Justice v. Schwimmer

Many a U. S. citizen distrusts a pacifist as though he or she were suspected of carrying the bubonic plague. This antipathy, so prevalent among storekeepers, salesmen, politicians, appeared last week more logically expressed, hardly less rabid, in no less potent a tribunal than the U. S. Department of Justice.

Mme. Rosika Schwimmer, 55, is a plump, cultured Hungarian Jewess. She was once Hungarian Minister to Switzerland. Often she has visited and lectured in the U. S. In 1915 she helped organize Henry Ford's peace ship. Several times she has unsuccessfully tried to become a U. S. citizen (TIME, July11, Oct. 24, 1927). She has always denied that she would bear arms for the U. S., adding that she understood that was not required of women. But judges have considered that her oath of allegiance would be vitiated by her unwillingness to carry a defensive musket.

Last year her petition for citizenship was refused by a Chicago District Court. Later the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed this decision, directed the granting of citizenship, on the ground that Mme. Schwimmer was naturally disqualified from bearing arms by reason of her sex and age.

It was at this point that the U. S. Department of Justice filed a brief with the Supreme Court opposing Mme. Schwimmer's naturalization & the Circuit Court decision. Said the brief: "The fact that the applicant . . . may or may not be able or willing to bear arms is not the sole consideration. The mental attitude of the individual toward the Government and its defense, with its necessary influence on others, is a vital matter. . . . She says she has 'no sense of nationalism, only a cosmic consciousness of belonging to the human family.' . . . If every citizen believed as she does and acted as she will, we would have no Constitution and no Government."