autocracy, but we are fighting a war of self-defense. I sat last August at a dinner of the American Bar Association, by the side of the Belgian lawyer who defended so far as anyone was permitted to defend her, the heroic English nurse Edith Cavell, and he gave to me personally many harrowing details of the outrages committed against his people in Belgium. The things he told me could not be made public, or they would punish some of his friends in Belgium. I am in this war with all my strength, not only in fighting for democracy, but to keep my wife and daughter from suffering the same nameless horrors that the women and children of Belgium and northern France have suffered in the last three years.

Of course we want peace, but we want peace that brave men can justify. Such peace that " men who know their rights and knowing, dare maintain," can stand for. We fought a hundred years ago for sailors' rights for rights of much less importance than we are fighting for now. If ever a nation was justified in entering into a war for humanity's sake, we are that nation in this war. Lowell wrote, in talking about our fight for sailors' rights, something we can bear in mind at the present time:

"Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut to do
Is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu.

I recollect how sailors' rights was won,

Yard locked in yard, hot gun-lip kissin' gun:

I am sure that I express the feeling of all the members of this Association when I say to Chief Justice Carter that

we appreciate most highly his informing and stimulating address. The opportunities given by these meetings of the State Bar Association should be most highly prized by all lawyers. I am glad to see the interest taken this year, and I hope that we shall witness a constantly increasing attendance at these meetings and a constantly growing interest. We cannot be content with mere professional routine. We do not live merely to drudge and make money, to try cases and write opinions. We cannot live except as social beings, and, to make the most of professional opportunity, we need the inspiration of these meetings with our professional brethren. Such an address as we have just heard is a keen delight and gives a new edge to our purpose.

We will now take a recess until half past two o'clock, at which time we will have the memorial exercises in memory of Mr. Choate.

Gentlemen of the Association: it is a trite saying that the reputation of lawyers is fleeting. The work of a lawyer, in the study and application of legal principles, in forensic debate, and in the adjustment of controversies, enters like thread closely interwoven into the fabric of our society. This work is not accomplished by men without aspirations or ideals. It is work related to professional standards; it is work which fills the worker with a sense of fellowship with great men who have wrought with like aims. It would be poor work indeed if we were not inspired by the memories of those who have most nobly achieved.

As Mr. Curtis said, it is by the heaven-piercing peaks, not by the confused mass of upland, that one measures the height of the Alps or the Andes or the Himalayas. Every lawyer, however modest his ability, has felt the touch of the great lawyers of the past and has been irresistibly attracted and permanently influenced by narratives of stirring scenes in court and of extraordinary skill in the performance of herculean tasks.

It is a peculiar privilege that we have today in honoring the memory of a genius of the bar. We are accustomed to pay our tribute to talent. The bar is well represented by men of talent. We justly praise that acquired ability in analysis and in presentation which is so frequently shown in the work of many men of the profession. Every now and then, however, there appears in the ranks of the profession a genius, a man of easy mastery, of facile adaptation, to whom nothing seems difficult. We admire, we cannot wholly understand that mastery. Nothing made a deeper impression upon me in my early days at the Bar than this quality as revealed by Mr. Choate. It happened that I was serving as junior to Mr. Choate in a case involving many complicated facts. The preparation of the papers had been laborious, the questions were many, the affidavits voluminous. It was his duty as counsel to master these facts, and there was the very natural apprehension of the one who had been toiling in the preparation of the papers that the difficulties presented by the record would not be fully appreciated. And, after a long night of work, I remember going to Mr. Choate's library in the morning to present to him the results of this labor and to get the benefit of his study of the questions in the case. I found him placid, wholly unperturbed, reading a literary work, and apparently entirely untouched by the swirl of emotion which every one else in

the case felt by reason of the pressure of preparation. It impressed me as the approach of a great mind to a simple task an intellect too strong and lucid ever to be burdened or confused. Mr. Choate's life was one of mastery, and in every department of effort he brought to his work a rare combination of skill, of perfect adaptation, and, what was more important than all, of character. So that in the result you had that perfect play of forces which you can not describe save by calling it genius.

When shall we see his like again? His memory is a benediction to this Bar. It is not for me to speak of his achievements. It is for me only to introduce those who will pay just tribute to his memory. Whenever we think of those who in the history. of this State and of this Nation have adorned our professional life, who have shown us how great ability in advocacy can be linked to statesmanship and distinguished service in public affairs, when we recall those who have thus honored our commonwealth, we shall always give very high place to this great lawyer, this distinguished leader of men. It was thought that we could do no better at this time than to have representatives of the Bench and Bar present short addresses instead of having a single formal memorial, and accordingly, I have asked those to speak to you on this occasion who could fittingly voice the sentiment universally felt and give adequate expression to the love and admiration of the Bar for their lost leader.

I will first call upon Judge Parker.

Honorable Alton B. Parker then delivered the following address:

Alton B. Parker, of New York:

Senator Root in his delightful address before the Association of the Bar, suggested that the boyhood of Joseph

H. Choate survived his youthful years, constituting throughout his life one of the most attractive features of his personality. Consider it a moment and I think you will agree that he has said what we have each of us unconsciously felt about Mr. Choate.

It is not an unusual thing for a man to retain through life many boyhood traits. Very often the traits that he clings to are not those which are the most attractive. And even attractive traits so retained, very often interfere appreciably with success in life. Clearly, nothing interfered with Mr. Choate's success in life, for his was a career which any one might envy, and it seems to me that the youthful qualities his manhood inherited were among his most attractive characteristics.

He had occasionally the pertness of a boy and always his frankness and perfect honesty. He had a playfulness that broke out in unexpected and almost inopportune moments, just as a boy's playfulness breaks out in school or prayer meeting or at other times when his elders expect him to be most serious.

It was this playfulness which prompted him to say of his birth that it was an event as to which he could not say that his memory was entirely clear, and to assert that "It requires great forecast for a man to select a birthplace of which he shall always be proud."

It was in the same spirit he answered the cry of the old clothesman whom he met in Boston, while Mr. Choate was on his way to court with his green bag full of legal papers. After the manner of his kind, the old clothesman was passing down the street, crying lustily, "Old clothes! old clothes!" And when he cried it under Mr. Choate's nose, the latter replied "No! New suit!"