THE LIVING AGE VOL. 322-AUGUST 30, 1924-NO. 4182 THE LIVING AG DRINGS THE WORLD TO AMERICA A WEEK OF THE WORLD THE AMERICAN BAR ABROAD THE members of the American Bar Association, who, with their Canadian brethren, recently visited England, the first great world-gathering in history of English-speaking lawyers from all parts of the earth, were much impressed with the dignity and ceremonial of judicial procedure in the motherland of the Common Law. Robert Lee Saner, a former president of the American Bar Association, is quoted by the London Daily News as saying: The wonderful dignity and ceremonial, the gorgeous robes and uniforms, the ancient buildings in which British legal institutions are shrouded, have made a profound impression on us. We get on very well without them: but you get on very well with them. No lawyer would treat these things lightly, however useless they might seem to some people, because we lawyers realize that behind each of them is an historical reason which has proved its worth. Referring to his visit to London courts, he said: I was struck by the thoroughness and the humanity of the legal processes. I saw a little girl witness treated with such patience and kindness as I have never seen before, and could not hope to see surpassed. I saw how glib and perhaps unreliable witnesses came under the influence of the legal atmosphere and took up the general attitude of respect for the judge as the representative of the law. The calm demeanor of all concerned, the respect shown to the judge and by counsel to each other, the habit of understatement rather than overstatement, could not help but impress one coming from a country where our different mentality and us sometimes into circumstances lead rhetoric and sometimes into exaggeration, and also sometimes into an acidity of which I have seen no trace this week. Naturally a meeting like this one suggests a review of the status and functions of the Common Law. Sir Frederick Pollock estimates that there are in existence some 25,000 volumes of reported authorities on the Common Law, so that we can speak of it as 'abundantly alive,' despite its venerable antiquity. More than half of these volumes are American, and only about one fourth are British, while the remainder report decisions in Canada, Australia, and other overseas Dominions. The London Times said in discussing this theme: Copyright 1924, by the Living Age Co. It is unnecessary to regard the Common Law as sacrosanct in its administration either here or overseas, or to suppose that perfection has overtaken the ministers of that law. Were the law perfect, its functions would be near their end, a dead law for dying peoples. None can foreshadow the future of the Common Law of England; but this can be said that in America; that in Australia, which has deliberately adopted in its universities the tradition of Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge; that in South Africa, where the Common Law seems to be, here and there, amalgamated with Roman Law, the processes of growth are still in rapid progress. Some laymen may be interested to discover what every lawyer knows that all these sources of the Common Law are equally binding throughout practically the whole English-speaking world. It is, and long has been, the practice for the House of Lords to receive as of great weight the decisions of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, of the Supreme Court of the United States and other leading American Courts, of the Irish and of the Scottish Courts. Indeed, there have been precedents which regard certain decisions as binding in view of the eminence of the judges giving those decisions. In the riot of legal growth there is need of a central authority that can speak ex cathedra to the whole dominion of 'Our Lady of the Common Law.' AN ABORTIVE TREATY and submitted by the League Council to the Governments of the nations represented upon it. Ramsay MacDonald's letter to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations, rejecting the treaty, declared that the guaranties it provided were not sufficient to justify a State in reducing its armaments, and that the obligations it imposed were not such as a responsible nation could engage to fulfill. Two leading British opinions on the Left take diametrically opposite views of this decision. To the New Statesman Mr. MacDonald's objections seem 'absolutely valid.' It believes the Premier is rendering the League the greatest possible service by saving it from its friends and declares that a reduction of armaments in itself will 'have no direct effect and very little indirect effect in preventing war.' If all the armed forces of the world were cut down by a half, or by three quarters, the nations could and would pursue their quarrels just as effectively and viciously, provided that their relative strength remained unaltered. And nobody has any suggestion for altering that. It has been said a thousand times, and forgotten a thousand times, that armaments follow policy. The function of the League is to help in the slow process of changing