tyranical activi¬ ties when there are no more saloons? Why not have an Anti-Murder League, ov an Anti-Larceny League, or an Anti-Burglary League? The Volstead Law should be obeyed, just as all other laws should be obeyed, but all other laws should not be subordinated to this particular one. There are statutes far more important to the welfai’e of the country than is the Volstead Act, but there are no special organizations seeking to pick out the judges v. ho will deeidi those cases in‘accordance with the wishes of the league. It is far more important that the sacred¬ ness of the home and of the person should be preserved, than that every man should be made as dry as Mr. Volstead presumably is. It is the well-known trait of the fanatic that he has only the one idea in his head, and that he honestly believes that there are no ideas deserving of respect except his own. In this country, where reckless or careless drivers of motor vehicles kill more people every year than have been Jdlled in any one year of any of our wars in these United States, it would seem that League for the selection of Careful Drivers, and for the Adoption of Sen¬ sible Traffic Regulations, which., would safe¬ . guard the rights of those who go on foot, is quite as important as the elimination of beer and wine from the use of mankind. In New York, one person is killed for every day in the year. In Philadelphia, it is nearly as had. Here in this city hardly a day passes but some man, woman, or child is either killed or badly mangled. One takes his life in his hands at many of these crossings where car after car, and truck after truck, and one motorcycle after another, come speeding by at a rate which should not be permitted in a city, or, indeed, should not be permitted anywhere at a crossing. Strange as it may seem, Switzerland is un¬ dergoing the same kind of crisis, which has prostrated industries throughout our own country. The Swiss Confederation remained neu¬ tral during the world war, and, as in this country, the profiteers reaped a golden harvest. After the war a slump came, just as it did in this country, and it came from the same cause. The financiers refused to allow the issu¬ ance of paper money, and fiercely held on to the gold standard. They were as crazy about gold as our Federal Reserve Board has been. The consequence^ were inevitable. The gold dollar in Switzerland increased in value, just as it did here. Everything else went to smash. Factories closed down, merchants failed, abor was unemployed, and even the production of milk and butter almost ceased. A magazine article recently published j;oes as far as to say that the very cows are unong the imemployed, either because there s no one to do the milking, or no one to buy lie butter and milk. ' This, of course, may be an exaggeration, nd it probably means that a fewer number of eople are able to buy the dairy products, and hat therefore the industry shrank. Be that as it may, the description of the •onditions in the Swiss Confederation would if ours. Germany, having issued sLx or eight timef is much paper money as was in. circulation iefore the war, has sprung upon her feet, in lustrially, and is underselling the Swiss man ifacturers, the American manufacturers, and jven the manufacturers of .Great Britain. People Bay that the German money is very g Q a g ^ a at E8 jfe S?4 a. a * <3* eq much less valuable in gold than it was before the war, bat the practical answer that the Germans are making is, that they do not have to measure it with gold. Had they limited their currency to gold, and put everything on a gold standard basis, they would not now be shipping into this coun¬ try enormously greater quantities of their manufactured goods than they were sending before the war. They would not now be underselling the Swiss in Switzerland. The German money answers every pur¬ pose of the German laborer, the German mer¬ chant, and the German banker, in his domestic business; and when they have to deal with matters of foreign exchange, their goods are so much cheaper than Swiss or American goods that they can buy the exchange needed in foreign markets. Moreover, as the balance of trade is in her favor to the extent of nearly 1,000,000,000. marks a month, the exchange would probably he a profit to her. France would never have become so near¬ ly rehabilitated, in so short a time, if she had restricted her currency to the gold standard. She issued four or five times as much pa¬ per money as was in circulation before the war. and this money, being perfectly good in France, where it was legal tender, served the purpose of reviving trade, and rebuilding the waste places. Our Federal Reserve system, by piling up a mountain of gold, of which more than $3, 000,000,000. is not represented by any certifi¬ cate, or any other form of currency, has caused our people fabulous losses, due directly to this fatal holding of gold, and fatal destruction o $2,000,000,000. of paper money, which boomed our country during the war. The good Doctor Abernethy, of Baltimore, has been sorely tried because of his acquies¬ cence in a request that he strike out the name of Jesus Qlirist, from the prayer with which he opened the Peace Conference. It was prayer’ not absolutely essential, perhaps, to a good that the name of Christ should have been mentioned, although it is the universal custom in Christian churches to men¬ tion the name of their founder. But after Doctor Abernethy had written in the name of Christ, folrowing universal