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Holmes-Laski Letters
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES AND HAROLD J. LASKI
II
1926-1935
HAROLD J. LASKI
From a photograph, reproduced through the courtesy of Mrs. Harold J. Laski
and by permission of the copyright owner, Pictorial Press? London, England.
Holmes-Laski Letters
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES AND HAROLD J. LASKI
1916-1935
EDITED BY
Mark DeWolfe Howe
With a FOREWORD by
Felix Frankfurter
I
RSI
II
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS
1953
Copyright, 1953, by the President and Fellows
of Harvard College
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
VOLUME I
FOREWORD BY FELIX FRANKFURTER xiii
I. 1916—1918 i
II. 1919—1921 177
III. 1922—1923 395
IV. 1924—1925 577
VOLUME II
V. 1926—1927 sis
VI. 1928 — 1929 1011
VII. 1930—1932 1215
VIII. 1933—1935 1425
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 1483
INDEX 1525
Illustrations
VOLUME I
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES FRONTISPIECE
From a photograph of the original painting by Charles Hopkinson in
1929. Reproduced through the courtesy of the Harvard Law School.
LASKI'S LETTER OF FEBRUARY 18, 1920 244
VOLUME II
HAROLD J. LASKI FRONTISPIECE
From a photograph, reproduced through the courtesy of Mrs. Harold J.
Laski and by permission of the copyright owner, Pictorial Press, London,
England.
A PORTION OF HOLMES'S LETTER OF MAY 12, 1930 1246
V
a 6
Washington, D. C., January 3,
Dear Laski: A happy New Year to you. It is delightful to think that you
will be here. I agree with you that it would not be best for us to attempt
to put you up. Among other reasons, you would have to climb so many
stairs, but you will share our victuals at convenient moments and we will
talk. And you shall have one more chance to see light on sovereignty.
In actual fact I wouldn't think it possible for us to disagree had you
not said that you thought Kawananakoa v. Polyblank1 wrong. That chap
Zane said that no one who thought it right could hope to be a lawyer,2
while I categorically and brutally think that one who doesn't think it
right (I mean in the general aspects) simply doesn't understand what he
is talking about.
Your friend Smellie called yesterday and took luncheon here today.
I enjoyed seeing him very much and learned only by accident that he
was a "thin red 'ero" and had lost both feet in the war. Another man,
Gates,3 was here just before, from Frankfurter, whom also I liked greatly.
But I have spasms of shame after I have seen these fellows to think of
having repeated all my old chestnuts to them. Yet if we worried about
repeating ourselves who should escape?
I didn't know Vinogradoff was dead. I don't think him a great loss to
the world of thought, judging by what I have read of his writing, but I
agree that his Villainage in England was a good book. He was the first
to print what I had noticed, the reappearance of the festuca etc.4 in the
manorial ceremonies.
I should have liked to hear Pollack on the need for a philosophy of
law. You speak of him as a man of 75, or, qu. Ms? 78. He has just cele-
brated his 80th birthday and I have congratulated him as an infant just
appearing through the trap door in the upper story of the old.
I haven't had time to read Warren's volume 4 about our Court.5 The
other three I thought as good as could be from anyone except a very
superior and penetrating intellect which I hardly think Warren has. I
should call them first rate.
I read Whitehead's Science and the Modern World. It seemed to me
obscurely written, perhaps not so to mathematicians and it did not
change my view of the universe. He's a clever man, but I doubt if he
wields a thunderbolt. . . .
1 Supra, p. 776.
2 Supra, p. 180, note 3.
8 Sylvester Gates, an Oxford graduate, was currently a special student at
the Harvard Law School.
* VinogradoflF had noted the similarity between the rituals of enfeoffment in
manorial courts with those observed in Prankish law. Villainage in England 372
et seq.
5 Charles Warren's Congress, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court
(1925) was not a fourth volume of his Supreme Court in United States History
(3 vok, 1922).
818 HOLMES TO LASKI [1926
Smollett I haven't read since you were born. I thought him rather dull
I believe in former days.
Tomorrow morning we take a dry dive into a longish sitting, with its
concomitant prepossessions. On looking at the schedule I see that we sit
during the first three weeks of March. March 22 begins a 3 weeks recess,
which I hope will be propitious for your visit. I can almost say a bientot.
Jours ever, O.W.H.
16 Warwick Gardens, 9.1.26
My dear Justice: Two delightful letters from you were waiting for me on
our return from the Continent. We had a wonderful ten days there,
mainly spent in looking at pictures and bookshops. I went to Amsterdam
and saw some Vermeers which confirmed my general impression that the
Dutch Flemish school is much more attractive than the Italian. I spent
a day in the Plantin Museum, handling letters from people like Scaliger
arranging for the printing of their books. And I found some pretty treas-
ures of which the most interesting was the ms diary of an Antwerp mer-
chant who came to England in 1632. He notes down all he bought here,
and being evidently interested in literature some of the songs he heard
in the street. Being a good husband he also takes down recipes for his
wife of things like English puddings and notes, thus early, that the
English do not know how to cook vegetables. I bought, too, a nice copy
of the first edition of Descartes and an engraving of Voltaire by Moreau
Le Jeune1 which explains almost everything in the extraordinary man
merely in the mouth and the sinuous twist of the nose. I like the Flemish
country and if only one could, say, destroy about % of the Roman Church's
influence there, one feels that one would get a flowering civilisation. While
I was there I read two books which I do most warmly commend to you:
(1) The Mentality of Apes by Kohler, which is simply thrilling, as attrac-
tive a book as I have read in many a long day and (2) Folk-lore in the
Old Testament by J. G. Frazer — an abridged edition in one volume which
I found full of interest. I met one Dutch lawyer of some eminence who
seemed to know you and Pound and went up in my esteem until he added
"that great figure, J. M. Beck." Then back here to get lectures ready and
have some pleasant dinners and visit my favourite book-haunts and the
National Gallery to see more Vermeers and find out what reproductions
were good and purchasable. We dined the other night with Wallas and
fought over some old but attractive fights anent the value of modern
psychology in politics. Also a good dinner with Sankey, J. whom I like
the more I see of him. He told me one delightful story of a man he tried
*Jean Michel Moreau (1714-1814), illustrator of Rousseau's works and
brother of the painter Louis Gabriel Moreau.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 819
at Leicester last year who, before sentence was passed, explained to him
that he was the only honest plumber in Leicester. The charge was one
of coining and Sankey said that there was some disparity between claim
and charge; "Oh," said the prisoner, "of course I keeps my 'abits separate."
Did I tell you of hearing F. Pollock open a discussion on philosophy and
law at which he was really admirable? I must add, by way of anecdotage,
one sheer delight. Maurice Amos and I dined the other night with Hal-
dane and the latter was recounting with a somewhat serene air the things
that had made him contented with life. He had read philosophy; he had
met the best minds of his generation; he had helped in some big events;
and he had never passed an important dish at a public dinner. I wish I
could picture to you the smile of happy benevolence on Haldane's tubby
face as this grand climax came out. Amos said he felt that he ought to
recite the nunc dimittis. Since I came back I have done but little beyond
these things; but a bookshop adventure may interest you. I am talking
to its owner, a man of about fifty. Suddenly a white-haired old fellow
certainly around eighty approaches him. "Are you Mr. Bailey?" "Yes."
"Mr. Angus Bailey?" "Yes?" "Don't you know rne?" "No." (a little doubt-
fully). "I'm your Uncle Ezra who went to Australia fifty-eight years ago;
and if your father's still alive I'm not coming into the shop." Luckily the
father was dead and so the old man did come in. But the nephew later
told me the history. The two brothers were members of the same Baptist
chapel and quarrelled violently (about 1865) about anti-paedobaptism.
They dissolved partnership and one went to Australia. They never spoke
or wrote to each other in the interval. Their sons and daughters met, and
the English nephew's son was actually married to the granddaughter of
the old Australian gentleman. I had a chat with him — utterly bewildered
by London, amazed and chagrined to find that Darwin (whom he re-
garded as a blasphemer) was buried in Westminster Abbey. The greatest
man in 19th century England was Spurgeon, Australia was morally a bad
country; the Presbyterians and Romans have it in their grip. He wasn't
keen to stay in England. He had heard that in Iowa the Baptists were
very powerful and he thought he would go out there and start a religious
bookshop. He was a game old boy who asked me what I was and when I
told him at once said with fierce simplicity "Another of them mucky
Atheists?" He regarded research into natural science as sin. Poverty was
one's own fault and Herbert Spencer (just dawning when he left Eng-
land) ought to have been living. He was as young in spirit as when he
left England and he fought at the crack of the pistol. Once I said that
things change — "Yes, young man, but God's truths don't change." I left
him walking back to his lodgings like an old Covenanter — a magnificent
spectacle.
My love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L,
820 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
16 Warwick Gardens, 17. 1. 26
My dear Justice: I came back yesterday from a week in Scotland to find
your adorable letter. I envy you the patience that works through White-
head's book. I began it at the behest of Bertrand Russell, but found it too
far from me in mental point of view to get much headway. Russell says
that we have not yet reached the point where we can distinguish between
facts about relativity and mathematical operations which may have nothing
to do therewith; I bought a couple of books for the train to Edinburgh,
but I can't say I was greatly illuminated. But two books I have read with
great pleasure, both by the same man. One is a History of Political Science
since Plato (R. H. Murray) and the other the Political Consequences of
the Reformation. They are both what I should call informing books,
written from a full mind and a large heart, and the second, especially, has
the great merit of making things clear that otherwise seem entangled and
complex. Also he is a devout Austinian who accepts as obvious the con-
clusions of Holmes, J. in the Polyblank case, so he will give you especial
comfort, even though, thereby, he reveals to me the one channel of weak-
ness in his mind. And I have been reading for the first time Burton's
Anatomy of Melancholy and really liking it as an ideal book for bed-
purposes. Queer and distorted that world is, but there is an ability pun-
gently to reflect which is impressive. Also Vauvenargues, whom I find
delightful and I pray you to procure a volume of his Maximes, preferably
without editorial embellishments, and ask yourself if he was not the
wisest man since Bacon. I admire endlessly that French gift of packing a
lifetime's experience into a phrase; and he certainly had it in full measure.
Also he is one up to Voltaire; for when the young and unknown army
captain sent a sheaf of mss to the great man he struck the table with
his fist and proclaimed genius on the spot. I mentioned this to Birrell who
at once retorted that it is dangerous; he had done it once and the man
next year got penal servitude for embezzling from his female admirers.
Whence, said Birrell, I have been led to demand proofs of a sober life,
preferably married, before I eulogise unduly in the public press.
I had pleasant days in Scotland — nice audiences to lecture to, and a
pleasant series of academic dinners. But the people of interest were not in
my own subjects. The best of them by far was a young Darwin1 (about
my own age or a little more), the son of Sir George. The moral philoso-
phers, especially at Glasgow, were unco' guid, with a real theological
flavour; and it was evident that the Rhine had overflowed the Firth of
Forth for they were all devout Hegelians, and looked on the Cairds and
1 Sir Charles Galton Darwin ( 1887- ); Tait Professor of Natural Philoso-
phy, Edinburgh University, 1923-1936; Master of Christ's College, Cambridge,
1936-1938; author of works on theoretical physics.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 821
Bosanquet as demigods. When I doubted whether vitalism was anything
but an expression of the degree to which physiology and bio-chemistry
have still to progress, I was treated as a hare-brained extremist for whom
respect is impossible. I met one old judge (Salvesen)2 who just remem-
bered Francis Jeffrey3 and Cockburn, and was told by the former that
Brougham once wrote in a day (I) three decisions for the Privy Council,
(II) an article for the Edinburgh Review, and (III) most of a draft report
for a Royal Commission. Jeffrey told this to Macaulay who said remark-
able indeed; but still more so in that (I) the decisions were wrong, (II)
the article was absurd, and (III) he (Macaulay) got the Royal Com-
mission to reject the draft report. I was amused to find that a good
deal of the supposed Scottish knowledge of Roman law is mythical, inso-
far as complete ignorance of any book except the text on the lawyers' part
is evidence of that. At least I mentioned people like Girard in vain; and
I found the Regius professor of the Civil Law bewailing the fact that
students found the subject too little related to their job.
1 lunched yesterday at his kind suggestion with Lewis Einstein and
found him entirely delightful. He gave me a good report of you, and I
forgot time in the energy of discussion. He reminded me much of a
balanced and more cultured Arthur Hill; and I was charmed by the
interest he retained in what ought to have been his life-work. And today
I lunched with Sankey as a farewell before he set out for assize. He had
an old law lord with him, Wrenbuiy who was once Buckley, L.J.4 The
old gentleman told good stories of the bar in ancient days, but was over-
anxious, I thought, about the steepness of taxation. And as he thought
Malthus a "nasty old man" and "his disciples worse," I, as a good Mal-
thusian was perhaps more energetic in rebuttal than the old gentleman
liked. But ad finem he seemed placated for he said he would read Mal-
thus, the which he had never done. Of such is the Kingdom of heaven
for Wrenbuiy is a great figure in the Church. I also met a Bishop there
who deplored the decay in the missionary effort among the Jews and asked
my views. "I, my lord," I said, "am the corpse rather than the surgeon
and I cannot be expected to subscribe to the cost of the operation." But
2 Edward Theodore Salvesen (1857-1942), Lord of Session, 1905-1922,
member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 1922-1939.
8 Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), Lord Jeffrey, Scottish judge and critic who
was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review and was Judge of the Court
of Session from 1834 to 1850 and as such had decided in favor of the "wee
frees" in the Case of the Free Church of Scotland; see, supra, p. 20. It should
be noted, perhaps, that both Lord Jeffrey and Lord Cockburn (1779-1854)
died before Lord Salvesen's birth.
* Henry Burton Buckley (1845-1935), Lord Wrenbury; judge of the Chan-
cery Division, 1900-1906; Court of Appeal, 1906-1915. After retirement he
continued active in hearing appeals to the House of Lords and the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council.
822 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
he felt that if only there were special church services in Hebrew the gulf
between the Church and the synagogue could be bridged. I do hope you
realise fully that these men also are God's creatures.
You notice that I have changed the format of these letters,5 in the
belief that it may give you aid and comfort in reading them. I'm glad my
general American plan fits your views. I begin to get really excited about
it, even to the point of anger when cynical friends say that the State De-
partment will not give me a itet. But I shall be in America on March 27
if I have to swim over.
My love warmly to you both, Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., January 29, 1926
Dear Laski: Two letters from you, delightful as usual, this week. The last
this morning. I could not answer at the drop of the hat because I was
so busy with the work here. But a recess comes on Monday, and all
my opinions are written, up to date. Do you know I really am bothered
by the old difference between us, if there is one, as to sovereignty, because
as I understand the question it seems to me one that does not admit of
argument. The thing to which I refer has nothing to do with the difficulty
of finding out who the sovereign is, or the tacitly recognized de facto
limits on the power of the most absolute sovereign that ever was. The
issue is on this decision that you criticize, and even narrower than that. ,
If you should say that the Courts ought in these days to assume a consent
of the U.S. to be sued, or to be liable in tort on the same principle as
those governing private persons, I should have my reason for thinking
you wrong, but should not care, as that would be an intelligible point of
difference. But what I can't understand is the suggestion that the United
States is bound by law even though it does not assent. What I mean by
law in this connection is that which is or should be enforced by the
Courts and I can't understand how anyone should think that an instrumen-
tality established by the United States to carry out its will, and that it
can depose upon a failure to do so, should undertake to enforce some-
thing that ex hypothesi is against its will. It seems to me like shaking one's
fist at the sky, when the sky furnishes the energy that enables one to raise
the fist. There is a tendency to think of judges as if they were inde-
pendent mouthpieces of the infinite, and not simply directors of a force
that comes from the source that gives them their authority. I think our
court has fallen into the error at times and it is that that I have aimed at
when I have said that the Common Law is not a brooding omnipresence
in the sky and that the U.S. is not subject to some mystic overlaw that
5 In this letter and the two succeeding letters Laski widened the space
between the lines.
1926] HOLMES TO LASKI 823
It is bound to obey. When our U.S. Circuit Courts are backed up by us
in saying that suitors have a right to their independent judgment as to
the common law of a State, and so that the U.S. Courts may disregard the
decisions of the Supreme Court of the State, the fallacy is illustrated.
The Common Law in a State is the Common Law of that state deriving
all its authority from the State, as is shown by Louisiana where it does not
prevail. But the late Harlan, Day, and a majority of others have treated
the question as if they were invited to speculate about the Common Law
in abstracto. I repeat that if you merely mean that we ought to imply a
consent until it is denied in terms, I should think you were wrong and
that I was better fitted to judge of that than outsiders, but that would be a
specific question for a given situation, a difference about which could
create no concern.
Wednesday I had to preside vice the C.J. absent at a funeral and
again today as he had caught a cold and was advised to keep to the
house. The newspapers laid hold of it for a paragraph, and even one
chap got a photograph in the literal five minutes that I gave him. It came
out in the evening paper — good but looking very old. It made me
realize what a hungry lot the reporters are — every trifle that will make
a paragraph is, I suppose, cash to them. The other day there was a rail-
road accident here and they were ferocious with the doctors and the
nurses in a hospital who wouldn't let them interview the damaged engi-
neer although they were told that it was a matter of life and death to
keep him undisturbed. Queer, the way in which Beck has made an im-
pression in Europe. I am rather sorry for him. He avows disappointed
ambitions, I believe. A kindly man, but of an incredible egotism. I am
not sure whether he has a naif belief in his own misfortunes, as some think,
or asserts it to keep up his courage. He is clever, too, if he would only
master something. Your account of the old Scotch quasi Covenanter was
fine, also your anecdote of Haldane, also what you say of Burton and
Vauvenargue's Maximes. ... I rejoice that you and Einstein took to
each other. And I am much pleased by your discerning touch as to what
"ought to have been his life work/'
Your suggestion of possible trouble about coming here worries me a
little. They have made troubles that seemed queer, but I have assumed
(in perfect ignorance) that the exclusions came from some hint on the
part of a government. If I were you I would make sure beforehand that
there will be no trouble. I was remarking to Brandeis the other day that
speech was freer in England than here, now, whereas in 1866 or 7 it was
freer here and he mentioned some writer who had made this same observa-
tion. I noted it as the striking of a bell when under Morley's editorship the
Pall Mall spoke in a matter of course way of those who did not believe in
Christianity. Much later I noted the complete change since my first visit
824 HOLMES TO LASKI [1926
when a lady whom I took down to dinner, having just been introduced to
her asked me if I believed in it, and she turned out to be a Catholic.
On the other hand when my friend Henry Cowper1 was here in '67 he
said I notice that you say you don't believe.
Let me return for a moment to the matter of actions of tort. I hesitate
as to what government should do because among other things I think the
action has been a doubtful good in these days. Lawyers are on the look-
out to trump up claims, which they prosecute on shares. I suspect that
the substitution of a regulated insurance is a great improvement so far
as it goes. With the government as it is here the trouble would be greater
even than it is with the railroads. Of course the abstract proposition of
justice is plain. On the general theme you must remember that I criti-
cized Austin and dwelt on the independent sources of actual authority,
before you were born, and that therefore it is no novelty to me. (The
approach of 85 makes me pose as an old man. Pray for me. )
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
The President is getting to be recognized as a man of wit. I have heard
several things of his saying that prove it. Long ago his remark that
diplomas were not wolves in sheeps clothing looked that way. Stone, a
good man, told me how he wished he had made a note of some of his
saying that he heard when Attorney General.
