power to its adversary, the settlement of a
matter in controversy on the basis of law;
i. c., of equality of rights, would ordinarily
be no more acceptable than would have been
a similar proposition made to a feudal baron.
The proposal of Russia to the other na
tions assembled at The Hague, looking to
the non-augmentation of military forces and
expenditures was in complete harmony with
that of the establishment of a tribunal to
which international differences and contro
versies might be referred; in fact one was
but the complement of the other.
This proposal was believed by the Confer
ence to be impractical, and the reasons for
this belief are, in their last analysis, the same
as those which have led to the neglect of the
Tribunal itself.
The enormous and increasing military bur
dens imposed, even in time of peace, upon
the subjects of the Great Powers of Conti
nental Europe, are destroying their very ability to bear them. The present condition cannot be maintained indefinitely, and we may confidently hope that in the not distant future as this pressure becomes more and more unbearable, nations will seek relief by turning more and more away from war and all the evils that it entails, and seek to establish their rights through the arbitra ment of reason. This tendency once established will be a constantly increasing force. Every decision made or reason given therefor in an inter national court of arbitration will be a prece dent and a new force in the establishment of justice between nations, and with the doc trines of International Law firmly based on the principle of Equality as laid down by the great founder of the system, it may be that war itself will be "a thing of the past."
HAIR. BY R. VASHON ROGERS, K. C., Of the Kingston, Ontario, Ear.
UT you will say that hair is but an excrementitious thing." So said Thomas Howell in his Familiar Letters. Among the ancient Jews he who put his hand on his own beard and swore by it bound himself by the most solemn of oaths, to violate which would render him infamous among his fellow men. • The favorite oath of the Mahommedan was by the "Beard of the Prophet." Three hairs from a French king's beard, under the waxen seal stamped on the royal letter or charter, were supposed to add great er security for the fulfilment of all promises made in the document itself. The Lacedemonians compelled their mag istrates, yclept the Ephori, to undergo what
seemed the ridiculous ceremony of being shayed merely to show the readiness with which they would obey the law in all things. (Perhaps appointment to office was sufficient compensation for the loss of these hirsute appendages.) When Henry VIII. was king the custom of wearing beards—which, for a time had gone out of fashion with the growth of civi lization—had so revived among the legal fraternity that the .authorities of Lincoln's Inn prohibited wearers of beards from sit ting at dinner at the great tables, unless they paid double commons. This was doubtless before that very arbitrary monarch ordered (1585) his courtiers "to poll their hair, and he himself grew that beard which is so fa-
