Site Ed. Note: Our initial sense, (and that apparently of Cash's father who had saved this day's column and checked only the two), from eight years ago when we first put the other two editorials, "Italian Hand" and "Whirligig", of this date online as part of the initial handful of editorials posted at the start of the site, that the following two editorials are not by Cash, is probably a correct one. Nevertheless, we add them anyway in our continuing endeavor to provide you with all the News fit to print...and maybe then some.

With regard to "Whirligig", we would have to add, in light of some recently added editorials which prompted our reference to many things, that it is now time to talk about something, uh, completely different, off topic, as it were.

"Britain?"

"No."

"No."

"Rather, uh, ..."

By Heywood Broun

But for the prompt and intelligent action of Governor Lehman the State of New York might well have added one of the most morbid chapters ever written in the strange history of criminal procedure. Twelve years ago a man named Henry Vichnitzer killed two policemen and was duly convicted and sentenced to the electric chair. While in the death house fear of his impending execution gripped him to such lengths that he went raving mad. Seemingly there was no question of his guilt, in the first place, nor of his subsequent insanity. A lunacy commission reported to Gov. Smith, and the man was sent to Dannemora State Hospital for the insane. The maniac was twenty years old at the time he made his escape from reality into the dream world. He pulled madness about him as if it had been a cloak conferring obscurity. And since he was no longer of the world, they took him from out of the shadow of the chair into the darkness of Dannemora.

AFTER TWELVE YEARS HE TURNED SANE AGAIN

And for twelve years he had his being with the living dead. His terror of the chair had saved his body from the burning but blotted out his brain. And for twelve years he continued to exist because his mind could not endure the fact of death. Almost alone among mortals, he was able to exercise a veto power when his time had come and postpone his appointment in Samarra. But, of course, he paid a price.

The newspaper accounts are rather sketchy on the medical history of the case. They merely say that suddenly, after twelve years, his mind seemed to improve.

The prison alienists judged him to be sane again--in fact, sane enough to be liberated from Dannemora and sent back to Sing Sing for execution. Indeed, that was precisely the decision of the judge before whom the rescued lunatic was brought for a verdict. The jurist had no choice in the matter. The law in such matters is mandatory.

GOVERNOR SAW THIS AS BEING INHUMANE

Vichnitzer went back to the death house under the stipulation that he should go to the chair at the end of six weeks.

However, after a single day Governor Lehman commuted his sentence to life imprisonment, saying, "It appears to me to offend all humane considerations to permit the execution of a man who since his conviction and for a period of twelve years has been in an insane asylum under judgment of an officially appointed state commission." And so there it stands.

Better men than this convicted murderer are dying of violence in many quarters of the world today. But that, I think, makes it all the more creditable that the Governor of New York should speak for humane considerations.

SOMEBODY TAUGHT HIM TO ACCEPT DEATH

No low price should be put on any human life, however warped or abject. And I have a feeling that something more than the life of the prisoner was saved. I am curious to know more about the facts of the cure. It seems to be extremely doubtful that the man at Dannemora moved wholly spontaneously out of madness and back into sanity. My guess is that some physician in the institution took a peculiar interest in the case. But the lesson which he had to induce the patient to accept is not easy, although it happens to be ancient.

In effect, a healer, as soon as he could command any trust at all on the part of the mad man, would have to begin to hammer home the truth that life in full function can be had only by those who are ready to accept death.

Somewhere along the line there must have been an emotional acceptance of this philosophy on the part of the crazed prisoner. In the unconscious there would have to be an active consent whereby the devils of unreason were to be cast out, even though by their departure they opened the door to death. It were better to face the ignominy of execution than to tarry in the fog.

But I do not think that any medical man who had restored a mind would like to have his fee as a state servant exacted by taking away a heartbeat.

Site Ed. Note: We also add from the column these two little fillers:

W. B. Kesiah, State Port Pilot

Hunting wild hogs with dogs, the leader of the canines being a vicious bull dog which fastens on the ear of the swine and never lets go, may sound like a cruel and extreme measure. In fact, a Southport matron balled us out last week for our apparent lack of sympathy while relating the capture of a 200-pound wild boar on Bald Head Island.

