things to appeal to the megalomania of his compatriots. Then later on we read that two other spies were to be tried before three judges, including the Lord Chief Justice, that the prosecution would be conducted by Sir Edward Carson, just then appointed Attorney-General, and that the defence would be in the hands of a K.C. and three other barristers! It would be interesting to know whether the fees of counsel employed in such trials will be taxed as profits due to the war. It is unnecessary to say more about this and other wasteful expenditure on law by a lawyer-dominated Government, which has urged the nation to deny itself in every possible way.
The great danger of the lawyer-politician in a time of supreme crisis is that he has been accustomed to live in an atmosphere of compromise, of action based on reasonable discussion between opposing interests, of scrupulous attention to precedent. But when, under entirely new conditions, we cannot follow history but are compelled to make history, then the spirit of the advocate is the worst possible guide. In that spirit the Declaration of London, drawn up in 1908 and rejected in 1911, seems to have been put into force by the Government at the beginning of the war. It is an instrument which might have been prepared by agreement between a clever barrister representing Germany and a dull one representing this country. While it was in operation it served to diminish the power of our fleet, to legalize the action of the Emden, and to provide President Wilson with a convenient handle to be used against us. Article 57, only got rid of by the Order in Council of October 25 last, 'provided that the neutral or enemy character of a vessel is determined by the flag she is entitled to fly'. Think of