Parody of a Miracle Play

In the New Deal days, a forthright British industrialist was introduced to a trustbusting U.S. Government lawyer. Said the Briton: "I've read your books and I know you to be an intelligent man. I know that you know that these antitrust suits of yours don't really change anything. Why do you bring them?" Said the American: "I know they don't change anything. But what you don't understand is that these suits are like medieval miracle plays--designed to educate the people, to tell them how capitalism really works."

The U.S., beginning last week, had a new spectacle: the televised hearings in the case of McCarthy v. the Army.

It was a lively show. Robert T. Stevens. Secretary of the Army, was the principal witness of the first week. Stevens, a topflight businessman, found himself snarled in a dirty little fight where the fate of an Army private named G. David Schine and the fate of a New York dentist named Irving Peress somehow became high affairs of state. Senator McCarthy, ever the showman, gave televiewers their time's worth. A new character. Ray Jenkins, the committee's trap-jawed counsel, brought to the screen the forensic flamboyance of a Southern trial lawyer.

Nevertheless, it was a poor show. Again and again the committee got itself snarled up in procedural difficulties. Counsel Jenkins could not seem to decide whether he was plaintiff's attorney, defendant's attorney, judge or bailiff. And McCarthy worked mightily at recasting himself as the prosecutor.

The fault was that the committee was trying to do what no legislative committee can do: conduct a trial. When it needed to decide whether a piece of evidence was relevant, it could not turn, as a court can, to pleadings in which the issues had been clearly framed. The committee was, in effect, trying two very different cases: the Army's case against McCarthy and McCarthy's case against the Army.

Some public education--especially about the characters of McCarthy and his counsel. Roy Cohn--might result from this show. But in its first few days, the main point shown was that the legal trial, which everyone takes for granted, is a most complex and valuable institution--not to be parodied by a vulgar imitation of judicial process.

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