Our contention is that, in the case of old wild hogs that cannot be approached near enough for the huntsman to use a gun, it is only a bit of humanity to bring it to bay with a dog and thereby get in a position to put an end to its career. As in the case of several other wild animals, a wild boar when it has attained a fairly good age, is prone to develop savage tendencies. The brute has no conscience and no compunction about slaying all of its kind with which it comes into contact, and other wild animals that get within its reach. However, nature provides a painful and lethal punishment for the swine. His huge lower tusks slowly curl over the upper jaws, and in the course of weeks and months grow downward; gradually he can open his mouth less and less and finally the downgrowing tusks force the closing of the mouth to the point where he dies of sheer starvation. It is a great deal more merciful to run down an aging boar with a dog and put a quick end to it than it is to let it slowly starve to death.

Royal flushes in three suits showed up in a Texas poker deal. We won't say it was prearranged, though it smacks of pro wrestling.

--"Hey, bulldog..."

..."Yeah."

Common Sense Supports The Proposed Court Reforms

The state-wide movement, which has been launched here, to have the Legislature adopt some such civil procedure scheme for Superior Court as that being used by the Federal Courts, has the backing of leading lawyers of North Carolina and Charlotte. Which sounds agreeable. Popularly, at least, lawyers usually get the blame for the system which now exists, and are often suspected of wanting it continued for their profit.

In any case, that system plainly needs overhauling. It is notorious that civil suits quite often drag on for years without settlement or even hearing, so complicated is the machinery now in use. Many people with legitimate grievances under the law, indeed, simply let them go rather than be bothered with the cumbersome and costly process of trying to get relief for them.

The Federal system is a model of common sense, and in no way infringes on the rights of the parties to the case. Simply a pre-trial hearing is held, with a view to (1) simplifying the issues, and (2) possibility of obtaining admission of facts and documents, (3) necessity or desirability of amending pleadings, (4) eliminating the number of expert witnesses, and (5) considering the advisability of referring the issues to a master for findings to be used as evidence in the trial by jury. After the conference, the court makes an order which recites the action taken by the conference, and which limits the issues of fact and law to those agreed upon.

The marvel about all this is not that it is now being proposed for the State Courts, but that it has been so long reaching that stage.

We Go A-Hunting And Bag Some Unexpected Game

We hadn't expected that Railway Age, an organ of the trade, would care for the reduction of freight rates in Dixie. And so we were not surprised when, in its latest issue, we found it bitterly assailing the recent action of the Interstate Commerce Commission as due to politics on the part of a combination of Southern and Western interests. But we thought we had something when it went on to say:

We thought that if we looked up the other six members of the Commission, it would turn out, significantly enough, that they hailed from the East.

And so it was--as far as the Hon. Joseph Bartlett Eastman. He is a native New Yorker who was appointed from Massachusetts. And the Hon. Frank McManay was born in Pennsylvania, though he seems to have come to Washington from Michigan.

But then the proposition seemed to blow up on us. For of the remaining four, three--the Hon. Charles Delahunt Mahaffie, Claude R. Porter, and Balthasar Henry Meyer are Westerners--and the fourth, the Hon. Carroll Miller, so help us, is a native of Richmond in Virginia, appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

However, perhaps all is not lost. McManay, for instance, was connected with the railroads both before and after he got to Washington, where he has been ever since 1911--and residence in Washington notoriously does things to a man's viewpoint. Meyer, a University of Wisconsin college professor, was chairman of the Wisconsin Railroad Commission from 1905 to 1911, and he also has been in Washington since 1911. Mahaffie, a Kansas man, was a lawyer in Oklahoma and Oregon, and has been in Washington since 1916. And if Miller grew up in Richmond, he graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology and was an engineer in Yankeedom--mainly of Pittsburgh--until the lightning struck him in 1933. Meyer, McManay, and Mahaffie are all Republicans, appointed by Republican Administrations closely identified with Eastern interests.

The one man we can't quite make out is the Hon. Claude R. Porter. An Iowa man, born and bred, he stuck to the native soil as a lawyer until 1928, when Coolidge appointed him despite the fact that he is a Democrat. One thing, however strikes us. He is a seasoned politician. He spent eight years in the Iowa Legislature, and is one of the champion runners of all time. In 1898 he ran for Secretary of State in Iowa (unsuccessfully); in 1906 he ran for Governor (unsuccessfully); in 1908, he ran for Senator (unsuccessfully); in 1909 he ran for Senator (unsuccessfully); in 1911 he ran for Senator (unsuccessfully); in 1920 he ran for Senator (unsuccessfully); in 1926 he ran for Senator (unsuccessfully). Maybe that has nothing to do with the South and West and freight rates, but it plainly deserves attention on its own account.