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Montagu-Pitt-Rivers-Wildeblood trial opens with repeat of testimony of airmen McNally and Reynolds as to their alleged entertainment by the three men. Queen's-Council reminds jury to take into account the base character of the witnesses, but maintains the trio, vastly their social superiors, had used the all-too-willing servicemen for gross and indecent pleasures.

Lord Montagu and his cousin, Michael Pitt-Rivers, merely denied in detail the charges, adding that they'd been embarrassed at finding the airmen were homosexual.

Peter Wildeblood, recently successful press correspondent, denied indecent behavior: "I am an invert," he said, "but I've always kept my desires under control... but it was flattering anyone should take such an interest in me." He had been incapable of any physical expression for three years, he said.

Queen's-Council: "Where are the witnesses who could have testified to the innocence of the beach-hut party?... Someone is lying... You are dealing with the dark and mysterious realms of sex . .

How little do

we know of the sex lives of our neighbors." Defense seemed mostly concerned with proving the degeneracy of the airmen, a point already gratuitously put forward by the Q-C.

Mr. Justice Ormerod, summing up, warned that if any crime had been committed, the witnesses had been willing parties. Of the eighteen charges, he instructed the jury to drop two against Montagu, one against Wildeblood. "It is dangerous in the extreme to convict a man on the evidence of an accomplice" without corroboration "by outside and independent evidence."

The jury returned a guilty verdict (the first time a peer of the realm had ever been found guilty by a jury) and Justice Ormerod, "in the most lenient way I possibly can" sentenced Montagu to twelve months, PittRivers and Wildeblood to eighteen months each. Crowds booed the airmen as they left the court.

DAILY SKETCH: "The trial is over... Yet doubts remain . . . not concerning the trial itself conducted with scrupulous fairness . . . The court had to deal with the law as it stands. If the law is a bad law, then it should be altered . . . but that is for the future and for Parliament to decide.

"THE ENGLISH LAWS PUNISH VICE; THE CHINESE LAWS DO MORE, THEY REWARD VIRTUE."

GOLDSMITH

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