UNION OF FORCES

Senator Wheeler's testimony delivered yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee presented some of the most convincing opposition arguments yet advanced. The most significant of these was Mr. Justice Brandeis' statement that enlargement of the court would impair rather than increase its efficiency. The agreement of Justices Hughes and Van Devanter is of secondary importance compared to the opinion of this famous liberal. That he should have put his name to such a statement is one of the most impressive victories for which the opponents of court packing could have hoped.

Chief Justice Hughes' letter itself presented incontrovertible facts which place the administration in a woefully weak position. Senator Wheeler's comment emphasising the "deplorable misinformation" of Attorney-General Cummings is the only possible reaction to Hughes' account of the efficiency of court procedure. The use by Cummings and the President of the false postulate that the inherent weakness of their case. Some of the the court was running behind on its docket shows bitterness of President Roosevelt's Victory Dinner declamation must be neutralized by the incontestable fact that the "Nine Old Men" have kept up with their work, if anything reviewing, in Hughes' opinion, more cases than necessary.

The hesitancy of the three justices to give an opinion on the injection of new blood was made up by Wheeler's plaintive query: "I don't know when the administration became averse to age." He cited the late Attorney-General Walsh, Justice Brandeis, and the elderly Senators Glass, Borah, Norris and Johnson as men who have not "failed to keep in touch with modern affairs." Roosevelt's offer of a cabinet post to seventy-nine-year old Carter Glass is evidence that age and liberalism are not always separate in the President's mind. The administration is in reality seeking some very particular new blood, and not the rather theoretical advantages of young blood in the abstract. Wheeler appropriately stressed this point by comparing the enlargement plan to the packing of a jury by a private litigant.

That New Deal objectives would be aided by new justices is by no means sure. Senator Wheeler pointed out that, in the event of the six new men being conservatives, and amendment would be impossible, as the people would balk at a second revision scheme. The amendment process is the obvious way to attempt reform, and should not be endangered in this way. In addition, amendments are capable of swift passage if the people desire a change, President Roosevelt's manufactured crisis notwithstanding.

Whether or not it be true that, as Wheeler asserts, approval of the enlargement plan will destroy the President, his further contention that liberal principles will be frittered away by this stop-gap legislation is highly logical. That a liberal of such long-standing as Senator Wheeler stands by this opinion is helpful to more conservative opposition forces. Even this unlooked-for support is overshadowed by that of Justice Brandeis, however, and the marshalling of liberal opinion behind the well-reasoned stand of these men can make for a strong coalition against the President's paternalism.