unitary existence. Consequently, though the Dominions be original members of the League of Nations, they were not parties to the Treaty of Versailles because they had not been recognized in international law as sovereign states. As a political fact, the legislative supremacy of the British Parliament over the Dominions has disappeared, and the theory of the executive unity of the Empire is also commencing to vanish. While the Peace Conference adhered to the principle of the unity of the Empire for the purpose of war and peace, they acceded to the demands of the Dominions for separate representation in the League to guard the interests of those nations.

What the Constitutional Conference of 1921 may do toward the creation of a closer union of the component nations of the Empire one may not predict. Any endeavour to create oneness by centralized authority or to place the straight jacket of a written constitution upon the growing bodies and active limbs of developing nations might result not in unity but separation, not in harmony but in discord. In addition to whatever bonds there now exist whether of kinship or association or langguage or common traditions or similarity in administration of justice, in law making and in government or inter-trading, and protection from external enemies, there is a unity of mind and spirit in which we should live and move and have our being as a whole, of which spirit the King is the symbol or adumbration.

As stated in the British North America Act, Canada became federally united under the Crown of the United Kingdom. Undoubtedly that does not mean under the King as advised by the Cabinet of the United Kingdom save in respect of those things reserved for consideration by the Imperial Government under the Act, such as disallowance, for as to general Canadian affairs the Federal and Provincial representatives of the Crown are advised by their respective cabinets. It has a significance far beyond a person acting constitutionally on such advice. In different periods of British history the Crown had different significations. In early England the tribal head was the hereditary senior, but pressing circumstances soon required the wisest man and he was selected as supreme executive authority and called the King or knowing person, who was given property to support him in his administrative and military work. As times advanced, this did not give sufficient supply and in about 1400, the reign of Henry IV, Parliament stipulated that reforms should be made as a condition of granting further supplies. This form of kingship ceased when the people, exhausted by the War of the Roses, the war of disputed succession, permitted absolutism to take root under the capable but ruthless Henry VII, to flourish under subsequent Tudors and to go to excess under the Stuarts. When James II was expelled, a new style of Royal headship developed. William III was chosen by parliament

though not in the hereditary line. It became manifest he would leave no issue. So as to avoid disputed succession the Acts of Settlement were passed in 1713. Accordingly, George I came to the throne by the will of parliament. As he could not speak English he did not attend meetings of the executive council but acted perfunctorily on the advice of his ministers. George III attempted domination, had a subservient Cabinet, lost the American colonies, and his reason. It was during the period of the Georges that the supreme administrative authority of the King was put into commission, the peoples' Premier, and his selected ministers being the Commissioners. The kingship was rescued from mere pageantry by the personal character and virtues of Queen Victoria and her honoured successors. By their personal attractiveness, by their careful attention to their constitutional advisers, by their desire to be of the people, though in honour the highest, by their expressing and maintaining only the sentiments and aspirations of our British civilization, as evidenced by their changing the family name to Windsor, they have endeavoured as far as humanly possible to represent in personality what is absolute in legal theory that the "King can do no wrong." Thus they have endeared themselves to the people and thus they have become the symbol or the adumbration of that spirit and soul of the British-Anzac-Canadian civilization. Hence the great enthusiasm with which our capable and personally charming Edward Prince of Wales has been received not only by the peoples of the Dominions but of the United States.

It is that Empire spirit, that soul, that psychological entity which is to our physical senses represented by the King, or, in statutory words, by "the Crown of the United Kingdom" that holds so closely together the nations and peoples composing the Empire.

We Canadians have been enterprising in claiming national and international rights. Are we as eager and ready to perform the corresponding duties? We assert equality of nationhood in the Empire with the United Kingdom and accept the benefits but will we shoulder our share of the Empire burdens, will our attitude be provincial or parochial or will it be broad and imperial? The one is pusillanimous and dwarfing, the other demands enterprise and industry, service and sacrifice, but leads to prosperity and to greatness.

When we speak of Empire, we do not think of an Imperium; none such exists, but rather of Empire as defined by Burke in his speech on conciliation with America:

"The aggregate of many states under one common head whether that head be a monarch or a president of a Republic."

We are of the British Empire an autonomous nation in it.

We are also of America, but are not "Americans." While cordial friendship has existed between us and them for over a century, there has also existed an impenetrable barrier of sovereign statehood deep as an abyss and high as heaven, invisible, intangible, but which the honour, the faith, the mutual respect of both nations regard as holy, over which no shodden foot may pass. With them, we, the representatives of the British Empire, hold and will hold against all other states this continent for our common civilization, from the Rio Grande to the North Pole. If we are menaced by the unrepentant forces of central Europe shoulder to shoulder we will face eastward, if by Asians, we will right about and march westward, if by any other common foe we will stand back to back, but never face to face in fratricidal strife. Canada is by birth the child of the United Kingdom, and by association partakes some of the characteristics of our American neighbours, and knows the worth of both, so standing between them and clasping on one side the hand of the United Kingdom and on the other that of the United States, Canada feels in its own heart and transmits the pulsations of kindness and sympathy which at the bottom the one feels for the other, and if at times it happens they are somewhat out of harmony, Canada will thus adjust them into synchrony. And let us hope that in some way the League of Empire Nations may be extended in a larger league which will include the United States. Such a league would not only protect all its members and our Anglo-Canadian Anzac-American civilization against external aggression but command the warring nations to be still. Failing such a league of nations, let us develop and consolidate the Empire, the spirit of which like the pillar of cloud and of fire will lead us into an inheritance of still greater blessing and to an increase of that Government and Peace of which there shall be no end.

