Contest of Verities

In a Manhattan courtroom last week, the Government settled down once again to the country's most celebrated contest of verities: the second trial of Alger Hiss.

There were some changes in the cast of characters. Elderly (73), dignified Judge Henry Goddard, an appointee of President Harding, took the place of Judge Samuel Kaufman, an appointee of President Truman. A jury of eight women and four men took the places of the two women and ten men who, last summer, had so sensationally disagreed as to whether Hiss was guilty of perjury. At the defense table the Harvard-trained Boston lawyer, Claude B. Cross, had replaced the flamboyant Lloyd Paul Stryker.

In his opening address, Attorney Cross indicated that a minor witness in the first trial might play a major role in this one. Cross declared that he would prove that it was not Alger Hiss but another former State Department employee, Henry Julian Wadleigh, who had fed the controversial State Department documents to ex-Communist Courier Whittaker Chambers. The defense had hinted the same thing in the first trial, but could not make it stick. Preliminaries over, Chambers took the stand.

In another federal courtroom, in San Francisco, the U.S. began last week the job of trying to prove that Harry Bridges is a Communist and that he had perjured himself when he denied it. The Government had tried unsuccessfully twice before; this time the Government promised a new witness whose words would "carry a real Sunday punch." If the charge can be proved, the vociferous, needle-nosed boss of the C.I.O. Longshoremen can be sent back to his native Australia. As in the Hiss trial, the jury is eight women and four men.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.