Martial Law

Martial law was declared in Georgia last week. No criminal disturbance had taken place. There was neither epidemic, catastrophe nor race riot. Governor Eugene Talmadge was simply having it out with a political enemy, Chairman John William Barnett of the State High-way Board. In every chain gang camp, office, garage and supply depot belonging to the Highway Department militiamen were posted.

Georgia's Talmadge showed a flare for the spectacular as soon as he was inaugurated. He had a barn built in back of the Gubernatorial Mansion on Atlanta's Prado so he could be near his beloved cows and chickens. He also began to pardon state prisoners wholesale. Since taking office Jan. 10 he has pardoned 50 convicts, including eight murderers, issued 52 commutations of sentence. He released one prisoner who had been dead three weeks.

Traditionally the Governor of Georgia runs the House, while the Highway Board controls the Senate. Friction between the Governor and Mr. Barnett became more than traditional this spring. Having reduced automobile license fees to the record low of a flat $3, thereby curtailing the Board's income, Governor Talmadge added insult to injury by reducing the Highway Department's appropriation and ordering the removal of five of Mr. Barnett's engineers. When the Board refused to approve the removals, Governor Talmadge seized $2,500,000 of the Department's money from local banks, with which he decided to pay off some of the State's indebtedness, stowed it away in a vault in the Capitol at Atlanta. This precaution forestalled Mr. Barnett's incipient court action to tie up the money so the Governor could not get at it. Posting a machine gun manned by young and husky militiamen in front of the vault, Governor Talmadge went off to Manhattan to officiate at Flag Day exercises fortnight ago.

Returning last week, Governor Talmadge, far cleverer than the deeply rural character he affects, decided to complete his subjugation of the Highway Department. His militiamen took over the Department's property and notified all anti-Talmadge men that they were fired. Meantime a civil action which Mr. Bar nett had begun against the Governor to reclaim the $2,500,000 was, by proclamation, transferred to a military court. A process server who tried to present a notification of suit to the Governor was arrested, escorted out of the Gubernatorial offices by the Adjutant General of the State. Then the process server himself began a suit against the Governor, charging that he had been grossly humiliated. The Governor was at an American Legion luncheon when the notification of this suit was presented. He tore it up, threw it at the server's back as the man was being taken away by guardsmen. The Legionaries unanimously adopted a resolution protesting the indignity to which the Governor had been submitted.

Next move by Mr. Barnett was to go to a Federal court, on the grounds that the Highway Board handles Federal high way funds, and ask that an injunction be served on the Governor, demanding that he show cause why he should not give the money back. Meantime, the U. S. Department of Agriculture decided to hold up Georgia's $10,000,000 allotment under the emergency road building program until the Georgian ruckus was settled.

"The time has not yet come for a Mussolini in Georgia," cried thwarted Mr. Barnett. "Many people have told me that the Governor's action has indi cated a deranged mind, and I rather think this is the charitable view of it."

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