while the same event must serve to emphasise the existence of a novel sovereign character appertaining to the several parts of the Empire. This again raises a further problem; Dr. Baty insists, with perfect justice, that normally there is no legal means of adjusting disputes between different parts of the King's dominions, the circumstances of the Commonwealth being exceptional in this regard. With the advent of an Irish Free State the necessity of some standing Court of Arbitration will become more pressing than ever, for it would be most unfortunate if disputes within the Empire were to be carried to the International Court."

Comparative Public Law. -An interesting discussion of this topic, and the fundamentals of its study, by Mr. Ludwik Ehrlich is included in the November issue (pp. 623-46) of the Columbia Law Review. When the far-reaching nature of the topic is considered, it is hardly surprising that few efforts should have been made to deal with the subject, and it is impossible not to agree with Mr. Ehrlich that a necessary preliminary to any effective treatment must be the compilation on a uniform basis of handbooks of the public law of all the important countries of the world. These works would, to be really useful, have to treat the subject not merely analytically, but in such a manner as to show the relation of political institutions to the life of the society and the historical conditions to which they owe their origin and development. A further desideratum is the production of collections of constitutional documents with the necessary explanations. Both of these desiderata offer serious considerations of expense, but the project might well be commended to the consideration of the Carnegie Endowment. At a time when so many new state constitutions have been brought into existence, information of this kind would be of special value in assisting legislators to effect the modifications of which these constitutions, as a rule hastily evolved under pressure of immediate necessity, stand greatly in need.

Apart from the main thesis, Mr. Ehrlich's article is incidentally full of valuable references; it is interesting to learn how far the process of following judicial decisions is extending on the Continent. Reference is made to the freedom of the Judicial Committee to depart from its own decisions; an allusion might have been added to the curious anomaly by which the Empire still maintains two Courts of Final Appeal.

Decisions of the Mixed Arbitral Tribunal. - Reference has already been made in this Journal to the Reports of cases decided by the Mixed Arbitral Tribunals under the Treaties of Peace. Since then parts ii to iv of the Reports have been published, and many judgments of general importance have thus become available. Several of these-Villemejane v. Germany (p. 90), Bignon v. Germany (p. 93), Huret v. Germany (p. 98), Marqua v. Germany (P. 104), de Creutzer v. Germany (p. 156), and Sachs v. Germany (p. 215)-are decisions of the Franco-German Tribunals upon claims for compensation under Article 297 (e) of the German Treaty, and they have

gone far to elucidate the meaning of the phrase "exceptional war measures" found in that Article. Another case-Hallyn v. Basch (p. 168) -involved the application of Article 299 (a), which provides that any contract concluded between enemies shall be regarded as having been dissolved. Hallyn, a French subject, had "Yemis" certain pictures with Basch" en commission " before the war. Basch was a German national and the war dissolved the contract. Was Basch bound to preserve and restore the pictures? The Tribunal held that upon the dissolution of the contract Basch became " dépositaire," and liable as such, the effect of the obligation of the contract being to give rise to an obligation different from that contemplated by the contract. But among the most interesting decisions are two of the Anglo-German Tribunal, which are to be found in part v. In the first of these-Great Eastern Railway Company v. Mosse (p. 282)—the claimant was indebted to the respondent at the outbreak of war, and had a right to recover part of the debt from a Dutch railway. The Dutch company paid to the respondent during the war its share of the debt; but he nevertheless recovered judgment in the German Courts for the whole amount, and obtained a decree of distraint against moneys standing to the credit of the claimant at a bank in Cologne. The Tribunal, finding that it had jurisdiction under Article 304 (b) of the Treaty, ordered repayment to the claimant of the amount paid to the respondent by the Dutch company, with interest.

In the second case-Huth & Co. v. Fahr & Setzer (p. 286)—the claimants, a London Accepting House, had agreed before the war to accept bills for the respondents, a Hamburg firm. It was a term of the contract that the Accepting House should not have to pay out against such acceptances unless and until they were put in funds, and that all costs and risks should be for the account of the respondents. The claimants accepted in July 1914 two bills which matured after war had broken out, and the respondents were thereby prevented from transmitting funds. Accordingly, the claimants obtained advances to meet the bills from the Bank of England bearing interest at 2 per cent. above bank rate. The respondents admitted their liability to repay, but disputed the rate of interest. The Tribunal, however, found that, in view of paragraph 7 of the Annex to Article 303 and the contract between the parties, the German firm must indemnify the Accepting House against the whole of its liability to the bank.

