Verdict Against Hiss
The remarkable case against Mr. Alger Hiss, the former State Department official at Washington, and one of President Roosevelt's advisers at the Yalta Conference, was marked by such confident, and often convincing, cross-swearing that what is remarkable is not that the jury at last year's trial failed to agree, but that the jury at this year's re-trial succeeded in agreeing. Hiss was sentenced on Wednesday to five years' imprisonment on two charges of perjury— one the denial that he had passed confidential documents to a Com- munist courier as long ago as 1938, the other the denial that he had ever seen the chief witness against him, Whitaker Chambers in the relevant period—the two sentences to run concurrently ; but the end is not yet, for Hiss has appealed. No one who has fol- lowed the two trials can be satisfied with the verdict ; but no one, probably, would be satisfied if Hiss had been acquitted ; the Scottish finding of "Not Proven ".might have fitted better here. Whitaker Chambers, on whose testimony practically the whole case against Hiss rested, is a self-confessed traitor and perjurer, but the jury decided that this time he was speaking the truth, and an inanimate object, the typewriter .which at one time belonged to Hiss, and on which the incriminating documents were typed, told heavily against the defendant. Politics are unfortunately mixed up with the affair, for Hiss stood fairly close to, the Administration, and the verdict leaves Republicans triumphant
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