of a Lord Chancellor and a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary during their tenure of Judicial Office in the years 1920-2. It needs no gloss. He who runs may read and understand; and it is not within the province of the present writer to pronounce upon the relative merits of the conflicting opinions of those Judges. Two observations may, however, be made, of which the first is that Lord Carson's contention that a rule for the guidance of the Judiciary should bind all Judges or none, seems reasonable; and the second, that Lord Birkenhead was somewhat too generous to ex-Lord Chancellors when he represented them as not being paid Judges.

A statement is attributed to Lord Birkenhead in an alleged interview given to a newspaper reporter on the 'Liverpool Daily Courier,' and reproduced in the 'Evening News' on Feb. 11, 1924, which may justly be quoted It is as follows:

'All ex-Lord Chancellors sit whenever they are needed. They receive 5000l. a year, though the Judges of the Court of Appeal whose decisions come before them for review receive 6000l., and it is notorious all of them sacrified 20,000l. or 30,000l. a year when they came from the Bar.'

All that need be said about this statement is that it has added to the small stock of hilarity possessed by a depressed profession, and that Lord Birkenhead has thereby earned the gratitude of the Bar of England.

To extract the lesson from the 'party' controversy between the two Judges-for it is a valuable lesson! It teaches that if there is no rule forbidding the Judiciary, paid or unpaid, to prosecute pari passu with the administration of Justice, political aims and party success, it is indubitable that there should be. For although, to the expert in law, Judicial intervention in political and party warfare may only indicate a lack in the disputants of a single-hearted devotion to the law, to the ordinary citizen it conveys something more-the suspicion of partiality. Lord Carson, at the Bar, enjoyed an esteem as remarkable as his forensic pre-eminence. He was the one advocate of his time deemed comparable with Lord Russell of Killowen. There is not a competent Member of the Bar who would not welcome his appointment as Permanent Chief of our Judiciary. Lord

Birkenhead, whatever may be said of his personality, his habit of invective, and his general freedom of speech, made an admirable Lord Chancellor. His legal appointments were without reproach. Some of his judgments were beyond praise, and his attitude towards the oft conflicting claims of Bar and Community was exactly what it should be. Yet these two highly placed Judges furnished a painful example of the evil that can be wrought by political partisanship in the Judiciary.

Throughout the remarks made above, it has been insisted that a popular belief in the impartiality of the Judiciary is the main support of the fabric of the State. Once that belief is shaken, the support is pro tanto weakened. When it no longer obtains, the Rule of Force supplants the Rule of Law. If this insistence be justified, the effect on the Community caused by the public disputations of two Judges on political matters is regrettable. It tends to destroy public reverence for Law, and public confidence in the impartiality of the Judiciary. Indeed, already it has been productive of much mischief.

What, then, is to be done? Let action be taken upon the homely principle of prevention being better than cure, and let there be statutory prohibition of the taking part by any Judge in political debate or movement. This is a necessary reform which must eventually be made. There is no reason for delay in the making of it. It may, however, be objected that it would be impossible to work such a reform, on the ground of the peculiar constitution of the Tribunal of the House of Lords and the position of Unpaid Justices of the Peace. But there is no substance in the objections or in the grounds upon which they might be founded.

The House of Lords as a Legal Tribunal either sits for the trial of Peers and Peeresses who are indicted before them for Treason or Felony, or as a Final Court of Civil and Criminal Appeal. In the first case, all Peers of Parliament act as Judges or as 'Lords Triers'; but as the occasions of their assembling for such purposes are domestic and pertaining to themselves as a privileged class, such need not be further dealt with here; nor need proceedings by way of Attainder or Impeachment be discussed.

The second case, where the House of Lords sits as a Court of Appeal, alone concerns us, as then and only then is it served by the Ordinary Judiciary of the State acting in the exercise of its Statutory Jurisdiction. Now, although the House of Lords in its appellate character is, in theory, composed of all Peers of Parliament, it is, in fact, composed of the Lord Chancellor, ex-Chancellors, Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, and other peers who have held high judicial or legal office. Consequently, the objection in that case would be met by passing an Act of Parliament which would provide that any Peer, whether a paid Judge or unpaid, who made any public pronouncement on political matters or took any part in any 'party' movement should be thereby and thereafter disqualified for ever from acting as a Judge in any sitting of the House as an Appellate Tribunal.

