"Lines" Lacking

A classic situation of rural melodrama is the moment at which the eloping or otherwise errant heroine is asked to produce her "marriage lines." Lack of such is considered circumstantial evidence of the most damning sort.

Last week one Henry M. Blackmer, U. S. citizen residing in France, found himself lacking lines which, though not as intimate as a marriage license yet were of some importance to his wellbeing. For, the U. S. Government had succeeded in taking from him his U. S. passport, leaving Mr. Blackmer in the embarrassing predicament of a "person whose papers are not in order." Mr. Blackmer is urgently wanted in the U. S. as a witness in the coming (October) trial of Albert B. Fall, onetime (1921-23) Secretary of the Interior, and Harry F. Sinclair, oil man, for conspiracy in the famed Teapot Dome scandal. Last May Mr. Blackmer refused to honor a subpoena to return and testify; the passport revocation followed, presumably with the intention of preventing Mr. Blackmer from leaving France for even more distant regions. Not but that he can get out of France without a passport, but he cannot legally enter any of the countries bordering France, which would seem to confine his movements to the high seas.

Mr. Blackmer has retained counsel to recover his passport, arguing that he paid $10 for it and therefore it is his property in perpetuum. Experts on international law, however, considered that the right to revoke a passport is included in the Secretary of State's authority to "grant and issue passports and ... to refuse them at his discretion." During the World War numerous passports were withdrawn and revoked.

Should Mr. Blackmer's stay in France be prolonged beyond the date of the Fall-Sinclair trial, set to open in the District of Columbia Supreme Court on Oct. 17, his absence may cost him $100,000. For in 1925 Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, head of the Senatorial investigating committee which had discovered that it was not oil wells that truth lay at the bottom of, secured the passage of a law empowering the Senate committee to summon witnesses from abroad. Furthermore, the law provided that a person refusing to honor such summons be judged guilty of contempt and fined to the extent of $100,000.

Mr. Blackmer's presence has been considered essential to the Government's case by special attorneys onetime (1911-23) U. S. Senator Atlee Pomerene and Owen J. Roberts, in charge of the oil trials. Mr. Blackmer was onetime (1922) an official of the Prairie Oil Co., which, along with Sinclair oil companies, bought from a Canadian oil company 33,333,000 barrels of oil. The Canadian company had bought this oil from the Mexia (oil) companies of Texas. It was claimed that the Canadian company, which made some millions of dollars on the transaction, was a "shadow" or "dummy," concern, and that Albert B. Fall received $230,000 in Liberty Bonds as his share of the profits. When the Teapot Dome case first came up before a Federal court in Cheyenne (TIME, March 23, 1925), Mr. Blackmer, along with one James E. O'Neil, president of the Prairie Oil Co., left for France. Mr. O'Neil has not been located since. Mr. Blackmer was found on May 11 by U. S. Consul at Marseilles Bernard F. Hale and then and later refused to accept subpoenas proffered him.