GOOD MEN AND TRUE

Doheny and Fall are again free men. What seems to have been a fairly able jury unanimously acquitted them of charges of conspiracy. Mr. Doheny, leaving the court, delivered to reporters an heroic on the unbesmirched patronym he now passes on to his grand-children. True, Senator Heflin of Alabama shouted, "All law-ab ding citizens will hang their heads in shame at the verdict", but that was party politics, says the New York Tribune.

Although the trial was perfectly fair, there remains a conviction that Doheny and Fall were acquitted more through skilful manipulation of the paradoxical machinery of the Common Law than through conviction of their innocence. It has never been easy to prove guilt in cases of major political importance. The ordinary course of justice could not convict Strafford of treason; public odium and the amazing oratory of Burke and Sheridan could not find Hastings guilty.

Posterity has excused the crimes of Strafford and Hastings; they were committed for the sake of great public interests and were justified by their efficacy. Fall's greatest crime was his hopeless incompetency If it were possible to try an official for utter incapability, he would merit the maximum sentence: He is a living argument that idiocy should be a statutory offense.