Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/138

I02 HARVARD LAW REVIEW four and one-half per cent, which Westengard proposed to use in building a railway from Bangkok through the Malay Peninsula. This treaty was strongly opposed by the whole cabinet and even by the King, holding that such a railroad paralleling steamer transportation could be of no advantage. The King finally yielded because of his confidence in Westengard, which was soon justified, for the railroad paid from the first, and since its completion in 191 7, when shipping was practically unavailable, it provided the one outlet for Siam's tin and other valuable products. Moreover, the money borrowed at four and one-half per cent was so well invested in public utilities that a few years later Siam was loaning the same money back to the Federated Malay States at six per cent. After the ratification of the British treaty, which involved a long period of delicate diplomacy and incident strain, Westengard with some pride in his achievement wrote to one who regretted his long absence from the Law School, maintaining that the work he was doing was at least "equal to that of a moderately successful law teacher. I do think it is more than that — though perhaps I am not competent to judge. Only, I think I may safely say that the average law teacher could n't do it. Siam has rid herself of ex- territoriality as far as concerns the two most important powers. Lord Cromer, with the whole power of the British Empire and the British Army of Occupation, has hardly moved one inch along that path for Egypt. "I remember well that I dined one night with President Eliot, when, pointing out the happiness of the law teacher's lot, he said that the practicing lawyer was a man 'whose name was writ in water.' No man should boast till he has safely finished his task; but, come what may, in Siam my name is writ more substantially on the land than that." Westengard early won the confidence of the late King Chula- longkom who was always reasonable, with a profound sense of the right, and later ready to yield his own inclination to what he con- sidered his adviser's better judgment. Gradually he won the confidence of all the king's ministers, the respect of the foreign ministers and other foreign advisers of the government. Adminis- trative circles in the East with their intricate diplomacy, delicate problems, conflicting claims are notoriously a hotbed of jealousies. Westengard's intellectual cahn, his smoothly accurate-working