recent events point to a fulfilment as being near. The world is probably a long way off from the abolition of armaments and the peril of war. For habits of mind which can be sufficiently strong with a single people can hardly be as strong between nations. There does not exist the same extent of common interest, of common purpose, and of common tradition. And yet the tendency, even as between nations that stand in no special relation to each other, to develop such a habit of mind is in our time becoming recognizable. There are signs that the best people in the best nations are ceasing to wish to live in a world of mere claims, and to proclaim on every occasion "Our country, right or wrong." There is growing up a disposition to believe that it is good, not only for all men but for all nations, to consider their neighbours' point of view as well as their own. There is apparent at least a tendency to seek for a higher standard of ideals in international relations. The barbarism which once looked to conquest and the waging of successful war as the main object of statesmanship seems as though it were passing away. There have been established rules of international law which already govern the conduct of war itself, and are generally observed as binding by all civilized people, with the result that the cruelties of war have been lessened. If practice falls short of theory, at last there is today little effective challenge of the broad principle that a nation has as regards its neighbours duties as well as rights. It is this spirit that may develop as time goes on into a full international "Sittlichkeit." But such development is certainly still easier and more hopeful in the case of nations with some special relation than it is within a mere aggregate of nations. At times a common interest among nations with special relations of the kind I am thinking of gives birth to a social habit of thought and action which in the end crystalizes into a treaty; a treaty which in its turn stimulates the process that gave it birth. We see this in the case of Germany and Austria, and in that of France and Russia. Sometimes a friendly relationship grows up without crystalizing into a general treaty. Such has been the case between my own country and France. We have no convention excepting one confined to the settlement of old controversies over specific subjects; a convention which has nothing to do with war. None the less, since in that convention there was embodied the testimony of willingness to

give as well as to take, and to be mutually understanding and helpful, there has arisen between France and England a new kind of feeling which forms a real tie. It is still young and it may stand still or diminish. But equally well it may advance and grow, and it is earnestly to be hoped that it will do so.

Recent events in Europe and the way in which the great Powers have worked together to preserve the peace of Europe, as if forming one community, point to the ethical possibilities of the group system as deserving of close study by both statesmen and students. The "Sittlichkeit" which can develop itself between the peoples of even a loosely-connected group seems to promise a sanction for international obligation which has not hitherto, so far as I know, attracted attention in connection with international law. But if the group system deserves attention in the cases referred to, how much more does it call for attention in another and far more striking case!

In the year which is approaching a century will have passed since the United States and the people of Canada and Great Britain terminated a great war by the Peace of Ghent. On both sides the combatants felt that war to be unnatural and one that should never have commenced. And now we have lived for nearly a hundred years, not only in peace, but also, I think, in process of coming to a deepening and yet more complete understanding of each other, and to the possession of common ends and ideals; ends and ideals which are natural to the Anglo-Saxon group and to that group alone. It seems to me that within our community there is growing an ethical feeling which has something approaching to the binding quality of which I have been speaking. Men may violate the obligations which that feeling suggests, but by a vast number of our respective citizens it would not be accounted decent to do so. For the nations in such a group as ours to violate these obligations would be as if respectable neighbours should fall to blows because of a difference of opinion. We may disagree on specific points, and we probably shall, but the differences should be settled in the spirit and in the manner in which citizens usually settle their differences. The new attitude which is growing up has changed many things, and made much that once happened no longer likely to recur. I am concerned when I come across things that were written about America by British novelists only fifty years ago, and I doubt not that there are some things in the American literature of days gone

past which many here would wish to have been without. But now that sort of writing is happily over, and we are realizing more and more the significance of our joint tradition and of the common interests which are ours. It is a splendid example to the world that Canada and the United States should have nearly four thousand miles of frontier practically unfortified. As an ex-war minister, who knows what a saving in unproductive expenditure this means, I fervently hope that it may never be otherwise.

But it is not merely in external results that the pursuit of a growing common ideal shews itself when such an ideal is really in men's minds. It transforms the spirit in which we regard each other, and it gives us faith in each other:

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Why, what but faith, do we abhor

And idolize each other for

Faith in our evil or our good,

Which is or is not understood

Aright by those we love or those

We hate, thence called our friends or foes."