16 Warwick Gardens, 23.1.26
My dear Justice: My travels, at last, are over. I gave a lecture on "Free-
dom of Discussion" at the University of Wales last Tuesday and now I
can enjoy seven weeks' peaceful routine. The discussion on the lecture
was very amusing. Wales, as you perhaps know, is full of nonconformist
sects, each convinced that it has a private recipe for salvation. My cue
was to supply a kind of historic background for the dissent in the Abrams
case; all the secular people warmly sympathised; all the religious thought
it damnable and detestable that untrue doctrine should be permitted. I
met a variety of eccentricities, including a professor of mathematics who
has devoted forty years of enthusiasm to the discovery of the highest
possible prime number. I mentioned a retired major (an F.R.S.) in
London who has the same passion and was at once met with a stream of
vitriolic abuse which was delivered with amazing energy. I suppose ac-
cordingly that nothing leads to such really deep feelings as the pursuit
of the definitively useless. I also have been to see the memorial exhibition
of Sargent — an amazing show. It's quite clear when you see the things
en masse that his methods were French — Manet comes to my mind.
But I think there is a lot of trickery in them; the paint is so put on that
1 See, supra, p. 323.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 825
there is little or no inner coherence in them. I take it that a picture ought
to be a complete whole; it seems to me that his are rather a catalogue,
brilliant, insolent, but without emotion or inwardness and with little deli-
cacy of perception. I hope I do not insult one of your idols; broadly I
felt impressed but disappointed.
Also I have been reading Ambassador Page's letters.1 He produces on
me the same kind of impression that Lowell does, a competent man of
the world, not very profound, too often taking ignotum pro magnifico
for his standard of judgment, a little prone to believe idle gossip, a tiny
bit of a snob, and self-conscious of it, yet on the whole a thoroughly
good fellow who cared deeply about America without having any great
grasp of what it meant. . . . And I read the volume by Channing on the
Civil War, mainly with the sense that he had been over-indulgent to the
South. And I went to a brilliant lecture by a Frenchman, Pierre Hamp,2
who put the case for Pragmatism in exquisite French, and said some
clever things of which the thing I liked best was the remark that Idealism
represents the willingness of theology to insist that God is an abstraction
in case his personality is found out. He mentioned one or two living
people, especially one Meyerson, as of great importance and altogether
radiated such charm that it was a delight to listen to him. I have seen, too,
a collection of fifty unpublished letters of Descartes to Huygens3 on
Cartesianism which thrilled me. The great man straining to make a con-
vert of one almost as great is really rather an attractive spectacle. And,
even more interesting, I think, one of our students had discovered an
unpublished ms treatise of Bentham which is a sequel to the Fragment
on Government and dissects the rest of Blackstone in similar style.4 It
was a great chase, for parts of it were in one library, parts in a second,
parts in a third. They all had to be pieced together, and it was only by
careful insight that they could be arranged. If this had been a classical
writer of bastard Latin in the late silver age, I suppose there would have
been a great fuss about it; as it is, we had great difficulty in finding a
publisher willing to do a critical edition. It really is a remarkable book,
written before Bentham's style decided to anticipate the worst involutions
of Henry James. The young fellow who found it, by the way, is an
American from Columbia.
My love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H, J. L.
1 Burton J. Hendrick, The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page (3 vok, 1925).
2 Pierre Hamp, pseudonym of Pierre Bourillon (1876- ), chef by inherit-
ance and training who became a distinguished novelist and sociologist, author
of a series of works under the general title, La peine des hommes.
3 See Correspondence of Descartes and Constantyn Hut/gens, 1685-1647
(Roth, ed., 1926).
* Published as A Comment on the Commentaries (C. W. Everett, ed., 1928);
reviewed by Laski, 18 Manchester Guardian Weekly 453 (June 8, 1928).
826 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
16 Warwick Gardens, 611.26
My dear Justice: A fortnight of rather hard work. First of all two public
lectures, one of which, on Rousseau, I really enjoyed giving; and it led
to an amusing onslaught on me by a clergyman who felt strongly that
a man as bad in character as Rousseau could not possibly have written a
great book. The other was in a series we are giving at the School on Adam
Smith to celebrate the passage of 150 years since the Wealth of Nations
was published. I lectured on him as a great political thinker and had a
jolly time working out the contradiction between the theory he urges and
the range of exceptions he admits. It is really interesting to see in Smith
the meeting between typical a priori natural law and the historical method
he had learned from Montesquieu. They don't fuse completely, and the
result is a certain confusion. But the fairness of mind is remarkable, e.g.
the detachment from the War of Independence with the plea for federal
union and the possibility of a new Constantinople as the American capi-
tal of the British Empire. And re-reading Rae's Life of Smith I found it
impossible not to love both the old fellow and David Hume. They have an
equanimity of mind which is very enviable.
Of reading I have been mainly plunged into the matter of lectures. But
one or two things arising therefrom deserve mention. Have you ever read
P. M. Masson's Religion de Jean Jacques? — much the best book on
Rousseau, I think, ever written? Second, did you ever know the work of
the economist Cliffe Leslie? I came to him from his essay on Adam
Smith1 and found him full of good things, often, indeed, remarkable
things. And I read an admirable book of J. A. Hobson's called Free
Thought in the Social Sciences2 which would, I think, interest you
greatly. It is a study of the obstacles to disinterestedness in thinking con-
nected with human material and, in especial, its account of the use of
scientific method in political economy as the tool of preconceived desire
is, I think, beautifully done, especially as it becomes fatal both to Marshall
and to Marx. One other book I have thought well of, though in a lighter
way, is the Memoires of the French encyclopedist, Marmontel. He gives
one especially a quite remarkable picture of the early days before and
after the sitting of the States-General. It bears the impress of truth, es-
pecially his interview with the academician, Chamfort,3 whose ideas
explain much of the course taken by revolutions. And it amused me to
'The essay of Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie (1827-1882), "The Political
Economy of Adam Smith," is in his Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy
(1879). ^ y
•Reviewed by Laski, 14 Manchester Guardian Weekly 154 (Feb. 19, 1926).
"Sebastien Chamfort (1740-1794), French epigrammatist and man of
letters, enthusiastically espoused the cause of revolution, but could not
stomach the Reign of Terror and met his end by suicide.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 827
find there most of the theory of social psychology which Graham Wallas
et hoc genus omne set out in formidable tomes. Marmontel is, of course
not one of the big people, and he absurdly overrates his own importance;
and he quotes enthusiastic letters from Voltaire to him while in the Corre-
spondence of Voltaire you find the latter saying to Diderot "Ce M. fera
rien, il na pas le secret." And, finally, I have been struggling with Kuno
Fischer's History of German [sic] Philosophy4 which will, I expect, later
repay effort but at present is largely bewilderment and pain.
I must not omit the story I heard the other day of Bradley the meta-
physician. Brodrick, the head of Merton,5 was a notorious talker to whom
a two-hour monologue was a normal incident. One day he came into the
common room with a broken arm. "How did he do it?" Bradley was
asked. "Trying to hold his tongue" was the retort.
Of other things. A jolly lunch with the Swedish minister at which, inter
olios, Alfred Noyes, the poet, and Baldwin were present. The former, I
thought, a self-conscious fool. He acted the poet. "There are moments
when I feel uplifted . . . perhaps three of my things will live . . . one
is conscious of persons as colours. KTA"; but it was good to see the pro-
fessional aesthete in action. Baldwin as always was simple and interesting
— particularly so on Lloyd-George. "It would be easy," he said, "to deal
with him if he merely thought he was Napoleon, but he insists that he is
the Twelve Apostles." He thought Asquith easily the finest speaker he had
heard in the House, but Bonar Law much the most successful in holding
it. He said the House in his experience is always kind to error and always
ruthless to cleverness. He told us that on the average five hundred people
in a year ask directly for knighthoods and peerages, and he had one de-
lightful letter from a business gentleman beginning, "Appreciating as you
must do my services to the Empire." I like his simplicity enormously.
He doesn't set up to be a great man; and to a lady who made a remark
implying that he was he said "Madam, I know myself in my bath to be
as naked as most. . . /'
I am very grateful for your kindness to my young colleague Smellie; he
writes most happily of his visit to you. I have now booked my passage
and paid for it on the Berengaria on the 20th of March. I shall, I think,
go direct to Boston and spend ten days there; then on to Washington; and
a few days in New York before I sail again. I need not say that the mere
thought of talk once more gives me joy.
My love warmly to you both, Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
4 Kuno Fischer, History of Modern Philosophy (Gordy, tr., 1887).
* George Charles Brodrick (1831-1903); his career as lawyer, journalist, and
liberal politician was followed by more than twenty years as Warden of Mer-
ton College and amateur historian.
828 HOLMES TO LASKI [1926
Washington, D. C., February 7, 1926
My dear Laski: This is after having been shut up for a week with a cold —
the grasshopper is a burden — but luckily all my work is done, Following
your suggestion I telephoned the Congressional Library for Vauvenargues,
and, on my own motion, for Benjamin Constant's Adolphe. By and by
I received an English novel with a name (I forget it) dimly approximating
Vauvenargues and a note saying they would send The Constant Nymph
the next day! Later I got what I wanted. Yes, Vauvenargues has some
merit, but it was a misfortune to have his Maximes bound up in the same
volume with La Rochefoucauld. Once in a while he seems to be ahead of
his time and to hit the eternal, but in the main he is a gentle joy, not too
pungent for the sick room. French talk about virtue and envy, etc. etc.,
doesn't nourish me greatly. Adolphe interested me to reread — interested
me by the reflections it suggested as well as by its acute analysis. How
deeply concerned are the parties to the drama, and how little you care
about them. The woman, of no intellect, could not expect to keep the
man long, the man taking so seriously an absorption springing from the
lumbar region. But I grow too detached with age. Perhaps I am too
averse to any over-serious treatment of the personality as a definite indi-
visible unit, needing self-respect and striving for God's respect, instead
of a shifting nebula of uncertain outline and content varying with the
[aurora?]. I swear I believe many errors and much unhappiness are due
to the view generally taken, recommended by religion as a duty, felt by
good breeding as a foundation, which in my opinion is the true sin
against the Holy Ghost. But I am so much alone in my thinking that if
I grew very articulate they would shut me up.
I have spoken of the sickroom — I am doing very well and have
nothing to complain of, only am not much good for a few days. I am not
making the most of my time but dozing and dawdling, and trying to feel
irresponsible, A bientot. Jours, O. W. H.
16 Warwick Gardens, 1311.26
My dear Justice: Everything now is arranged. I have my passage booked,
a vise from your consul on my passport, and nothing to do except wait for
March 20. 1 assume that I shall not be detained at Ellis Island, as I have
never been divorced, am not an anarchist or a polygamist, and do not
believe in the violent overthrow of established governments. I need not
tell you how the prospect of talk with you both heartens me. It will be a
great adventure.
My chief news will, I think, please you. I have been given the chair
of political science in the university. That means 33% on my income, the
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 829
chief say in the teaching of the subject in the university as a whole, and
the consequent chance, about which I care much, to make the department
really important. I am very pleased about it, as there are all kinds of
plans in my head for which I can now seek fruition. And if I can get
someone like Eugene Meyer1 to give me a small fund for the purpose of
publication, I think I can get some good work into the hands of scholars.
The competitive field was rather interesting. (1) A young Balliol man,
conscious, I gather, of effortless superiority to the rest of mankind; (2) an
Australian who explained in his letter of application that he would, if
elected, make Plato "live again," an achievement in reincarnation which
he had seemingly practised for some years in Sydney; (3) an elderly K.C.
whose practice was beginning to dwindle and who built his claim on the
ground that he had published an analysis of Austin for students; (4) a
clergyman who had written a book to prove that the British empire was
God's Kingdom on earth and "would welcome an opportunity to expound
this vital thesis to a larger audience"; (5) an American whose name I
know not but who informed the Board of Advisers that he had published
sixteen text books and was now preparing his seventeenth. I was very
solemnly interviewed and the clergyman has written to me regretting my
election as it stands in the way of his doing God's work. I have written
apologising humbly and suggesting that a university is really far too
narrow a sphere for such a message. He thereupon replies that he is
glad to see that I appreciate his importance and indicates that he hopes to
occupy the chair at a later date. This I take to be a polite way of looking
forward to my early demise. But as I hear that he wrote recently to the
Archbishop of Canterbury suggesting his suitability for a vacant bishopric
on the ground "of attainments which united the learning of Hooker to
the persuasiveness of Jeremy Taylor," I presume that it is one of those
cases where consciousness of great powers is rendered the happier by the
sense of their frustration.
The week has gone quietly in work. In reading I have mainly been
busy with Clarendon whom I had not read since I was a schoolboy. I
found him stately but irritating; and the impression is like you would feel
if you found yourself naked amid an audience in full Court dress. Then
a good dose of the Spectator which I found wholly delightful especially
the attractive essay on the Bank of England. Also I read Trotsky's book
on the future of England,2 which I thought able in parts but also full of
elementary misunderstandings of the British Constitution and the habits of
our people. But what struck me more than all was to realise (perhaps you
had noticed it) that the whole Bolshevik psychology is simply Hobbes
redressed in Marxian costume. It's very interesting put in that way for
1 Supra, p 506.
8 Whither England? ( 1925 ).
830 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
it throws a flood of light on recesses otherwise dim and explains, above ail,
the terrorist element in their actions. What puzzles me in the book is the
naivete with which an obviously able man assumes that ipso facto his
violence is right and your violence wrong. His diagnosis of some of our
statesmen has real insight; but, equally, some of it (to me) is absurdly
wrong. Did I mention to you last week J. A. Hobson's Free Thought in
the Social Sciences? I enjoyed that greatly; and I was impressed but not
convinced, by a clever German book by one Hans Kelsen of Vienna,
Allgemeine Staatslehre which puts the Hegelian case with, I think, great
ability, even though its ability does not seem to me less disastrous. And,
lastly, a good swig of de Quincey. Apart from the famous things, did you
ever read his essays on political economy? Without being especially
original, they are amazingly able statements of the classic Ricardian doc-
trine; so much that I have asked the Oxford Press to reprint them cheaply
for my students.
I had a good bookhunt last week and found some pleasant trifles circa
1640. But what pleased me much was to find a superb graving of Voltaire
by Moreau le Jeune for a couple of pounds. It is done from a wax-
statuette and brings out almost diabolically the verve and diablerie of his
features. It is in pretty good condition, though you, as a connoisseur in
these matters, would complain of the cropped margins. And one other
thing I bought which, child-like, pleased me, namely a copy of Black-
stone given by him to Mansfield for which I paid ten shillings. I was
amused by the fact that the set does not show signs of much usage. Two
or three pages in each chapter have not been cut. Eut, apres tout, Mans-
field had no need to read Blackstone.
I must not forget to tell you of the death of a fellow of Trinity Cam-
bridge aged 97. His funeral was attended by a brother of 99. The latter
was much distressed and said he had always told his junior that theologi-
cal research was not compatible with longevity. "God," he solemnly told
Rutherford, "does not mean us to pry into these matters." After the funeral
the old man went back to Trinity and solemnly drank his half -bottle of
port. He was asked his prescription for health and said with great fervour
"Never deny yourself anything." He explained that he had never married
as he had found fidelity restrictive as a young man. "I was once engaged,
when I was forty," he said, "and I found it gave me very serious constipa-
tion. So I broke off the engagement, and the lady quite understood." He
was very anxious not to be thought past the age of flirtation. The vicar,
he said, found his presence very helpful at evening parties. I thought he
was sheer delight for it was all so absolutely unconscious, but, to my
amusement, two deans were shocked beyond words. I took the old man
back to London and put him on his way to the Midlands and have rarely
had a better journey. Twice he refreshed himself lustily from a flask of
1926] HOLMES TO LASK1 831
claret and once insisted on my sharing it with him. He told me he still
had his pint of champagne for lunch but that it did not mean to him what
it used to do.
Our love to you both, and every good wish,
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., February 21, 1926
My dear Laski: This ought to be the last or the last but one from me
before your welcome coming. I hope, I repeat, that you have made sure
that there will be no obstacle to your entry here. I am ignorant as a child
about it, beyond a vague notion that one is liable to be surprised. I don't
know either of the books you mention1 (Religion de Jean Jacques and
Cliff e Leslie), and I vainly tried, though wobbly in my memory, for those
volumes on the history of politics and the influence of the Reformation.
It didn't matter much, for after getting away from the flabbiness of a cold
I walked into the dentist's trap and am no free man. I have, however,
touched off two little dissents so far as to get them in proofs — one con-
curring in a few words with a colossal piece of work by Brandeis,2 and
the other on my own, concurred in by him, for not [sic] applying the XIV
Amendment to a state case that is before us.3 Also I have read one or two
books, the most notable Symonds's translation of Benvenuto Cellini, not
read since boyhood when Roscoe's version was all we had. I could not
but chuckle to think that I saw under Symonds's would be cosmopolitan-
ism the inner domination of the "We don't do that in England," which
is so apt to be the Briton's last word. I dare say the same local standards
prevail elsewhere but I am more conscious of it with the English, although
even Montesquieu taught one to associate Little Pedlington with the
Boulevards.
I recur to your letter to say that I read something of Hobson's years ago
but was not impressed, but what you say interests me. . . . Yesterday
p.m. I went to my shelves and took down two volumes nearly at random.
One was a life and sermons of Whitefield, interesting mainly because he
is buried at Newburyport. I think you prostrated to his coffin when we
went over there one day. I didn't read much but was reminded of Sainte-
Beuve and Pascal by his discourse on election and reprobation and of
what is said of Edwards by his satisfaction in believing that most of us
1 Supra, p. 826.
• Not identified.
8 Probably in Schlesinger v. Wisconsin, 270 U.S. 230, 241 (March 1, 1926).
The majority of the Court condemned a state statute, under the Fourteenth
Amendment, which created an absolute presumption that gifts inter vivos made
within six years of death were made in contemplation of death. Mr. Justice
Stone joined with Brandeis, J., in concurrence in Holmes's dissent.
832 HOLMES TO LASKT [1926
are eternally damned. I found bis language rather surprisingly modern
and direct. Soon I put him down and turned to the other, which was
Volume 1 of an old 4 volume edition of Horace Walpole's letters which
began with his remembrances of the Courts of George the First and
Second, I find that so delightful for an irresponsible moment that I think
I shall keep on. Hang it, one can't be seeking improvement all the time.
Mostly I avoid books that don't help to strengthen the foundations or at
least add a flying buttress, but if I ever am to be allowed any levity it is
time for it now. Yet it doesn't come natural to say, My time for expecting
to contribute anything is over — serious amusement is all that is left. I
dunno — one goes up and down. I think that I will go forth and walk an
inch and a half. I did so yesterday for the first time for a fortnight. If one
has rather a nervous doubt it is astonishing how it gets on your nerves —
as if it made any difference if he knocked all my remaining talk down my
throat. However, one must accept one's irrational interest in oneself as a
way in which the cosmos keeps up the circulation in its extremities or
secures local [illegible]. So fare you well for a time. I am a little anxious
about your dates. From March 22 to April 12 we are adjourned, then we
sit till May 10. I hope for the best. Affly yours, O. W. H.
16 Warwick Gardens, 21.11.26
My dear Justice: A delight of a letter from you (29.1.26) warmed my
innards. I don't think myself that there is much essential difference be-
tween us on sovereignty except differences of emphasis. I agree (I) that
the Courts must enforce law and take law to be a command of the U.S.
or a similar authority competent to act; (II) that it is not possible to go
behind that ultimate source of reference at present. I think myself that
any state, the U.S. or other, should be responsible for the tortious acts
of its agents, and I should ultimately like to see large functions e.g. immi-
gration, tariffs, colonial control, in the hands of an international and not
a state authority. And, internally, I should want to do all I can to
make the de jure limits of the state coincide with the de -facto limits.
