with his confrères and of loyalty to the Association than he confessed before he attended the meeting. And so from the vantage-ground of the Annual Meeting of 1925 our survey of all the events and influences that have led up to it as an outstanding proof that the Association has come to stay induces us to suggest that across the historical scroll of the first decade of our corporate life should be written: "Ibi semper est victoria ubi concordia est." It was the principle of one-mindedness in moulding and working out its aims that has enabled the Association to overcome the obstacles to success confronting its inception. And it is that principle alone which will make it live on. It is our privilege to publish two of the admirable addresses de'livered at the meeting in our present number-those of the President and the Right Honourable Lord Buckmaster of Cheddington. The contents of our next number will include the addresses of Maître Fourcade, the Honourable G. W. Wickersham, and the Honourable. Geoffrey Lawrence, K.C., representing respectively the French, the American and the English Bars. All of them were reviewed in the highest terms of praise by the Winnipeg press. In later numbers we hope to find room for some other addresses of unusual merit that were delivered at the meeting. The REVIEW has much pleasure in announcing that the Honourable Sir James Aikins, K.C., was prevailed upon to accept re-election as the President of the Association. Owing, in a very special way, its foundation to Sir James, his unfailing tact and good judgment have smoothed the way to the large measure of success that the Association has attained. We are sure that its affairs will continue to prosper during his eleventh term of office. We are not afraid of the charge of invidiousness in venturing to say that nothing that was done at the meeting of a fraternal character excelled in pleasantness the presentation by the Association of a handsome gold watch and chain to Mr. E. H. Coleman, who has held the position of Secretary-Treasurer continuously since its foundation. Mr. Coleman brought exceptional qualities for service to that exacting office, and the way in which his duties have been discharged throughout has reflected credit upon himself and immeasurably benefited the Association. Mr. Coleman has our warmest congratulations upon this graceful recognition of the value of his work. TERCENTENARY OF THE DE JURE BELLI AC PACIS.-The tercentenary of the publication of the magnum opus of Huig de Groot— better known as Hugo Grotius-was duly celebrated a few weeks ago by the Grotius Society at Gray's Inn Hall. Lord Blanesburgh, the President was in the chair, and presented a most interesting survey of the life and work of the great international jurist. Speaking in particular of the De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Lord Blanesburgh said that the "whole work was pervaded by an insistence upon good faith as between men and as between States in any and every relation of life, and an earnest love of peace. By a process of selection and of classification amounting to genius, Grotius had evolved order out of what to his contemporaries and his forerunners had been chaos. He had forged the golden chains which bound together the whole structure, complete and regular. He had employed as the foundations of that structure the best that had been said and thought and known in the world." We should like to remark here that while Grotius was not the founder of modern International Law-that title properly belonging to Gentilis he is its earliest systematic exponent. To anyone who cares to study his epoch-making book it will become manifest that the principle of primordial Justice, as first apprehended by Aristotle and elaborated by scholastics such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Suarez, lies at the very base of the Grotian system of rules for international conduct. Possessing this native bias of the soul' as a moral faculty it is the duty of men in civilised society to apply its sanctions equally to individual relations and to those arising between communities. Once this Justice is universally accepted as a practical test of right it will afford a pou sto for the feet of Peace, whence she may send forth her benign influences throughout civilisation. And may we not say that Justice as envisaged by the gentle Hugo Grotius is the very motif, or dominant idea, of the League of Nations? If so, how can the operations of the League fail of eventual achievement in a world that can no longer prosper if its resources are permitted to be ravaged by War? * CANADA AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. Our opinion of the League of Nations being as above expressed, it was with the greatest pride and pleasure that we learned that Canada had received the distinguished honour of having one of her sons and citizens elected to the presidency of the League. Senator Dandurand is in every way qualified for the post, and the words of the retiring president, M. Painlevé are well merited: "Senator Dandurand is a statesman of high capacity, and deep knowledge of juridical questions." Our satisfaction over this international recognition of his attainments is deepened by the fact that Senator Dandurand has always manifested a kindly interest in the Canadian Bar Association. ** * JUS ET NORMA LOQUENDI.-Above all the professions the law requires lucidity and exactness of language to be observed in its affairs— what disaster can be caused by defectively phrased statutes and legal documents is known of all men. And then how important for Bench and Bar in these days of impatient haste to possess the art of combining precision with brevity of speech. It was said by one of the great English lawyers of the past that the sparks of all the sciences in the world are taken up in the ashes of the law, and surely our professional training should be most solicitous in its regard for the science of the grammarian. Hence it is comforting to know that not only in Great Britain, but in the United States and in Canada, movements are on foot to safeguard the classical purity of the English tongue, and at the same time to expand and develop it to meet the needs of a civilisation that spins forever down the ringing grooves of change. In 1910 there was founded in England, under the presidency of the late Lord Morley, an Academic Committee of the Royal Society of Literature, with the pious wish