did not sacrifice for the abstractions of philosophers, much less the theories of politicians, but on the old altars of God and country. They saw no "visions on the horizon," they heard "no voices in the air;" their feet were on the ground, even though their heads were among the stars. My boy was a lawyer, a graduate with honour at our best law school; the son of a lawyer; the grandson on his father's side, and the namesake of Justice William Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was no visionary. He was twenty-seven years old, and he knew what he was doing. he knew the reason for the faith that was in him. They died not for internationalism, whether that of the men who love every country but their own, or of the "Third Internationale" of Lenine and Trotsky; not for the Red Flag, bearing "No God, no country" as its motto, but for the old flag dear to each land, borne with the others in the cause of freedom. They died for law. "Go, stranger," says the immortal inscription on the Rock of Thermopylae, "tell Lacedemon we lie here in obedience to her laws." They died for international justice, incarnate in international law, for the sacredness of treaties, and to prevent and punish the tyrant who proclaimed his will to be law and sought to impose it upon all mankind at the cost of his honor. Never was a war issue more simple; never were a war's results more plain. It is strange that these should be misrepresented. Liberty under law faced autocracy above law, in the world struggle, and liberty and law won, thanks to clear vision and courageous choice twixt the good and evil sides in that supreme hour. "The State? It is I." No monarch can ever say that again. The last of the crowned autocrats is a miserable exile. But wise men know, none better than lawyers who are wiser than they as hard-headed men of affairs?—that freedom's battle, never done, is handed down from sire to son, and that therefore war will last until the return of the Prince of Peace. Eternal vigilance must face constantly the new attacks of tyranny, as the price of liberty. Sensible men know -we, who are accustomed to dealing with facts and who have a deep aversion from universal panaceas we know that until human nature is changed we can at best only reduce wars by gaining cooling time, by conciliation through mediation, by arbitration, by reduction of armaments, all remedies agreed to by the forty-four nations signatory to the Hague Treaty of 1907, and above all the establishment of the supreme court of the world provided in that treaty, and at last to be set up by the adoption of a method of selecting the judges (the one thing lacking in the plan of 1907), just completed by that small Hague meeting at which the people, not the Government, of the United States, were represented by the leader of the American Bar, Elihu Root, who as Secretary of State, did more than any other man for the Hague Treaty of 1907. (Applause.) I believe in a League of Nations, but I do not see any reason for becoming unduly excited about it. If it works, it will work because of Britain, Canada, the United States and France that same entente, alliance, whatever you choose to call it, of which we have spoken. Nor is there any reason for becoming at all excited about the attitude of the United States to the League of Nations. The Treaty could have been ratified six months ago. It has ever since then been in the hands of the President, with the reservations suggested by the Senate, all of which were approved by Mr. Taft, although he did not think they were necessary; but he did not think that they were to be a reason for setting the Treaty aside; and at any time within the last six months that Treaty could have been re-submitted to the Senate, ratified, and transmitted to the other members of the League. Eighteen months ago the same thing could have been done. The President alone is responsible for the delay. The fact is, gentlemen, that we are of the same human nature in the United States as in Canada, as in Britain. Among men of good-will-and it was only to men of good-will that peace was proclaimed at Bethlehem— there is no difficulty whatever, on this or on any other subject. We have a great advantage in such meetings as this, in coming to know that we are like-minded men, equally honest, equally high-minded, equally altruistic, equally devoted to the welfare of mankind. Independence, not isolation, is our desire. At a meeting of all the judges of England at the time of the Queen's Jubilee, when all bodies were adopting addresses to her, objection was made to the opening sentence of the draft which had been prepared in advance by one of the judges, on this point: "Conscious as we are of our imperfections." Discussion followed. Finally Lord Bowen said: "May I suggest an amendment which I think will make it acceptable to everyone? 'Conscious as we are of each other's imperfections."" (Laughter.) Gentlemen, we are very ready to accept such an amendment as that. Remember for all time to come that we are of like mind with you, that we are of the same stocks, British, Scotch, Irish, English, Welsh, French, Hollandjust the same people exactly. When you come to us, we know no difference, and we hope that when we come to you, you know no difference. Remember that is the answer to every charge of the demagogue, on either side of the line, that there is any occasion for real difference between us. This world court, by the wisdom of its judgments and the strength of its opinions, and there is no other way, should draw all nations unto it, just as the Supreme Court of the United States, which was a purely experimental thing at first, under the leadership of Chief Justice Marshall, in his great opinions, drew the sovereign States of the Union to its Bar for the settlement of all justiciable questions. Another class, of course, can not be settled by such a court. Crimes like that of the Kaiser in 1914-an attempted crime, rather, for he was not able to carry out his purpose-will be met and punished by some form of war; boycott, or arms, or what not. But this new court will put the sovereign nations under law-real, binding lawnot the diplomatic decisions of arbitration councils or tribunals, which, useful as they are, are bargains, as we all know; but decisions like the law of your Supreme Court or ours; and that law, binding law, will broaden down from precedent to precedent, accumulating a body of law which shall govern in such cases. Burke said, "Slavery is to live under will rather than law." This court will do all that any court could do to establish the reign of law as against the reign of force. "And its sanction?" you ask me. The only effective sanction will be the enlightened public opinion of the world approving the reason and justice of the decisions. It is the public opinion of the United States, not the Army and Navy, never invoked-which never would be invoked as between sovereign states to enforce the decision of the court