Indeed, I suggest that if you will, wherever the word "state" is used
substitute the word "government" and think of actual persons issuing
orders that movement to concreteness makes the notion of a limit laid
down by law quite intelligible e.g. I don't want the King in Parliament
to be able easily to suspend Habeas Corpus; I want it to pay if its agents
in the Admiralty invade a patent granted by the Board of Trade; I don't
want a man of war to be able to evade paying damages if its captain has
handled it carelessly, and so on. I gather that you would not vehemently
dissent from all this even if you doubted its wisdom.
It has been a pleasant week. First a happy dinner at Haldane's —
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 833
among others there Rosebeiy. He is like a professional fog and believes,
a la Mantalini, that the world has gone to the demnition bow-wows. The
only thing that pleased him was when I said that he spoke like an earnest
Catholic bewailing the Reformation, for it enabled him to add that he was
more like an earnest Catholic who did not really believe his own dogmas.
Dilke's niece was there and while the women were in explained at length
the injustice of fate in depriving her uncle of being a certain Prime Minis-
ter. When they left, Haldane, Rosebery, and Gosse set to work and
stripped Dilke naked of every quality moral and intellectual. I said to
Haldane that they had left him only his money; no, said Rosebery, we
leave him his whining hypocrisy. Also a pleasant dinner for Salvemini the
Italian exile.1 He made, I thought, one good remark to the effect that in
Caesar's time he would have been invited a la Cicero to commit suicide;
now he waited for some one else to kill the tyrant. He gave us incredible
details of Mussolini, but I think truthfully. He is a first-rate historian with
a real sense of evidence and I do not think would consciously lie. Also
he gave us some wonderful glimpses of D'Annunzio in one of his purple
moods. You must, please, remind me to tell you the story of D'Annunzio
and the railway clerk. It is too long to write, but too perfect not to be
told.
In the way of reading I recommend strongly two things. The first is
Mrs. Webb's My Apprenticeship — a wonderful account of English
opinion in the years 1860-90. You will like especially the illuminating
glimpses of Herbert Spencer of whom she paints one of the most interest-
ing and sympathetic portraits I have read. The other is Winfield — The
Sources of English Law,2 a Harvard book which I thought both able and
attractive. Birrell, who usually abhors law books, was enthusiastic about
this; and he also put me on to a new American Life of Godwin by one
Ford Brown3 which I found so fascinating that I read it until two this
morning in bed. I can't decide whether Godwin was in money matters an
illimitable muddler or whether he was really a conscious blackguard. Cer-
tainly he was without exception the most self-righteous person not in
orders I have ever met; but it may be that his early training as a dissenting
minister was responsible for that. There are divine glimpses in the book
of Shelley and Charles Lamb — the latter, as always, the most charming
of human beings. I have also read a good life of Wordsworth who seems
to me a loathesome creature. Birrell said he would give up all poetry
after Shelley for the "Prelude" which appalls me, for though there are
passages to which I respond I find intolerable longueurs. Are you a
1 Gaetano Salvemini (1873- ); distinguished historian and anti-Fascist, who
left Italy in 1925, and from 1930 to 1948 was lecturer on history at Harvard.
2 Reviewed by Laski, 6 Economica 237 (June 1926).
8 Reviewed by Laski, 3 Saturday Review of Literature 191 (Oct. 16, 1926).
834 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
Wordsworthian to the hilt? He always seems to me in temperament what
Harriet Martineau would have been if the latter had been dowed with
poetic talent. Also I had a shot at some Proust, but I was bored to tears.
It was like living in a hot house in which the residents compare notes on
their paleness and measure their birth in terms of the delicacy of their
skins. I do not believe that the analysis, however consummate in power of
handling detail, of people who have no real human value or significance
can possibly be as important as is made out. I believe in fact that great
subject-matter as well as great formal skill is necessary to great art. If
Rembrandt paints a peasant woman the history of the ages of land tenure
is there; it is the power to universalise an idea in miniature that gives it
significance. But you read Proust and watch a lot of silly marionnettes
doing silly things in great detail and solemnity and there is no significance
of moral or intellectual value in what they do. Nitchevo! as the Russians
say, and I go back to Dickens or George Eliot with a sense that they really
knew how to amuse or to illuminate and that one or the other is the
story-teller's job.
I imagine that this letter ought to reach you round about your birthday.
You know with what eager affection I send you good wishes. Now the
calendar must be set for 90. It is great to have you alive. But please take
care; for I expect to absorb your energies for a relentless week of talk.
Our love to you both, Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., March 4, 1926
My dear Laski: (I always remember that damned My just too late. I am
told that to omit it is like omitting the personal pronoun, as when one
says "Have been very busy" etc. I don't believe it, but am bullied by the
suggestion.) This is just a word to say how I am looking forward to
seeing you and hoping this will catch you before you start. I have been
mad with work, and distributed another little 14th Amendment dissent
in which I shall have Brandeis and I think Stone, this morning1 — an
opinion distributed Tuesday on patents that I hope I shall be allowed to
announce on my birthday next Monday.2 You warm my heart with your
good wishes. No, I am not a Wordsworthian to the hilt, but I do think
that whereas Mill spoke of him as the kind of poet that a man might
learn to be, he had by flashes the power to utter the unutterable quite as
1 Weaver v. Palmer Brothers, 270 U.S. 402, 415 (March 8, 1926). Brandeis
and Stone, JJ., concurred in Holmes's dissent urging that Pennsylvania could
constitutionally forbid the use of sterilized shoddy in the manufacture of
bedding.
2 Alexander Milburn Co. v. Davis-Bournonville Co., 270 U.S. 390 (March 8,
1926).
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 835
much as Shelley. He stumps along by your side, a bore in a brown coat,
and suddenly he goes up and you find that your companion was an angel.
Proust gave rne pleasure that I should find it hard to analyze, but he
brought back the feelings of youth and the romance that gilds it. Your
general remarks I agree with, but Rembrandt could make not merely a
peasant woman but a beef carcass sublime. I agree, however, in substance.
You must see the infinite, i.e. the universal in your particular or it is
only gossip. Did I ever remark to you that philosophy after its flights ends
in a return to gossip? It goes ahead and formulates as far as it can the laws
of the cosmos, but it ends in the purely empirical fact that the cosmos
is thus and not otherwise — an unrelated, unexplained datum, which is
gossip and nothing else. I believe I saw the statuette of Voltaire of which
you speak at an 18th century exhibition in London once. It had just the
diablerie of which you speak and made a deep impression on me.
Your old man seems a companion to an old woman I heard of who was
asked what she had done to live so long and said, "Oh, I lived human."
A bientdt. Aff'ly yours, O. W. H.
192 Brattle Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 29111.26
My dear Justice: I have been here since Saturday, and the days with
Felix and Marion are, literally and figuratively, bathed in sunshine. Haec
olim meminisse juuabit.
I propose next Saturday night to travel to Washington. So, if I may, I
will come in to lunch on Sunday. Will you send me a line to say that is
convenient? Ever affectionately yours, Harold J. Laski
Washington, D. C., March SO, 1926
My dear Laski: It is rejoiceable that you are here — I did not realize it
until your letter came just now — I certainly shall expect you at luncheon
next Sunday 1:30 o'clock, 1720 I Street.
A bientdt. Affly yours, 0. W. Holmes
On Board the Cunard R.M.S. "Berengaria"
April 23, 1926*
My dear Justice: I literally have no words to tell you what those days in
Washington meant to me. I did not need to revise beliefs, or renew
allegiance; those had been made in aeternum. But I found that all I had
treasured as a great memory had the old beauty and more. I put it in
1 A brief note from Holmes, dated April 5, 1926, is omitted.
836 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
the treasure house of remembrance as among the great things I have
experienced. To you both my old homage and affection made deeper and
more intense by new richness.
America has been a great adventure. To find Felix not less electric
than ever, and to take up talk with him as though it ceased but yesterday
was superb. And I am so much in agreement with many of the results of
Brandeis's thinking that I had from him (apart from the fresh sense of
his compelling charm) the satisfaction of guessing that my own diagnosis
was not entirely wrong. New York was especially kind to me. Mack, J.
especially helped me to meet Cardozo and Hough:2 the former a nature
as exquisite as his mind is perceptive, the latter a fine, masculine mind
with something of the nature of Bluff King Hal at its base. I saw your
ex-secretary Benjamin,3 and his charming young wife. Morris Cohen I
had a great evening with. He has mellowed greatly, and I was particularly
glad to find that he and I (like you, I believe, too) had not dissimilar
views on Pound. I met also a young physiologist from the Rockefeller
Institute, Alfred Cohn,4 whom you must sometime meet. He has, I be-
lieve, a big reputation; but even more important, he has a wonderfully
tempered mind. And the New Republic gave me a dinner at which the
talk was quite thrilling; I learned much of an America too often hidden
from the sojourner of so brief a moment as mine. I felt, again, too that
with many limitations and a certain heaviness of method, Croly is really
a big fellow, patient, curious, sincere and penetrating. So long as there
are people of his quality around, your future as a nation is not without its
guarantees.
But this is not a letter so much as a salute. I need not tell you both
how warm is my affection and how eagerly it greets you. I shall resume
writing so soon as I am straight at home.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., May 13, 1926
My dear Laski: Your letter from shipboard moved me in my marrow, but
I have delayed in writing from day to day owing to the uncertainty and
anxiety I have felt and feel as to your public affairs.1 I suppose you are
in the thick of it — I have much confidence in the business sense of the
nation but one can't talk freely while things seem to hang in the balance.
2 Supra, p. 601.
3 Supra, p. 457.
4 Alfred Einstein Cohn (1879- ), distinguished and creative research
physician; author of Medicine, Science and Art (1931), No Retreat from Rea-
son (1948).
1 See, infra, p. 838, note 2.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 837
I shall say but a word or two therefore. (1) I also met Cardozo the
other day and thought his face beautiful with intellect and character, I
had only a limited chance to talk during the short time he was here —
with others.
(2) I read with surprised satisfaction Murray's History of Political
Science, etc. His slight whiff of the parson or the Hegelian at moments
did not prevent my finding it most interesting and compactly instructive.
(3) I am reading out of regard to my friend Wu, Stammler's Theory
of Justice. I have read 228 pages and though he seems a noble-minded
moralist, I confess so far it has been simply marking time, and with
tedious iteration impressing upon the reader the difference between an
abstract scheme regarded as applicable to all possible controls of the law,
and the empirical contents. As I don't believe the postulate — and think
morality a sort of higher politeness, that stands between us and the ulti-
mate fact — force — I am not much edified. Nor do I see how a believer
in any kind of evolution can get a higher formula than organic fitness at
the given moment.
(4) Your impression of Croly is like my own, but he can't write — and
he tends to give a pedagogic tone to his discourse that makes me shrink
from it,
I tremble as I send this off — but affectionate thoughts and hopes go
with it. Yours ever, O. W. H.
16 Warwick Gardens, 2.V.26
My dear Justice: Let us resume operations. I arrived home on Wednesday
after a wonderful voyage, made still more pleasant by reading (a)
Bowers's Jefferson and Hamilton which I really enjoyed and (b) Sand-
burg's Lincoln, the first book I have read on him which makes you feel
the bigness of the man even in those early years; and it is, besides, a
really absorbing picture of life in the Middle West when it was still a
frontier province. I hope you will take it to Beverly Farms for the summer,
as I am sure you will get the same pleasure I did from it. I amend this, to
avoid metaphysical objections, to the "same sort of."
I had a most interesting visit in New York before I sailed. A dinner
with Cardozo whom I found quite enchanting; it is not often that a mind
so attractive goes with a character so sweet as his. I met, too, Hough
whom I liked as one likes the bluff sea-captain type. He has, I should
judge, a strong rather than a profound mind without much delicacy of
perception but with an immense grip of what he has seen. I saw, also,
Learned Hand, who is as attractive as ever. The sceptic in the judge is a
great combination. But of all those in New York I was won, or re won, most
by Morris Cohen. Not only the width of mind, and the ability to play with
838 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
ideas, but a poise and a new equanimity which made him a really arrest-
ing figure. I found (it made him even more attractive) that we were
largely in agreement on essentials. We both thought Pound had reached
the stage of repetition. We both thought idealism was done. We both had
the same doubts of America. The New Republic people were very good
to me, and I was again impressed by Croly s honesty and simplicity of
character. And New York was given added delight by continual recontres
[sic] with old pupils in the Harvard Club who surprised and touched me
with the warmth of their greeting.
Well, I am glad to be back; but I have rarely spent so interesting and
profitable a time as those weeks with you all. It was not merely the joy
of finding that the impalpables do not rust with time; nor even the acute
pleasure that the feeling-out of other minds gives one (after all the
greatest of pleasures). It was the experience of being plunged suddenly
into a totally different civilisation with different assumptions at its base.
If I wasn't entirely convinced, I was throughout fascinated; and the spec-
tacle, all in all, is impressive. I am going to try and put some thoughts
about it into the New Republic,1 so, on the assumption that you will read
them there, I shall not bother you with them twice over. For your private
ear, I want to add that the days with you and Felix had a quality that one
encounters only two or three times in life. I shall not forget them.
I came back to find Frida and Diana both very fit; but we tremble on
the verge of terrible events here and I do not know what will happen.2
I have a deep sense within me that before the general strike begins on
Tuesday, Baldwin will somehow have found means of accomodation [sic],
1 No such article was published.
2 Since mid-April the crisis in negotiations between the miners, the employers,
and the government had developed with mounting intensity. Since April 30
there had been a total stoppage in the production of coal and on May 1 the
Trade Union Congress announced that a general strike would begin on Ma)' 3.
Mr. Baldwin, and even more vigorously, Mr. Churchill, Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, treated the action of the Trade Union Congress as a lawless, revolu-
tionary effort to upset the constitutional system. The Government, when the
general strike took effect, stood by the proposition that it would not participate
in negotiations concerning the shutdown of the mines while the general strike
continued. On May 12 the general strike came formally to an end on the
understanding that negotiations with respect to the coal dispute would be
reopened forthwith. Those negotiations, however, fruitlessly dragged on, the
miners stanchly refusing to accede to the employers' demand, supported by the
Government, that wage reductions and longer hours were essential. The coal
stoppage continued throughout the summer, and it was not until November
that the miners finally returned to work, on terms far less favorable than those
which had been offered to them in April. Laski wrote of the coal strike in
122 Nation 578 (May 26, 1926) and of the general strike, id. 663 (June 16,
1926). See also 56 Survey 416 (July 1, 1926).
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 839
for, as I wrote to him last night, the breakdown seems to me rather the
misunderstanding of tired men than any ultimate difference. I hope so;
for a general strike, if at all prolonged, would loose forces of a kind that
make for changes too vast to come rightly or wisely without deliberate
plan.
The routine has begun, and I do not find it irksome even after those
days of unrestraint. It is a little sad from the fact that one of the dearest
of my colleagues died suddenly after an operation and a great teaching
influence has gone. But one learns, I think, as one grows older that the
vital thing is less to repine than to close the ranks. Inani perfungor munere
is better accomplished by closer attention to one's job than in the weaving
of wreaths.
I did not, I think, tell you that I had some book adventures in New York.
I did not find the one thing I wanted for myself — a cheap set of the
U.S. Supreme Court Reports. But I found the rarest work of the old
Mirabeau — the Legons [sic] economiques;3 and, also the Laboulaye
edition of Montesquieu for ten dollars, it being usually both rare and
costly. This was the more attractive in that it was well-bound and, also,
had the correspondence bound uniformly with it. And I bought the works
of Fisher Ames on the advice of Rosensohn and found him an able and
interesting fellow. Somme tout, 1 brought back some fifty volumes and
one, Faxon's History of the American Frontier, I look forward to for new
insight into America,
Now I must end and go on with the vast task of arrears of correspond-
ence. My love and homage to you both.
Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
16 Warwick Gardens, 23.V.26
My dear Justice: A grand letter from you yesterday was like a fragrant
scent in a dismal world. You can imagine that it has been a time of
immense strain, made, I think, the worse by the fact that it was all per-
fectly unnecessary. . . . You will not, I am sure, have been deluded by
all the talk of revolution and challenge to the government. From first to
last it was a purely industrial dispute carried out with amazing good
temper and orderliness by millions of men who could not without shame
see the miners' wages reduced to between ten and twelve dollars a week.
I speak whereof I know; for I carried out the earlier private negotiations
with the government on behalf of the unions, and the ultimate settlement
was upon a draft I had written. This, of course, is strictly between our-
selves; I have not even written it to Felix. And you will not need me to
8 Presumably the Marquis de Mirabeau's Lettres tconomiques (1770).
840 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
say that, on this issue, had the question of a challenge to constitutional
government been in question, I should not have tried to help the trade
unions. My own feelings were put admirably by Keynes in the New Repub-
lic of May 19th.1 It was a piece of bungling, due to hotheads in the
cabinet who wanted to "teach labour a lesson." I come out of it with
intense respect for the qualities of the working-man. And of those in high
place with whom it was my business to deal, Baldwin and Birkenhead won
new esteem from me. The first isn't able, but he really has character and
an absence of vindictiveness, though he lacks strength of will. Birkenhead
was amazing. Once you broke down his oratorical habits, he was resource-
ful, quick, full of intelligence, and with a great flair as a draftsman. . . .
Well, it was a fortnight's grim labour, which ought, at least, to enable me
to write a much better book on communism than I could have done before.
It also convinces me that there really isn't much to be said for "muddling
through." You may win your end, but you pay a heavy price. The miners
are still out, and unless there is a return to my basis, they will stay out.
. Now we are trying to get the parties together on the old basis. But
the miners having seen the basis thrown over once the general strike was
called off were naturally suspicious, and it will, I fear, be a long job. The
suffering in the mining districts is intense and I cannot find words to tell
you what I feel about their powers of endurance. They have five and ten
shillings a week strike pay, and they just set their teeth and bear it. In an
ultimate sense, they are unbeatable people; for, as I told the Prime Min-
ister yesterday, even if they lose this fight, they will strike again as soon
as the tide of trade turns. They are Cromwell's Ironsides, and they do not
know what it is to be beaten.
As you can imagine, I have done no reading during these days; only
since Wednesday, indeed, has life been normal again. We had a good
two days in the country with the Webbs, after the strike was over; and
last night Mcllwain came in and we had a grand book talk, in which I had
that endless satisfaction which comes from seeing a man with a fine
library envy you your own treasures. I have paged Graham Wallas's new
book, The Art of Thought, but it seemed to me elegant trifling; and this
a.m. in bed I read Hirst's Thomas Jefferson, with the feeling that he did
not know much about his subject. But I can't really gossip until next week,
when I shall be back in midstream. This is really only an interim word
of affection to tell you both that the old landmarks stand.
Our united love, Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
1 Keynes, "The End of Peace by Negotiation," 46 New Republic 395 (May
19, 1926).
1926] HOLMES TO LASKI 841
Washington, D. C., -May 15, 1926
My dear Laski: This is a postscript to my rmnuscript of the other day, and
is written to acknowledge your first letter from home — as you say, on the
verge of terrible events. My anxiety still makes it hard to write. The
papers speak as if a settlement were coming, but I feel no security until
the fact is accomplished. That Baldwin is on one side and MacDonald on
the other seems to promise a rational result. I think I have told you
before of going, 60 years ago, with Mill to a dinner of the Political
Economy Club and finding the subject for the evening discussion to be
whether the financial policy of England should be shaped to meet the pre-
dicted exhaustion of the coal in 90 years.
My ennui with Stammler continues, although some of his laborious
applications of the Golden Rule have a little novelty in form. Lord, Lord,
I wonder if you would get nourishment from him. I believe men have
prolonged life by boiling their brogans.