The case of the Unpaid Justices is hardly more complicated; it would be met by adding a political disqualification to the existing disqualifications safeguarding the office of Justice of the Peace. But another and a more satisfactory method of disposing of the objection on that score would be the making of the necessary reform of the abolition of the Unpaid Judicial Bench, and the erection in its stead of a system of District Stipendiary Magistrates, throughout the country. Either method would be effectual.

In concluding these remarks, it may be stated that whatever may be thought of the quality of the suggested reforms, there can be little if any doubt that the misuse of the Judiciary threatens the existence and vigour of the Rule of Law. If that is rightly said, some reform is necessary, for it is not to the 'Shining Sword' that the national greatness of our country is attributable, but to the operation of that Rule. Equality before the Law is the sure shield of British Progress, and, in the true interests of the Empire, naught should be suffered to interfere with the effectuation of that Principle.

ERNEST BOWEN-ROWLANDS.

Art. 9.-THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TREATY.

1. Ministère des Affaires Etrangères. Documents relatifs aux Négociations concernant les Garanties de Sécurité contre une agression de l'Allemagne (10 Janvier 19197 Décembre 1923). Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1924. 2. The Truth about the Treaty. By André Tardieu. Hodder & Stoughton, 1921.

3. Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement. By Ray Stannard Baker. Three vols. Heinemann, 1923.

THE recent publication of the French Yellow Book on the guarantees of security against German aggression, has drawn attention to a controversy which, more than anything else during the last four years, has prevented Europe from returning to a state of peace and stability. It is a controversy which ultimately turns on the interpretation and execution of the Treaty of Versailles. We propose, therefore, in the following article to indicate as briefly as possible what took place on this matter at the Conference in Paris in 1919, for in this way alone can the present situation be understood.

As is well known, the French came to the Conference with a complete scheme for settling the western frontiers of Germany. This was no hasty improvisation. It had been worked out during the course of the war at a time when the issue of the struggle was still in doubt. At the beginning of 1917 it had been communicated to M. Cambon, the French Ambassador in London, and a fortnight later, the French Ambassador communicated to the Russian Government the wish of France. . . to bring it about that the territories west of the Rhine should be separated from Germany, and that in future the Rhine might form a permanent strategic impediment against German aggression.'

As M. Briand recognised, this scheme was in its essentials not a new one. It was reviving the traditional policy of France which for many hundreds of years had aimed at securing the Rhine frontier.* This

One

The French claim to the left bank of the Rhine is very ancient. sees it indicated in the twelfth century; it leaves visible traces in the policy of Philip-Augustus; Charles VII aspired to it; Richelieu approached it; Louis XIV was on the point of obtaining it; the Revolution

programme was, indeed, modified to a certain extent; instead of annexation to France, we get merely the separation from Germany. The distinction is very small; even if the actual territory of France was not extended to the Rhine, none the less the influence of France, both political, economic, and military, would dominate all the countries on the left bank of that river.

To schemes of this kind neither the British nor the American Government during the war had given any countenance, and they were in effect repudiated by every statement made as to war aims. The proper occasion on which they should have been disclosed by the French Government to their Allies and a decision taken, was during the discussions at the beginning of November 1918, before the armistice. Then it was that the Allies adopted President Wilson's speeches as the agreed basis of the peace, and any such scheme was irreconcilable with his principles. The British representatives, acting with great frankness, refused to accept two items in the American programme, the freedom of the seas and reparation; their reservations were put forward in a written note, accepted by President Wilson, and communicated to the Germans. The French took no such precaution, and apparently accepted the basis of the peace without demur. None the less, they continued their policy. This conception of the future peace was allowed to govern the armistice conditions, which were drafted by Marshal Foch. The territory which the Allies were to occupy under the armistice was so defined as to include precisely that district which he hoped would be separated from Germany and permanently occupied by the Allies, namely, the left bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads. This limitation of the occupied area was a very faulty decision, which eventually was to cause much difficulty. Everything was, however, sacrificed to the desire immediately to make a marked distinction between the left bank of the Rhine and the rest of Germany.

At the end of November 1918, this programme was accepted by the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the French Chamber :

obtained it. The limits of France, Danton has said, were marked by nature; we will obtain them in the four quarters, the Ocean, the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees.'-Ollivier, 'L'Empire libéral,' vol. 1, p. 7.