OYEZ OYEZ

Legal involutions and complexities are interesting if taken in small doses. And they have never been more naively (or more publicly) exploited than in the trial of the California apostle Mrs. Aimee Semple McPherson. Until the jury renders a verdict one cannot help matters by passing private judgment on the lady; but one may--and millions of newspaper readers do--derive considerable entertainment from the agile antics of her lawyers. In fact out of the various journalistic menus which have been served the public continuously for seven months the McPherson affair wears the best.

Having built up an apparently substantial case on the grounds that the enchanting evangelist did not hire a substitute to impersonate her at beautiful Carmel-by-the-Sea and that consequently anyone who so accused her was attempting to blacken her reputation the defense now turns a complete somersault and tacitly admitting the possibility, even the probability, of such a move, argues that the action does not constitute a crime. Socrates himself could not have more cleverly retreated from a cloud of threatening evidence; even Gratian would have been forced to admire the constitutional genius who prepared the briefs for the case. No matter what the eventual outcome is (and with this latest coup an imminent outcome grows even less likely) one may well congratulate the chief of the Four-square Bible Temple on her wise and nimble lawyers. Had she exercised an equal amount of perspicacity in concealing her whereabouts last May she would in all probability be searching at the present time for more conventional and less dangerous methods of publicity.