I am a wreck this evening, though somewhat restored by slumber, from
having got up half an hour or more earlier than usual, hurried through
dressing, and going and sitting in the sun on the steps of the capitol to
see the Hopi Indians do their dances, winding up with the snake dance,
though it was said they were not allowed to bring the full-fanged rattle-
snakes that they played with at home, and had harmless serpents squirm-
ing about on the stage, around their necks and in their mouths. Again I
say to myself, the joy of life is the neglect of opportunities. However, this
one is over and I am tolorably serene now.
Do you know Miss Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant? She writes intimating
a call by and by. We had a clever chat once and I think she will be
better than Stammler. I have read some good pieces of hers, using superla-
tives about people I did not know. I slightly suspect her of hyperaesthesia
(not speaking pathologically), and yet she was very rational about Amy
Lowell who was a friend of hers. Here the mere fact that a person is at
ease with the more delicate allusions and assumptions of intellectual or
literary interest distinguishes him. It may not go very deep. Many years
ago Haldane said that the clever young ladies who seemed so on the hair
trigger got their knowledge from reviews, not from the books. But I
always have remembered what one of them said to me: "You Americans
wait for us to finish our sentences/*
The evening paper is calming. It seems to indicate that the worst is
over. Also it says that the chap that started to fly over the pole in a
dirigible has landed in safety after a silence that made one fear that
he was lost.1
Amundsen (1872-1928) on May 11 had started from Spitsbergen on
his dirigible flight over the Pole, He landed on the 14th at Teller on the Bering
Sea.
842 HOLMES TO LASKI
My wife has read a very engaging book to me, Pupin, From Immigrant
to Inventor. He is a Serb now at Columbia and Stone promises to bring
him in some day. He speaks with a reverence for the saints of science that
gives joy to my heart. m
My love to you and yours — and may this Bnd you all in peace.
y Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
Washington, D. C., June 4, 1926
My dear Laski: An absorbingly interesting letter from you gives me the
only light I have on the recent great affairs except an article by Keynes,
no doubt the one you refer to. I received a letter from one of a different
mode of thought speaking contemptuously of MacDonald, but I don't
know why. I have no comments except my already expressed general
impression that England as a whole appeared to great advantage. I have
nothing to tell. I am in the details of approaching departure — on Monday
we adjourn. There were 29 certioraris to be examined this week, of course
many opinions coming in at the last minute — one dissent by me, con-
curred in only by Brandeis, though I think it pretty plain.1 One dissent
from me by MacReynolds [sic], solus, concluding that the argument sus-
tained by him "cannot be vaporized by gestures of impatience^ and a
choleric 'obviously' " 2 which makes me smile, the more that I don't think
it hits or is aimed at anything in my opinion but rather at my attitude
at the last conference — which I am afraid was not as respectful as it
should have been. Poor MacReynolds is, I think, a man of feeling and of
more secret kindliness than he would get the credit for. But as is so com-
mon with Southerners, his own personality governs him without much
thought of others when an impulse comes, and I think without sufficient
regard for the proprieties of the Court. I don't mind the above a bit so far
as I arn concerned, but I think it improper in an opinion. Formerly,
according to my recollection, he was really insolent to Brandeis, although
now there is at least a modus viuendi. When I was in the hospital he
wrote a charming letter to me, which I shall not soon forget. I have had
also business matters to attend to — tax return, probate return, etc.,
but thanks to my secretary they are polished off. If left to myself I get
1 Frost and Frost Trucking Co. v. Railroad Commission, 271 U.S. 583, 600
(June 7, 1926).
* Morse Dry dock and Repair Co, v. Steamship Northern Star, 271 U.S. 552
(June 7, 1926), The dissent of McReynolds, J., as published concluded with
the assertion that he agreed with the trial judge and ventured "to think that
the argument in support of his conclusion cannot be vaporized by mere nega-
tion." Id. at 557.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 843
balled up by some detail every time. I have read nothing. I had a call
the other p.m. from Miss Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant. At parting she
renewed the statement that she made on a previous occasion some months
or more ago that she wanted to write about me. What a dame not learned
in the law can find to say I don't know. I said that so long as I took no
part in it people were to write or not as they liked. . . .
The dentist has let me loose with his blessing — and in short the waters
are accumulating in the dam for a bust toward Boston next Wednesday
evening. I expect that my next to you will be from Beverly Farms.
Af'ly yours, 0. W. H.
16 Warwick Gardens, SO.V.26
My dear Justice: A delight of a letter from you is a landmark in these
grim days. The miners are still out, and industry, as a result, is inflicted
with a kind of creeping paralysis. We have won a remarkable bye-election
in London, in which a government majority of two thousand was trans-
formed into a labour majority of four thousand. It has given the govern-
ment a fright, and we cherish a hope that it will persuade Baldwin to
act, instead of standing idly by, doing nothing. It is all very well for him
to protest that he loves the good and the beautiful, but that doesn't
butter any parsnips. I gather that the nigger in the woodpile is the good
Winston, who is never happy unless there is a fight. The other big event
of the week is the new quarrel between Asquith and Lloyd-George.1 I
never thought I should live to sympathise with the latter, but here I
think that Asquith has made a profound mistake by trying to set up
standards of party orthodoxy to which no man can possibly be asked to
conform. I don't know if you saw the correspondence? I don't suppose
that since the Russell-Palmerston row over Louis Napoleon, one distin-
guished statesman has ever so written to another. It doesn't seem possible
that they should ever collaborate again; and it means, I should imagine,
the definite disappearance of liberalism as a force in party affairs. It is a
tragic ending for Asquith's career, but he has proved so utterly incapable
of adjusting himself to the demands of a new age that the collapse was
inevitable. Yet I am enough of a traditionalist to see with regret the end
of power which goes back directly to 1832 and the great epoch of reform,
1 On May 20, Lord Oxford, supported by other leaders of the Liberal Party,
had written a letter to Lloyd George severely reprimanding him for his de-
fection from Party policy in the matter of the general strike. The letter led
to an acrimonious dispute between the principals and their supporters and
finally in mid-June the controversy sputtered out with Lloyd George the clear
844 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
and, indirectly to the Revolution of 1688. The funerals of historical entities
are melancholy events.
Frida and I used to know well the Miss Sergeant whom you have been
seeing, and to like her well She had one or two aspects, e.g., admiration
for Mexican Indians, which I thought a little ennuyant, but in general a
woman of real taste and insight, without a trace of humbug, like that
intolerable Gertrude King who struck philosophic attitudes for the ap-
plause of a group of young lawyers all of whom were totally ignorant of
philosophy. I cannot stand a certain pretentious Anglo-American type of
woman who has all the latest "culture" on her lips, and is steeped in the
latest slang of the market-place. The other day I was at tea with Birrell,
and he had a visitor from Chicago who put him (and me) through a
catechism about our "reactions" to this and that fashionable figure in
letters. At last I told her frankly that I was a purely passive recipient of
sensations who never dared to examine their meaning; and that the last
biography I had read was Boswell. She looked at me in pure amazement
and said that I must be very "out of things" at parties. I said that I very
rarely went to parties. "Good heavens," she exclaimed, "what do you do
with your time?"
I have seen few people since last week as Whitsun has sent them away.
But Mcllwain of Harvard has been here a good deal, and yesterday we
devoted the day to a splendid book-hunt together. We bought a few
choice items, of which my main prize was the Anti-Mariana of Roussel
(1610) as rare a thing as there is in political literature and cheap beyond
words at fifteen shillings. We saw things that make one weep with envy
for the ampler purse. But we agreed that if one can buy illimitably half
the joy of battle has gone. Mcllwain is a great fellow, with extraordinary
knowledge, and a great fund of original ideas. He has a certain dourness
of temperament, which may be the result of generations of Calvinism;
but I know no historian in my line since Maitland who is so suggestive.
The Harvard people ought to be very proud of him.
1 hope that my articles in the Michigan and Harvard Law Reviews2
will have come safely to you. I think you will agree with them in general,
for they are really humble exercises in discipleship. Certainly the Har-
vard one is no more than the application to English conditions of Noble
State Bank v. Haskell. Haldane, to my great surprise, is very hostile to
the one on the judges. He denies (1) the possibility of good choice by
judges and (2) that political influence really makes much difference. 1
am not in the least convinced, for I can see in recent years here definite
signs e.g. in Sumner of a definite interaction between his decisions in the
Lords and the speeches he (very wrongly) makes there in eager defence
2 See, supra, p. 808.
1926] HOLMES TO LASKI 845
of Toryism. It is as though you were to speak in strong defence of Cool-
idge in the Senate and then to expect that cases to which the government
was a party would come to you quite colourlessly. I wish that people
could be persuaded to realise that judges are human beings; it would be
a real help to jurisprudence.
Of reading, a good deal in a quiet way. First the translation of Stamm-
ler, which I do not find very impressive. He seems to me to be platitudi-
nous and in the air, and to lack precision both of statement and ideas. I
doubt, indeed, whether one can get a satisfactory theory of law deduc-
tively from a set notion of justice. Analyse what judges do, explain why
you don't like it, and make a skilful argument to show that your personal
preferences had better be mine. But to dress it all up in categorical im-
peratives and universality is, I think, to give very big names to very small
beer. Then I read with extreme pleasure Declareuil's Histoire de droit
frangais au 1789 — an admirable book, the best on its subject I know. It
is learned, acute and revealing, with not a little of Maitland's power of
happy phrase. I think you would find it a good book for Beverly Farms.
I tried to read Haldane's new book Human Experience but found my-
self lost in Hegelian quicksands. It may be good, but I don't eat with
pleasure that kind of apple and don't see why I should.
Our love to you both. I think I shall risk sending my next letter to
Beverly Farms. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Beverly Farms, June 17, 1926
My dear Laski: Your delightful letter met me here, forwarded from
Washington. We stopped at the Touraine from last Thursday until Mon-
day p.m. and then motored down with the faithful Beverly man — cold,
and the furnace in pieces, but electricity and wood fires kept us going
until the furnace was up and started. I was really impressed in Boston by
two things — the South Boston Marine Pond and Aquarium and some of
the harbor structures, and the Franklin Park Zoo. There was a sort of
bigness of conception that reminded me of what Borglum1 the sculptor
recently said to us of a new class of young engineers with conceptions
worthy of the country. Also I brought down from the Athenaeum a book
by Carver, professor of political economy at Harvard, The Present Eco-
nomic Revolution in the United States, which cheers my optimism. He,
like myself, thinks the talk of class war is humbug and that we are find-
ing a solution by the working men becoming capitalists, as illustrated by
1 Gutzon Borglum (1871-1941), American sculptor, best known, perhaps,
for his heads of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt
carved on the face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
846 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
the Labor Banks and greatly increased deposits, stock purchases, etc,, etc.
He defends capitalism which I still believe in, well, I was interrupted at
this point and must hurry more than I meant to. You give me joy by what
you say of Stammler — you must now have received a letter from me
expressing similar views. I thought Wu's appendix the best thing m the
book and excellent. I shall read to my wife what you say of Gertrude
King. It will make her chuckle. I can t say that I made much of her
essays, as I remember them. God forgive me if I acknowledged them
with soap.
I have written to you how good I thought your essays, and my reserva-
tions as to political appointments here — although I always should be
fearful of the effect of such considerations. I never have ventured to ask
Taft what led him to make White C.J. I think that Hughes (whom I
take it politics defeated) would have been fitter for the place. At the time
I told McKenna, I believe, that he and I were the only two who didn't
have booms going for us.
One of my interruptions was 10 essays by children of 13 on Saving
the Ship Constitution, which I agreed to judge. I am now going to the
post-office to return them with my adjudication, and shall post this hoping
that it will go promptly. Beveridge called yesterday. He is taking infinite
pains with his Life of Lincoln, and has the sound notion that what is
wanted is not opinions but significant and authoritative details, so massed
as to tell their own story. I expect some chapters to read, anon. My love
to you both. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
16 Warwick Gardens, 13.VL26
My dear Justice: I hope so much that you will both have a really restful
summer. In a fortnight I, too, shall be on vacation, and though, on ac-
count of Diana's school, we can't leave London until August, the mere
absence of the need to be at the School each day is a great prospect. I
have much work to do; and a new course in Administrative Law to get
ready for which I have many plans.
The last fortnight has been varied entertainment. I spent a week-end
in the country with our research students, talking over their problems, an
enjoyable time. They are interesting young folk, full of life and vigour.
About half the young women seem to me better fitted for motherhood
than for technical enquiries, but, possibly, the path they have chosen is
one along which marriage is secretly discoverable. Then yesterday, Mc-
Ilwain and I went down to Oxford and had a great time book-hunting all
day. I can't say we made any epoch-making discoveries, though we seem
to have spent eight or ten pounds between us; but we had that peculiar
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 847
thrill which comes from going into a room redolent with the faint musti-
ness of old calf and feeling that almost any volume may turn out a
treasure. We lunched with some of the younger history dons, and it was
amusing to find how well they played up to the theory of what an Oxford
man ought to be, At least, to me, the contrast between Mcllwain's fine and
intense seriousness, and the Oxford man's air of avoiding the only sub-
jects of which he knew anything made lunch something that only Charles
Lamb could describe adequately. Then, also, I had a pleasant dinner
with Birrell who is, at the moment, immersed in Swift and talked of him
with so much charm that I was almost persuaded it was a matter of im-
portance to make up one's mind whether Swift married Stella or not.
Indeed so attractive did he make the problem of Swift that, after many
years, I read Leslie Stephen's biography of him with real delight. Leslie
is really the Prince of Biographers. He has no eagle-flights, but for essen-
tial sanity, calm common-sense and quiet humour I don't think he has his
peer in English literature. Indeed, I think he is, in a different way, as good
as any of the French masters; and I believe a case could be made out
for my pet thesis that outside Bozzy his Life of Fitzjames is the most
perfect biography in the language. Frida here interrupts me to say it is
his life of George Eliot, which I agree ranks very high; and the only book
I regard as nearly as good is Maitland's biography of Leslie himself. Of
other things I have read the new translation of Spengler's Decline of the
West. One can't help being interested, and impressed by the command of
vast theories; but I see no reason to suppose that he has made of history
an exact science. Most of his results seem to me to depend upon the intro-
duction of unnecessary rigour into the time-problem and a plentiful supply
of new and mystical terminology. But he is clearly a fellow built upon a
big scale and to pose problems, even if one can't solve them, is itself
evidence of a critical spirit. I read, too, an admirable book of essays on
the ancien regime by Funck-Brentano. They give one an excellent picture
of its machinery and have real humour. Did I, by the way, speak to you
of Declareuil's Histoire de droit frangais? There's a truly admirable book
which makes even Esmein and Brissaud look pretty thin by his side. He
has got the flair for ideas that Maitland had and I read every word of him
with interest. Eke he put me on to a hypothesis I propose to prove pres-
ently in detail:1 That Bodin never propounded the theory of sovereignty
associated with his name, that his ideas have no connection with Hobbes,
consequently none with Bentham or Austin; that, on the contrary, Bodin
is full of the idea of "fundamental" law which the sovereign cannot alter,
1 Laski did not, apparently, fully develop this thesis in any published work.
Cf. his Rise of Liberalism (1936) 32. See also his essay "The Tercentenary of
Bossuet," 17 Manchester Guardian Weekly 254 (Sept. 30, 1927).
848 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
and that this is true of all the royalist jurists of France — Coquffle,
Lebret,2 Loyseau, etc.; that the theorist who really represents Austimsm
in France is Bossuet and that he took all his ideas over from Hobbes and
gave them the proper theological unction, I hope this does not bore you.
I am full of the notion that a careful re-writing of the history of French
politics from 1610-1715 will altogether change our notions of the course
of European thought. And here I must interpolate one other hobby. Have
you ever read the novels of Samuel Richardson? If you have not, I hasten
to insist that I do not ask you to begin; but if you have, why is it not
true to say that the fond of Rousseau e.g. the Nouvelle Heloise is in them;
and, consequently, that the individualist strain in Rousseau is, so to say,
the discovery in him of the Genevan Protestant as a result of discovering
in the man whom all France was reading of ideas akin to his own. If ever
I inherit two thousand pounds I shall certainly retire for two years into
the country and write two volumes on these Frenchmen which, like the
pamphlets of your friend Agassiz, will set eight men by the ears.3 It is a
subject that one can't help getting excited about.
But this is my Hercules's vein. Let me end by being more mundane.
Have you read a great detective story called The Murder of Roger Ack-
royd by Agatha Christie. Do get it and read it with Mrs. Holmes in the
evening. I defy you both, singly or jointly, to find the solution. Since
Trent's Last Case, (the Odyssey in these epics) I know nothing in its
class.
My love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., June 6, 1926
My dear Lash: This is an extra, slipped in between two storms, to say
that I have read your two articles in the Michigan Law Review and
Harvard Law Review1 respectively, and think them both admirable. Of
course I don't know the H. of L. decisions except by your report, but the
attitude and general principle that you show has my sympathy and assent.
One slight qualification. The political appointments here that I best recall
have been good. I think Taft is all the better Chief Justice for having
been President. Story, Taney and Chase were all good — and I might
add one or two more. I don't know many as political appointments but I
am ignorant. Also I think that Presidents, if there is a large preponderance
of their own party on the bench try to get one of the [other] side — but it
is not always easy.
2Cardin Le Bret (1558-1655); author of Traite de la souverainete du roi
(1632), the classic apology for Richelieu's government.
8 The anecdote referred to is not known to the editor.
1 See, supra, p. 808.
1926] HOLMES TO LASKI 849
The C.J. has telephoned to me that he does not expect to be present
tomorrow, so I shall have a number of odd jobs on my hands as soon as
I get some papers from him. It is the adjournment for the term and on
Wednesday I hope to leave for the north.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Beverly Farms, June 24, 1926
My dear Laski: One of your ever delightful letters came this morning.
Your account of the Oxford dons avoiding their theme in contrast with
Mcllwain reminded me of how Bowen, when I tried to get him on serious
subjects, dodged them with an anecdote. Following your order, I haven't
read those biographies by Leslie Stephen. Perhaps I may this summer. I
have obeyed your injunction and got Declareuirs Histoire de droit francais
from the Law School and begun it. So far it is preliminaries that I imper-
fectly understand without special maps and don't care much for, and
forget, but le bon temps viendra, as old Fitzroy Kelly1 said to my wife. I
agree in your high valuation of Maitland's Life of Leslie Stephen. As to
Spengler, I must have written when I was wrestling with volume I in
German last summer. He stimulates with propositions that one doesn't be-
lieve when one understands them, but finds no less stimulating on that
account. A new untruth is better than an old truth. As to Bodin's notion
of sovereignty, he certainly states the proposition that the law-maker is
superior to the law he makes — which doesn't seem to require much
genius. If he believed, as Mcllwain says the English did, in fundamental,
unalterable law, I should guess that that was rather an unconscious as-
sumption than a theory. I never read Richardson in extenso, nor the
Nouvelle Helo'ise at all. My wife won't read murder stories, but we should
finish tonight Hangman's House by Donn Byrne. I don't see how it can
end as well as it began, but the first half as least is superlative, if you
like Irish stories. I told you last week of my best experiences in reading
down here.
We motored round Rockport this morning and I thought of you. I saw
no changes since last year. Probably not enough has been done yet to
amount to anything, but I hate to see them cutting out and carrying off
the granite. I feel (with less justification) as the author of The Wheel of
Wealth says of England's selling coal — it is the workman selling his
tools, or at least cutting out the foundations of his house. The automobile
somewhat takes the wonder out of things by bringing them so near. In
the days of horses this Cape would be full of remote mysteries that I
might hope to pry into one by one. Now you can go round half the show
1 Sir Fitzroy Kelly (1798-1880), lawyer, politician, and Lord Chief Baron of
the Exchequer, 1866-1880.
850 HOLMES TO LASKI [1926
in two hours. But the charm to me is too great for familiarity to blunt it.
It goes back to my first impressions as a child.
