satisfied the hunger for realism which represented the reaction against the dreamy symbolism of the poets who went down too in the wreck of traditionalism, while in his dogged battle for justice he struck a new and profounder sincerity into the hearts of the French youth. Together, these two writers seem to have held the field between them for more than a decade, expressing the wider aspirations of the time, and yet, in the case at least of Anatole France, not losing the delicate touch of irony and grace which is perhaps the finest and most subtle quality of the French genius.

IV

To the visitor to-day in France who asks what the younger generation is thinking and dreaming, it seems that that golden age has passed. The reaction has occurred, the nationalism of Barrès, checked by the affaire, has at last asserted itself, and the youth of France find their spirit called home to defend the national spirit against the enemies within and without. For suddenly the golden age was struck by the electrifying menaces of Germany at Agadir, and in a flash the whole situation seemed to be revealed. 'While you have been indulging,' reaction said, 'in these dreams of social Utopias at home. and perpetual peace abroad, you have left the nation undefended, you have weakened her so that her hereditary enemy does not fear to flout her in the face of Europe.'

The old feelings began to be renewed, the burden of Lorraine began again to reverberate through the French soul. On top of Agadir came the great railway strike with its threat of syndicalist revolution. To the frightened bourgeoisie, alarmed at the power they had been giving to the workers, the golden age suddenly revealed itself

as the criminal idleness of fantastic reverie. To-day, after four years, one finds the reaction in full swing. Military service, which had seemed a bitter and barely tolerable evil, is actually increased by one-half, and is hailed as the sacrifice which the youth of France must be prepared to make for the nation. The pacifist internationalism now assumes the guise of a chimerical dream, and the old national antagonisms loom again. The Church, whose fall was viewed almost with indifference, now begins to seem lovely in her desolation; her political and social power shattered, the thoughtful youth begin to respond to her æsthetic appeal. Even royalism, under the leadership of some of the most able intellects of the day, begins to raise its head, and to preach a cult of the crown as the symbol of the social order, and spiritual cohesion, without which a true nationalism is impossible.

In the numerous symposiums of the journals, the 'social introspections' of the day, one sees the trend of these tendencies and the influence of Barrès, whose position, one is told, is almost without a parallel since Chateaubriand. Physically and spiritually the youth of France seem to be setting themselves to the defense of 'l'esprit Français.' The hard and decivilizing life of the caserne is accepted for its long three years as a necessary sacrifice against the threats of the foe to the east. Politically, a restlessness seems to be evident, a discontent with the feebleness and colorlessness of the republican state, and a curious drawing together of the extreme Left and the extreme Right, in an equal hatred, though from opposite horizons, of the smug capitalism of the day, a rapprochement for the founding of the Great State, which shall bind the nation together in a sort of imperial democracy, ministering to the needs of all the people and raising

them to its ideals of splendor, honor, and national defense.

Spiritually one finds a renaissance of religious faith, mystical and social, however, rather than dogmatic; for a new prophet, Bergson, has arisen to justify the intuitional approach to the reality of the life-force, unmediated by the cold concepts of science. Yet, while he shelters mystical appreciation, he seems to glorify the life of action, at whose service he puts the intelligence. So that the youth of the day, following him, are both more mystical than the realistic followers of Zola and the rationalistic followers of Anatole France, and at the same time more resolute and active, more eager for the combat with life, than were the humanitarians of the preceding decade. This taste for action finds expression in the new popularity of sports, and the expressed admiration which one finds for the individualism of the Anglo-Saxon. All these tendencies seem to mark the reappearance of a fusion of thought and action, of intelligence and feeling, which is the characteristic charm of the French genius. In the midst of what seems like reaction, this new spirit is searching for a national self-consciousness which shall clearly see, strongly feel, and sanely act. In the search for the nationalisme intégrale of Barrès, the youth of to-day, one feels, are seeking the nourishing qualities of the traditional trait, the richness of a common culture which, has a right to make traditionalism seem seductive and beautiful.

