Reply

After having filled its columns, day after day last November, with the unsavory details of a matrimonial law action that involved miscegenation, the New York World despatched a scorching editorial reprimand at the heads of the prosecuting attorneys for ever having taken the case to court (TIME, Dec. 7). The World spoke of "the larger interests" of the attorneys' client (the family of Leonard Kip Rhinelander, of Manhattan); maintained that the "realities of the affair lay in a realm of feeling of which the actors themselves were hardly aware"; protested that since the attorneys were not emotionally involved they should have had the "sympathetic wisdom and practical judgment" to settle the case out of court, by means, perhaps, of a "Dutch uncle" talk; and accused the attorneys of cherishing an unbecoming overfondness for litigation.

All of which descended most heavily upon the head of Judge Isaac Newton Mills, chief attorney for the prosecution.

As soon as his affairs permitted, Judge Mills replied to the editor of the World in a dignified, legalistic and rather lengthy letter, which was published last fortnight and made the following points:

Mr. Kip Rhinelander, having left his wife, believing that she had deceived him about her colored parentage at the time of their marriage, had only three courses open to him to be rid of her:

a) He could continue living apart from her; but that would bring him no relief and she could still call herself Alice Jones Rhinelander.

b) He could purchase her consent to his obtaining freedom by annulment, or purchase her willingness to go to another state or to Paris and divorce him on grounds of abandonment. But that would be collusion. Judge Mills regretted to notice that the World had seemed to favor this course and had yet to notice that the World discountenanced Paris divorces, which are, in his eyes, dangerous to public morals.

c) Or Mr. Rhinelander could bring action for annulment, charging fraud. This course had already been adopted when he (Judge Mills) was called into the case; but it was also the course which he himself would have recommended as "the only practicable, safe and proper one."

With regard to unsavory publicity, Judge Mills had only this to say: That while many cases are taken before a referee for the sake of privacy, little privacy is ever thus obtained: Newspaper reporters will get the evidence somehow, and unseemly details will be printed.

And finally, "I do not venture to censure you. I permit myself, however, to say that it does seem to me that it would be a good practice before publishing such an article upon any one, even a novice, let alone an old practitioner, to at least send a reporter to interview him upon the subject and obtain his side or view of the matter."