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Show COURT DECIDES IN FAVORJipGER SOCIALIST EDITOR AND ASSOCIATES ASSOCI-ATES IN ESPIONAGE CHARGE8 TO BE GIVEN NEW TRIALS. Bench Divided In Decision on Radical Cases, Majority Deciding Judge Landis Was Ineligible to Conduct Trial. Washington. Victor L. Berger, Socialist So-cialist editor of Milwaukee, and four co-defendants who were sentenced to terms ranging from ten to twenty years for violation of the espionage act, will be given new trials under a decision on January 31 by the suprenie court. Dividing, six to three, the court held that Judge Landis of Chicago was ineligible in-eligible to conduct the trial and should have retired on' the filing of an affidavit affi-davit by the defendants charging him with "personal bias and prejudice," because of the nativity of certain of them. Berger and his co-defendants are Adolph Germer, national secretary of the Socialist party, a native of Prussia; Prus-sia; William Kruss, editor of the Young Socialist magazine, whose parents par-ents were Germans; J. Louis Engdahl and Irwin St. John Tucker, writers and lecturers, natives of the United States, snd claiming to be not of immediate im-mediate German descent. The sole question before th suprenie su-prenie court was whether Judge Landis Lan-dis has erred in continuing to sit in the easj after defense counsel had filed a properly drawn affidavit of prejudice. preju-dice. Six members of the court, including includ-ing Chief i Justice White, held that h did. Three other members, Justices Day, Pitney and McReynolds, held he did not A movement to bar Berger from the seat in congress, to which he had just been elected from a Milwaukee district, dis-trict, was at once started. Representative Represen-tative Mann, former Republican leader, being one of the few influential members mem-bers of the house who came out In behalf be-half of the Socialist editor. A new election having been ordered, Berger was again returned and again the house voted to bar htm, 328 to 6, within an hour after he had presented himself to be sworn In., |