attended the service of Magdalen College, Oxford. As now, the choir performed the service, the congregation for the most part content to listen. But Mr. Gladstone, fired with religious enthusiasm, and being very musical, sang loudly. This attracted the attention of the College Dean, who sent for Mr. Gladstone, and remonstrated with him. 'Why,' said Mr. Gladstone, is it not the House of God?" Not at all,' said the Dean, it is a college chapel.""

AN ESTEEMED LAWYER.-George S. Kerr, K.C., one of the best-. known members of the Hamilton Bar, died recently in his 58th year after a lingering illness. The day following the announcement of his death the jury sittings of the County Court for the City of Hamilton was adjourned out of respect for the memory of the deceased. Before the adjournment touching references to the character of the deceased were made by the Bench and the Bar. His Honour Judge Evans said: “Mr. Kerr was an able lawyer, a lawyer who rose to the top of his profession, and was one of the most prominent lawyers in Hamilton during the last thirty years. He had the finest disposition of any man I ever knew. I know his death will be a great blow to the profession and to the city."

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JUDICIAL CONFLICT IN ENGLAND. In the correspondence department of the present number of the REVIEW we publish a letter containing some interesting observations upon the conflicting views relating to the right to recover damages arising from nervous shock as expounded by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the case of the Victorian Railway Commissioners v. Coultas, and by the House of Lords in Brown v. John Watson, Limited. The REVIEW has already published comments 3 on the irksome obligation resting upon the Canadian courts to follow the law laid down by the Privy Council in a case which has been repeatedly discredited by text-writers and Judges. Further discussion of these opposing currents in the stream of precedent-which so largely lend countenance to the popular idea that the law is more or less of a Serbonian Bog-would not be edifying. We leave this judicial conflict with the submission that the time is fully ripe for their lordships of the Privy Council to let some 'Lethean dews' fall upon certain pages of the thirteenth volume of the Appeal Cases.

THE VICTORY OF LOCARNO.

"A peace is of the nature of a conquest;

For then both parties nobly are subdued,
And neither party loser."

Just as we go to press this month the joyful news comes to us from the little city of Locarno on the shore of Lake Maggiore that the world is about to have real peace again after weary years of devastating War and its paralyzing aftermath. How many things affecting the whole course of human history have come out of the small cities of Switzerland!

The Rhine Security Pact pledges France, Germany and Belgium to abstain from invading and levying war upon the territories respectively belonging to those powers; while Great Britain and Italy stand as guarantors of this undertaking, promising to throw their forces. against any of the three parties violating its terms. The pact is a conventional law governing its signatories. The rôle of the guarantors is that of sheriff or policeman enforcing the law. As between France and Germany, the pact takes cognizance of certain rights of the former embodied in the Treaty of Versailles, and should Germany commit a hostile act by "constructing fortifications either on the left bank of the Rhine or within fifty kilometers of its east bank "; or attempt to keep armed forces within that area, then France may take effective action to enforce her rights thus disregarded.

So far as can be gathered from the press accounts the pact does not disregard the authority of the League of Nations but establishes it. For instance the operation of the pact is suspended when combined penalties against any aggressor nation are ordered by the League, or when the council fails to reach unanimity on any dispute and the members of the League (as provided by Article XV. of the League Covenant) exercise their right to take such action as they deem necessary for the maintenance of right and justice. But, perhaps, the most significant gesture of the pact in the direction of a new order of international behaviour lies in the fact that arbitration is obligatory between the parties in certain cases, arbitral jurisdiction being assigned to the Permanent Court of International Justice, boards of conciliation and the League Council. By that feature of the pact what the world has needed from the beginning of national communities is supplied. It is a definite deliquescence of the menace of war between the chief parties to the agreement, and must react on the world at large. From the pact as a whole Austin Chamberlain does not hesitate to say that "there will emerge for Europe not a peace imposed, but a peace consented to by all; and Premier Painlevé de

clared that it indubitably marks the beginning of an epoch in history. And so with the Security Pact implementing the League of Nations rather than superseding it we come to recognize the folly of such opinions of the League as that expressed by H. G. Wells in his amazing Short History of the World ':-" Born prematurely and crippled at its birth, that League has become indeed, with its elaborate and unpractical constitution and its manifest limitations of power, a serious obstacle in the way of any effective reorganization of international relationships."

Truly, as Carlyle said, History is as perfect as historians are wise.

