JUSTICE VS. THE DEPARTMENT.

Another deadlock seems to have been reached in the Government's warfare on the Reds. The public is treated to the spectacle of one executive department charging another with disloyalty and with blocking its efforts to rid the country of suspected aliens.

In the present stage of the conflict the position of the Secretary of Labor is impregnable. The crime with which he is charged by the Department of Justice apparently consists of a decision that membership in the Communist Labor Party does not "per se" render an alien liable to instant deportation. This decision is eminently reasonable and just. Secretary Wilson announces that after careful investigation he cannot find any part of the program of this party which advocates violence or the forcible overthrow of government. Many aliens, he further points out, are members of the party without knowing it. It seems hardly in accordance with any principle of free government to punish such ignorance with deportation.

It is fortunate that there are officials in this country who can tell a harmless radical from a bomb-thrower, who refuse to be swept into panic by the sight of a soap-box or a red banner. It is fortunate, too, that some of our courts have not forgotten that an alien, like anyone else, has his rights before the law--that he is to be judged innocent until he is proved guilty.

The Secretary of Labor has only acted in accordance with the fundamental principles of justice. He is to be congratulated on his distinction between mere words and actual plots of violence. Only the latter furnish ground for punishment. To condemn on suspicion alone is contrary to the elements of free institutions.