o'clock and that all of the experience of the past has been for naught. They have no conception of the fact that back of our American Constitution, our institutions and our laws, and back of all the liberty that we now enjoy are the struggles and the experiences of countless centuries; that America today represents the struggles and ideals and traditions of millions of men. That back of it all are not merely Bunker Hill and Yorktown, not merely Valley Forge, but the struggles and ideals of countless thousands of prophets and heroes who, not merely in America or in England, but in every country of the world from which we have derived our magnificent but cosmopolitan population, have gone to the scaffold and to the gibbet, gone into the fire-swept trenches that we might have what we have today. That in every clause of our constitutions and of our laws are the blood of the martyrs and the experiences of the ages.

I speak with feeling, for I have seen this propaganda in action. I have had a Supreme Court judge candidly admit that he had promised in advance of election how he would decide his cases, and I have seen him keep his promise. Worst of all, I have seen a sovereign people elect a judge and perhaps judges on the theory of and because they had so promised. I have seen government by law absolutely overthrown. I have seen a wild attempt to stampede popular thought and by evading constitutional restraints, and the time for a sober second thought which these restraints guarantee, to throw a sovereign state into a wild orgy of socialism and to embark it in enterprises which must fail and which must spell ruin. I have seen a court hold that where the statute provided that a member of a state board of regents should be appointed by the Governor by and with the consent of the Senate, the Governor could absolutely ignore the Senate, submit no nominations, and when a vacancy occurred appoint himself.

I have seen the military despotism of Oliver Cromwell put into effect in an American state and sanctioned by an American court; for there is no difference between absolutely ignoring the prerogatives of a state legislature when it comes to the matter of appointments, and the marching of troopers into the legislative halls and turning out the legislative body when it refuses to comply with the wishes of the dictator.

But above all, I have seen this action sanctioned by the courts and by the electorate of a supposedly democratic state. I have, in short, seen the theory of direct action-that the judge is, like a member of Congress, a representative merely, who must bow to the force of the temporary majority, put into actual operation. But I perhaps hear you, some of you, say: " But this was in North Dakota, and North Dakota is an uncivilized, uncultivated waste." But it is not. North Dakota is not a waste, nor is it a state of tenant farmers or of the down-trodden and the oppressed. Nor is it a state of illiteracy. It perhaps has a greater per capita wealth than almost any other state in the union. A large majority of the farmers own their own lands in fee. Its illiteracy is only three per cent, and in that particular it far outranks all of the eastern states, including Massachusetts and Pennsylvania whose ratio is five per cent. According to the recent report of the Russell Sage Foundation, in educational efficiency it ranks fifteenth among the states of the union.

The trouble is that there, and everywhere in the nation, the people as a whole, the laboring men, business men, farmers, and even educators and college professors, are absolutely ignorant of what government by law really means; and of the difference between a representative and a judge. They have no conception of the difference between a government by men and by might and by the prejudice and ignorance and passions of the temporary majority on the one side, and a stable government under the law, on the other.

We fought in Europe for a government by law among nations. We must see to it that we keep that kind of government at home. Few of us, I believe, realize how similar to the struggle in Europe is, and must be, the struggle in America itself, and in fact, the struggle in all free lands. Clouded as the issues may be, we were certainly not fighting in Europe for territory or for power. We and the free peoples of the earth were fighting for the recognition of one cardinal principle, and that was that there shall be, as far as the nations of the earth are concerned, a government by law and not by men; by compact and by agreement, and not by the heaviest battalions. We were insisting that even as between nations, the honor of a gentleman shall prevail.

Slowly but surely we have come to realize that the maintenance of civilization depends upon the obligation of the contract, and that there can be no lasting peace unless the nations of the world are willing to enforce, by force if necessary, the doctrine that a treaty is a binding compact, and that obedience to international law, is a moral obligation.

We have come to realize, and Germany herself must by this time have come to realize, that when she declared that a treaty is a scrap of paper, and that a contract was of no binding force on him who was strong enough to break it, she placed herself outside the pale of civilization.

We will be blind indeed, and it is this point that I wish to emphasize today, if we fail to recognize that it is on this very principle that the permanence of America herself depends, and that underneath all of the progress of today there lurks a hidden danger, not so much of force or hatred as of misinformed enthusiasm, which may wreck our whole ship of state, and that in the orgy of today for a purer democracy, a larger measure of popular control, for speedy progress and for an administration of the law which shall be free from delay and free from technicality, there lies a growing impatience with, or at least a popular misunderstanding of, the principles of orderly government, which may prove disastrous.

