Witnesses in Washington

". . . On December 3, 1873 I was admitted to the Bar just after the crash came that followed our Civil War. In 1878 I became a partner with an older lawyer in Cleveland and for the next two or three years I was engaged a good deal of the time in putting people through bankruptcy which grew out of the panic of '73. . . ."

So reminisced Andrew Squire, 82, dean of the Ohio bar and "Grand Old Man" of Cleveland, last week in a letter to the Ohio State Bar Association urging President Hoover's reelection. The letter was purely political in purpose, but this little digression pointed a fact which all lawyers realize: Business may come and Business may go but the Law goes on forever.

Annually the American Bar Association meets to voice its views on public affairs, search its professional conscience, elect officers. Last week it met in Washington at a time when few competent lawyers are not "engaged a good deal of the time in putting people through bankruptcy or trying to keep them out of it.

President Hoover addressed their gathering and reminded them : "You have your duty . . . to expound the history of the painful past, through which rights and liberties have been won. . . .". Many a lawyer was glad of the chance to turn from corporate and financial tortuosities of the painful past to contemplation of the Law's higher concerns--to honest government, swift justice, international peace.

For this was an extra-special meeting of the Association. What President Hoover referred to as "the impregnable apex" of the country's judicial system, the Supreme Court of the United States, was being given a magnificent new home in keeping with its serene importance. The Bar Association, as students of the statutes which the courts of the land uphold, was the appropriate cloud of witnesses for the occasion.

From Canada, France and Britain the lawyers of the U. S. had invited distinguished witnesses to join them. Canada sent Newton Wesley Howell. president of her Bar Association. France sent Paul Reynaud. an intimate of Premier Herriot. who had served his country as Minister of Justice (Attorney-General). And overshadowing these as the chief guest of honor was the representative of the British Bar. baldish, high-strung, 72-year-old little Rufus Daniel Isaacs, Marquess of Reading.

In him. his hosts recognized, reposed an astonishing synthesis of distinctions. Secretary of State Stimson was on hand. Rufus Daniel Isaacs acquired distinctionanalogous to Statesman Stimson's when he consented last year to be Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at the outset of Ramsay MacDonald's Nationalist Government (three months later Sir John Simon succeeded him). Frank Billings Kellogg, another onetime Secretary of State, and John William Davis were there. Each has been Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. Rufus Daniel Isaacs was Britain's Ambassador to the U. S. during the critical War time. Charles Evans Hughes was there, Chief Justice of the U. S. High judicial distinction, too, Rufus Daniel Isaacs has known. His appointment as Britain's Lord Chief Justice in 1913 was his vindication from the only breath of scandal that ever touched him. In the absence of Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover was the only man in Washington who has enjoyed a distinction greater than any Rufus Daniel Isaacs has known: head of state. But no man there could say as he can that the first time he saw India it was as a ship's cabin boy, the next time as Viceroy. And not even Lawyer Owen D. Young (General Electric), Lawyer Myron Charles Taylor (U. S. Steel) or Morgan Partner Thomas William Lament, his friend and host in Manhattan, outranks Rufus Daniel Isaacs. As president of Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd. he heads one of the Empire's greatest enterprises.

A. B. A. Doings Before and after the Supreme Court ceremony, the A. B. A. held business sessions. In his opening speech President Thompson keynoted: "We vaunt a government of, by and for the people, yet we suppress the interest of our children in public affairs ... by encouraging them to avoid politics and to shun public affairs. We vaunt a government to encourage business, yet government bureaus are now in competition with more than 250 lines of business; a government to protect property, yet one-fifth of the nation's annual income--$14,000,000,000--was wrung from the people last year to defray expenses of governmental operations." Also the Association:

P: Adopted a report of its criminal law committee urging police to substitute scientific methods of crime detection for the third degree. lt drafted a bill to modify the Federal anti-trust laws so that "contracts voluntarily submitted to the Attorney General and filed with the Federal Trade Commission shall become automatically effective unless objection is made."

P: Spent an afternoon listening to specially invited experts argue the lively question of utility regulation.

P: Continued for another year an investigation (already two years old) into gang operations, which showed that the rise to wealth of gangsters was due mainly to Prohibition.