INTERPARLIAMENTARY UNION.—The first Conference of the Interparliamentary Union ever held in Canada took place at Ottawa on the 13th and 14th instant. It was the twenty-third Conference of that interesting body. There were present no less than three hundred and fifty-eight representatives of forty-one nations, showing how much importance is attached to such gatherings. The House of Commons was the scene of the meetings of the representatives, and they expressed themselves as much pleased with the convenience and beauty of the building as a whole. Baron Theodor Adelswaerd, President of the Council, was in attendance. Among the distinguished Englishspeaking representatives present were the Right Honourable Arthur Henderson, P.C., former Home Secretary in the Ramsay MacDonald government, and also a member of the war cabinet; Right Honourable Sir Robert S. Horne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer; J. Hugh Edwards, Official biographer of Lloyd George; Sir Arthur Shirley Benn; F. W. Pethick-Lawrence, the Labour representative who defeated Winston Churchill; General Richard Mulcahy of the Irish Free State Parliament; Honourable Walter S. Monroe, Prime Minister of

Newfoundland.

The Honourable N. A. Belcourt, K.C., member of the Senate of Canada, welcomed the visitors in a felicitous speech. On the first day of the Conference they were guests of the Government of Canada at dinner.

The business of the Conference at Ottawa was not important as it was in the nature of a continuation of the meeting of the Union in Washington the previous week. There was some discussion on the question of regulating the use of narcotic drugs, and on the subject. of "minority rights," but both were laid over for action at the next meeting of the Union.

The Interparliamentary Union is a body of practical importance more particularly in that its membership is confined to sitting parlia

mentarians who can bring into the active sphere of legislation measures approved by the Union. To quote Sir Robert Hutchinson, speaking at Toronto, it is: "An association of the parliaments of the world, which did not and could not pass acts in executive manner, but threshed out problems and moved resolutions pointing in the directions in which parliaments might profitably travel. It was creating an educated international public opinion through the personal touch that members were enabled to acquire, one with another. It was finding out what the people of each country thought and so promoting more national and international efficiency and a better understanding between nations."

LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE BALKANS.-On the 27th instant the League Council decided at a tea given by M. Briand to the Council members that the League would follow up the Greco-Bulgarian incident, and formulate a sort of Locarno agreement for the Balkans.

With the war clouds brushed from the skies of Western and Central Europe, the powers are determined to take every possible measure to prevent a conflict, which might easily spread to other countries from breaking out in the Balkans.

A Council meeting was previously held, when opinions were divided as to the cause of the conflict and the present state of affairs.

MOSUL AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.-It seems that atrocities have not stopped since the Lausanne Treaty. Dr. MacDowell believes with the British authorities that, even if the Angora Government orders civilized methods in dealing with Christian minorities, local Governors on all parts of the frontier will be absolutely out of hand, making Angora powerless. The frontier officers and local Governors are notorious for their hatred of Christians, and they are known to have instigated the terrorism.

The British mandate expires in three years, or in 1928, and even if it is renewed, the population fears that the Turks eventually will hold the territory, and take revenge on any one speaking against the Turkish occupation now. The presence of 40,000 troops on the Turkish border makes honest opinion regarding the plebiscite impossible.

LORD BUCKMASTER ON THE PLATFORM.

Lord Buckmaster made a fine impression on his audiences both in Canada and the United States during his recent visit. His broad culture and philosophic outlook upon the present period of human history which seems so perplexing and so frivolous to most men who, like him, have lived in the Victorian age, served to refresh the taste and raise the spirits of every one who heard him. In the current number of the American Bar Journal, Lord Buckmaster's address to the American Bar Association at Detroit on 'The Romance of the Law' is characterized as "One of the most unique and eloquent speeches which the Association has ever been privileged to hear." We published last month his address at the tenth annual meeting of the Canadian Bar Association held at Winnipeg in August last, and how he impressed his audience there was admirably told by Mr. T. R. Roberton in the columns of the Winnipeg Free Press, under the caption which we use above. Mr. Roberton's appreciation of the personal qualities of the speaker as well as the subject-matter of his address is infused with so much delicacy and judgment that we are pleased to comply with a request to reprint it here, having obtained the necessary permission therefor:

Men

"Lord Buckmaster spoke to the Canadian Bar Association on Wednesday night. Lord Buckmaster is an ex-Lord Chancellor of England. The Lord Chancellorship of England is a great office. who have held it are linked in a long chain of connection that winds its way deep into the recesses of English history, taking you back to the times of Queen Elizabeth, to the days of Edward III., to the time of Henry II., who reigned in the twelfth century, and farther back still than that to the times of the Saxons. As Lord Buckmaster stood on the platform in the dining-room of the Royal Alexandra he had a great and storied past behind him, the whole stormy epic of the English people.

That was behind him. As he spoke he had Sir James on his right flank, and Chief Justice Anglin on his left; confronting him were the assembled lawyers of Winnipeg, their ladies, and the visitors, and the distinguished visitors. The heavy chandeliers hung down from the bronzed panels of the heavily beamed roof shining in soft golden light on the blue crepe dresses, and the white silk dresses, and the dresses made of silk lace net, and on the ermine furs, and the green mists of tulle, and the spangles, and the pearls, and fans, and ribands