But what has all this to do with the law schools and with legal education? Everything. For somewhere in our educational system we must provide for instruction on a broad and comprehensive scale, as to what government by law really means. must train practicing lawyers and judges who will inspire respect for the administration of the law. We must train men and women who will be able to reform the law where necessary, and to thoughtfully lead in the great social advance. We must above all have some schools, some institutions where all that has stood the test of the ages, and all that is sacred in our American institutions is not questioned and sneered at. We must train a great body of young lawyers who will have the ideals of their profession at heart and once more make the practice of the law a profession, and who will drive from their ranks the lawyer or the judge who prostitutes his great calling.

We must get to the people. We must have extension courses in constitutional, in criminal and in administrative law, as well as in literature. Surely the law schools are worth the while. Surely the thoughtful citizen should be interested in their encouragement and support. A state in which everyone is presumed to know the law, and which has no educational requirements as a prerequisite to membership in its legislature, in its municipal councils, or in its other public offices, can hardly take the position that a citizen must be a college graduate before he can be allowed to study the great principles by which organized society has chosen to be governed and controlled.

As a matter of fairness there should be afforded to its citizens some place in which they may learn not only what their rights, but what their duties are. It is often as important to know one's duties as an employer of labor, and as an owner of property, as to know the history of the morality play, or to be able to read Chaucer in the early English; to know one's rights when upon a railroad train, as to know the story of the discovery of the use of steam, or of King Alfred and the pancakes; to know when a contract is or is not binding, as to know how to conjugate a Greek verb; to know when a judge exceeds his powers, when a corporation violates its charter, or a public officer his duties, as to know the solution of a problem in geometry, or the plot of the latest novel.

The situation, indeed, is a most serious one.

Democracy

is the desideratum, and the world should be made safe for democracy. A government, however, may be so democratic that all respect for it may be lost, and it may become utterly inefficient to accomplish the very thing for which it is and should be created. Every democracy must have as a foundation stone, the idea of a government by law rather than by men, and those who administer the law must have behind them that measure of popular co-operation and esteem which will not only protect them from unjust assaults but give to their decisions such a measure of dignity that they will be unquestionably and unhesitatingly obeyed. This indeed, in the past, has been the real foundation of our great American cosmopolitan civilization, and our achievement has been a marvelous one.

Criticise as we may, and as a free people should, individual decisions of our courts, the costs and delays of judicial pro

cedure and the frequent incoherency of the law, we cannot but do homage to the ability and lofty patriotism of the American judiciary. Every thoughtful man must bow before the social and intellectual monument that has been theirs. He cannot but he deeply impressed not only with the probity of the American judge but with his statesmanship, and with his wisdom. It is no easy thing to steer the ship of state. It is no easy thing to interpret the social ethics of a free people.

We have in our cosmopolitan America the representatives of every nation, of every class, of every religion and of every creed. Classes and nations and religions who in Europe were divided and often at war, are here working out a common destiny and have here builded a great cosmopolitan civilization. The very fact that our heterogeneous people has in the past yielded such an implicit obedience to the mandates of the American courts, is in itself the highest monument to the wisdom and to the probity of the American judge. The mandates of our courts have settled boundary lines, have determined great social and industrial policies and have controlled sovereign states. Yet we have had practically no standing army. The court stenographer and the court marshal have been army enough.

The mandates of our courts have been obeyed because our people as a whole have learned the art of self-government, and of respect for the law, and because back of those mandates has been the will, the strong right arms, and the bayonets, if necessary, of millions of citizen soldiers. We have obeyed these mandates because the American people have in the past trusted, and in the past have had reason to trust, in their judiciary, and have grasped the magnificent concept of a government by law and by law alone. Now, however, distrust has entered, and not content with the power to amend the constitution and to change by statute judge-made rules of law which may be unpopular, even thoughtful men, such as Ex-President Roosevelt have preached the gospel of the judicial recall and of the primary election.

A government by law, must be builded upon faith and upon a respect for those who enforce it. There can, however, never be any large measure of respect for the American judge and for the administration of the law as long as judicial primary elections exist, nor can there be any harmony among the members of the court which is subject to such elections.