POLITICAL NOTES: Circumstances & Cases

Perhaps not by sheer accident the last official opinion of outgoing Attorney General Homer Stillé Cummings, published last week, tweaked the Jew-baiting nose of Nazi Germany. The State Department had asked the Attorney General to advise whether to deny, on grounds of moral turpitude, a visa to a German Jew who, in order to escape from Germany, had lied about his money to Nazi officials.

Wrote New Dealer Cummings, whose department has prosecuted many a U. S. citizen for false income tax statements: “The alternatives open to the alien were to remain in Germany and be reduced to a state of penury and serfdom, or to seek another life in another land. … I advise . . . granting him a visa.”