The Principles of Income Tax.-" Mr. G. H. Crichton has written a very interesting and suggestive article on 'Co-operative Societies and Income Tax' in the January number of the Law Quarterly Review. It raises matters," writes Mr. G. R. Stirling Taylor," which lie at the basis of taxation, and concern many more than co-operators and their ideals of thrift and large dividends. Indeed, so far as the co-operators are affected, there is a certain humour in the decision of the inquiring Commission (appointed by the Inland Revenue) that it is advisable to take away their privileged exemption from the tax, because they will find that they are

scarcely likely to have to pay any! If the vast majority of the co-operiative society members are not liable to income tax, it certainly will not seriously inconvenience them to know that they would have to pay if they had reached the taxation limit. Nevertheless, the problems involved cannot be dismissed in this light-hearted way; and the question whether the dividend of a co-operative society should rank with the interest of a limited liability company in the matter of income tax assessment must be faced and answered. The object of the income tax is to make each pay his contribution to the State roughly in proportion to his ability as measured by his income.

"It is fairly evident that, so far as the ordinary member of a consumers' co-operative society is concerned, a dividend is as much a " profit " as the interest paid to the shareholders of an ordinary commercial company. The low sale prices and the resulting dividends are alike (in the main) due to the good management and work of the paid servants of the store. If this be so, surely the dividend is a profit to the shareholding members of the society, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the ordinary tax should be paid. Probably, in any case, the best solution would be to aim at selling everything at the cost price of production; whereupon, of course, the dividends would not be there to raise awkward questions. The shareholding co-operative members would then be left face to face with their working staff, and would have to decide whether their low prices were due to underpaid labour or to so much secret virtue in the principles of co-operation itself.

"But there is another large and fundamental principle involved in this question. Taxation is a most convenient method of encouraging one social system or institution and discouraging another. If it should be decided that the co-operative system is a better manner of conducting industry than the limited liability company method, then it might be perhaps advisable to encourage the co-operators by exempting them from certain forms of taxation from which they had no right to exemption as a matter of strict financial logic. The chief end of taxation, like the chief end of all government, is to obtain the most satisfactory resulting human beings; and when this matter of the taxation of co-operative funds is discussed it will be well if more than the revenue officers and their accountbooks are consulted. Government has always been essentially a matter for philosophers rather than for bureaucrats."

American Journal of International Law. -The Washington Conference was impending when the October number of the American Journal of International Law appeared. Accordingly the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. J. B. Scott, devoted his opening article to armaments, and to the earlier projects for their limitation. He recalls the unsuccessful attempt made at the Hague in 1899, a less-known and now expired agreement between Argentina and Chile, and the agreement between Great Britain and the United States restricting naval forces on the great lakes, which stands, and has stood for more than a hundred years. Of the remaining articles in this number William S. Carpenter's is historical -" The United States and the League of Neutrals of 1780 " is its titleand another by Pedro Capó-Rodriguez discusses "Colonial Representation in the American Empire." In a third, which is a translation from the French, Tor Hugo Wistrand adds a chapter to the already voluminous literature upon the Balance of Power. Chandler P. Anderson, in the Editorial Comment, analyses the Treaty of Peace between the United States and Germany-a service to the many lawyers in Europe who have given too little attention to this important document, and James Brown Scott describes the election of the judges of the Court of International Justice. The Supplement contains the text of three conventions signed during the Peace Conference at Paris and also of the Pact of Union of Central America.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

MR. JUSTICE HOLMES'S PAPERS.1

SEEING that the name and fame of Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes are known almost as well in England as in America, it is needless to bespeak for any work of his the attention of English students and scholars. More than forty years have passed since his little book on the Common Law was recognised as a classic, and classic it remains. Of the addresses contained in this volume, ranging over a wide field, some are concerned with purely legal topics. Others relate to matters which are professional rather than technical, dealing with the status and functions of the lawyer. Several are biographical appreciations of illustrious men.

Others, again, rise into the sphere of metaphysical philosophy. All, whatever their subject, are pervaded by a philosophical spirit, large and luminous, such as we may suppose one of the great lawyers at Rome in the days of Augustus to have applied to the great problems of ethics in the leisure he allowed himself from the composition of technical treatises and the delivery of responsa. Justice Holmes is more of an Academic than a Stoic in his metaphysics, and occasionally verges on Pyrrhonism. But his reasoning, whether it moves along philosophical or purely legal lines, is always exact, penetrating, and subtle, going straight to the centre of the question, and leaving the reader in no doubt as to his view. In very few authors does one get so much sound and original thinking to the page. He is never dull. Whatever the theme, his writing has a literary charm rare in legal writers, of whose style critics usually think enough has been said when it can be praised for precision and lucidity. He can plant a flower and make it bloom even in crevices among the stones of "a dry, parched land, wherein no water is."

We have no space to comment upon any of these discourses, but the non-professional reader who does not care to trudge over the arid regions of law may be recommended to read such an essay as that on Montesquieu, which gives in a few pages singularly fresh and instructive impressions of a great writer. Feeling how much the author of these addresses might have contributed to biography and criticism, many a reader will recall the words of Pope when he regretted that his friend

1 Collected Legal Papers of Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. (London: Constable & Co., 1920.)