Ideal Justice

On a hard wooden bench in a stuffy, sweltering Athenian courtroom last week sat white-haired old Samuel Insull and alert young Forest Harness, the special assistant U. S. Attorney General sent to Greece to fetch Exile Insull home (TIME, Sept. 26, 1932 et seq.).

Quarry Insull and Hunter Harness both looked worried as the extradition hearing neared its end. "Chestnuts!" shrieked street vendors clearly audible in the courtroom, "Hot roasted chestnuts! Psita kastana!"

Several times during the long, passionate proceedings Presiding Judge Panegyrakis and his four colleagues on the Greek Court of Appeals bench showed that they considered the arguments of the Insull lawyers slightly fantastic. They argued, among other things, that the sums spent by U. S. newsorgans to report Quarry In-sull's doings in Greece were a source of so much profit to telegraph and cable companies as to constitute a reason for barring his extradition.

"Now don't go too far!" a judge reproved the three Insull lawyers, bnt they went the limit in a 15-hour plea, delivered in passionate relays and featured by Lawyer Christos Ladas' charge: "The Government of the United States wants to snare Insull back in order to lynch him!"

From his lawyers Quarry Insull has acquired the habit of chewing sticky Greek candies between puffs on his pale cigar. Just before the verdict was expected he shook hands with Hunter Harness who might soon be escorting him back to the U. S. under guard. Then Presiding Judge Panegyrakis emerged with a fistful of scratch paper on which he had penciled the Court's decision. No light affair, it began with 25 minutes worth of ambiguity, got down to cases only in the last ten minutes, when the Presiding Judge exclaimed: "It is agreed that the man whose extradition is asked--an old man and suffering from a serious malady--has been a great engineer and businessman and collaborator of Thomas A. Edison! He advanced the industrial progress of the world in an important way by producing cheaper electric current than was previously possible, thereby introducing electricity to many household and commercial uses. . . . "The unlimited credit given by the public to Insull has brought irreparable calamities and has created many victims, but Insull was in reality a hero fighting against the Depression and a benefactor of mankind." While Greek cheers and hand-clapping by Insull sympathizers rocked the court his three lawyers jostled each other in their efforts to be first to kiss his sunken cheeks and the close of Presiding Judge Panegyrakis' decision refusing extradition was lost in pandemonium. "I am very disappointed," said rueful Hunter Harness. "I am sorry for young Mr. Harness," cried generous Quarry Insull. "These Greek judges are ideal! I am more than satisfied. I shall stay here the rest of my life. Greece is a small but great country!" Back in Athens' Hotel Grande Bretagne, popular Guest Insull did not repeat the champagne celebration he staged last year when the U. S. lost its first Greek court fight to extradite him (TIME, Jan. 9). "I am tired," he said. "Send up a beefsteak, peas and fruit salad." Taking off shoes and coat in his suite Old Sam Insull dined alone while young Forest Harness digested the Greek Court's 6,000-word decision and conferred with U. S. Minister to Greece Lincoln MacVeagh. Next day, without announcing his visit in advance, Minister MacVeagh descended wrathfully on the Greek Foreign Office, spoke his mind to flustered Foreign Minister Demetrios Maximos who perspired profusely, waved his hands and wriggled in his chair but stood firmly by the guns of Greek Justice. Later Mr. MacVeagh returned to smack down under M. Maximos' nose one of the angriest little notes ever authorized by the U. S. State Department: "I am instructed to inform Your Excellency that the United States Government has learned with astonishment that the Greek authorities have again declined to honor the request of the United States for the extradition of Samuel Insull, a fugitive from American justice. . . . My Government considers the decision utterly untenable and a clear violation of the American-Hellenic Treaty of Extradition signed at Athens on May 6, 1931. . . . Accordingly, I am instructed to give formal notice herewith of my Government's denunciation of the Treaty with a view to its termination at the earliest date possible. . . ." Since without an extradition treaty Fugitive Insull can scarcely be extradited (though the Greek Government could of course deport him), he plucked up spirits, began dining out again with his beauteous Greek friend Mme Helene Kouryoumdjoglou and read with satisfaction in the Athens Eleftheros Anthropos:* "The King of Electricity will remain in Greece and establish big industries!"

*Free Man.

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