P: Approved formation of a National Junior Bar Association for lawyers aged 35 or younger.

P: Elected as president for the coming year Clarence Eugene Martin, self-styled "country lawyer" of Martinsburg, W. Va.

"To Quicken, Not to Hurry ." Having criticized itself and others, the Bar Association was ready to hear the U. S. Law criticized by its chief guest. This he was, of course, much too polite and Distinguished to do. In Constitution Hall, with aged Frank Billings Kellogg presiding, Lord Reading delivered an extremely graceful, circumlocutory and boring address, a brilliant example of how dull a great and able man can be at a formal function. He recalled his distinguished U. S. friendships, expatiated on the profession, on India, on Anglo-U. S. understanding and world depression. Only with the politest indirection did he remind the U. S. ''brethren" that when England moved her high courts to finer quarters 50 years ago, she followed the move with sweeping reforms in her legal procedure, "to quicken yet not to hurry justice."

Mayflower Night. Festive finale of the Bar Association's week was the Saturday night banquet at the Mayflower Hotel with Associate Justice Roberts of the Supreme Court, Lawyer Rowell of Canada, Owen D. Young, President Frank Joseph Hogan of the District of Columbia Bar Association and one Washington Lilleston of Wichita, Kan. on the program. Justice Roberts stuck to Supreme Court history, Canada's Rowell to the Kellogg-Briand treaties. Mr. Young struck out characteristically into the future. Excerpts :

"Under the stimulus of research, invention and engineering, business is now moving into the unknown with unparalleled rapidity. Unless the processes of the law are correspondingly quickened the distance between them will increase. I fear it is increasing. . . .

"As business becomes more integrated in the nation we must have either more uniform laws in the States or a centralized law in Washington.

"We are experiencing now some of the disasters to a national credit structure which rests on the banking laws of 49 different sovereignties. . . .

"Indeed it is not enough to do it in the domestic field alone. Business is crying for more integrated rules throughout the world on all basic economic activities.

"And when I say business is crying I don't want you to think of corporations or banks or representatives of invested capital.

"I want you to hear the voice of thousands of millions of people in all highly industrialized countries who are the mainspring of business, and millions of whom are now out of work, not so much because basic economic laws have been violated, as because man-made laws have impaired, and in some cases wholly destroyed the opportunity of men readily and safely to exchange with each other the things they need and the things they have made. . . .

"As a street-sweeping department in our modern life that is cleaning up controversies over things done, especially relating to mere questions of money, the law is too slow and too expensive. As a street laying-out department that is planning and constructing for the future, the profession is inadequately organized. . . ."

Lawyer Hogan, the dapper "million-dollar fee" man who defended Oilmen Doheny and Fall against the U. S. in the gay 1920's. got off a lively attack on the abuse of citizens' rights by Federal enforcement officers. Excerpt:

"The nation-wide crime wave, lashed into destructive fury by the power of gangland born of a monstrous legal blunder, has created such a demand for severity in law enforcement that there has grown with that demand a laxity in observance by law officers of those rights which it is fatal to ignore, even though that ignoring results in the entrapment of the guilty." Lawyer Lilleston of Kansas was the comic relief. He called himself "the forgotten man."

New President Martin polished things off with a bow to his predecessor and the news that the Association's finances were in the healthiest condition ever.

"Astonishing Reading." When Rufus Daniel Isaacs first saw India as a cabin boy it was because of an unsuccessful youthful love affair. When he next saw India as Viceroy it was because of a successful love affair. The second woman, Alice Edith Cohen, who became his first wife, persuaded him to leave a failing career as a stockbroker and study law. Colleagues rate him below his contemporaries Lord Birkenhead and Sir John Simon as a lawyer. They credit his industry (he got up at 4 a. m.), his wit and polish, his amazing memory for figures for the fact that soon after he began practicing he was earning the fashionable income of -L-30.000 per year. "Figures spoke to him like poetry to another man," commented a fascinated observer after Rufus Isaacs' sensational prosecution of England's notorious swindler, Whitaker Wright.

