The coroners of history may sometime look back upon these days as civilization's great crisis. In every way an apostate world challenges principles which past generations have long thought secure. Law and order and good old army discipline have just been vanquished in Oregon's primaries, and the Princeton campus gave Earl Browder a warm greeting. But yet a further branch has been made in the dikes which true liberals has been made in the dikes which turn liberals have builded against the raging torrents of the New Deal. The Herald Tribune wavers!

Casually imbedded in an innocent-looking editorial a few days ago, appeared a suggestion that tile Constitution of the United States should be interpreted in the light of changing times. Answering critics of the proposed New Deal bill for the registration of firearms the Tribune says: "Another how! has arisen from those who point to Article II of the Bill of Rights forbidding infringement of the right... to bear arms. May we remind such objectors that this constitutional provision was adopted ... When pioneer conditions required that the householder become his own policeman? An insistence on its literal interpretation is shown to be absurd when we reflect..."

We might remind the Herald Tribune--Since they are so glib about reminding us--that the best way to undo the work of Washington, Madison and the other founding fathers is to deride as "another how!" the anxious protests of those who see their most cherished liberties about to be legislated away. The Tribune errs dangerously when it adopts even for a moment the mudslinging tactics formerly peculiar only to labor leaders. When we reflect let us remember that temporary lapses like the Tribune's may tend to become permanent and that this is no time for any loosening of the coalition which is protecting honest business from the inquisitorial activities of the National Labor Relations Board.

What will Justice Roberts say when he Jays the proposed statute alongside of the appropriate article of the Constitution to see if the former squares with the latter? He may retreat from the glorious standard set in the AAA decision but we can confidently expect from Justice McReynolds a blistering restatement of his dissent in the Gold Clause cases: "As for the Constitution it is not too much to say that it is gone." And this will be a merited rebuke for the New York Herald Tribune.