This is a mean looking sheet to write on — I shall try to get something
better in Beverly. But there is such comfort in a block. Frankfurter has
written, and I hope to see him and his wife next week. I can't offer to
put up a married couple in these days — we should have to give up our
room and be at more bother than is reasonable for old people, but I am
sorry, I dare say I forgot to mention that the Chief Justice, as the result
of too much physical exercise, was kept in bed for the last week of the
term. So I bossed the funeral. I have written to him, but it is too early
for an answer. I hope and have little doubt that it was only a set-back
requiring caution as he has to take care of his heart. I suppose all old
people have to — (I am not including him in that category).
I have seen Beveridge — full of his work. The trouble that he will take
to verify a detail is admirable, the more so that details don't master him.
His idea is to mass them so as to make them tell the story without com-
ment. I should be surprised if he didn't supersede all that has been
written about Lincoln before. Afffy yours, 0. W. H.
16 Warwick Gardens, 19.VI.26
My dear Justice: A delightful note1 from you came yesterday. I am glad
those papers of mine in the Harvard and Michigan Reviews won your
approval. In general I don't myself mind an occasional political appoint-
ment; e.g. I am well content to believe that Taft (I hope he is better)
is a good appointment. But one also has to remember the political judges
at the time of the Dred Scott case and their disgraceful correspondence
anent it with the executive power; and the habits of men like Ellen-
borough, Eldon and Kenyon give one furiously to think. A knowledge of
affairs is, of course, invaluable, but one ought not to pay too heavy a
price for it
This has been a really peaceful week. The only engagement I have had
was a party at the Russian embassy, where I had some good talk with
one or two old friends. A reception there is a very amusing thing to see.
The hauteur of a normal diplomatic affair is entirely absent. One sees
many who would not appear in the entourage of the older embassies and
many who are always at the latter never appear there. Our Foreign office
always scrupulously sends a junior clerk, but the mighty most carefully
absent themselves. The person there who interested me most was a
Russian jurist with an unpronounceable name. He talked fluently eleven
languages. The people I respect on the continent like Ehrlich and Duguit
1 Supra, p. 848.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 851
he recited on with great insight and common-sense. And he told me much
that was illuminating and helpful about the working of the present legal
system in Russia. It seems, if I followed him, to be a combination of
executive justice and justice without law. In all political cases the problem
rests entirely with the court, which means that, especially in matters like
treason, the accused has very little chance. In smaller cases, the jury acts
much more like a jury in medieval England in that it reproduces the
atmosphere of trying a neighbour from personal knowledge. He himself
was, I gathered, very opposed to the first, and well satisfied with the
second. He told me that the new Russia has produced a remarkable
literature about these things; but I had to take this for granted as it is not
even translated into German.
The rest has been reading and a hunt round one or two of the big
London shops with Charlie Mcllwain. In the first, my main pleasure
has been Fenelon whom I like. He has courage and imagination. Not, I
hasten to add, the F6nelon of Telemaque who bores me stiff, but the
Fenelon of the Dialogues and the Memoirs on practical affairs of his
time. Acton showed, I think, singular insight in picking him out as one
of the seminal influences of the 18th century. I read also a much-lauded
German work — Allgemeine Staatslehre by Kelsen of Vienna. It is very
clever in the sense of being an exquisitely reticulated system; but like most
Hegelian structure, it seems to me entirely false to life. In a somewhat
different field, I reread Tom Jones for the first time in years. It was really
gorgeous — a great, human book that made one want to live in the
same celestial block of flats with Fielding and talk things over with him.
And, somewhat different again, I read Fontaine's Memoires of Port-Royal
— a most moving and exquisite account of its spiritual side by the most
charming fellow of its second generation.
1 must not forget (how could I forget) to tell you that since I wrote
last I have met God. I was at a committee for the relief of the miners
when Mrs. Besant turned up with the young man whom she announced
as the new Redeemer.2 I have never met a God before and it was a little
embarrassing to talk to him. I did not like to mention the weather, as a
comment on continuous rain seemed like an attack on his will. So I asked
if he remembered any of his previous incarnations (he represents the
Theosophists) and he told me thirty-three. He was a simple and un-
affected creature who, I gather, has a gospel composed of a mixture
between the Sermon on the Mount and the Veddas [sic]. What turned my
stomach a little was the greasiness of his chief bishop who came with
2 Mrs. Annie Besant (1847-1933), theosophist, had recently announced that
Jiddu Krishnamurti, her prot6g6, was the new Messiah. Shortly thereafter
Krishnamurti repudiated these claims.
852 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
him; . . . Gods, in my own view, should be more careful in the selection
of their prophets. But I grow blasphemous.
I had a pleasant adventure in a cafe yesterday. I was having some
morning coffee with my friend Siegfried Sassoon and we were having a
heated argument about some modern men of letters. An old boy with a
cloak, velvet jacket, flowing tie, and all the other appurtenances of the
literary movement of the nineties sat near, listening with all his ears.
Presently he came over, and in a booming voice asked to take part. We
bowed and he made a long speech ending, "Sirs, I have not had such a
happy hour since I first came here with Aubrey Beardsley, thirty years
ago." The waiter told us he was an old journalist of the Wilde-Beardsley
set who still was faithful to his haunt and, I dare say, peopled it still with
the wan ghosts of memories.
In the bookshops I have found little save a copy of Gentillet's attack on
Machiavelli and one or two trifles like Balzac's Aristippe. I must wait until
[ can get to Paris in August and have a real debauch. But I have bought
from a German catalogue a complete set of Linguet's Annales politiques
— about the most valuable of the 18th century French journals and I
count it cheap in perfect condition at two pounds. And next Thursday as
ever is, I bid on the finest set of Bentham you ever saw, finer than yours,
or the one I gave away, or any conceivable other. I shall be restless until
I know it is mine, and fearful lest it soar above my means. It is a set such
as one rarely sees.
You I expect, are enjoying delicious sunshine. Here it is cold and wet,
and the coal lock-out hangs over us like a dread spectre. Mr. Baldwin's
new plans3 proclaim him a typical Pecksniff, who has given way to all
the worst influences in the cabinet. I am afraid peace is far away.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
16 Warwick Gardens, 3.VIL26
My dear Justice: A letter from you this morning was refreshing beyond
words. I have had a whole fortnight of sheer agony, examining students
here, and in Oxford and Cambridge, for Ph.D. and D.Sc. degrees. It has
meant reading about 5000 pages of typescript on about twelve entirely
unrelated subjects, one of which only really appealed to me. Is there any
worse ordeal in the world than a combination which involves boredom
and a sense of duty? I have snatched at every diversion the time has
afforded, but, but, it has been a heavy fortnight.
And you meanwhile driving around Rockport I envy you a little, for
that coast got inside my heart and a summer there, not only for proximity
aOn June 15 Baldwin had announced the purpose of the government to
take action to lengthen the working day in the coal mines.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 853
to you, would I confess, be attractive. Instead, I am going with Frida and
Diana to the Ardennes, thence for a little to Geneva, and ending up with
a week of bookhunting in Paris. But that will not be for three weeks yet,
for there are committees to attend and articles to be written.
Yet, as I say, I have had diversions. I went to All Souls for an examina-
tion and spent a night there — dinner on Sunday is, I gather, a great
event and I can boast of having contradicted (very gently) an Arch-
bishop. But he said that Montaigne was foul-minded and I count the
provocation ample. Dons, I add, are a queer breed. Their conversation is
either the interchange of inept and slightly malicious personalia, or gos-
sip about the passing daily events such as a careful reader gets from the
Times before breakfast. Or the state of the college cellar; or the probabil-
ity that X will get a certain chair. I was not impressed, though I don't
deny a certain mellowness in the atmosphere. Then a dinner with Hal-
dane which was amusing as Bernard Shaw and Austen Chamberlain got
on each other's nerves and the claws came out. The latter, I thought, gave
the provocation by trying to be the Minister of State; whereupon Shaw,
with incredibly brilliant insolence, began to prove that Foreign Secre-
taries are by definition cynical and corrupt. Poor Austen, of course, tried
to riposte; but he was like an elephant trying to catch an extremely agile
wasp. And what complicated matters quite gloriously was the presence of
an old society dame of the Gladstonian epoch, who backed up Shaw by
recounting the amours and infidelities of the Victorian foreign secretaries
since her girlhood. Altogether an evening such as one rarely gets outside
a French salon. I had also a pleasant dinner with Sankey, J. where I
heard one piece of gossip that will interest you. Slesser, the late Solicitor-
General, said the government would probably create two new law lords
next September one of whom would be Leslie Scott. I hope that is true,
for he has several times in recent years been passed over for men who have
not a tithe of his ability. One law story I must not forget to tell you. You
will have heard of Lyons, the famous caterers, who are a Jewish firm;
and you may know (1) that the Coliseum is a music hall, and (2) that
the Trocadero is Lyons most chic restaurant. Recently in a case before
Darling, J. the Coliseum was mentioned. "Ah yes," said Darling, "the
place in Rome where the Christians were fed to the lions." "Doubtless, my
lord," said Counsel, "but the Coliseum I mean is near the Trocadero,
where Lyons feed the Christians."
Of reading, there has not been time to do much; though I did thor-
oughly enjoy Hoffding's History of Modern Philosophy — a Danish work
the translation of which was given to me by a grateful student who got
his degree a little unexpectedly. And a new volume of Rousseau's Cor-
respondence was really interesting; there is a problem in that fellow that
one can't help getting excited about. Also I read, for the first time in
854 LASKI TO HOLMES
many a year, Godwin's queer novel Caleb Williams and I think I rather
liked it. And Croce's book on history* which, though disgustingly trans-
lated, and full of irritating Hegelisms is a work of real profundity. And
by way of makeweight a very pleasant, ambling novel of Trollopes The
Way We Live Now. He is like a good pack-horse, there is nothing
specially attractive about him, but he always wears well Certainly this,
which has no special merits, could not be left until it was read.
I was very moved by your account of Beveridge. There is something
fine and arresting about his tenacity, and I am sure that if he keeps his
eloquence under control, he will do a valuable job. But the man I want
to see tackled is Jefferson who, I observe, died a hundred years ago
tomorrow. He is queer and big in a queer way; I wish I felt certain that
I knew his secret.
I think, if I may say so, that you attach overmuch importance to
Carver's book. For your Trade Commission has just published a most
interesting account of American income2 from which it appears that one
percent of your population holds over sixty percent of the wealth, and
the total value of employee holding of corporation stock is less than two
percent of common and preferred. Moreover nothing of this touches the
problem of control I don't doubt that America will postpone longer than
any other country the problems that come when one reaches the point of
diminishing returns; but I don't doubt also that then your problems will
be more serious, because of the degree to which your wealth is concen-
trated, than they have been elsewhere. I'm glad you are reading Declareuil
which, I think, is about 3 times as good as Brissaud. I found myself last
night quite enthralled by the latter half of the book, even to the point
of checking up (and confirming) some of his references.
Did I write to you of my interview with Felix's Indian student? He
turned up with letters and I invited him to dinner. I thought he wanted
to talk law; but it turned out (1) that he wanted me to get him the post
of Judge Advocate in India (2) to get a scholarship here for his brother
(3) to recommend a treatment for his wife who suffers from constipation
and (4) to get him appointed legal adviser to my fathers firm in India.
Very respectfully, I declined to do any of these things. He, with great
firmness, persisted in his requests. I declined still more firmly. He rose
and said with the air of Hamlet, "Then all the recommendations of Pound
and Frankfurter are as froth or foam?" I gather that he visited McCardie,
J. and after a ten minute interview asked for a testimonial. I told all this
to Sankey who produced a letter from a Babu in Bengal beginning
"Father of Merciful Justice'* and ending "Hoping you will get me a soft
job, I am your affectionate son/'
1 History, Its Theory and Practice (Ainslie, tr., 1921).
* National Wealth and Income (1926).
1926] HOLMES TO LASKI 855
I must end by quoting you my poem which appears pseudonymously in
one of the weeklies.
When Churchill came before the Judgment seat
No angel sought for mercy to entreat,
Silent they heard the sentence grim and dread
— To spend eternity with Birkenhead.
Our love as ever to you both. Jours always affectionately, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, July 4, 1926
My dear Laski: If I could have a letter from you with no duty to
answer except when I felt like it I should like to get one every day.
Pretty often too, I want to write but not always. The languor of age I
suppose makes one lazy. I have had various odds and ends of a business
nature, including paying bills, that have taken time and energy. To draw
a single check and dispatch it properly takes an appreciable moment. In
one way and another Declareuil has had to wait. I am much tickled to
note the Frenchman in him and am pleased for other reasons also to see
him pronounce a hobby of the great Sohm pure imagination. Sohm was the
fashion when I was younger and I even then thought that there were
reserves to be made. His vogue led me to realize that there is fashion in
ideas as well as in bonnets. Then Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capi-
talism came along — the publishers said by his direction — and I have
just finished that. A charming and handsome piece of work. I wrote to
him this morning and said, as bound, after an appreciative word, that I
was an old skeptic and thought capitalism better than anything likely to
replace it but that I got more intellectual companionship from you young
prophets than from the older orthodox sages. Now I have typewritten
chapters of Beveridge's Lincoln to criticize — and at first reading I am
afraid that I shall have to say that one, which must have cost much
time, seems to me of questionable value to the story — but I must read
the rest and then go back before I can speak.
I am delighted with your old fellow in the cafe with the reminiscences
of Aubrey Beardsley. I think I once was told to call and called on Beards-
ley's sister, but I am not sure, it may have been merely an actress who
recalled meetings with him, and the French woman who wrote queer
stories and reviewed those of other people in the Mercure de France —
Rachilde1 — that was what she called herself. Her book notices were
good stuff, as I remember. I have not derived bliss from my encounters
with actresses. I remember going with John Gray to call on one — lament-
1 Rachilde (Mme. Marguerite Valletta; 1862- ), novelist and critic.
856 HOLMES TO LASKI [I926
ing over the rest -and as we came away he said consolingly well, she
wasn't so damned respectable. Ellen Terry I thought insufferable.
I had a letter from Leslie Scott who seemed to think Baldwin was do-
* Lrtthis brief despatch count me one As ever affly yours, O. W. H.
Beverly Farms, July 16, 1926
My dear Laski: An expected and appreciated
count of the dons' conversation reminds me of Baliol [«c] in 66
was there with Edwin Palmer.* The dons spoke French after the school ot
Stratford atte Bowe and believed the formula that one Englishman could
lick three Frenchmen. I probably have told you of Goldwin Smith- com-
ing in at breakfast (I think) and saying, "I hear that Matthew Arnold
is going to lecture on Celtic literature. I should like to know what Matt
Arnold knows about Celtic literature." I read Caleb Williams when a
toy _my fatiber telling me it was the best novel he ever read, or to
that effect. DeQuincey I think says that it was impossible to disclose in
the finale the contents of the chest as no possible disclosure would be
adequate. But all my memories are over half a century old. I cant be-
lieve that you really read all the books you mention. I don't doubt you
read them as a good reader does, skipping by instinct, but I bet you
didn't plod through every word of Declareuil as I am doing. I don t
give much time to him, and for the first 300 pages, with some mitiga-
tions that I believe I have mentioned, I couldn't imagine why you had
put me on to him. Now that I am in the Kingdom I begin to see, and
although there still are details that I hardly pick enough long enough
to forget, I am getting pleasure and instruction. I don't accept your
comparison with Brissaud to the disadvantage of the latter. I couldn't
recite on him, but I thought he brought the doctrines of private law
into relation with life in a way that I never had seen equalled. So far,
there is nothing of that here. Declareuil deals only with institutions,
Some amusing explanations, e.g. the responsibility of ministers for the
King, and a general impression going further than anything I knew be-
fore that England was a sort of provincial follower of French fashions
in the origin of her institutions.
As to Carvers book, I can't control his facts. He pleased me because
he thought as I do that the capitalist regime was better than the pro-
posed substitutes and didn't believe in class war.
1 Presumably Edwin Palmer (1824-1895), Fellow of Balliol, classicist and
archdeacon of Oxford.
s Goldwin Smith (1823-1910), Cobdenite controversialist, who left Oxford
for Cornell and Cornell for Toronto.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 857
One of my few links with the living goes with the death of Miss Ger-
trude Bell — not that I had heard from her or seen her but once for I
know not how many years — but there was a time when I knew her
pretty well and got some remarkable letters from her. I sadly see Pepys
drawing to his end — unfortunately I have nothing but a little cheap
expurgated ten cents a volume edition here, but it is an ideal book for
idle days. Some things that I had forgotten come up, especially in the
use of words, such as mad for angry, which I should have supposed a
modern Americanism. But there is always less modern than one thinks,
as philosophers have observed since Solomon. I greet the budding laure-
ate in you, as I do the historian in Beveridge. He is working along faith-
fully, and really wants criticism. When I said cut out a number of pages
that had cost a lot of work, he argued his case but showed no vanity
or anything but a wish to get it right — which I think creditable. He
gets the Roosevelt Memorial Medal this year which I am glad of. I
think there will be more trouble with his style than with his conception
or his work. Affly yours, O. W. E.
16 Warwick Gardens, 15. VII. 26
My dear Justice: Very many thanks indeed for your letter — refreshing
beyond words. I have had ten hectic days, a dash to Manchester to make
a speech at the farewell dinner to the retiring Vice-Chancellor of the
university; a lecture to 200 Americans at Toynbee; a lunch to other
Americans sent to me by Mack and Felix; a dinner to some German
lawyers; and three committees and two articles. It has been a ghastly
sweat, and I shall be relieved indeed when next week comes and I can
get away to Belgium. I look forward to that, for I shall sneak away to
Paris for a week to hunt books, and later to Geneva for a couple of days
to lecture to the university. But it is clear that so long as I stay here the
burst of visitors will make life unHvable.
In the way of reading I haven't been able to do much. I read a very
clever Essay on the Origin of the House of Commons, by one Pasquet;
a new novel by Sinclair Lewis,1 which I thought poor; a lecture by
Keynes on laisser-faire2 which was meritorious without being extraordi-
nary; and a very good book by Norman Angell called Must Britain
Travel the Moscow Road? — an answer to Trotsky's lucubrations done,
I thought, with great effectiveness. And I reread Plato's Republic in order
to examine on a thesis. Not exactly idleness, but still reading that has
been a little aimless in character.
I have bought one or two things though. The best, undoubtedly, is
1 Mantrap (1926).
* The End of Laissez-Faire (1926).
858 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
Le Bret, La souverainetS du roi, which was Mansfield's own copy, and
though I doubt whether he ever read it, I like to think that he owned it.
Also I got Baildon's Cases in the Star Chamber of which he printed
only two hundred copies. And on a barrow in the Caledonian market I
picked up a first edition of the Lettres provinciales in perfection as to
state for sixpence and sold it to Quaritch for ten pounds. So I go to
Paris with a good conscience. Did I, by the way, tell you that my gradu-
ate students presented me with the 1557 folio of Sir T. More's Works.
Ten of them this year got their doctorates, by way of being a record for
one teacher in one year; and this was their very charming salute in
passing.
One or two people who have happed in would have pleased you.
Notestein,3 who is professor at Cornell, is a charming fellow, learned
and light-hearted. I have told him to send you a clever paper of his on
how the House of Commons won the initiative in legislation. Rosenthal,4
a lawyer from Chicago, whom Mack sent, seemed to me most able, and
he gave me a lunch that in conception and execution was an epic. He
was enthusiastic, by the way, about a federal judge named Sanborn,5
whom I do not know. Could you recite on him? And I liked much an
economist from Columbia named (I think) Brightbrown6 (or the other
way about). He came from Felix, and like all the latter's envoys, could
talk the humanities as well as economics. But one man was deadly. He
came from Peoria and announced (I) that New York was Babylon (II)
that prohibition was sanctioned by the New Testament (III) that
America led the world because she was singled out by God to set an
example to King-ridden Europe and (IV) that the night-side of London
made him tremble for the virtue of his sons. I asked, humbly, if it was
necessary for him to investigate it; he said he made a point of it wherever
he went in order to emphasise the virtues of Peoria to the "folks back
home." I asked if he had read Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but as he had
not, the allusion went for nothing. My God, what a man! He would not
buy an evening paper because it contained the racing results.