"For lo! the kingdoms wax and wane,
They spring to power and pass again,
And ripen to decay;

But Britain sound in hand and heart
Is worthy still to play her part
Today as yesterday.

"Not till her age-long task is o'er,
To Thee, O God, may she restore
The sceptre and the crown.

Nor then shall die; but live anew
In those fair daughter lands which drew
Their life from hers, and shall renew
In them her old renown."

ADDRESS BY RIGHT HONOURABLE VISCOUNT CAVE

OTTAWA, SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1920

Your Excellency, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I should like first to say that I have felt it a great pleasure, as well as an honour, to be invited to attend this meeting of the Canadian Bar Association and to give you an address.

To be on Canadian soil is itself a delight. For me -as for most Englishmen-Canada, with her wide spaces, her fertile plains, her lakes and rivers, her people, her history, her romance, has a special appeal. The early struggles of the Canadian settler against wild nature and untamed man; the expansion, first slow and arduous, but afterwards rapid almost beyond belief, of the area under his control; the growth of a small community into a nation destined for greatness, as settlement grew into colony and colony into Dominion; the business enterprises which, with a population relatively small, has produced factories humming with work, agricultural areas bearing grain for the use of the world and great railway systems linking East with West; and, above all, the wise moderation which has blended two races into that union which is strength-that is the story which fills us in the Motherland, not with interest only, but with pride that we and you are members of one Commonwealth.

But if this was our feeling before the War, you can imagine how much deeper and more vibrant the sense of brotherhood has been rendered by that great event. For us the War, in which the very existence of our land and the safety of all that we cared for were at stake, was as the uprooting of our lives, was for the time being the only thing that mattered. Who was with us was as the gods, who was against us was leagued with the powers of evil. And from the beginning to the end Canada was with us heart and soul. The initiative and the decision came from her. In the early days of August, 1914, she offered to send troops. In a few weeks 30,000 of them were on the high seas. Before the War ended they grew towards the half million; and Ypres and Vimy Ridge and many another gallant struggle shewed that Canada had sent us not numbers only but MEN:

They saw with brighter vision

The Empire's direst need;
They came with swift decision
To do the utmost deed;

and the memory of those days and of the burden which we bore and of the victory which we won together will last as long as time.

Let me add that I am glad too to meet so many members of the Canadian Bar. We are not altogether strangers to one another; for at intervals during the last two years I have seemed though bodily present at the sittings of the Privy Council in London, to be living in a Canadian atmosphere. The sturdy combativeness of the corporations of Ontario, the courteous but firm insistence of the Province of Quebec on her rights, will, in an assembly of lawyers, receive nothing but approval; and to me they have brought this great advantage, that through them I have made the acquaintance of many able members of the Canadian Bar whose arguments have persuaded or coerced the Board into giving (as is its custom) the right decision. I am glad indeed to meet them here once more.

In looking around for a subject which we lawyers might discuss together on this occasion I found it dificult wholly to get away from the War, and it occurred to me that it might interest you if, for a short time, I dwelt on some of the legal aspects of that event, and that such a review might even be of some use for future reference. As a Law Officer in the early part of the War, and afterwards until the Armistice was signed as Secretary of State, I saw the War under many aspects more or less closely connected with our profession, and I propose to speak of some of them, taking care, first to avoid telling any secrets which ought not to be told, though there are few of these left, and secondly, to keep away from ground which was covered in so interesting a fashion by my noble friend, Lord Finlay, last year.

And first, as a lawyer, I cannot resist the temptation to say something of the part which our lawyers, whether solicitors, barristers or judges, bore in the War. I do not refer only to their share in the fighting, which was splendid. Every man who could go went; and if their practice went to pieces and for good, they let it go. Many, very many, gladly gave their lives; and to them may fitly be applied that stirring sentence uttered by Rudyard Kipling in his address to the Edinburgh students:

"They willingly left the unachieved purpose of their lives in order that all life might not be wrenched from its purpose, and without fear they turned from the open gates of learning to those of the grave."

But those whose hard lot it was to stay behind were eager to make their contribution too. The Inns of Court Volunteers (familiarly referred to as the "Devil's Own") became an Officers' Training Corps and I believe that over 5,000 officers were trained at their headquarters.

Of our judges, Lord Haldane put his trained intelligence and his experience of military organization at the disposal of the War Office, Lord Moulton gave his great scientific knowledge and organizing power to the study and manufacture of explosives,