Caleb Cushing treaty the arbitrators met at Geneva, the capital of the Swiss Confederation. It was most fit and proper, as Cushing later declared, to select Switzerland, preeminently the land of neutrality, as the country, and Geneva as the city in which to hold the sessions of the tribunal. The counsel for the United States were Caleb Cushing, then in his seventysecond year, William M. Evarts, and Morrison R. Waite, and for Great Britain, Sir Roundell Palmer, the leader of the English bar, later created Earl of Selbournc and twice Lord Chancellor under Gladstone, Montague Bernard, and Lord Tenterden. The arbitrators from Italy, Switzer land and Brazil could read but not understand spoken English. "Great was their surprise and pleasure," says Mr. S. Arthur Bent, a former member of this club, who was at Geneva during the arbitration and knew Cushing in timately, "when General Cushing ad dressed them in French. It gave our side an advantage which contributed largely to our success. Equally impor tant, I understand, was the ability of Mr. Evarts and Mr. Cushing to think upon their feet. Admiralty law was a branch of the science unknown to the Chief Justice. When he ventured into that field he was met by the extempo raneous argument of both the lawyers mentioned and retired sine gloria." The success of the American case was largely due to the careful work of prepa ration by its counsel, again illustrating the truth so familiar to lawyers, that as a rule cases are won or lost by the prepara tion or the want of it before the trial in court. So completely had Cushing mastered his case that during the sessions of the tribunal he was able to take part in social functions and to read a large
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amount of both light and solid litera ture. To quote further from Mr. Bent: It was commonly said of him that ho spent his mornings in Court and employed his after noons in reading French novels. This was merely a way of saying that he knew his case. He was not obliged, like Cockburn, to lock him self up in order to study a case with which he was unfamiliar.
No one, even at this late date, can read the statement of the American case and the arguments of its counsel in its support without pride and admiration for the forensic skill, the legal acumen and the convincing logic which char acterized the American argument. Space does not permit me even to summarize this argument, but any stu dent of law may read with profit the entire voluminous volumes containing the case, counter case and arguments of the respective parties. On the seventh day of August, 1872, Mr. Cushing made the closing argument for the United States in reply to Sir Roundell Palmer, England's leading counsel. This argument, a most bril liant forensic effort, was delivered in French spoken with a fluency and accu racy which astonished his hearers. When we recall that the arbitrators for Braxil, Italy and Switzerland did not understand English, it will be seen how great an advantage Mr. Cushing's lin guistic accomplishments gave to the United States. F. W. Hackett, Esq., of the Wash ington bar and Cushing's private secre tary at Geneva, says of the preparation and delivery of Mr. Cushing's reply: -— It is not too much to say that there was no American lawyer living who could surpass Mr. Cushing in fitness for this duty. In the field of public law, no less that of familiarity with diplomatic precedents, he stood almost without a rival. Though past threescore years and ten,
