CHALLENGE TO JUSTICE SEEN IN MINNESOTA

A gross miscarriage of justice is about to take place in the Minnesota sedition trials. This was the keynote sounded by Mrs. Dorothy Schultz to a meeting of the Harvard Liberal Union held last night in protest to the charges pending against 23 members of Socialist Workers' Party for conspiracy against the government.

With Professor Francis O. Matthiessen presiding, Professors Arthur N. Holcombe '06, E. Merrick Dodd '10, and Harlow Shapely spoke before the gathering of 200 people in Emerson Hall.

Mrs. Schultz, who was one of the five defendants in the trial against whom the charges of sedition were dismissed, said that the government attorneys in the trial had appealed to the prejudice of the Minnesota jurors against radicals and labor leaders instead of to their sense of justice.

At times, she said, the evidence against the defense was so ludicrous that even the jury laughed. The testimony for the prosecution was given by biased witnesses, former members of the Socialist Workers' Party who had joined it only for possible material gain, she said.

Following Mrs. Schultz, Professor Holcombe told the meeting that they could count on the Supreme Court to free the accused Trotskyites. Both he and Professor Dodd, who spoke after him, maintained that the Smith Act under which the charges were made is unconstitutional if strictly construed.