Larks

Free as larks and just as gay, America's men of law (TIME, July 21, Aug. 4) sallied forth from London. Their Convention with their hearty English and Canadian colleagues was finished, but there were more good times in store. Some went north, some went east, not a few went south, very few came west.

In Paris, the U. S. Bar's distinguished princeps, Charles E. Hughes, unrecognizable for the moment as U. S. Secretary of State, struck one note of world-wide-peace-through-cooperation after another. At the Palais de Justice, at the Hotel de Ville, he was cheered and cheered to the echo. At the Palais, it was a reception by the French Bar Association, involving many speeches and the unveiling of a tablet to French lawyers fallen in the War. Mr. Hughes and his colleagues laid a wreath (red, white, blue) on the memorial, then preceded to the Hotel, quite late for their governmental reception.

Picked musicians from the Opera played "a stirring refrain;" Mr. Hughes gave his arm to Mme. Georges Lalou, wife of the President of the Municipal Council; all moved in a column "up the aisle of the magnificent festival hall." Said one despatch: "The honors paid that day used to be reserved of old by Parisians for the Kings of France."

On the third day, Mr. Hughes stepped into the 2:15 train for Brussels, where Albert and Elizabeth of Belgium awaited his coming. Guards were slamming the carriage doors when down the platform rushed Minister of Justice Renoult, bewhiskered Acting Premier of France (during Herriot's absence at London). He was breathless. He had been detained. He was so sorry Mr. Hughes had to go so soon. The two shook hands cordially through the window. The train moved out.

In Dublin, several score of the Americans and Canadians rubbed shoulders and exchanged blarney with the Irish benchers and bar: at a garden party given by Governor General Healey, at a banquet at Kings Inns. Some trekked to Killarney, to be sung to by John McCormack, famed Hibernian tenor, and to join in a regatta and a golf tournament.

In Edinburgh, still other of these legal larks approached Parliament House, were received by the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, who led them gravely toward the Court of Sessions. The Court was on vacation, he explained, but in the judge's robing-room there waited six Lord Justices and their Lord President (Lord Clyde). These, gorgeous in full-bottomed wigs and scarlet, were cordiality's very self. The larks lunched with Edinburgh's Lord Provost (Lord Sleith) and his corporation.