Life for a Snob

In Boston's Federal District Court last week a gaunt, haughty, thin-lipped man stood up to hear his sentence. He was Douglas Chandler, onetime newspaper reporter, American Lord Haw Haw, convicted as a common traitor (TIME, July 7). The judge gave him one more chance to speak.

In the cultivated voice that had once harangued the world over Berlin radio, Chandler read his statement. He had wanted to take the stand "to establish the truth of my beliefs, particularly as to the danger to my country from the conspiracy of world Jewry. My counsel thought me insane, I am not insane. . . . Time, however, will vindicate me. . . . If I must die because I dared speak the truth then let me die."

Said Judge Francis J. Ford coldly: "The defendant . . . is sane. He is a fanatic. Counsel for the Government said he was a snob--I do not adopt the word. [But] he was willing to adopt any ideology that would give him a chance to associate with people that he thought were of some importance. He expected Germany to win the war. What type of sentence shall I impose that will act as a deterrent to others?"

Judge Ford conferred briefly with the court clerk. Then he fined Chicago-born, snobbish Douglas Chandler $10,000 and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

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