I am sorry to hear your scepticisms anent Beveridge's Lincoln. I take
* Wallace Notestein (1878- ), Professor of English History, Cornell
University, 1920-1928; Sterling Professor of English History at Yale, 1928-
1947. The paper referred to, "The Winning of the Initiative by the House of
Commons," was the Raleigh Lecture on History for 1924 and is printed in 11
Proceedings of the British Academy 125 (n.d.).
* Leasing Rosenthal (1868-1949), public-spirited practitioner in Chicago.
5 Presumably Walter Henry Sanborn (1845-1928), United States Circuit
Judge in the 8th Circuit, 1892-1928, who wrote important decisions in anti-
trust cases, and administered a number of important receiverships,
•Presumably James C. Bonbright (1891- ); coauthor, with Gardiner C.
Means, of The Holding Company (1932) and of The Valuation of Property
(1937). r y
1926] HOLMES TO LASKI 859
it that he lacks conciseness and sacrifices the perspective to the love of
trifling detail. I met here the other day a man who had worked out that
George Washington had connections in 52 places in England, and was
going to visit them all. B. I fear has something of that temper. I always
felt that his Marshall could be cut down by a third without essential
loss. I wish I could have seen you presiding over the Court; sorry though
I am for the cause. Hewart, C.J. told me the other day that a Welshman
who spake not English described him to the interpreter as the "old bloke
in the red bedgown"; at least you are free from that.
Our love warmly to you both. I hear Chafee has just arrived here. I
look forward to seeing him. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, July 29, 1926
My dear Laski: Your latest calls for two or three counter mernos. 1) I
saw Trotsky's book at the Athenaeum when by exception I went to Bos-
ton to try on some clothes — wondered if I ought to read it, but noticing
that it was written more than a year ago thought it could wait. I am
glad to know that he has been answered, and will let the two books
cancel each other. 2) But I haste to correct a seeming impression that
I am sceptical about Beveridge's Lincoln. I confidently believe that he
will write the final life. I forget what I said, but it cannot have been
more than that I wanted him to cut out some pages that I thought ir-
relevant, and thought that he possibly had been getting too high an
opinion of the South before the war (our war). 3) Sanborn is a distin-
guishable Circuit Judge. I think I heard when I came on to the Bench
that he had his name before the White House as a candidate for a place.
I should think he was as good as some that have been promoted, but
I should be inclined to speak as did the King in the ballad of Chevy
Chase when he heard of Percy's death.1
Now for my turn. Thrice accursed man, why did you put me onto
Declareuil? He does his work well I don't doubt, but out of his damned
1061 pages, all read by me, not more than 100 have anything that I
want (the account of the development of French law and the relation
to it of the Roman and Frankish law). His decent but universal denial
of anything that any German ever said gives me pleasure, but I do not
understand your great enthusiasm. I should as soon get hot in praise
of the Almanac. However, since then I have turned off some certioraris
against next term, and incidentally have tucked in Pepys and some small
1 The words were those of King Harry when news of Percy's death reached
London:
"Tve a hundred captains in England,' hie said,
'As good as ever was he/ "
860 HOLMES TO LASKI [1926
matters and now am happily at leisure. Miss Sergeant indicated the
possibility of calling here this afternoon but as it is rainy and she is^ in
Brookline I doubt. Whether her calls have an ulterior motive in a notion
that she once entertained of writing about me I know not, but I believe
I told her that I didn't see that there was anything to say for a writer
not in the law. My wildest excursion was to Gloucester last night to
hear a master play on the carillon of Our Lady of Good Voyages — a
Portugese church. It moved me, though somewhat impaired by the in-
terjection of Three Blind Mice and the like. I have seen Bob Barlow and
Palfrey — but know no personalities that would interest you. I turn
from Declareuil to Nize Baby, Dryden's Dramatic Essays, Dorothy Os-
borne's Letters to Sir William Temple, and Frankfurter's admirable
article, which I shall finish as soon as I have signed this. It is on Petty
Federal Offenses and the Constitutional Guaranty of Trial by Jury.2 I
envy you your trip which I hope has come off satisfactorily. I envy also
the Provinciales which I wouldn't have sold — yet I dare say you were
right. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
16 Warwick Gardens, 2S.VII.26
My dear Justice: I have packed a good deal into the ten days since I
last wrote, including a dose of septic tonsillitis, which kept me in bed for
six days. However, I am about again and quite fit, and I got a good
deal of pleasant reading done. First I reread with great joy all of Jane
Austen, who is really an ideal bed companion. I stick to Pride and Prej-
udice as the best of them all, though I do not deny the immense art
of Emma. I amused myself by trying to discover in Jane some semblance
of interest in contemporary events, but I can only discover four faint
references that suggest that the political scene was ever before her mind.
What pained me was to note that in most of the novels I usually prefer
the rejected suitor to the accepted e.g. in Mansfield Park I greatly dislike
Edmund, and do like Henry Crawford, and I prefer his sister to Fanny
Price who seems to me a quite intolerable prig who was quite obviously
destined by nature to be an old maid and keep a pug. Of other things
I read with real enjoyment Scherer's Life of Grimm — a wholly delight-
ful book, full of insight and delicacy; unfair to Rousseau, but that be-
cause the new evidence was not then available. Then I read a good
book by one Cru (an American of whom I know nothing) on Diderot
and English influence of Shaftesbury in the 18th century. Did you ever
read the Characteristics? I have tried twice and each time failed pretty
completely. Did you ever try., and if you did, were you impressed? Then
2 Frankfurter and Corcoran, "Petty Federal Offenses and the Constitutional
Guaranty of Trial by Jury," 39 Harv. L. Rev. 917 (June 1926).
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 861
I re-read Leslie Stephen's English Utilitarians, a greater book the more
one reads it. It is wonderful to be in touch with his common sense, his
poise, his fairness, and his sly humour. I don't really think he has a rival
among English critics. He hasn't the sudden and unexpected genius of
Coleridge, or the level of brilliance of Hazlitt, but he has a width of
mind, and an easy charm in learning that neither of them could approach.
I thoroughly enjoyed, too, McTaggart's Hegelian Cosmology which, if
you have it at hand, would, I think, give you real pleasure. The essays
especially on sin, punishment, and society as an organism, are really
first-rate. And I greatly enjoyed also (have I spoken of it to you before?)
Hoff ding's History of Modern Philosophy. I don't know if you have read
it. No other book I know is nearly so good for the purpose of discovering
the sweep of the subject.
But a truce to reading. I had one book-hunt with my friend Professor
Neale of Manchester which was really exhilarating. First of all we dis-
covered a quite new shop (in Hammersmith) and second, the man did
not know the first thing about the books he was selling — a combination,
you will admit, that is as near the ideal as can be. We spent the mom-
ing on the top of ladders, perilously swinging in mid-air. But the fruits
of danger, my dear Justice, were worth the risk. I got for sixpence a
volume three of a Jurieu of which by the luck of heaven I had the pre-
vious two. For three shillings each I got two Recueil of the early French
17th century which are as rare as they are desirable — and neither of
them is in the British Museum. For ten shillings I got the Aldine Tacitus
in a contemporary morocco binding — as delectable a copy as you ever
saw; and for 7/6 I got Edward's Gangraena, the three parts complete,
the usual price for which runs up to seven or even eight pounds. And
one other book adventure I must record. There is an old bookseller here
called Harding. I go to him a good deal to chat, though, as a rule, his
prices soar beyond me. He is a good fellow, who lost a son in the war
and another later and carries on the business now rather for occupation
than need. When I went to see him the other day, he shyly asked me
if I would accept a book from him as a word of thanks for pleasant com-
pany and to my gratified amazement presented me with a copy of Bail-
don's Cases in the Star Chamber of which only two hundred copies
were printed with a most charming inscription. I was, as you can im-
agine, really touched; and when I thanked the old man and suggested
that we go out for a cup of tea, the tears stood in his eyes. "That's the
thing," he said, "you treat me as a human being; most of my customers
look on me as a machine for finding books for them."
We have had one or two pleasant dinners here. One, for Croly, pro-
duced some of the best talk I have had in many a day. The more I see
of Croly, the more I respect him. He is so simple, so humble, and so
862 LASKI TO HOLMES
absolutely fair in his judgments. The other was for a group of American
historians among whom you would know Mcllwain. But there was one
from Cornell, Notestein, who was simply charming; and I have asked
him to call on you if he ever gets to Washington. He will send you a
paper of his on how the House of Commons won its legislative initiative
in the 17th century which you will, I think, find most delectable. I also
had a most amusing lunch with Glenn Frank,1 the new President of
Wisconsin University. He is, I should guess, what Felix calls a faker —
really charming au fond, but terrified of not being thought the real in-
tellectual, with the result that statements such as "London is full ot
Americans just now" are made with a grim tensity such as might be
used in announcing the discovery of the law of gravitation. He was
most anxious to go to the King s garden party, so .1 wangled an invita-
tion for him. It was most amusing to see him take the most infinite
pains over the right clothes, even to the purchase of a white top-hat and
white spats, which I dared him to wear in Wisconsin. I saw Archie
Coolidge for a moment and he told me the extraordinary fact that a
colleague of his has joined the Benedictines.2 He was working at Polish
history and was thus converted. The ways of God's mercy are infinite.
Polish history would send me to a sanitarium.
We leave England on Wednesday for a month at Walsort-sur-Meuse,
a little place tucked away in the Ardennes, about twenty miles from
Dinant. I go on the 8th to Paris, to spend four days with Neale book-
hunting; and on the 19th I go to Geneva for two days to lecture. But
otherwise I shall have a complete holiday, writing in the mornings and
playing for the rest of the time.
Our love to you both. I hope the heat wave of which I read has not
troubled you. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, August 5, 1926
My dear Laski: Pleasures are ultimates and in cases of difference be-
tween oneself and another there is nothing to do except in unimportant
matters to think ill of him and in important ones to kill him. Until you
have remade the world I can class as important only those that have an
1 Glenn Frank (1887-1940), journalist who in 1925 had gone from the
editorship of the Century to the presidency of the University of Wisconsin,
where he remained in office until 1937.
2 Robert Howard Lord (1885- ) had taught history at Harvard from
1910 to 1926 and, becoming a convert to the Roman Catholic Church, studied
for the priesthood, to which he was admitted in 1929. Besides being the author
of a number of works on Polish history, he was coauthor, with Harold J.
Coolidge, of Archibald Gary Coolidge: Life and Letters (1932).
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 863
international sanction in war. Therefore I pass without further remark
your raptures over Jane Austen (well enough if you don't make too
much row about her). She shines in the firmament of your world —
along with Declareuil. You are God of that, but the religion of taste is
polytheistic.
I wonder whether McTaggart's Hegelian book is one that Haldane
recommended to me when we crossed together and that I purchased
and read with much pleasure. I can't remember definitely. As to Shaftes-
bury, I can't say whether it was his Characteristics or somewhat else
of his that I read in times past, As the Characteristics have stared me in
the face for years I am pretty sure it was they (them) — anyhow I
remember spotting modern [vistas?] and thinking that I saw a man
ahead of his time. Hoffding perhaps I will send for.
I have been browsing and idling for a few days. G. Moore turned me
to Synge's Well of the Saints and I can't say how much I admired the
genius of that play. The Irish more than any others have the poet's gift
of uttering the unutterable, I think. I read Twelfth Night to see if a little
girl was right in thinking S. long in coming to the point. Some twaddle,
some unintelligibilities, the treatment of Malvolio brutal and tiresome,
but as always a precious jewel in the head of the toad. I have spent
two days in rereading The Moonstone, and still found it absorbing. Yet
it has no other merit that I can see, except the coup de theatre at the
end where the three men part for their pilgrimage and the moonstone
shines once more from the forehead of the idol. That does truly tickle
my melodramatic soul. I read in Everyman's, Dryden's Dramatic Essays,
i.e., his prefaces, with much pleasure and some surprise. It made me
feel that there were some who twigged Shakespeare from his own time.
Also he is more than a razor — he is a sting and says poignant things.
But as you see I am not deeply engaged. When I read a book I read
every word — a bad sign — and so am slow to tackle a new one. I hope
you are having a happy vacation. Affty yours, 0. W. H.
Walsort-sur-Meuse, 4.VIII.26
My dear Justice: The postcard I enclose will give you some idea of the
country-side here; it is really beautiful beyond words. As I write, I look
down straight on to the Meuse, which is surrounded to a height of eight
hundred feet by gaunt, grey rocks, half-covered by green firs. And for
miles round its banks are dotted by small chateaux like the one you see
on the postcard. This particular one dates from 1620, and is itself the
transformation of an eleventh century abbey. It's a magnificent piece
of architecture for all its smallness; the proportions are exquisite, and
the glass in the windows has that peculiar half-purple tinge one finds
864 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
in old buildings. The rooms inside are not exciting. The furniture is
mainly the dull gold of Louis XIV, which always seems to me pompous
and artificial, and the pictures, in general, are the fake pastorals of the
Boucher period. But there is one Watteau landscape that is like a page
straight out of fairyland. We are enjoying ourselves hugely, and it is a
perfect rest. I write all morning, and in the early afternoon; then we
walk after tea and again after supper. The place is small enough to
make evasion of formality possible with all the comforts that represent
civilisation. One or two social observations will, I think, interest you.
Practically all the local peasantry are profoundly Catholic, and so far as
the countryside extends, the deputies in the chamber are Catholic. But
as soon as you move to the outskirts even of a small industrial town like
Dinant, the church is a dead force and the deputies become socialist.
It is interesting, too, that in the different hotels roundabout the head-
waiters, who have mostly originated from the place, are all eager agnos-
tics, anxious to explain to you that as soon as they got into the larger
world outside, they saw that the church was an incubus. The politeness
of everyone is almost excessive, and I incline to the view that the pecu-
liar virtue of French is that it enables you to say nothing more formi-
dably than any other language I know. One other thing has struck me
forcibly. A large number of Dutch people come here, and, taken as a
whole, they are the finest race of trenchermen I have ever seen. They
breakfast solidly at 9, meaning every dish of it; at eleven you see them
at coffee and bread and cheese; at one they are at the table with their
napkins tucked in their necks, ready for siege operations; at four tea
and cakes; at six-thirty a drink in anticipation of dinner; at seven they
dine over five courses, missing nothing, and evading talk as an interrup-
tion of serious business; then at 10:30 they have tea and cakes in prepa-
ration for bed. One visitor here is a Dutch professor of history with
whom I have had some talk. The other day I approached him while at
dinner with a question, only to be met with the stern remark that he
never spoke at meals! I must add that life among a small nation is most
interesting. Their sense of national feeling is much more intense than
in a great country like America or England. A writer of local reputation
assumes the proportions of a world-figure. The Dutch historian was
shocked beyond words that I did not know of a Dutch dramatist whose
name, I think, was Wondel.1 Surely I knew his Lucifer. I asked if he had
been translated into English or German. No; I did not know Dutch.
Ah! but he is the first dramatist of our time. I hinted gently that a word
might be said for Shaw. This was waved gently aside. Shaw, of course,
1 Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679), poet, translator, and dramatist; his
play Lucifer (1654) was translated into English in 1898.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 865
was a big man, but Wondel. — So an historian who had written a his-
tory of Java was pointed out to me with the same solemnity and rever-
ence as I might show in asking you to notice Gibbon on the other side
of the street.
I feel a quite different person since we've been here, fit and rested,
and very happy in being at work. So far, I have got my inaugural lec-
ture roughly done, a plea for the historical study of politics on the
ground that one cannot get the perspective of one's ideas in any other
way. Of reading I have done but little that would interest you, I fear;
mainly communist pamphlets which have been chiefly noise, except
one or two by Lenin and Trotsky, in which one detects at once the hand
of the really big man. Also Anatole France's Eergeret at Paris which,
apart from the Dieux out soif, I like the best of all his books. On Sunday
I go to Paris for four days book-hunting, and I look forward to that im-
mensely. I have one or two new addresses, and as the day comes nearer
my heart panteth after the quays, as the hart after the brooks.
And I must not forget to tell you that on the way here Frida and I
celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of our wedding-day by buying our-
selves two etchings by James Ensor, whose work I expect you know.
One of them is the cathedral at Antwerp — a large one (12 x 8) with
the square in front alive with a crowd, and as you look closely, you see
that about every person in it is doing some little task with a gesture or
an expression that gives them life. The other is a study of the quay at
Ostend, and is a delicate piece of witchery rather in the manner of
Whistler. The man we got them from had a collection of Ostades that
made my mouth water, as also one of Rembrandt's which was in finer
condition than any I have seen at a dealer's. But this last was not for
sale as the town has bought it. While in Antwerp I stopped again to
look at the Plantin Museum and sat on the chair where Justus Lipsius2
used to correct his proofs, and saw the letter to him from Casaubon
regretting L's conversion to Rome.
1 like most all that you write of Beveridge's attitude to his book, for I
imagine he is pretty sensitive to criticism; those ebullient people usu-
ally are. I wish it had been Jefferson or Taney, C.J.; they are the peo-
ple about whom I want to read a really first-rate book. By the way, and
without connection, I must not forget to say that we dined on two suc-
cessive nights before we left with Shaw and Haldane, each celebrating
his 70th birthday.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
2 Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), Belgian Latinist best known for his edition of
Tacitus. His early fluctuations in faith came to an end in 1590 when he re-
turned, forgiven, to the Catholic Church.
866 HOLMES TO LASKI U926
Beverly Farms, August 20, 1926
Shatt I direct to you as Professor or Esquire?
My dear Lasld: Your account of the Dutch trencherman delighted me —
and what you say about small places. Did you ever read Little Pedling-
ton? If not, do make a note of it. It is what my father used to call a
seed book. The Vondel you mention, the author of Lucifer, which was
supposed to have given Milton hints for Paradise Lost, suggested Wen-
del so far that my father bought his portrait. I have it, it is engraved by
Janus Lutaa who in turn (or his father — I think himself) was etched
by Rembrandt, you may remember the etching, a third state hangs in
my dressing room. Vondel is called Olor Batavus. I think I also have
his works! Ensor I know only by name — if by that. A few of Ostade'^s
etchings I love. I have poor states of those that I like, but many I don't
care for.
Well, I have finished Hoffding, and thank you as much for recom-
mending that as I damned you for putting me on to Declareuil. The
book is already a little old, but really excellent, and his brief criticisms
are pungent. He has the best short account of Kant that I remember.