that gives effective sanction to the judgments of our Supreme Court. Of course, only judicial questions can be settled by a court. National independence can neither be arbitrated nor adjudicated; nor can similar questions; and so long as governments are more selfish than the best of their citizens, we shall find governments acting selfishly. Cavour, to whom Mr. Taft referred, wrote to Mazzini-and both were idealists, each in a different way; "We do every day for our country what we would be great rascals to do for ourselves." know very well that the responsible statesmen, when they come to such decisions, may be influenced by selfish consider ations. We Nevertheless, as the historic steps from the universal private warfare of the old days, between individuals, first to arbitration and then to judicial settlement, marked incalculable advance for individuals, even though some individuals in the very heart of civilization still settle quarrels by personal fighting, so the adoption, now, of judicial settlement by a permanent court on legal principles and with binding precedents (after a century of successful arbitration) marks great progress for nations, even though some may at times fight out their quarrels or settle by arms what cannot be settled by courts. Britain rightly, from her viewpoint, rejected the freedom of the seas doctrine in the Fourteen Points. Why? And this is the crux of the whole matter. For self-preservation. And such a question she would never submit to any international tribunal, much less to a super-executive government. Practical idealism takes the best possible in this imperfect world. Just now the best possible is, in my judgment, an agreement on the basis that laws, not men, shall govern within, and between, the nations. The new Mahomet, the Third Internationale, is preaching with force and arms, and great stolen wealth, its militant doctrine of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," of "absolute personal obedience" (I am quoting from Lenine) to the men having the supreme power in the Soviet state. One Big Union, one international system, one flag, red as with blood. No home, no church, no courts of law, only executive tribunals of arbitrary caprice. Of course, no laws, only arbitrary degrees varying from day to day. Conversion by the sword is the avowed purpose of the new anarchy, literally without laws. "Obedience to law is liberty," wrote Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, one of our great jurists on the Court House at his home city, Worcester. Yes, and "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." Our old political differences, and all other questions, are insignificant compared with the great imminent soul-searching issue now challenging mankind. That The great war is at once followed by a greater war. was for political freedom; this is for social freedom. That was between nations; this throughout all nations. This is really radical in that it goes to the roots of our civilization-the existence of society. Lawyers are instinctively hated by the Red Revolutionists. That is as old as the days of Jack Cade. "Let's begin by hanging all the lawyers," he said. Lawyers, sometimes tools of tyranny (we remember Empson and Dudley), but generally servants of justice, must lead in rousing the peoples to the terrible dangers threatening them. There have been far more Erskines than Empsons. Lawyers are natural leaders of the people, as Mr. Taft said. The lawyers must defend the constitutional principles, whose history, whose meaning, they know better than the laymen. Unfortunately, the laymen are almost totally ignorant of their meaning and their history. They must inform the laymen, who will always act rightly when they know accurately. Under the new attack of the Third Internationale in the United States, covert, by "boring in" to our labour unions, and-mark this our churches, our schools and colleges; overt by such strikes as Winnipeg's, handled to the honour of the province and of the Dominion, by the forces of order and law; these enemies of mankind, with a true instinct, strike at the judiciary as the chief obstacle to red revolution, and just as the old kings struck at it as the chief bulwark of liberty. "We, the people of the United States," begins our American Constitution, "in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice," etc., do ordain this Constitution. And to establish justice they put the national judiciary beyond the power of themselves as the sovereign by a self-imposed restraint which would preserve for all time, in tenure and salary, the absolute independence of the judges who were to pass upon the acts of the representatives of the people in the executive and the legislative departments. The Supreme Court, not the Executive or the Congress, is the last fortress of our liberties. The people must be reminded that the rich and strong can take care of themselves under any system of government. They are doing it now, those who survive and who can be useful to Lenine, under the Soviet Government of Russia. But the poor and weak, little as they understand it, have no protection for life or property but an independent judiciary, administering law. With that in view, the American Bar Association defeated the movement for the popular review of judicial decisions and the popular "Recall" of the judges themselves, under the temporary gusts of passion or disappointment, even when it was led by ex-President Roosevelt. The lawyers will have to make, I doubt not, a similar fight again, and not in our own country only, because it is a very popular delusion that was preached at that time. An independent judiciary is a very modern thing. When William and Mary landed in England, Serjeant Maynard, the oldest English barrister, then over ninety, presented the Serjeants' address. "You must have survived all the lawyers of your time," said the new King. "Yes, Your Majesty," replied Serjeant Maynard, "and if you had not come I might have survived the laws as well." It is news to most lawyers, but not to you, that it was not until the Act of Settlement after the Revolution of 1688 that the independence of the English judiciary was established. Before that time Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, sovereign after sovereign, had told judges how to decide, and removed those who would not obey their will. The King was to them, not only figuratively, but literally, "the fountain of justice.' As many a sovereign thought, the King's Bench was the King's own court to do as the King willed, its judgments in his power as in his name, just as the Lord Chancellor was his personal representative detailed from his suite. That the King's judges should be independent of the King's will was the novel teaching of patriot lawyers, often martyrs. It was a great achievement of struggling democracy, which, now sovereign, is equally self-restrained by the Act of Settlement. "Our fathers meant us to be free, |