For this new cult of nationalism is a very different thing from what it would have been if it had succeeded when first preached by Barrès, unpurified by the humanitarian socialism of the golden age. The new national consciousness is not a mere chauvinism, but sounds deeper notes of genuine social reform at home. Social work, of the sort that is testifying to a generally awakened social consciousness in America, is attracting great numbers of the youth of both sexes in France to-day. The sociological philosophy has made great advances in the last decade in France, and is influencing an important younger school of writers, who call themselves unanimistes. Much of the more youthful writing of the day bears witness to the enthusiastic discovery of William James, and of our divine poet of democracy, Walt Whitman.

So, if the French youth of the present day, inspired by the traditionalist Barrès, are coming to know their own national genius anew, they are coming to a knowledge of it immensely enriched and fertilized by the liberation of those years of socialism and a broadly ranging humanism. A traditionalism, rich and appealing like that of Barrès, but colored by this new social and pragmatic feeling, seems the best of guaranties that the younger generation in France, no matter what the dread exigencies of national circumstance, will not go very permanently or very far along the path of obscurantism and reaction.

I

A WRITER in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1913, contrasted the professional standards of the lawyer and the physician, to the obvious discredit of the former. He expressed surprise that within two professions touching life upon matters of equal importance,

professions of ancient dignity and learning, and inviting to their service men of equal and rare ability, — there should in the same community be so different a spirit.

The inside daily workings of a profession are scarcely of sufficient interest to attract the attention of a magazine reader, or to merit their description in a magazine article, but when the profession is arraigned and attacked, then, after the manner of its system, it may justly be heard to reply. A reply, however, calls for a formulation of the charges, and, still following the fashion of the lawyer, in an endeavor to get at the substance of the charges, I find they can be summarized as inertia, technicality, faulty criminal procedure, neglect of duty to society, and unjust methods in advocacy.

But before I leave my text to launch out into an endeavor to state what a lawyer really is, and what his ideals not only should be, but are, let me point out that a contrast between physicians and lawyers is not either a sure or a safe way to detect or to correct a lawyer's faults. If we analyze the praise which in the article in question is meted out to a physician, and contrast it

with the depreciation of the lawyer, we shall find that in essence the physician is commended for aiding his patient to escape the penalties imposed by nature, while the lawyer is condemned for aiding his client to escape the penalties imposed by man; nature's penalties are exact, and repentance and subsequent good works can do little to mitigate them, and the physician can counteract them only by aiding his patient to avoid them through others of nature's laws. Man's laws and penalties alike are uncertain, but the lawyer is condemned for aiding his client to escape their rigor by appeals to others of these laws, usually characterized by critics as technicalities.

Physicians utilize their knowledge of the habits of the human body to restore a disordered organism to efficient activity; anything which will do this is available for their use, and all they need to do to push forward their profession is to enlarge the sphere of their knowledge.

But lawyers can push forward their profession only by a more stupendous task, not of discovery, but of influence; having conceived the existing fault, they must first devise a means of correcting it, which will not in practice do more harm than good, and then they must induce the law-making power to accept it.

Lawyers have a much more difficult task as reformers than physicians. A single physician practices upon a single individual, and the success of his effort is the restoration of his patient. If we

should apply to the physician the duty measured by his larger obligation to society, conceived in the same spirit as the lawyer's larger duty of which we have read, we might easily proclaim that it is the physician's duty to kill his patient under certain circumstances in the interest of mankind. But we readily see the fallacy of this argument, because we can recognize that the physician's real duty to society is quite consistent with his duty to his patient, for his duty to each is the same. So it may also be with the lawyer in his relation to his client; it is not now, and never was, his social duty to abandon or betray his client; and the lawyer's duty to society, such as it is, is in nowise inconsistent with his being hired for his client's needs. Indeed, historically considered, it was the client's need, and nothing else, which gave rise to the brood of lawyers, and assigned them a recognized place in our judicial system.

If all men would settle their disputes amicably there would be little need of civil courts or judges; and if all men obeyed the laws, no need of criminal tribunals, and little need of lawyers. But before lawyers were, as an actual historical creation, men invaded rights and disobeyed laws; and before lawyers, and above them, were and are laws. And lawyers did not make the laws, but they must obey and observe them, and they must proceed as the laws require.