Eminent persons who have counted and have disappeared I (unlike
you) forget as fast as I read about them, but I get the movement. One
thing that bothers them all, I suppose from theological presuppositions,
strikes me as twaddle — the "problem of evil." Of course the universe
is a mystery — and its manifestation of life in seemingly isolated frac-
tions — but, given that, evil is simply death — the end of a transitory
manifestation. The withering of a leaf, the sickness of man, the struggle
for life, all are normal sequences of the datum — as are frauds and
murders. The philosophers seem to me to put their mystery in the wrong
place, as spiritualists and Catholics do their miracles. I consider the
above remark good, and with that and the end of Hoffding propose to
pass to lighter themes. I mean to begin by sampling Guedalla's two
books which lie upon my table — Fathers of the Revolution and The
Second Empire, If they amuse me enough not to count the pages I may
read them. I notice that Hoffding refers to Memories of Old Friends
from the Journal of Caroline Fox (Tauchnitz) which sounds as if it
might be interesting. I may send for it. (Of the Mill-Carlyle period,
converse of eminent persons, noted rightly by the journalist.) To one
who reads every word articulately, as I do, it is a more serious job to
tackle these histories, etc. than to you who read down the page instead
of across. I suppose I could drool along over other sheets, but I drive
out in a few moments and as it is possible that by stopping now I catch
tomorrow's (?) boat, I stop — anticipating your next adventure.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 867
Walsort-sur-Meuse, Belgium, 14.V1II.26
My dear Justice: I came back yesterday from Paris to find your delight-
ful letter.1 My conscience pricks me about Declareuil; I plead only in
mitigation of sentence (1) that I really enjoyed it (2) that Mcllwain
and Haskins share my view that it is a first-rate piece of work. But you
will note that I begin with a confession of guilt. And, after all, you have
been comforted by Pepys. Do you find pleasure in Horace Walpole? I
remark that I ask a question and do not make a recommendation!
My friend Neale and I combed the bookshops in Paris for five days
with infinite joy. We went to see two pictures (Vermeers) and did a
theatre (Cyrano de Bergerac); and we dined with Alvord the American
historian2 very pleasantly. But otherwise it was grim hunting. The Quais
yielded a little; but they have now little that is old except theology and
even a pleasant 17th century binding cannot reconcile me to sermons.
We had talks with some of the old bouquinistes there, one of whom had
a hobby of collecting incunabula, and, to my virgin ignorance, talked
of them well. One had been a great friend of Renan and told me with
huge malice of his contempt for priests. But, in general, they are a de-
caying race and the trash, especially pornographic trash, they display,
is abominable. But inside some of the shops was very different. I got
some sixty things I badly wanted — names like Jurieu, Linguet, Coyer,3
will explain the line of country over which I travelled. You know the
exquisite feeling of being in mid-air on a ladder with the prospect of
infinite treasures above your head. For the most part I eschewed mo-
dernities, except for an occasional out of the way thesis. I was proud of
what I got, but the joy was in the hunter's zest and in talk with the
booksellers. One, Gougy, had a shop which A. France used often to
frequent, and I spoke to him of France's knowledge of books; "pretty
fair," he said, "but" (with immense pity) "he did not know that the
1590 (?) Montaigne had a blank half-title." Champion was a delight
to talk to, for he is a real scholar whose own books are of high quality.4
He is very impressed by the young American students who come to
paris — their interest in work and their determination. He also told me
that his father was bookseller to J. R. Lowell and that the latter once
1 Supra, p. 859.
9 Clarence Walworth Alvord (1868-1928), historian of the Illinois Territory
who was Professor of History at the Universities of Illinois and Minnesota.
8 Gabriel Frangois Coyer (1707-1782); friend of the men of letters of his
time and almost a man of letters in his own right; author, inter alia, of
Bagatelles morales (1754) and La noblesse commercante (1770).
4 Pierre Champion (1880- ), editor and scholar, was the son of the
well-known bibliophile Honor6 Champion (1846-1913) and was the author
of historical and biographical studies.
868 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
refused to buy a first edition of Moliere for 200 francs because it was
too expensive. You can imagine that they were full days. I add that I
was glad to be back here; for the peace of this place after the noise of
Paris is attractive beyond words.
I have, of course, read little since I wrote last week. But I must men-
tion, because I liked it so much, Anatole France's Sur la pierre blanche.
You may not know it, tho' I expect you do; if not, I conjure you to read
it, if only for the simply exquisite conte of S. Paul and the Roman pro-
consul. You may doubt the philosophy at the end, but you will not fail
to yield to the pure magic of the style. I had also to read (dolorous job)
a book by an Indian on comparative administrative law to review it, and
I thought it pretty poor. These Indians will seek to write in the grand
manner, with the result that they irritate one's sense of words beyond
endurance. On one page I counted 74 nouns with adjectives and thirteen
without; on another 36 had two adjectives and only 18 one. What gain
he hoped thereby to win in heaven I know not. The one other thing I
read was the Christmas Carol with Diana and I don't know which of
us loved it most. Dickens certainly had the gift of tears; and why the
impossible conversion of Scrooge should make one's eyes wet at the
twentieth reading when one knows exactly what is to come I don't know
one bit; but there it is. A good letter in the New Statesman the other
day pointed out that Dickens probably did more than anyone in his
generation to make men see the commonsense of Bentham, and I im-
agine that is true. Who wouldn't be a law reformer after reading Bleak
House? or in favour of school inspection after Mr. Squeers, or factory
laws after Hard Times. The world belongs to those who know how to
tell a story well; and it is only after them that the poets come in influ-
ence.
By the way I want you to tell me if you know of a Dutch poet named
Vondel? (Have I asked you this?) I found no one in France to bear
testimony to him and the Dutch here swear by him.
But I must pack; for tonight I go to Geneva and until next Saturday
I shall have no peace.
Our love to you both, Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Beverly Farms, August 27, 1926
My dear Laski: You renew my job by another letter from Waulsort sur
Meuse, the precise place of which on the map I know not. I readily ac-
cept the judgment that Declareuil's work is first rate. My howl was
only because the greater part of it concerned facts that I am not study-
ing and forget at once. You ask in connection with Pepys whether I
find pleasure in Horace Walpole. I should be surprised if I hadn't writ-
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 869
ten or said that Pepys and Walpole were the two books that would occur
to me first when I didn't want to be bothered with ideas and yet didn't
want to waste my time. Not that I have read more than a volume or
two of Walpole — but I wish I had him here now. . . . Your account
of your Paris experience makes me feel envious and old. I have little
to tell of myself — I think I mentioned reading Guedalla's two books,
Fathers of the Revolution and Second Empire — the latter much the
fitter subject for his pen. Since then only a mystery tale — by E. Wallace:
A King by Night — good of its sort. I hung over it for a day.
Yesterday my leisure between driving, etc. was taken up with an article
that my dear Wu sent me from China.1 I wrote three opinion-size pages
to explain why I didn't think it a source of new light — but one hates
to do that kind of thing to one who commands all one's affection and
esteem. I told him that I thought his studies in Germany had affected
him a little with their own systematizing habit, that Kant's and Hegel's
systems had gone into the waste paper basket and that they would have
done better if they had confined themselves to their profound apergus.
Their systems, pace Haldane, have burdened and bored the world to
get rid of them. Now for a few odd moments I have taken up to read
a third time Lethaby's admirable little book on Architecture in the
Home University Library. If I can find another story I shall read it —
but I think it just as well to idle a bit. The other day I went again
around your adorable Rockport, stopping to look at the house built
wholly of newspapers that I must have told you of last year. The papers
are glued together into boards, and now chairs, tables, etc. adorn, also
made of newspapers rolled into tubes. I believe the man, whom I didn't
see this year, is an expert electrician — building this house was his
amusement. . . . Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
As From 16 Warwick Gardens, 22.V11I.26
My dear Justice: I came back from two thrilling days in Geneva1 to find
your letter. Of course I accept your polytheism, adding that I would
not embark upon persecution even for the sake of Jane Austen. I ask
1 Probably "Scientific Method in Judicial Process/' 3 China Law Review 7
(July 1926), reprinted in Wu, judicial Essays and Studies (1933) 26. Holmes's
letter to Wu concerning the article is printed in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
His Book Notices and Uncollected Papers and Letters (Shriver, ed., 1936),
186.
1 In Geneva Laski had delivered an address, "International Government and
National Sovereignty," before the Geneva Institute of International Relations.
It is printed in The Problem of Peace (1927) 288.
870 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
you to note my moderation, for men have oppressed in much worse
causes.
1 had never been to Geneva before. The city itself, to begin with, is
quite lovely. The vast lake, the sun-flushed mountains, the peak of Mont-
Blanc with the snow crowning its summit are not easily forgotten. To
look over the bay by moonlight is one of the memories to be cherished.
Then the old houses are attractive. And in the town library I read
Rousseau's Confessions in the original manuscript and letters to him
from D'Alembert, Diderot, Hume, all, of course, known, but all, with
their faded splendour, giving one the sense that one had suddenly be-
come a contemporary of them and that if one went outside into the sun-
light, Montesquieu, maybe, would be just around the corner.
To this must be added the pleasure of finding what was, from my
point of view, the best bookshop I have ever entered. Even now I trem-
ble to think what I might have missed had I not gone. Original editions
of Rousseau, Jurieu, contemporary criticisms of them, answer to Mon-
tesquieu (still uncut) circa 1748-50, all at a price that rarely averaged
more than a dollar, and was frequently less. I spent, I think, five pounds;
and I must, I think, have bought seventy things all of which are undis-
coverable in England, and long sought for by me with sighs of longing.
The hunt in that musty room with my heap of discoveries growing
bigger and bigger as the hours went by is unforgettable. Next year I
must certainly visit Lausanne and Basle. These Swiss places, through, I
suppose, the Calvinist tradition, have accumulated the kind of literature
I want in a size I have never yet experienced.
The League itself was not especially impressive. I saw some old Ameri-
can friends — Manley Hudson, Herbert Feis,2 Raymond Fosdick;3 and
I met James Brown Scott4 who, I whisper quietly, did not seem to be
a great man. I met also Zimmern, but he is now a crusader for the League
and nothing but the League and to a sceptic that does not help discus-
sion. The place itself, as the centre of the League, has become the
most amazing medley of nationalities; and one finds oneself continually
searching for an interpreter to find out what some Czech or Pole is try-
ing to say. On the other hand the International Labour office does im-
press. One has the sense that fertile thinking is on foot and that really
effective work is being done. The real genius of the place is an Irishman
2 Herbert Feis (1893- ), economist and public servant, was associated
for many years with the International Labor Office of the League of Nations.
8 Raymond Blaine Fosdick (1878- ), lawyer, man of affairs, and au-
thority on police administration.
4 James Brown Scott (1866-1943), energetic administrator of, and prolific
writer on international law.
1926] HOLMES TO LASKI 871
named Phelan,5 who has a good deal of Felix's quick, nervous charm.
He has a power of speculation that kept me up till four one morning
and a hatred of organised religion that gave me immense pleasure. This
last conversation was a kind of round table fight over what the Russian
Communists would call theses — Phelan and I against Fosdick and an
American bishop whose name I do not remember. We argued that no
religion can be certainly established and that the mere beauty of its
profession does not entitle us to claim any other sanction for it than the
inherent appeal of that beauty. The bishop wanted to force people to
believe as the only way of saving the world from anarchy. He was the
mildest persecutor I ever met, but grimly certain that the world was
lost, and unwilling to see any virtue in the power of reason. We met
there also a Bolshevik from Moscow who was just like a medieval in-
quisitor. His calm certainty that Marxism was an ultimate truth and
that one could go to Das Kapital as one goes to the Bible when a Chris-
tian, made Phelan say that for Communists Marx was the incarnation
and Lenin the second coming — a remark that combines the charms
of truth and blasphemy.
I came back last night to our last week here. We go next Friday to
Antwerp for two days and then home. This really is an interim letter,
for I have two weeks' English correspondence to answer and I am writ-
ing to you as a relief to my irritation over business letters.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Beverly Farms, September 3, 1926
My dear Laski; Your account of Geneva and your book adventures there
move my envy — but I too have had my adventures, although on a less
impressive scale, both external and literary. One Wednesday, two days
ago, we went to Plum Island and sat upon the white beach, longer than
the old Hoffman House bar, stretching out of sight, with the black-blue
ocean illimitably in front, and a few mackerel gulls zigzagging swiftly
overhead — infinite space and air. Then returning we stopped at the
old house that you will remember in Newburyport, which was hard by,
and renewed the old sensation of the yard thick walls, and the daughter
of the house, now its mistress, came out (as there were a lot of girls
inside whom we didn't want to disturb) and made me proud of the
old Yankee race — though I horrified her by saying that I believed in
5 Edward Joseph Phelan (1888- ), British economist of Irish birth; after
many years with the International Labor Office, he became its Director Gen-
eral in 1946; author, inter alia, of The British Commonwealth and the League
of Nations (1931).
872 HOLMES TO LASK1 [1926
"My country right or wrong." Yesterday we went to a noble old house
in Marblehead of which I spare you the description but found there an
elderly Marblehead woman in charge who again made me proud of the
Yankees. Returning I found a woman with proofs of a photograph that
I weakly let them take the other day. I expounded that it was not my
job, but my wife liked the photographs so well that she let me in for
$74 before the short seance ended. This p.m. we have been at the studio
[of] Kraska [sic]1 in Gloucester to see a model he has made for a com-
panion piece to the fisherman that stands at the head of Gloucester
harbor of which probably I wrote to you last year. This is of the Glouces-
ter woman and again moved me. Also I liked the man. He said he came
from England (Norfolk).
In the way of reading, not much, but impressing. I've read, in a trans-
lation, not having the French, Le pere Goriot — an odious story. I don't
think the reproduction of ugly or hateful things always justified by the
genius it may display — justified aesthetically, I mean of course. When
I got enough for the moment I turned for a tooth wash to the little ex-
cellent book on Rome in the Home University series and the Plutarch's
Lives referred to there. It is an ever fresh surprise to see how many of
the axiomatic media got from life by men of the world you find in the
old books. My father quoted Tom Appleton,2 a noted wit, for "Give us
the luxuries of life and we will dispense with the necessities" — which
is Menger's3 "les gens pour qui le superflu est le nScessaire" previously
hinted at by Balzac, and now in the life of old Cato I read of Scopas,
a rich man, saying "It is just these useless and unnecessary things that
make my wealth and happiness" — which comes pretty near, etc. etc.
Now I have nothing on hand and have taken up the Antigone in the
intervals of paying bills, and leisurely preparations for the return to
Washington at the end of the month. Did you ever read Leacock's ac-
count of a Greek play given by college boys? It is balm to a wounded
soul. It is in Over the Footlights, a book I recommend — "Oroastus, a
Greek Tragedy, attributed to Diplodokus."
A day or two ago I received a parcel marked "Personal, Confidential
and Urgent" and in another place "From Society for the Propagation of
the Word among the Heathen; Subcommittee for the Illustrious Heathen"
— and began to swear to myself, noting only the first words of the last.
I opened and found Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (which, like Emerson's
1 Leonard Craske, supra, p. 781.
2 Thomas G. Appleton (1812-1884); Boston man of letters.
8 Carl Menger (1840-1921), founder of the so-called Austrian school of
economics which emphasized the factor of subjective value in the explanation
of economic phenomena.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 873
cannon shot, seems to have been heard round the world). I suspect an
ex-secretary who was here with his wife a few days ago.
And so adieu for the moment. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
16 Warwick Gardens, MX. 26
My dear Justice: We got back here yesterday from Belgium, and are to
spend a week in Manchester with my people before serious work begins.
Meanwhile I am arranging new books, and finding out what is happening
to the world.
We spent three delightful days in Antwerp on the way home. First
we bought two etchings by Ensor, to celebrate our fifteenth wedding
anniversary — how I wish I could show them to you. One is the town-
hall at Ostende, as delicate a thing as I have seen, and the other the
pier at Middlekerke which for suggestive beauty really is in the class
of Whistler. We are both so excited about them that we keep taking
trips to the dining-room where they hang, and they somehow seem (as
Frida said) to justify our marriage. Then I found four books in Antwerp
of first-rate value to me. One, especially, a Recueil de pieces interes-
santes of 1590, had in it the first relation I can discover not in English
of Drake's voyage round the world. Altogether, looking over what I
bought abroad I am well content; for when the School of Economics
eventually inherits my library it will at least have a significant collection
on the history of social thought.
We spent a day also just outside Antwerp with friends. A perfect
scene — flat dunes with the old Flemish houses fading into them, and
good talk. One of the houses was Camille Huysmans,1 the Socialist
Minister for Education in the present Belgian government and a very
attractive fellow. He told me remarkable stories of Lenin, whom he
knew well in the days of exile; and he took me to see a most interesting
survival of the old common system where the Flemish peasant still has
a right to fish, wood, and pasturage for one cow or two sheep. I talked
to some old peasants there and found, to my amazement, that one of
their deepest convictions was absolute loathing of Spain. Why, I could
not understand until further talk revealed that it was the memory of
Alva and the Spanish infantry which had been handed down as a legend
of hate; and Huysmans told me that Alva still exists throughout Flanders
as the nursery bogy for naughty children.
The one positive thing I have done since we got back is to read H. G.
Wells's new novel, Volume I2 (there are to be three). It's a remarkable
Camille Huysmans (1871- ), Socialist statesman, was Prime Minister
of Belgium from 1946 to 1947.
a The World of William Clissold (3 vok, 1926).
874 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
thing — episodic, formless, and rather stuttering as most of his things
are; but queerly alive and vivid and stimulating. Incidentally^! think
it c'ontains the best criticism of socialism I know. I hope it will come
your way. I have read, too, coming over, Anatole France's Sur la piene
blanche, which I thought exquisite (Frida interrupts to say the word
is not strong enough); and its one indecency is quite brilliant. The
young girl prays at the statue of the 'Virgin, "O thou who didst conceive
without sin, help me to sin without conceiving." I shall send you this in
the pocket edition in the hope of (a) tempting you into reading it and
(b) relieving my conscience a little in the way of Declareuil. And I
must not forget to say that in our last days at Waulsort I was lent an
excellent book by one Felix Sartaux [sic] called Foi et science au moyen
age* which interested me enormously. It might not unfitly be called a
modern footnote to Haureau of the sixties who wrote on the Scholastics;
and I found especial interest in its account of medieval science. It is
quite a short book, and I believe it is going to lead me further than I
ever intended to go — a sure proof of quality.
I have kept rather hidden these two days in London in order to work
off arrears of letters. A mass of things accumulates; books to be acknowl-
edged; reviews to be done; and university business. One day I must
acquire a secretary, but I fear that is far distant. The Germans, with
great kindness, are beginning to notice my work and send me books; and
I am rather baffled as to whether I am in duty bound to read them or
no before I acknowledge them. One man, for instance, sends me a huge
tome on Plato's theory of law and I gaze upon it fondly with a feeling
that if it were in English I would happily turn over its pages, but that
German with an average of ten footnotes to a page is less inviting than
might be. So also with a Frenchman who sends me the first of three
volumes on the later Jansenists. A great failure is, I suppose, at least
contingently a great tragedy, and to me to see or read a great tragedy is
always a Katharsis; yet with Diana at my elbow clamouring to be read
to, and Huckleberry Finn as the book, somehow or other the last Jan-
senists are rather far away.
Other news, I fear, there is none. Politics, at the moment, are dead;
and the only big event in the next ten days is the necessity of correlating
exarn papers for the B.Sc. final. That I hate; for I have the baffled
sense of disbelieving in examinations without knowing how to replace
them.
Eliot's death, I suppose, was expected.4 I take it for granted that he
was a great man. I only saw him twice, when I found him impressive
8 Felix Sartiaux, Foi et science au moyen dge (1926).
4 Charles William Eliot (1834-1926), President Emeritus of Harvard, had
died on August 22.
1926] HOLMES TO LASKI 875
but harsh. Your father, if I remember aright, held him in great esteem.
He must have done much for Harvard, and certainly he makes Lowell
dwarf-like. But I am not sure that a smaller, more intense Harvard
would not have been finer; at least I always feel that in the Law School
which I respect above all other educational places.
My warm affection to you both. I shall write once more to B. Farms
and then try you in Washington. Ever devotedly yours, H. ]. L.
