FELIX FRANKFURTER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23704, 11 January 1939, Page 11

FELIX FRANKFURTER

NEW UNITED STATES JUDGE ADMIRER OF BRITISH CIVIL SERVICE The cable news on Saturday mentioned the appointment by President Roosevelt of Mr Felix Frankfurter to a judgeship of the Supreme Court of the United States. This man has been so marked for his ability and his honesty, that he has been the personal friend of Presidents of the United States right back to Theodore Roosevelt. In an illuminating article in the Saturday Evening Post of October 29 by Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner, “ We Shall Make Over America,” inside character sketches and hitherto unrevealed facts are given of people prominent in American politics of the present day, particularly the friends of the New Deal. In that article the writers maTce extended references to the past and present-day roles played in and out of American politics by Felix Frankfurter. In view of his appointment, to the. Supreme Court bench at a critical time, some of these references “ scan the man.” Of the man who helped to burst the big trusts, this article says;— “ Felix Frankfurter, the kindly, learned, high-minded scholar of the law, the cherished intimate of spirits so various as Holmes and Brandeis, Taft, Cardozo, and Franklin Roosevelt, carries the history of the New Dealers back to the time of Roosevelt I. In those days, an able man was as likely to enter a monastery as the ranks of Government workers. Yet Theodore Roosevelt had roared, “When there is hard work to do, the nation has a right to demand the service of its best-equipped citizens,” and Henry L. Stimson had meekly become U.S. Attorney for the Southern New York District. By quoting T. R.’s remark, Stimson had bullied Frankfurter and a company of others like him into helping to bust the trusts. And somehow, in that promising company, Frankfurter was imbued with a burning desire to put “ its bestequipped citizens" at the nation’s service. Frankfurter became a recruiting officer for Stimson, catching the best men in the law schools’ graduating classes, bringing them to Stimson’s office, inspiring them with his own fire. He has been a public recruiting officer ever since. “ For the honest and efficient management of these increasing millions’ public affairs, it has been Frankfurter’s life ambition to establish an equivalent of the British Civil Service. The British Civil Service is his hobby. He studies the minutiae of its administration, tells stories of its unassuming usefulness. and quotes, in bitter contrast, such defences of the patronage sys-

tem as Bryan’s idiotic remark, “Any man with real goodness of heart can write a good currency law.” “ His meeting with Mcßeynolds ended coldly, but his effort never slackened. In 1914, Harvard Law School made him a professor. Once there, in daily contact with good, trained young minds whom he could infuse with his ideal, he started a sort of Government employment bureau. “Quite naturally, he was called on when one of his friends became President of the United States. In the Wilson era he was chairman of the War Labour Policies Board. The Navy’s board member was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At the interminable, wrangling weekly meetings. Frankfurter struck up a warm intimacy with the agreeable young official who had a knack of composing the worst disputes. It was never interrupted, and when the young official was elevated to the presidency, he used Frankfurter not only as a close adviser but also as chief personnel officer of his Administration. The President merely let it be known that if good men were wanted, Frankfurter had them.”