bearing or deportment among nations it compares with the naturalborn gentleman in civil life, who is kindly, altruistic, averse to wounding the sensibilities of others, and in return respected by all. For the nation as well as the individual this is the way of peace and safety.

EXCITES APPREHENSION AND DISTRUST.

By sudden and hysteric preparation for war a nation belies its profession of confidence in the fairness and good will of its contemporaries, or indicates a concealed purpose to attack and rob them whenever they happen to be weakened by war, distracted by revolution, environed by perils, or otherwise at a disadvantage.

Moreover, it admonishes and compels them to burden the people with onerous taxation in likewise preparing and keeping ready for war. Preparation of this kind invariably has a somber and sinister background. It excites apprehension and distrust. It leads to counter activities of like nature to meet it.

The traditional policy of this country has been to cultivate friendly relations with other powers. We have not aroused their distrust by big armaments or provoked their anger and enmity by interfering with them. We have followed Washington's counsel in declining foreign alliances. By pursuing this course we have hitherto commanded world-wide respect and good will. If we continue to pursue this policy, judging the future by the past, we can reasonably hope to live at peace with all nations, and avoid war, unless deliberately sought or irrationally provoked by ourselves a fatuity unthinkable apart from the wily exploitage among us of foreign militarism and attendant preparedness for war.

SOME MYTHS OF THE LAW.

By WALTER CLARK, Chief Justice Supreme Court of North Carolina.

[From Michigan Law Review, November, 1914.]

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." These words of the great Apostle to the Gentiles apply to every calling and to every profession under the sun save only that of the law.

The beliefs of men in the childhood of the world have vanished. The gods no longer keep court and revel on high Olympus. The gods and the faiths of Assyria, of Egypt, of Greece, and of Rome have long since dissolved into thin air. Even as to the one true religion, the thoughts and understanding of men have undergone a radical change. Three centuries ago in Massachusetts they were burning witches and driving out Roger Williams to become the founder of a new colony. The inquisition and the massacres in the name of religion throughout Europe, when men were burned alive or butchered for opinion's sake, are recalled to-day with a shudder. In medicine the practice of Dr. Sangrado is no longer tolerated even in the most benighted regions, and it may be said with truth that so rapid has been the progress in the medical profession that some treatments which 30 years ago were considered orthodox would to-day invite an indictment for manslaughter or an action for malpractice. In all the other professions, in the sciences and arts, there has been like progress. In the one calling of the law, for which we claim especial ability for the average of its membership, many doctrines remain as they were when patients were bled to death and heretics were burned.

A short while since we still adhered closely to the common law with its meaningless and cumbersome division of actions into debt, covenant, trover, detinue, assumpsit, and others, whose object seemed to be to prevent the administration of justice instead of to accomplish its speedy enforcement. Then there was, and in some States there is still, the division between law and equity which, long since abolished in England and in many States of this country, in others as yet is unaccountably asserted as fundamental. Then there were the many technicalities in criminal trials, and as to the forms of indictment, which seem incredible to reasoning men outside of the legal profession, and until lately we retained the common law by which the status of married women was practically that of a slave. Her legal existence was merged in the control of her husband, and the bulk of her property became his by the bare fact of marriage. She had "not a penny but by his permission."

But it is needless to go into all the incongruities of the law. The subject is too vast and its anomalies too unbelievable to be recounted.