Alice in
-Justiceland |

“I beg pardon, | am not guilty
of anything.“

: Y are those men locked up
es: in that awful bullpen?” ask-
,ed. Alice, a sympathetic tear in
her eye.

. “They’ve been guilty of free
speech,” the White Knight ex-
plained

“Don’t tease me,” Alice plead-

ed.
free speech.”
* “Who said they’d been charged
with free speech?” demanded the
‘White Knight. “They are not
charged with anything of the sort.
Free speech is only what they’ve
been guilty of.”

“Well, then,” Alice protested,
“what is the charge against
‘them?”

_ “They’re charged with being
vagrants.”

“But they aren’t -vagrants,”
Alice protested.

“Of course not. But you can’t
‘deny that they are guilty of free

“{ thought a tramp was the
only person who could be charg-
ved with vagrancy,” Alice insist-
ed.

' “How naive you are!” said the
White Knight scornfully. “Tramps
‘are never charged with vagrancy.”

* “What are they charged with,
then?” Alice inquired.

‘ “With burglary.”

“But they aren’t necessarily
guilty of burglary.”

“Perhaps not. But they are
guilty of vagrancy. And, if you
give them the proper treatment,
they'll plead guilty to anything.
(ve got you there!” said the
White Knight triumphantly.

e
“Well then,” Alice resumed,
after she had thought a while,
“am I to understand that, if you
are guilty of one thing, you are
-aecused of something else?”

“J beg pardon,” replied the
Knight haughtily, “I am_ not
‘guilty of anything.”
“Tf used the word ‘you’,” Alice
explained, “only because one gets
confused if one uses ‘one’ in one’s

“You can’t be charged with

“Objection overruled and sen-
tence confirmed!” thundered the
White Knight. “Answer yes or
no!”

“Answer yes or not to what?”
inquired Alice.

“To the charge.” :

“But I’m not charged with any-
thing,” Alice pleaded. .

“Perhaps not, but you will be
if you aren’t careful.”

“Why?” asked Alice.

“Because you have shown an
interest in men accused of a
crime.” :

“But that’s no crime,” Alice
remonstrated.

“Not a crime exactly, but it
can be officially inconvenient,”
the Knight explained.

“J hope you won’t get vexed
with me,” Alice ventured apolo-
getically. “I’m really quite in-
terested in this system and I’d
like to know more about it,”

“You’d better choose your
words more carefully,” the Knight
said warningly. “You sound like
a sympathizer. If I thought you
were, I'd be compelled, as a pat-
riotic. citizen, to have you arrest-
ed on a charge of resisting ar-
rest.”

“But I haven’t resisted arrest,”
Alice objected.

“Tf a policeman tried to arrest
you on a charge of resisting ar-
rest, wouldn’t you protest?” the
White Knight asked.

“Of course.”

“You see — you're guilty al- .

ready!”
é

“Let’s change the subject,” said
Alice, just a bit exasperated.
“Who is the man sitting in that
double-barred cell?”

“That,” replied the White
Knight, “is a Dangerous Crimin-
ai”

“Oh!” exclaimed Alice, start-
led. “Did he kill somebody?”

“Oh, no. He’s more dangerous
than that. He’s a Thinker.”

“But is it a crime to think?”
asked Alice.

“You don’t seem to get the idea
at all,” expostulated the White

“My dear child, everybody is
innocent of something.”

Knight impatiently. “It’s a crime
to obstruct traffic.”

“Did he obstruct traffic?” Alice
inquired. ‘

“No, but he declared it was
ridiculous for a judge to drive
to court in an intoxicated condi-
tion, and fine men for drunken
driving.”

“T don’t see what that has to
do with obstructing traffic,” Alice
argued.

“That’s the beauty of it — it
hasn’t anything to do with it,
which makes it all the easier to
get a conviction.”

“The whole system,” said Alice,
“looks cockeyed.”

“Nothing of the sort,” replied
the Knight. “It’s very sensible.

‘Knight solemnly.

If you hate your neighbor as you
love yourself, you don’t charge
him with being a hateful person.
You call the police and tell them
his automobile is parked without
a tail light. That’s our system in
a nutshell, only we carry it a step
farther. _.We don’t have to prove
that the tail light was .out —
only that it might have gone out.
By the same line of reasoning,
people might gather in groups to
discuss the suggestion that a
drunken judge should not sen-
tence drunken drivers and they
might obstruct traffic.”