Laws may be divided into two great classes those which concern rights, characterized as substantive laws; and those which concern the method of securing those rights, classed as remedial laws; and among remedial laws fall those which regulate the manner of procedure in the courts, and which, more frequently than substantive laws, give rise to what are commonly styled the technicalities of law. VOL. 114 - NO. 3

II

It is possible, but not necessarily true, that lawyers could reform the laws of procedure. It is too true that many of them are satisfied with the existing defects of procedure, and merit the description inert, but this is certainly not true of the whole profession. The truth is, the profession alone cannot reform procedure, because it is crystallized in our law, and legislators or people, as the case may be, will not submit to change. For instance, taking pattern by, but improving upon, the English practice of a single court with separate branches appropriate for different sorts of work, and with rules of court, easy of change, to regulate and do away with most of the absurd technicalities of practice, a vigorous effort, inaugurated by lawyers, was made a few years ago in New Jersey to institute a model single court with necessary divisions, and with model and simple rules; but when the necessary changes in the state constitution to effect these results were submitted to the people, the people rejected them, largely because, as I understand, they wanted no changes suggested by lawyers. It is but fair to say, however, that I am also informed that there was no unanimity among the lawyers themselves. Since then the Legislature of New Jersey, acting on the initiative of lawyers, has utilized its power to make a simple and model body of rules which are designed primarily to eliminate much of the truly despicable technicality of practice. But this required legislative action, without which the lawyers were quite powerless to reform the practice.

For the United States courts sitting in equity, Congress enacted in 1842 that the Supreme Court should make the rules of practice; and the result is that there never were more than 94

rules, and these have recently been reduced to 81. Congress has never, however, permitted the Court to make rules for practice at law, but has enacted that the practice at law in the Federal courts shall follow the state practice in the several states, thus giving rise to 48 different systems or sets of rules or practice at law, and of these the New York Code of Civil Procedure alone now contains about 2800 sections. And it has contained 3441 sections. Now a committee of the American Bar Association, composed exclusively of lawyers, is urging Congress to do with the practice at law in the Federal courts what it has been content to do with the practice in equity for a century and a quarter, and let the courts make the rules of practice.

When the Supreme Court recently remodeled and simplified its rules in equity it was to committees of lawyers in each of the nine Federal circuits that it submitted the formulation of suggestions for simplification and improvement; and in New York, by the grace of the Legislature of 1913, a committee of five lawyers is now considering a plan to simplify into a concise system its monstrous Code of Civil Procedure. The lawyers, in fact, instead of being inert, are so far as I know the only persons who are really moving to introduce practical reforms of procedure.

Before we can properly compare physicians and lawyers, to the discredit of the latter, we must first imagine physicians under a state system of medicine, in which not only broad theories of general practice, but also specific remedies and regulated doses are prescribed by a law-making power beyond the control of the physician, and under which the patient is himself clamoring for the administration of the theory, the remedy, and the dose prescribed by law, and the physician is

liable for malpractice if he makes any novel departure and fails.

If the lawyer should disregard all absurdity, anachronism, and formalism, and follow his highest concepts of ideal justice, he would be liable to encounter the technical attacks of an adversary, which, according to existing law, the judge under his official oath, must recognize. And, if judge, advocate, and adversary should all accept the same ideals, their disposition of the cause might be at variance with actual law.

The simple truth is that all men are not agreed; that no technicality, no anachronism, and no absurdity has its place in the law which did not in its origin appeal to some man as reasonable, or was not introduced into the law to promote some one's idea of justice. It is not lawyers who are at fault, but the law; and until lawyers are given the law-making power they should not be blamed for the faults of the laws.

III

The worst charge that can be laid at the lawyer's door, in respect to defective laws, whether procedural or substantive, is that, in the interest of his client, he takes advantage of the law as it is, or as he claims it is, instead of as it ought to be in the opinion of his critic.

It is always a serious question how far a lawyer may sacrifice the legal rights of his client to his own sense of right and justice; but as a possible result, I suggest that a lawyer who sacrifices his client's actual rights to his own ideal sense of propriety, which is at variance with the legal measure of those rights, may be liable in damages for the departure. With us in the United States it is not generally believed that a lawyer is bound to accept a client or a cause (as I understand an English