a Lord Chancellor and a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary aring their tenure of Judicial Office in the years 020-2. It needs no gloss. He who runs may read and nderstand; and it is not within the province of the resent writer to pronounce upon the relative merits of he conflicting opinions of those Judges. Two observaions may, however, be made, of which the first is that ord Carson's contention that a rule for the guidance f the Judiciary should bind all Judges or none, seems easonable; and the second, that Lord Birkenhead was omewhat too generous to ex-Lord Chancellors when he epresented 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 'Evenng 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 eceive 6000Z., and it is notorious all of them sacrified 20,0007. or 30,000l. a year when they came from the Bar.'

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

To extract the lesson from the 'party' controversy etween the two Judges-for it is a valuable lesson! It eaches that if there is no rule forbidding the Judiciary, aid or unpaid, to prosecute pari passu with the dministration of Justice, political aims and party uccess, it is indubitable that there should be. For Ithough, to the expert in law, Judicial intervention in olitical and party warfare may only indicate a lack in he disputants of a single-hearted devotion to the law, to he ordinary citizen it conveys something more-the spicion of partiality. Lord Carson, at the Bar, enjoyed n esteem as remarkable as his forensic pre-eminence. le was the one advocate of his time deemed comparable ith Lord Russell of Killowen. There is not a competent ember of the Bar who would not welcome his appointent as Permanent Chief of our Judiciary. Lord

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

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

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

The House of Lords as a Legal Tribunal either s for the trial of Peers and Peeresses who are indict before them for Treason or Felony, or as a Final Co of Civil and Criminal Appeal. In the first case, all Pe of Parliament act as Judges or as 'Lords Triers'; but the occasions of their assembling for such purposes domestic and pertaining to themselves as a privileg class, such need not be further dealt with here; need proceedings by way of Attainder or Impeachme be discussed.

The second case, where the House of Lords sits as a ourt of Appeal, alone concerns us, as then and only hen is it served by the Ordinary Judiciary of the State cting in the exercise of its Statutory Jurisdiction. Now, although the House of Lords in its appellate haracter is, in theory, composed of all Peers of Parlianent, it is, in fact, composed of the Lord Chancellor, x-Chancellors, Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, and other eers 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 rela aux Négociations concernant les Garanties de Sécu contre une agression de l'Allemagne (10 Janvier 191 7 Décembre 1923). Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1 2. The Truth about the Treaty. By André Tard Hodder & Stoughton, 1921.

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

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

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

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

Th

'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 policy of Philip-Augustus; Charles VII aspired to it; Richelieu proached it; Louis XIV was on the point of obtaining it; the Revoluti

ogramme was, indeed, modified to a certain extent; tead of annexation to France, we get merely the paration from Germany. The distinction is very all; even if the actual territory of France was not tended to the Rhine, none the less the influence of ance, both political, economic, and military, would minate all the countries on the left bank of that river. To schemes of this kind neither the British nor the merican Government during the war had given any untenance, and they were in effect repudiated by every tement made as to war aims. The proper occasion which they should have been disclosed by the French overnment to their Allies and a decision taken, was aring the discussions at the beginning of November 18, before the armistice. Then it was that the Allies lopted President Wilson's speeches as the agreed basis the peace, and any such scheme was irreconcilable ith his principles. The British representatives, acting ith great frankness, refused to accept two items in e American programme, the freedom of the seas and paration; their reservations were put forward in a ritten note, accepted by President Wilson, and comunicated to the Germans. The French took no such recaution, and apparently accepted the basis of the ace without demur. None the less, they continued eir policy. This conception of the future peace was lowed to govern the armistice conditions, which were afted by Marshal Foch. The territory which the Allies ere to occupy under the armistice was so defined as to clude precisely that district which he hoped would be parated from Germany and permanently occupied by e Allies, namely, the left bank of the Rhine and the idgeheads. This limitation of the occupied area was a ry faulty decision, which eventually was to cause much ficulty. Everything was, however, sacrificed to the sire immediately to make a marked distinction between e left bank of the Rhine and the rest of Germany.

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

ained it. The limits of France, Danton has said, were marked by re; we will obtain them in the four quarters, the Ocean, the Rhine, Alps, and the Pyrenees.'-Ollivier, 'L'Empire libéral,' vol. 1, p. 7. ol. 241.-No. 479.

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