MILLENIUM

The circus is here again. With Mme. Costello's record run forgotten, along come the Millen boys with a brand new show. The machinery of American justice is dusted off, set up and bolted together, and set to running with its familiar squeaks and rattles. The man from Mars reading our papers will judge, rightly, that the most popularly important aspect of an affair of wholesale murder and robbery is the fact that pretty Norma bumped her knee on a cell door.

A matter which should be as simple as the shooting of a couple of mad dogs involves the constant bombast of attorneys, the endless slush of newspaper columns, and the preparing of a jury for its labors by taking it en bloc to a baseball game.

The judge has refused to grant any more nonsensical extensions. He has done all he can to reduce the trial to common sense. The rest is part of our delightful set-up of criminal justice. There is every reason to believe that this case is conclusive enough to result in the eventual electrocution of the thugs. But there will first be the long hullabaloo of a trial, the endless appeals and decisions, and all the rest of the involved and expensive claptrap which our highly advanced civilization finds necessary in the extermination of its vermin.