that it might be allowed to exercise functions similar to those of the Académie Française. This committee, lacking, as it does, the institutional status of its French prototype, has met with hostility too often spiced with derision from the young lions of the press; but it has not been daunted in the prosecution of ends for which it was formed, nor has its labours been without achievement notwithstanding the revolt against authority of every kind that has peculiarly marked the last decade of English social life. Then they have also overseas the Society for Pure English, pledged to deracinate all the weeds it may find in the grammarian's garden. A Roman emperor, seeking to introduce strange forms of speech was fearlessly told that he would not be allowed to become an inventor of solecisms, hence the maxim-"Cæsar non supra grammaticos." And what an emperor was not permitted to do with the Latin tongue our mob of vulgarians should not be allowed to do with the English tongue. A year or so ago a movement for the purpose of arousing public interest in the speaking of pure English in Canada was started by Miss Rosamond Archibald, M.A., of the Acadia Ladies' Seminary, at Wolfville, Nova Scotia. So successful has Miss Archibald's campaign. been that there are now four associations carrying on at different centres in the Dominion what is known as "The King's English drill." Moreover, it was announced recently in the American press that Miss Edith Spencer, a Los Angeles teacher and educationist, had invited the newspaper editors to assist her in one clear-cut and specific effort to counteract the prevailing influences making for the corruption of the English tongue, namely, by eliminating the following five outlawed expressions from all "Comic Strips" in their publications: 'Ain't,' 'You was,' 'I seen,' 'You done' and 'I ain't gonna do nothin.' Miss Spencer's project is being cordially endorsed in editorial circles. A small beginning, perhaps, for so great an enterprise as the purgation of the corrupt forms of English so generally used by uninformed. persons in the United States, but it must be remembered that the renowned Académie Française grew out of a friendly meeting of eight more or less unimportant Parisians in the Rue Saint Martin in the year 1629. So we feel that the general outlook is hopeful for the English language to be kept from losing its responsiveness to the standards of the past and from the disruptive influences inherent in the adoption of uncultured neologisms and improvisations. But it must not be overlooked that both in the United States and Canada stupid and misleading variants of English words and phrases of established place are being constantly poured from the mouths of people newly-arrived from alien lands, and where these people gather in communities corrupt speech must find a permanent lodgment unless the efforts of the educational authorities are backed by concerted action on the part of patriotic citizens throughout the countries concerned to combat the evil. In contending as we do for the continuity and unity of present day English with the standards fixed by its great masters in the past, we are not insisting that our language, even on formal occasions, should now reflect the embroidered rhetoric of Chatham or Burke, or even Gladstone-of whom Queen Victoria complained that whenever she gave him a private audience he always addressed her as if she were a public meeting. We desire to say, too, that we hold no brief for the pedant. So far as our Courts are concerned, all we ask is that effort be made to adhere to the contemporary usage maintained by the Bench and Bar in England. There we have a demonstration of both the formality and flexibility of the English tongue-the one securing a just adherence to inescapable rules laid down in the past, the other providing for the inclusion of new forms of expression demanded by the social machine in every sphere of change. In this con nection we commend a reference to the House of Lords opinions in the recent case of Sorrell v. Smith.1 Unfortunately Canadian citizens using English as their native tongue are not in so happy a case as their French-speaking compatriots. The well-known conservatism of the French-Canadian is a sure refuge against the menace of linguistic corruption as well as against other forms of social revolt and disorder. In thus holding fast that which is good, Quebec affords an example which the other provinces of Canada would do well to follow. BETTER EDUCATION FOR LAWYERS.-Our attitude towards the efforts to preserve the purity of English speech referred to above naturally inclines us to commend to the attention of our readers Mr. G. F. Henderson's plea for the better education of persons desiring to enter upon the study of the law in Canada. It would seem that zeal for high linguistic standards can only be measured by the fullness of one's recognition that language is not only the garment of thought but is the key to the whole intellectual treasure-house of man. That recognition in its fullness is the product of education. As Mr. Henderson very frankly explains, his article is more or less a reflection of Professor D. A. MacRae's paper on the subject read before the members of the Ontario Bar Association at its last annual meeting. While Dean of the Dalhousie Law School Dr. MacRae established his place as one of the best qualified teachers of law on this side of the Atlantic, and he is strengthening his reputation as such in his new and larger field at Osgoode Hall. We are glad to see his progressive views shared by Mr. Henderson, one of the Benchers of the Law Society of Upper Canada. We are moved to quote some pertinent remarks from outside sources for the consideration of our readers after they have duly weighed the arguments for reform advanced by Mr. Henderson. In Mr. Philip Guedalla's volume of spirited essays entitled "Masters and Men" we find the following encomium upon solicitors of our own troubled time. It loses nothing in its suggestion of high ambition for intellectual and moral fitness from the fact that it emerges from the alembic of Mr. Guedalla's experience as a quondam practising member of the Bar. "If the solicitors of England were to take ship tomorrow for the Islands of the Blest, this happy kingdom would revert to the social economy of the kraal. . . . Our solicitors are the frail barrier which we have erected (at a trifling cost) between 141 T.L.R. 529. |