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Show KERBY, SUTHERLAND AND BALLINGER. There was considerable browbeating by members of the Bal-linger-Pinchot committee while Frederick M. Kerby, a stenographer in Ballinger's office, was on the witness stand, relating how he came to make public important facts in connection with the preparation of the memorandum which Ballinger's office sent to President Taft and from which tho President wrote his famous letter of exoneration. exoner-ation. Our own Senator Sutherland could not restrain himself. He offered a gratuitous insult to the witness by suggesting that he was a ''cautious" patriot in making sure of a new job before risking his old one. Sutherland's slur could mean nothing more than this, that were he in Kerby's place, he would have remained discreetly silent and have become particcps criminis, which- i$ not a very commendable commend-able attitude for a senator to assume or to offer as an example to other young men. Mr. Kerby was a stenographer, not to a private individual, but to a cabinet officer whose every public act is public property. He was under no obligation to do otherwise than serve his country to the best of his ability. When he read Secretary Ballinger's swom statements on the witness stand and knew them to be in conflict with the truth and to be of great detriment to the public' service, which must be inherently honest to endure, he was driven by conscience to expose the perfidy. That he felt out his friends and advisers, as to the possibility of securing other employment in case of dismissal was but an act of self-nreservation which he owed himself and those de. pendent on him. He was not posing as a martyr and has not assumed assum-ed the role of one. .He has done nothing more than to seek to escape being made a silent party to a crime being perpetrated on the people of the United States, and against GifTord Pinchot, James A. Garfield and others whose integrity and worth is being assailed by means of deceptive, tricky tactics on the part of men who should be above the unscrupulous and the unfair. The disclosures of Mr. Kerby cause us to again call on President Presi-dent Taft to allow -Secretary Ballinger to resign in order that the administration may be purged of the scandals which have grown to huge proportions in the office of the secretary of the interior and have tended to destroy the confidence of the American people in their servants high up in the councils of the nation. |