I think that for the future of the relations between the United States on the one hand, and Canada and Great Britain on the other, those who are assembled in this great meeting have their own special responsibility. We who are the lawyers of the New World and of the old mother country possess, as I have said to you, a tradition which is distinctive and peculiarly our own. We have been taught to look on our system of justice not as something that waits to be embodied in abstract codes before it can be said to exist, but as what we ourselves are progressively and co-operatively evolving. And our power of influence is not confined to the securing of municipal justice. We play a large part in public affairs, and we influence our fellow-men in questions which go far beyond the province of the law, and which extend in the relations of society to that "Sittlichkeit" of which I have spoken. In this region we exert much control. If, then, there is to grow up among the nations of our group, and between that group and the rest of civilization, a yet further development of "Sittlichkeit," has not our profession special opportunities of influencing opinion which are coupled with a deep responsibility? To me, when I look to the history of our calling in the three countries, it seems that the answer to this question requires no argument and admits of no controversy. It is our very habit of regarding the law and the wider rules of conduct which lie beyond the law as something to be moulded

afresh as society develops, and to be moulded best if we cooperate steadily, that gives us an influence perhaps greater than is strictly ours; an influence which may in affairs of the state be potently exercised for good or for evil.

This, then, is why, as a lawyer speaking to lawyers, I have a strong sense of responsibility in being present here to-day, and why I believe that many of you share my feeling. A movement is in progress which we, by the character of our calling as judges and as advocates, have special opportunities to further. The sphere of our action has its limits, but at least it is given to us as a body to be the counsellors of our fellowcitizens in public and in private life alike. I have before my mind the words which I have already quoted of the present President of the United States, when he spoke of "lawyers who can think in the terms of society itself." And I believe that if, in the language of yet another President, in the famous words of Lincoln, we as a body in our minds and hearts "highly resolve" to work for the general recognition by society of the binding character of international duties and rights as they arise within the Anglo-Saxon group, we shall not resolve in vain. A mere common desire may seem an intangible instrument, and yet, intangible as it is, it may be enough to form the beginning of what in the end can make the whole difference. Ideas have hands and feet, and the ideas of a congress, such as this, may affect public opinion deeply. It is easy to fail to realize how much an occasion like the assemblage in Montreal of the American Bar Association, on the eve of a great international centenary, can be made to mean, and it is easy to let such an occasion pass with a too timid modesty. Should we let it pass now, I think a real opportunity for doing good will just thereby have been missed by you and me. We need say nothing; we need pass no cut and dried resolution. It is the spirit and not the letter that is the one thing needful.

I do not apologize for having trespassed on the time and attention of this remarkable meeting for so long, or for urging what may seem to belong more to ethics than to law. We are bound to search after fresh principles if we desire to find firm foundations for a progressive practical life. It is the absence of a clear conception of principle that occasions, some at least, of the obscurities and perplexities that beset us in the giving of counsel and in following it. On the other hand, it is futile to delay action until reflection has cleared up all

our difficulties. If we would learn to swim we must first enter the water. We must not refuse to begin our journey until the whole of the road we may have to travel lies mapped out before us. A great thinker declared that it is not philosophy which first gives us the truth that lies to hand around us, and that mankind has not to wait for philosophy in order to be conscious of this truth. Plain John Locke put the same thing in more homely words when he said that "God has not been so sparing to men to make then two-legged creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them national." Yet the reflective spirit does help, not by furnishing us with dogmas or final conclusions, or even with lines of action that are always definite, but by the insight which it gives; an insight that develops in us what Plato called the "synoptic mind;" the mind that enables us to see things steadily as well as to see them whole.

And now I have expressed what I had in my mind. Your welcome to me has been indeed a generous one, and I shall carry the memory of it back over the Atlantic. But the occasion has seemed to me significant of something beyond even its splendid hospitality. I have interpreted it, and I think not wrongly, as the symbol of a desire that extends beyond the limits of this assemblage. I mean the desire that we should steadily direct our thoughts to how we can draw into closest harmony the nations of a race in which all of us have a common pride. If that be now a far-spread inclination, then indeed may the people of three great countries say to Jerusalem "Thou shalt be built," and to the temple "Thy foundation shall be laid."