The Justice Has a Date

Frank Murphy focused his blue eyes in a bright second-balcony stare, and gripped the dog-eared Bible given him by his mother, the Bible on which he has taken all oaths of office, including those of Mayor of Detroit, High Commissioner to the Philippines, Governor of Michigan, U.S. Attorney General, Supreme Court Justice. The Justice was about to take another kind of oath. He had decided to go to the wars, as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. "I have," he murmured dramatically, "a date in Manila."

If the 49-year-old Justice really expected to keep his date, he was going about it in somewhat haphazard fashion. When he went off this week to Fort Banning, Ga., he was still a member of the Supreme Court, from which he had not yet resigned, or been given a leave of absence.

A captain in World War I, Soldier Murphy is due to be paid as much as General Pershing. His Court salary is $20,000 a year, and will continue while he remains at Fort Benning. He has, however, forsworn the added pay of a lieutenant colonel. While in the Army Lieut. Colonel Justice Murphy will probably not be burdened by the routine and the chores of men who are not merely spending summer vacations in the Army--he can always return to the bench. (In his two years as a Justice, Soldier Murphy has handed down only 42 opinions.) However, his social life will be sharply curtailed, which may be a considerable sacrifice for gay (though teetotal) Bachelor Murphy, who seldom misses Capital routs, tirelessly makes all the rounds.

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