policies. It may work in various ways, laboriously and patiently, and on occasion, perhaps, heroically. But there is nothing helpful and only a dash of mock-heroic in the Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance; it implies no change of policy. The proper organ for settling disputes is in existence, in the shape of the Permanent Court of International Justice. develops his plan for the prevention of war, its central machinery will be the Permanent Court of Justice instead of the Council GREAT BRITAIN, like the United States, Russia, Germany, and Holland, has rejected the proposed Treaty of Mutual Assistance sponsored by the League of. We hope that when Mr. MacDonald Nations. This is the treaty drafted and agreed upon by a Temporary Mixed Commission, subsequently modified by various expert bodies, and approved by the League Assembly. It is not to be confused with the Draft Treaty of Disarmament and Security prepared by a voluntary committee of Americans, dressed up as a super-General Staff. The Nation and the Athenæum summarizes the chief points in Mr. MacDonald's letter of rejection as follows: '' It points to the difficulty of determining by a unanimous vote of the League's Council within four days of the outbreak of hostilities which combatant is the aggressor. It dwells on the delay which must occur in mobilizing the forces at the disposal of the League. It asserts that the obligations created by the treaty would necessitate an increase in British armaments. It objects to the proposed 'complementary agreements' both on the familiar ground that they would revive the old system of competing alliances, and as likely to cause conflict between the League and individual Governments. Finally, it does not consider that the Council of the League is a suitable body to be entrusted with the control of military forces. While the editor does not dispute that there is much weight in some of these considerations, he does not believe they justify the rejection of the scheme in toto, and concludes by in, terpreting the Cabinet's action as an unnecessary rebuff to the League: What has happened is, of course, clear enough. There is an ultra-pacifist element in the Cabinet resolved to defeat the treaty at all costs. Reënforced by the professional militarists, who have no use for arrangements for the reduction of armaments, and the departmentalists who regard the League as a nuisance because it impinges on their particular administrative sphere, they have rushed into a decision which undoes the whole of four years' work for disarmament at Geneva, sweeps the only constructive plan yet devised out of the field, convinces France that the security issue which she considers vital is a matter of indifference to this country, and effectively discounts all the Labor Government's protestations of faith in the League of Nations. 'By the irony of fate,' says the Morning Post, 'it has been reserved for Mr. Ramsay MacDonald to put the League of Nations in its place.' The Spectator, like the New Statesman, endorses the attitude of the Government. Among the reasons cited by the British Premier for refusing to ac cept the proposed treaty was the objection of Canada. Lord Balfour pointed out in Parliament that the League's plan of mutual assistance seemed to invite nations to group themselves by continents, but that such continental groupings were contrary to the interests of the British Empire, whose territories lie on every continent. 'We cannot make the Empire function in that manner.' Weighty Liberal opinion is in favor of committing Great Britain to farreaching mutual guaranties of peace. Mr. Asquith, in an important debate on foreign policy, declared in the House of Commons: The opinion of this country is coming increasingly to believe that the British Empire not only this country, but our Dominions should undertake to guarantee both to France and Germany to use all its powers against either State which pressed a quarrel against the Allies without calling into use the machinery of the League. It ought not to be a question of guaranteeing territories or the status quo. It ought not to apply to France or to Germany alone. It ought to be collective, general, and, indeed, universal to all parties represented on the League of Nations, and against any Power resorting to force in breach of the Covenants of the League. Commenting upon this statement, the Spectator says editorially: Whether these words can really be taken to mean that the British Empire should become the policeman of the world we leave it for our readers to decide; but at any rate they make one extremely useful concrete suggestion. The vital objection to this country giving a guaranty to France and Germany that she will support with all her powers either country if it is attacked by the other, is, of course, the impossibility of deciding who, in fact, is the aggressor in modern war. This country would be given the invidious and impossible task, to which even the historian is unequal, of fixing the responsibility for aggression. Mr. Asquith evidently realizes this and has found a |