Conant Enters National Arena to Blast Court Changes Without Popular Order

Entering the National political arena for the first time President Conant yesterday denounced the Roosevelt plan to pack the Supreme Court as "contrary to the spirit of a free, democratic country."

In a letter to Massachusetts Senators Walsh and Lodge the Harvard leader calls on the administration not to rush through "an interference with the judiciary which might eventually jeopardize the liberties guaranteed under the Bill of Rights" without a mandate from the people. He finds no justification of any emergency cry to dictate that the Supreme Court shall be packed without benefit of constitutional amendment.

As for the Supreme Court the President decidedly does not say that it may not be altered. In this most explicit statement to date of his political as well as constitutional views Harvard's chieftain states that "Personally I should wish to live under the present Constitution as written, but as interpreted by the minority of the present court.

"Some measures should be devised to alter the existing situation. Even the proposal now before the Senate, if cast as a constitutional amendment might be defensible.