Robbery

"Administration of criminal justice is admittedly the weakest point in American polity"--so said Dean Pound of the Harvard Law School in his annual report. He recommended that a chair of Criminal Law be endowed. In Missouri, however, the legislature approaches the question with the legislative proclivity for more laws.

The lower house of the Missouri Legislature, last week, passed by vote of 101 to 15 a bill providing that person convicted of robbery in the first degree be sentenced, at the discretion of th trial judge, to hang, to life imprisonment or to a prison sentence of not less than 20 years. The author of the bill Representative Henry, in urging its passage, said : "People are afraid to go to Kansas City, St. Louis and other cities for fear of the robbers and armed thugs."

Alabama and Virginia are at present the only other states which punish robbery by death. The Missouri statute is contrary to the general trend of the law, which, since 1780, when there were 240 capital offenses in England, has been away from capital punishment.

Mellow Years

Four venerable men advanced slow into the dining room of the Hotel Holenden, Cleveland, sat down to dinner. The affair did not look, at first glance exciting. Yet President Coolidge and Chief Justice Taft were sorry not be there; they sent long telegrams. Other messages from famed U. S. men* poured in: "Congratulations," they said; "Many Happy Returns of the Day." For these four old men--J. A. Smith, Congressman Theodore E. Burton, Harvey D. Goulder, Probate Judge Alexander Hadden--had all completed 50 years of law practice in Cleveland, were being dined in consequence by the Cleveland Bar Association.

George B. Siddall, toastmaster, welcomed the four, read telegrams, handed them in sheaves around the table. His hair was white as the table napery, but these gentlemen -- Messrs. Burton, Goulder, Smith, Hadden--were among the older men at the Cleveland Bar when he came there in 1893, he said. He called upon them each in turn and they rose to reply. The well-fed lawyers of Cleveland, fathers of the law, bent forward, giving ear to the forefathers of their association.

*Among them; Associate Justice Mr. I Ian F. Stone, of the U. S. Supreme Coi George W. Wickersham, onetime (1909-U. S. Attorney General, James M. Bi U. S. Solicitor General.