RE-TRYING CLASS TRIALS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 131, 4 June 1937, Page 8

RE-TRYING CLASS TRIALS

Political trials have often become famous (or infamous) in history, and have often been reviewed, in retrospect, by analytical persons. But a review in the past tense is quite different, from a re-trial in the present ' tense,-,'ohd it seems that the world will be facing a new. factor, of unknown potentialities, if the' practice of re-trial (in a foreign country) of recently concluded, trials, is pursued to its conclusion. A glimpse of it was given when an effort was made to re-try, outside Germany, the Reichstag fire case. Reports now come from America that leaders of public opinion like Professor Dewey and internationalists like Benjamin Stolberg, with many others, are carrying; on investigations of evidence supplied by Trotsky (in Mexico) and by other persons bearing on the reIcent Moscow trials.. Unlike the Reichstag .fire re-trial, the movement to find out the truth about Trotsky is reported to be unpalatable to the Communists. Quite apart from the merits and demerits of the TrotskyStalin case, one fact stands out—that though United States policy is "aloofness,'' Americans themselves simply refuse to remain uninterested in Old World issues. Some of the keenest students of dictatorship trends are in America, and Trotsky's presence in Mexico exerts an exciting influence. A Government may embargo arms, but not thought. For good or ill, the American mind, stimulated by writers like Sinclair Lewis, is pushing its way into European affairs, and sees therein not only a fascinating picture, but also a mirror of what may happen any-