custom, it was a strange thing for him to do when lie ran his blue pencil through that line. There may he those who think that it would have been better at that international pblitical congress to have omitted religious ceremonies altogether, especially as there were Buddhists present, but after having decided on a Christian prayer as a necessary part of this political meeting, it was remarkable that they should leave out what is considered an essential of a Christian invocation. Inasmuch as the Japanese did not object to a Christian minister opening the Confer¬ ence with prayer, I cannot see what objection they could have raised to the conformity by Doctor Abernethy to what the Japanese know to be the ordinary essentials of a Christian prayer. The greatest living French historian, M. Ilanataux, has published a statement that J. P. Morgan and Company propagandaed the Unit¬ ed States into the World War. He reported a member of that banking firm of having said to a French minister, it would require an immense amount of money to convert public opinion in America into a state of such hostility against the Germans that they would clamor for a declaration of war. As far as I know, Hanataux has nover been contradicted by any member of the inter¬ national banking house which had loaned so much money to England and France, and which had negotiated stupendous loans, amounting, it is said, to over $2,000,000,000. They believed that it was necessary for America to come into the struggle, to prevent Germany from winning the war, and to save American, British and French financiers from losing stupendous sums. We had a cause of war when the Lusitania was torpedoed, and one hundred and nineteen American passengers sent to the bottom of the sea. This was in the spring of 1915. Issued Weekly At that time I believed that we should de¬ clare a maritime war upon Germany, and should allow every American volunteer w! > wished to fight for France, to do so, but our Government took a different view, and the murder of those non-combatant passengers was condoned. Afterwards came, the sinking of the Sus¬ sex and the Arabic, and the attack upon the hospital ship. Each of these cases might have been held to be a cause for war, but still our Government took no action. So late as October, 1016, President Wil¬ son, a candidate f n- reelection, made speeches in which he declared that the European war was none of our concern, and that we ought to remain strictly neutral, both in act and in thought. So late as January 28, 1917, the American Ambassador in Berlin assured the officials of the German Imperial 'Government that the re¬ lations between their country and ours were never better, and that so long as those high officials remained in power, there was no rea¬ son to apprehend trouble between the two countries. Those high officials were Bethmann-Hol wog, Ludendorff, von Hindenburg, and von J agow. After this speech was made, nothing Hap¬ pened on the high seas, so far as we were con¬ cerned, except the sinking of several freight ships which had taken the risk of going into, the blockaded zone. In February, 1917, came the Russian col¬ lapse, and then it was necessary that a power as great as Russia should get in and take heS place. Mr. Elihu Root was sent to Russia, and he was said to have had at his command an unlimited amount of money for the purpose of bribing the Kerensky Government to continue the war. Kerensky did so, and invaded Galicia, which was a part of the Austrian Empire 5 but the revolutionary elements in Russia were de¬ termined to draw out of the struggle, in which they had already lost more than four million men, and they succeeded in overthrowing Ke¬ rensky, and withdrawing the Russian armies from the field. Then, with feverish haste, this Govern¬ ment got into the vortex, and we all know the rest. A very interesting letter from the Editor? of the Marine Journal was received by mo this morning: in part, it reads as follows: “I hope you have read my demand for the Congressional Investigation of the Press of the United States. It is my sober judgment that unless the Press (including magazines) of the United States is investigated and its true ownership revealed to the American peo¬ ple,—that our country is lost. Smile if you will, disagree if you must. But I have given fifteen months of my life and I know that the Press of the United States is absolutely in the hands of Great Britain. I will enclose for your information and reflection a copy of a letter I have receiv¬ ed from Oscar Callaway of Comanche, Texas, who charged in the House that the Press of the United States was brought under British control in March of 1915. Under date of March 27th Mr. Callaway writes me that the statement he made was accurate and that he could yet furnish wit¬ nesses to a committee with authority to make the investigation. Is it possible that our Congress is so rotten and so treacherous that it is impos¬ sible to bring about an investigation of a Press which-is tearing this Nation apart and paving the way for the return of America to Great Britain as a Colony? If so, then may God have mercy on us. Mr. Callaway is a lawyer and when ho says he can furnish proof of such a condi¬ tion it is worthy of serious consideration.” I am very much inclined to believe that Mr. Young’s suspicion is well-founded. The action of the Peace Conference indi¬ cates the irresistible influence of Great Brit¬ ain. The services rendered by Mr. Balfour toi ^Continued on Page Four.), No 2h
