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Author Train's Ephraim Tutt, says Tutt, is not the real Tutt. Train's Tutt, he continues, is not even consistent, changes from story to story, from "mountebank to philosopher, from shyster to philanthropist, from lawbreaker to up holder of the Constitution." The real Tutt is a rebel.
"I am a natural rebel," Tutt says. "I rebelled . . . against my father's Calvinistic theology and the severity of his paternal discipline, against the artificial social distinctions of my college days, later against the influence of politics upon the courts, and always against privilege, despotism, and the perversion of the law to selfish ends."
The higher the civilization, he says, the fewer laws it needs. "The only way to attain justice," says Tutt, "is by doing it ourselves every day—with our own hands—to each other—at home—and in the world outside."
Tutt is a democrat (with both a small and a capital D). He claims to be a "qualified New Dealer." When the Columbia Law Review remarked that a contribution from Tutt, which it had just published, aroused the suspicion that Tutt was a bit of a fascist, the old man cracked back that "people who lived in glass houses had better refrain from throwing stones. . . ." Whereupon Columbia offered, and Tutt accepted, an honorary LL.D.
Tutt v. Talk. Tutt believes the curse of the modern world is the fact that it is governed by talkers ("whose influence has been multiplied a millionfold by the radio"). Metaphysical notions about the nature of the universe, and human life, do not disturb him. Nor is he disheartened by the slowness of man's progress. Though his life is closing in a clouded world, Ephraim Tutt has faith that in the U.S. "the pennants still fly gallantly and the trumpets echo to the challenge of 'Liberty and Equality' and of 'Justice for the Common Man.' "