Court Ignores Threat That Sedition Trial Will Provoke Wave of Anti-semitism

Chief Justice Edward Eicher, who is presiding at the trial of 30 alleged seditionists here, apparently plans to ignore the tactics of defense counsels who are attempting to convince the government that the sedition trial should be called off by President Roosevelt in order to prevent “a wave of hostility and bias toward the Jewish race,” it was indicated here today.

A request that the trial be halted and a threat to convert it into a platform for anti-Jewish propaganda was contained in a plea addressed to President Roosevelt yesterday by James Laughlin, attorney for the alleged seditionists Edward James Smythe and Robert Nobls. The continuance of the trial, the plea said, would ” see class arrayed against class and race against race.” Should the trial not be sailed off, Mr. Laughlin said in his letter to the President, then it will last until November 8, when it will be discontinued “due to the fact that the people of the United States will vote a change in the Government on November 7.”

Taking note of Henry Ford’s protest against the attempt of the defense to drag him into the trial, Mr. laughlin made public the text of a letter he sent today to Ford reminding him that twenty years ago he made “many utterances against prominent Jews.” “Of course,” the letter said, “it may be that this is an incident you would perhaps prefer to have forgotten, but nevertheless history has been made and your utterances and writings will remain in posterity as long as time endures.”

The quest for a jury continued today with prospective jurors being asked whether they are readers of Anglo-Jewish publications and whether they hold the belief that “the Government of the United States, the Congress and public officials are controlled by Communists, International Jews and plutocrats.”