“Tt all seems predicated on the
word ‘might’,” observed Alice.

said the White
“Might makes
right. You see. It’s like this:
It’s much easier to convict a man
of something he didn’t do than to
prove that what he was doing was
acrime For example, if a man
was handing out union literature,
we charge him with littering the
streets. If he was picketing, we
charge him with loitering. If he’s
a radical, we charge him with be-
ing a bootlegger. If he writes a
book on economics that we don’t
agree with, we arrest him on a
charge of obscenity. If he thinks
a worker has the same right to
drink as his boss, we lock him up
on a charge of violating the Mann
Act. ;

“Tf the first charge doesn’t
stick, we try another and, if he
appeals, we charge him with
something else. That’s the ad-
vantage of this system. If you
charge a man with a crime he
really did commit, your prosecu-
tion is limited to one count but,
if you charge him with something
else, you have the whole book of
statutes to choose from. If he is
acquitted on all counts, we can
always have him committed to an
asylum. He'll probably ‘have
gone insane by that time, any-
how.”

“Does anybody ever get free
of everything?” asked Alice.’

“Oh, yes,” replied the White
Knight. “But the system takes
care of those cases, too. By that
time he has spent all his money
on litigation, his reputation is
ruined and, anyway, he has al-
ready been in jail as long as if he
had been convicted on the orig-
inal charge.”

“Am I to understand, then,”
Alice asked in some _ bewilder-
ment, “that most of the people
in jail are innocent?”

“My dear child,” replied the
Knight wearily, “everybody is in-
nocent of something.”

“Precisely,”

Was his
face red?

A FRONT-PAGE cartoon in the
London Daily Express showed
two U.S. senators standing be
neath a bust of George Washing
ton.

“Personally, Senator,” one said,
“Y’d_ like to reopen the whole
cherry tree inquiry, I figure he
was shielding someone.”

*

ALL references to the quis
should be cut out of U.S. scho
textbooks, says Mrs. Thomas J
White, of Indiana. :

2 1

The reason? “Quakers dont
believe in fighting wars. All at
men they can get to believe toy
they don’t need to go to wat, th
better off the Communists ate

Mrs. White is the woman Whd
called for the story of Robin Hoot
to be banned from school boos:

*

RECENTLY, West German eae
tectives searched the house’ nf
a woman in the little village Ms
Blexen, near Wesermarsch 12
British Zone. ee
They seized the program oo.
cultural performance givel Pie
the German-Soviet FriendshiP het
ciety, three copies of the abel
dren’s book Fairy Tales oft
Peoples of the Soviet Union, Fire
the Soviet adventure story ©
in the Polar Night. i

Despite her protest oa ays

were confiscated, and tw a) 00°
later she received an offich

tice from the county police
Wesermarsch stating:

’ f
“Subject: Confiscation , a
writings hostile to the sta.
“The confiscation of the bis
ings seized on the instruc
of the ‘Oldenburg State
ney is hereby ordered 10 s
ance with para 3 of the F ai
Ordinance on Defense ae
Attacks on Democratle
Rights, dated June 6, 1

“The bednics
contain appeals to
laws of the Federal pepe
and attacks on democra refore
er. The writings are a nd
prohibited under Pat,‘ the
confiscated under para ;
Ordinance quoted,”

By SID ZLOTNIK

NEXT it will be the Little Réd
Hen. :

A Republican member .of
the Indiana Textbook Commis-
sion, Mrs. Thomas J. White,
of Indianapolis, has urged that
Robin Hood be banned from
schools because of its “Com-
munist philosophy.” Said the
lady: “The Communists want
to stress the story of Robin
Hood because he robbed the
rich and gave’ to the poor.
That’s the communist line. It’s
just a smearing attack on law
and order.”

This demand for a ban was
followed by a series of devel-
opments, real and fictitious.

Real, The High Sheriff of
Nottingham, William Cox
(whose predecessor was Robin
Hood’s favorite target in the
good old days when he used
to sally forth from Sherwood

Forest) lifted a quizzical eye-
brow and commented dryly:
“Why, Robin Hood was no
Communist. We'd probably
call him a gangster, and I'd
have to do my duty and go

Will the Little Red Hen be

after him. We've never mind-
ed our children learning about
Robin Hood and Maid Marian,
and Little John, and all the
rest. It’s our heritage. We're
very proud of Robin Hood. And

next? —
mind you... I’m a member
of the Conservative party: . a

Fictitious. Little Red Ridiné
Hood has issued a state™ e
to the press to the effect
she will “reveal all”
Un-American ‘Activities i
mittee. Ma

“The fact is,’ she said)
do not have to turn Ve +O
new leaf, for at no time”
I been a Red in any real 8%"
My red cloak was just 4 se
up, because I.have bee Wet
ing for the FBI. As @™_
of fact, in my capacity rset
famous figure in ® access
rhymes, I have sain ary
to just about every ;
school in these United re
Only last week I comple’© yp
report on Communism able !°
schools in which I was of 08
prove that a majority ©,
little country schoolhouse’
still red.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 27, 1953