Upright Spirit

About two years ago able Correspondent Hubert R. Knickerbocker of the New York Evening Post was visited in Berlin by a bald Russian with a trowel beard-- Vladimir Orloff, onetime Councillor of State in the Imperial Russian Government. From him Reporter Knickerbocker obtained a number of letters purporting to show that U. S. Senators William Edgar Borah and George William Norris had accepted $100,000 bribes from Soviet agents (TIME, July 22, 1929). After a trial somewhat embarrassing internationally, in which Reporter Knickerbocker was star witness for the prosecution, M. Orloff was convicted of forgery, sentenced to jail. Rather surprisingly, Defense Attorney Walter Jaffe said of Witness Knickerbocker after the trial: "I shall never call his an agent provocateur again. I shall call him spiritus rectus: the Upright Spirit of the trial. . . ."

What happened later to change Herr Jaffe's mind is not recorded. But in Berlin last week Reporter Knickerbocker won a court injunction, forerunner of a libel suit, against a book just published: Murderers, Counterfeiters & Provocateurs, by Vladimir Orloff. In a preface to his client's volume, Herr Jaffe stated that M. Orloff had been forced into his crime by an agent provocateur in the person of Reporter Knickerbocker.

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