In 1889 Whitaker Wright began to float companies devoted to ambiguous enterprises. By intermingling their affairs and complicating their books to the utmost, he was able to rob his investors fantastically. Shrewd businessmen who were directors of his London & Globe Co. believed in his infallibility as unquestioningly as did the associates of the late Ivar Kreuger and Samuel Insull. In 1903 London & Globe Co. crashed. Whitaker Wright was charged with issuing false balance sheets. So complicated was the financial maze he had built that no lawyer in England wanted the case. Rufus Isaacs agreed to prosecute it. For days he stood in Old Bailey, his eyes sharp and penetrating beneath a pushed back wig, suavely questioning, blandly dissecting the answers he received. Swindler Wright grew pale as he realized that at last someone could untangle his involved deceptions. A jury found him guilty, a judge sentenced him to seven years imprisonment. Sharp-eyed Counsel Isaacs saw Wright's hand go to his mouth. He sprang forward, but it was too late. Wright lay dead on the floor, his hand clutching an empty phial of cyanide.*

In 1910 Rufus Isaacs became Solicitor General and a knight. A few months later he was Attorney General (Sir John Simon was his subordinate). In 1913 he became Lord Chief Justice, the next year a baron. Between those years he had been a lieutenant of David Lloyd George, helped to engineer the House of Lords reform, survived the scandal that threatened to end his career. As Attorney General he approved a contract whereby British Marconi Co. was permitted to construct a chain of wireless stations throughout the Empire. Before the contract was drawn he had bought 10,000 shares in American Marconi Co., of which his brother was agent. He had disposed of 1,000 shares to Lloyd George, sold the rest at a profit. Newspapers made a political issue of the "Marconi Scandal," raised a cry of Corruption. Before the House of Commons, Lloyd George made an impassioned plea for vindication. Sir Rufus followed with a long, calm, judicial speech, admitting negligence, denying any connection between stock purchase and contract. The House accepted his apology, cleared him of blame.

During the War he repeatedly warned England that the conflict would last a long time. The Allies sent him as head of the Anglo-French Loan Mission to get a small loan from John Pierpont Morgan. The story goes that in the latter's library Lord Reading boldly asked for a billion dollars. Banker Morgan appeared mildly surprised, suggested that the Allies accept half a billion. Lord Reading returned to the U. S. as special envoy, borrowed billions more. Upon the retirement of Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice he became Ambassador at the special request of the U. S. State Department.

As Viceroy of India (1921-26) he steered a course midway between the stiffness of Lord Chelmsford and the conciliatory attitude of Lord Irwin. He was the first Viceroy to put Gandhi in jail, first to impose the despised salt tax, first to enforce the Indian Constitution of 1921.

Last year was an eventful one for him. The National Government needed his prestige to survive its first hard months. He became president of Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd. He married a second time. His first wife, to whom he was devoted, was long an invalid, died in 1930. His second was Stella Charnaud. who had been first his typist, then his chief political adviser. She is 38, was once offered a $25,000-a-year-job in Wall Street which she promptly refused. Her solicitude is extreme for her husband who, at 72, has all the suavity, grace and quickness of mind he possessed in his barrister days. He moves spryly, has only the suggestion of a paunch, but his health is most delicate.

The late William Bolitho once wrote: "In the luxurious hand dealt England by Fate . . . the longest suit is the Jew. . . . Do not forget . . . Marcus Samuel, who gave them a brand new oil empire; Weitzman, who taught them to make high explosives; Mond. who settled the labor war; Herbert Samuel, who nearly prevented the downfall of coal mining, and Rufus Isaacs . . . who saved the Indian Empire that Disraeli created for them. . . . It is not his brain power, his cunning, which England settled on and used. . . . It is the grand manner which is his genius . . . a politeness that introduces serenity and grace wherever it is put. . . . The Jewish businessman's genius is . . . almost banal beside this astonishing Lord Reading. . . . He is the finished product of a century of civilized treatment, the beautiful reappearance of the noble, polished Jew."

The Isaacs wit which the U. S. public had heard about but did not see last week was visible on an occasion when Lloyd-George publicly addressed him in Welsh. Rufus Isaacs replied in Hebrew, "and nobody knew the difference."

In court one day he asked a surly witness: "Do you drink, sir?"

Witness: "That's my business."

Isaacs: "And have you any other business?"

*For a romanticized account of Whitaker Wright see Joseph Conrad's Chance.

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