A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
LL things considered, the Eisler case has ended satisfactorily.
At all events, as the Home Secretary was able to show
clearly in the House of Commons, the normal legal pro- cedure was followed punctually here throughout. The extradition appeal was in order ; so was the arrest on a foreign ship within the British three-mile limit ; so were the successive remands ; and the decision of the Chief Magistrate that, while the good faith of those who charged Eisler with perjury was not to be impugned, in fact he had not been shown to have been guilty of any act which could possibly bring him within the English law of perjury, was an example of British justice working as it should work. It may, of course, be thought hard that Eisler should have been kept in Brixton Prison for a fortnight awaiting the final hearing. But it must be remembered that Eisler had already been convicted in the United States, and would at this moment have been serving a sentence of a great many fortnights if he had not jumped his bail and got out of the country by virtue of a false statement made in applying for an exit permit. No great outrage, therefore, has been committed, and Eisler, to do him justice, said, on his discharge at Bow Street, that he had no complaints to make of the treatment he had received in this country. He was fair-minded enough to repeat that in Prague. American critics who take exception to the Bow Street verdict must recognise that in this country law stands above politics.
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