The Interminable Trial

Franz Kafka's The Trial is a parable of modern man's vague, gnawing anxiety; the accused never learns the charge or the evidence against him. The U.S. Senate, in its repeated and unsuccessful efforts to pass judgment on Joe McCarthy, keeps writing an even more modern parable: it hears the evidence again and again, as a way of postponing the verdict.

Last week the special committee whose job it is to decide whether the Senate should censure McCarthy met under the chairmanship of Utah's Senator Arthur Vivian Watkins. Before it. or at least available to it, was more evidence about McCarthy than any man could read in a lifetime. Fair or foul, McCarthy's record is written plain in transcript upon tons of transcript. What might be painfully difficult is the judgment to be passed on that record. Is his conduct unbecoming a Senator of the U.S.?

Postponing this painful judgment, the Senators have decided to hold hearings to elicit the facts. The trial ritual will be mocked again--as it was in the Army-McCarthy hearings. Witnesses will be heard, and, the committee decided last week, Joe will have the right to cross-examine them. This week Joe demanded that one of his accusers, Senator Ralph Flanders, return from a vacation in Europe and be put under oath as a "complaining witness." Actually, Flanders is no more a "witness" than any other American who can read or look at television. Flanders is a man who says that certain actions are improper. There is little doubt about the actions; the argument is about their propriety.

Because the Senate committee decided not to face up to the ethical and political problems, the case, to the delight of Democrats, will be in the lap of embarrassed Republicans right up to the November elections. Republican Senators know this, but Sergeant Friday's influence is too strong. All they want is the facts, ma'am.

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