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"There are at least two ways of getting rid of judges. One is to take them out and shoot them, as they are reported to do in at least one other country. The other way is more genteel but no less effective. They are kept on the public pay roll, but their votes are canceled."
Senator Dieterich snapped at him: "Do you think there's much difference between shooting judges and retiring them?"
"A great deal." agreed the professor.
"As I have said, retiring them or canceling their votes is much more genteel."
Next most disturbing influence was that of Edward R. Burke, who three years ago was elected to the Senate with the support of Nebraska's Democratic boss, Arthur Mullen. Slow-moving, stocky, a lawyer out of Harvard Law School, he first won national attention during the campaign of 1934. President Roosevelt at Green Bay quoted one of Burke's rare purple passages ("The New Deal is an old deal as old as the earliest aspirations of humanity for liberty and justice and the good life. . . . It is new as the Declaration of Independence was new and the Constitution of the U. S." etc. etc.). But Mr. Burke and the President have since differed. He began to talk of trimming New Deal expenditures. Last summer he answered Secretary Wallace's Whose Constitution? in a speech called Our Constitution. Last August in mid-campaign he resigned from the Democratic National Committee. His reason presumably was the nomination of wild Terry Carpenter for the Senate on the Democratic ticket, but his letter to Chairman Farley had a two-edged paragraph: "I cannot work for the election of any candidate masquerading as a Democrat who is a Democrat in name only and who neither understands nor cares at all for the fundamental principles [of[ the Democratic Party. . . ." Now Senator Burke is the marshal of the pro-Court forces on the Judiciary-Committee. As such he clashed last week with bumbling Senator Dieterich and went so far as to say, ". . . His questions do more good than any I could ask." His best clash occurred one afternoon with Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney of Wyoming, who was Mr. Farley's First Assistant Postmaster General until he was appointed to the Senate three years ago. Mr. Burke mentioned that "within the past two hours a very responsible official of this Government" had told him that the President would soon ask for a billion or a billion and a half dollars for Relief. "He asked." said Mr. Burke, "if I did not realize the futility of trying to fight against $1,500,000,000." Name the official, then," cried Senator O'Mahoney. "If that statement was made for the purpose of influencing the Senator's attitude, the name ought to be made public."