Beverly Farms, September 15, 1926
My dear Laski: Your last letter tells of your return and among other
things of a book by Sartaux [sic] which you call a modern footnote to
Haureau. I read Haureau once with interest, although I believe I was
assured that there was a better book by someone else, and I wish I
might read this, but we leave here at the end of next week. I wonder
what you mean by saying that it is going to lead you further than you
ever intended to go. Do you mean in reading? I remember that Haureau
impressed me by showing Descartes more indebted to the scholastics
than I had supposed. As to a book on Plato's theory of law, it seems to
me that that can wait. I saw the other day, possibly in Hoffding, a ref-
erence to the Antigone. (Don't you always say Antigone although the
Greek accent is Antig6ne? I am aware that the o is short) for the state-
ment that no one knows where the law comes from. As the reference
suggesting it did not give the lines I am rereading it, though I find the
chorus a difficulty even with Sir G. Young's translation alongside. I find
that Antigone is speaking of the divine law — 1.456.457: aXX' ae( TCOTS £vj
TauTa, y,ou8e!g olSev e£ OTOU ^pavr],1 but it fits pretty well the notion of the
common law as pictured by Mcllwain in Coke's time even. I shall try to
reread Sur la pierre blanche, but my rather vague recollection is that I
didn't like it. A. F. does not alway hit me — although I bow to Les dieux
ont soif.
I am not doing any serious reading, but give the best two or three hours
to admirable drives, and have done a little more Balzac with continued
dislike for the pictures of envy and malice and thirst for luxury. I imagine
that I still should get pleasure from the Contes drolatiques but I have
them not here. I bought them during our Civil War with Dore's illustra-
tions, and have them on my shelf of horrors in Washington. Speaking of
the Civil War, I believe that I am becoming a sort of mystical hero to
two or three small boys, cousins or neighbors, as a survivor who was in
that show. The grandmother of one asked me for an autograph for him,
and an aunt stipulated that I should give it to her so that her boy could
1 "[For their life is not of today or yesterday! but from all time, and no man
knows when they were first put forth." (Jebb, tr.).
876 HOLMES TO LASKI [1926
stick the addressee for a quarter, to get it. So I wrote telling the lad that
64 years ago on the 17th I was at Antietam and nearly killed. I like to
boast of my grandmother who died at about that time and who remem-
bered moving out of Boston when the British troops came in. I think Lord
Percy occupied her father's house as my father told me that probably he
had had his head powdered before a looking glass that is now in my
parlor at Washington — but Rice, late of the print department, Congres-
sional Library, knocked it out by saying that his grandmother with whom
he had talked remembered the old French war which was earlier than the
Revolution. An epitome of (my) life: my first books ends (designedly)
with the word "explained" — my last with the word "unknown." Sat prata
biberunt. I close the gates. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
16 Warwick Gardens, 19JX.26
My dear Justice: You must forgive my long silence, but I have been over-
whelmed since I last wrote to you. First there was a visit of a week to my
people in Manchester, which was not unattractive, but very exhausting.
You see the atmosphere is so strange to Frida that I have to be, so to say,
on duty all the time to see that she is comfortable. It isn't that they don't
like her, on the contrary. But it is the meeting of two quite different
worlds, and my job is to be the medium of adjustment. So while I am
there I neither read nor write, but simply talk hard from morning till night.
Then we had the problem of this house. The landlord had the option to
terminate the lease next March, which he has done; and he offered to
renew it only on terms which no professional salary could cope with, in
addition to wanting us to take on a studio at the back at 150 pounds a
year. As he offered to renew the lease only for 14 years we should have
been paying a heavy rental for nothing at the end. So we decided that the
path of wisdom was to find a new house and if possible a little freehold
so that all we spent on it would still leave us with a TUOU oro) we knew to be
ours. After wearisome hunting we have found and bought a delicious
little Georgian house ( 1796 ) about five minutes from where we now live.
It has one disadvantage — a railway in the front. But it has beautifully
proportioned rooms with Adam ceilings and fireplaces, an attractive lit-
tle garden, and we think that with some five hundred pounds spent on it,
we can make it a real joy to us. So sometime in the next few months we
shall move there and you will have to accustom your envelopes to a new
address.
As you can imagine, this has taken time and energy and I have done
little else. But we managed a delightful dinner with Redlich at the Francis
Hirsts' just before he set sail for America. (You know, I expect that he
is to teach jurisprudence in the Law School for three years.) He is a
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 877
great conversationalist, and we wandered easily over the universe. We
agreed in liking Jefferson more than Hamilton, in thinking that Destutt de
Tracy1 was a wrongly neglected figure, and in elevating Tocqueville above
any similar person in the 19th century. I had to fight both him and Hirst
over Leslie Stephen, whose books they rated low; and over you whom
they accused of undue contempt for Aristotle and Plato. I argued (I hope
fairly) that your "contempt" was simply an insistence that you must see
with your own eyes first and adjust your scheme in the light of their
criticism rather than bow the knee a priori. I wonder much how Redlich
will fit into Harvard. He has great incisiveness and is very "European." On
the other hand he has warm affection (who could not?) for Felix and I
think he is counting much on that friendship as the certain basis of con-
tent while he is in America. But you will, I gather, be seeing him in
October, I hope, and I shall look forward to your impressions.
We have been putting up this last week my friend Neale who is
professor of history in Manchester. He is very able indeed, and I had
the joy that comes of watching the intense earnestness of the scholar
hunting down documents. He is working on the history of parliament
under the Tudors, and especially under Elizabeth, and he is like nothing
so much as a dog that has found the scent. He makes the evenings
pleasant for he has fallen personally in love with Elizabeth, and as Frida
regards Mary Stuart as an unjustly treated woman, I can hound them on
to combat in great style. Also several Germans have been to the house,
one of whom, Palyi,2 strikes me as the cleverest economist I have met in
many a day. They are an amazingly grim set of men on their subject, and
their zest for categories appals me. To ask a German, for instance, to
define administrative law is to invite a metaphysical tyranny which only
a thunderstorm can avert. They use words that I (who speak German but
slowly) have to unravel in sections and by the time I have managed to
construct a reply they have proposed alternative terms as long as I Street.
Of reading, I have done little. I reread Butler's Way of All Flesh, with
some chuckles but much more with the feeling that it was like Noah's
sons uncovering their father's nakedness. I have read a charming account
of the salon of Mme Helvetms by one Guillois, and a new novel (not
very good) by Galsworthy.3 Also we went to the play to see his new
1 Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836), father of "ideology "
a science of ideas sufficient, according to its author and disciples, to bring
certainty to the political and moral sciences; his admiration for American ideals
was reciprocated by Jefferson, who sponsored the publication of Destutt de
Tracy's work as A Treatise on Political Economy (1817).
2Melchior Palyi (1892- ); following a distinguished career in Germany,
both as teacher and as economic consultant to financial institutions, Dr. Palyi
left Germany in 1933 and pursued a similar career in the United States.
*The Silver Spoon (1926).
878 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
piece Escape but it was, though nobly acted, a weak evasion of his
problem. X is in jail for manslaughter under circumstances that make you
sympathise with him. He escapes from Dartmoor in a fog. The play is
the hunt and the attitude of the general public to helping him. Most of
them do. But the real problem is not the helping of a gallant army officer
penalised for an accident, but the old "lag" who has no use for the ac-
cepted social standards. I think Galsworthy at bottom is a weak senti-
mentalist whose life is built round a shrinking from even the necessary
cruelties of life.
Our love to you both. Do have a great term in Washington; and greet
Rockport for me. Ever affectionately yours, H. }. L.
Washington, D. C., October 3, 1926
My dear Laski: Your letter telling of your visit to your father's and your
hunt for a house was forwarded to me here, and gives me unusual pleasure
even for a letter of yours. The simplicity with which you tell of domestic
circumstances and your assumption of my interest and sympathy delights
me. Perhaps it is rather late in the day for me to remark on such things
and not take them for granted, but still they give me a happy pleasure.
I wonder what can have given Redlich or your illegible host (Francis
Hust?) whom I do not recognize, the notion that I had a contempt for
Plato and Aristotle? I revere them, and have reread Dialogues of Plato
and read Aristotle (whom I know less well) of recent years. I simply
apply to them what I apply to all the past, my belief that the present
conception of the universe and man's place in it is more delicate and
profound than ever before — which I think is obvious. Don't you?
Apropos of Redlich, you call him a great "conversationalist" — a common
phrase. I always wonder why the adjective termination al is put into the
noun. Galsworthy I mainly pass by on the other side and can't criticize
in detail. I think I remember having read very beautiful descriptions of
nature by him.
We got here Wednesday morning and things now are in pretty good
shape for tomorrow's beginning. I have gone over (now and in the
summer time) 57 certioraris and have a big stack of them still awaiting
examination. I have called on the C.J. but have not seen him, and have
missed a call from Brandeis who came when I allowed myself the let-up
of a drive in the park yesterday morning. I did have a call from Hough
(L. Hand's colleague) which gave me much pleasure. He has praised and
criticized and chaffed me in articles in which, as in his opinions, he has
a spicy tongue. I liked him greatly. He talks simply and straight — one
was willing to trust him at once. Also he spoke with affection and appre-
ciation of Felix, which went to my heart.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 879
No reading for some time, I expect. I took advantage of the time saved
by the C.J.'s being out to whisk over to the Congressional Library to
look at an article to which I had been referred on Leibl l — whom
Spengler — Untergang des Abendlandes — cracks up as one of the last of
the great, and about whom (partly because I couldn't remember the
name) I have been vainly curious since 1924. There was only one repro-
duction of an etching, but there were others of drawings and paintings.
I couldn't make up my mind off hand on what I saw whether he was more
than a man who thoroughly knew his job. That is, I didn't clearly detect
a great poet, or one who had profoundly new things to say. And I don't
think that we yet have exhausted what man can learn of, or feel about,
the universe — which you fellows, who propose to reshape it, will admit,
I think,
I forget whether I have mentioned an excursion into Balzac, in transla-
tions that happen to be in the house at Beverly Farms, Pere Goriot,
Cliouans, Un grand homme de province a Paris, and a popular French life
of him. I don't like him or enjoy his books. Bob Barlow was talking about
him, said in substance, You don't find what we call a good fellow outside
our crowd, which has a certain truth. Their damned envies, jealousies,
and mean tricks make me tired. But perhaps I should qualify Barlow by
saying that one who does not know London or Paris but only this country,
cannot quite realize the fierce temptations of social ambition. Still, there
is too much of the boor and the snob about Balzac with all his genius. I
prefer the British laugh from the guts.
One of the most universally applicable of quotations, which comes up to
me in many places, is Caesar's et superest ager — but I will plough no
more today. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
16 Warwick Gardens, SO.IX.26
My dear Justice: This letter is written on the verge of term, with all the
tensity which comes therewith. I seem to have spent the last four days in
a whirl of new students, black, brown, yellow, and white, adjusting their
impossible perspectives to rationality. They are really adorable people —
the Hindu who asks you simply to be a father to him; the Chinaman
who is naively surprised when you tell him that you know nothing of
ancient Chinese political theory; the American (from Iowa) who uses the
word "sociological" as though it were in itself pure magic. They keep one
at it, but I am still in the mood where they seem to justify almost all the
energy one spends on them.
Since I wrote last I have had a good deal to do. A week-end in
1 Wilhelm Leibl (1844-1900), German painter who passed from an imitative
phase to a more forthright and self-sufficient realism.
880 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
Cambridge for an adult education conference with the extra job of find-
ing a successor to Haldane as its president.1 I had a long talk with the
latter there at dinner. He interested me enormously in a number of
ways. First, the regions where his mind simply doesn't function at all
e.g., in the quality of historic mindedness. Rousseau to him is simply a
body of doctrines which have no connection with space and time. Second,
I was interested in the great art he has — I suppose the supreme adminis-
trative quality of getting people to do things. And third I realised the
immense power as a factor in social life that comes from having experience
of high office. It persuades half one s audience to take pronouncements
as valid because of their origin. Haldane e.g. urged that much more at-
tention should be given in education to mathematics. Now if there is
one thing I am certain of it is that beyond a certain elementary point,
mathematics are a permanently closed subject to the larger part of man-
kind. Yet I heard distinguished professors of classics getting up one after
another and saying that without a grasp of Einstein men lost a significant
part of the heritage of mankind when they must have known (I) that
they themselves didn't and couldn't understand relativity and (II) that if
it were proposed to make mathematics after say the elementary calculus
compulsory they would fight like cats to prevent it. And I must not for-
get the other side. Rutherford had a great German physicist staying
with him who had never read a line of Goethe, the ancient classics, al-
ternative sciences, did not know anything of history, abstained from the
study of politics, and relaxed by reading the higher mathematics. He was
a Nobel prizeman, obviously a genius in his line, and, as I said to Haldane,
he cared nothing for % of the heritage of mankind. I added (Haldane
dissenting strongly) that apart from physics I refused to regard his pro-
nouncements on life as having any more interest or importance than those
of a bricklayer or a waiter — less perhaps. But of course he had views
about everything and could not be made to grasp the possibility that e.g.
a knowledge of liquid hydrogen did not entitle one to judgments upon
how a civil servant should be chosen.
Of reading I have done something. The new W. W, Jacobs gave me a
lot of pleasure2 — I think Sam, Ginger, and Russet, are really creations
of whom anyone could be proud. Then an admirable hook on the French
Revolution (not new) by one Chassin called La genie de la Revolution,
and a good one on Babeuf who had been a mystery to me but who in this
book by his aide-de-camp Buonarroti turns out to be quite simply a Lenin
manque. I picked up one or two nice books in Cambridge, and a nice 17th
1 Mr. Justice Sankey succeeded to the presidency. An account of the Cam-
bridge conference is in Haldane's Autobiography (1929), 319-322.
2 W. W. Jacobs, Sea Whispers (1926).
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 881
century engraving of the great feudist Loyseau that I think would attract
you.
One other adventure I must record, but for your private ear only. I
drafted some letters for the miners in their struggle with the government,
as a result of which I went with them to Downing Street the other day.
The change in Baldwin since I saw him last was quite tragic. He had be-
come hard and a little cynical and impatient of all criticism. We had some
private talk and I found that he was a most curious mixture of the senti-
mental phrase and the hard act. Churchill who was there was bigger and
more skilful in every way — he knew how to negotiate, Baldwin merely
.blundering uncouthly.
I send this to Washington as I expect your Court begins on Monday.
At the moment I am very barren of American news. Felix has been un-
accountably silent to the point even of leaving me worried as to whether
he is well. But the spare hours are full I expect with him and I remain
patient.
My love warmly to you both. Now that term is at hand I hope to have
more interesting things to say. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
16 Warwick Gardens, 9.X.26
My dear Justice: These have been difficult days, with more work than I
really like. First the hard work of beginning term, with the long procession
of students to be interviewed, theses to discuss, and lectures to prepare;
with only an occasional relief as when a Sikh who is 42, about 6 ft. 2 in
height, and weighing about 16 stone, asked me to be a father to him. And
there has been a sudden epidemic of German professors to be entertained
— one or two of them very charming, but, in the main, real heavy-
weights. I have learned from them at least one thing of great value, that
the adjective "sociological" means "indefinite." When X tells you that he
is going to treat his subject vom sociologisches standpunkt, it means that
he isn't clear what he is going to say about it. And Dorothy Kirchwey's
father1 to lunch — well-meaning, I thought, but rather dull. I annexed
my colleague Jenks (whom you know) to entertain him, and was vastly
amused by the elaborate compliments Kirchwey paid him. Indeed some
of them were so carefully balanced that at times I thought they would
topple over. Then, too, I have had all the documents to study for my
first case as a member of the Arbitration Court, and as I cannot, like you,
look into my docket and find 2000 cases, I have, as Felix would say,
sweated blood over it. It's a good case, I add, with room for the display of
1 George W. Kirchwey (1885-1942), law professor and criminologist, was
the father of Holmes's and Laski's common friend, Dorothy Kirchwey (Mrs.
Larue) Brown.
882 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
ingenuity; but we don t sit until next Tuesday so I have little notion of
how these things work out as yet.2
Of reading but little, though at least 3 things must be mentioned. First
the second volume of Wells's new novel, Clissold, which, with some bits
of bad taste, I thought quite masterly. He has an amazing power of vivid
insight, and a courageous frankness which it is impossible not to admire.
People complain of his attack on the King; yet if I may whisper it, I think
the things he attacks the King for are justly put and have exactly the
incidence on social affairs that he indicates. Certainly, in my own experi-
ence, the people at the top are helpless mentally and morally before
royalty; I have seen even a girl of brains and courage like Elizabeth
Bibesco3 tremble with excitement at a garden-party because the Duchess
of York asked for some words with her; and at the Institute of Philo-
sophical Studies the largest attendance we ever had at its executive was
when the Prince of Wales, who is its patron, took the chair. People of real
distinction, like Balfour, stood by him with an air of religious deference
which was frankly nauseating. The other book is sheer delight — one of
the wittiest things I have read in many a year. It is by the authoress of
Elizabeth and her German Garden and is called Introduction to Sally —
I do beg of you and Mrs. Holmes to read it aloud over solitaire — you
will have some of the best comedy you have ever experienced. In a more
sober line I have read a book by one Chassin called La genie de la Revolu-
tion which Morley commended years ago, and is quite excellent, and a
study of Mme. de Geoffrin and her salon4 which is nearly as good as the
writer's Life of Julie de Lespinasse. There is one adorable story in it of
Fontenelle. The latter had a nephew "sat, laid, fat" (I quote Fontenelle)
who took ill; the old writer, who was then 90, spent days at his bedside in
misery. At last the vigil began visibly to affect his health and Mme. de
Geoffrin urged him to come home assuring him that the nephew would
recover. "That," said Fontenelle, with tears in his eyes, "is just what I
fear." Do you know a better definition than that of what the French mean
by esprit?
Of other news but little. I had one interesting evening in Bermondsey
where I talked on Burke in a converted stable to 200 dockers and had a
most intent and intelligent audience; and a great night with the young
folk at the School where they received the freshers and were as delightful
and irresponsible as only undergraduates can be. Also I have (with Frida's
2 The Case of Postmasters and Assistant Postmasters (#1256), 8 Industrial
Court Decisions 306. Laski had recently been appointed a member of the
Industrial Court, a post which he filled until his death.
8 Princess Bibesco was Asquith's daughter, Lady Elizabeth Asquith.
* Pierre Segur, Le royaume de la rue Saint-Honore: Madame Geoffrin et sa
file (1897).
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 883
approval) definitely finished the purchase of the house, to which I think
we shall go in about Xmas time. We went over it again and fell in love
with it a second time. It will, I expect, exhaust my financial powers for
a bit; but it exercises the usual magic of ownership and I always seem in
these money matters to fall on my feet so long as I do not bother unduly
about them. It is a great thing to know that one has a TCOU <TT0 from which
only a revolution can move one and to be able to change about the house
without fear of or permission from some landlord ten degrees removed.
Did I ever tell you that between ourselves and the ultimate ground
landlord of our present house there are actually six sub-tenants.
For the rest I have been hard at my book on communism which moves
slowly on its way.5 I emerge as an admirer of Lenin who was a master of
courage and strategy. But I emerge also with the conviction that tolera-
tion and good will, bourgeois as they are, outweigh in virtue all the other
qualities in the world. And the dogmatism that is the price of a commu-
nist scheme seems the more unlovely the more one examines it. However
you shall judge for yourself in the spring of next year when the little book
comes out.
I have been rather baffled by receiving a number of circulars from the
Harvard Law School asking for money. I don't like their scheme. A
professorship of legislation seems to me merely foolish, and one of crimi-
nology dubious because likely to give a myopic view; and I don't want the
Law School to grow bigger — it's already over-big. Accordingly with some
doubts I have decided to do nothing for the scheme and send a gift to
the library instead. I'd like much to know what your views are about
this. To me it looks as though Pound had been trapped by the illusion
of size.
Our love to both of you. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
16 Warwick Gardens, 16.X.26
My dear Justice: Your delightful letter, written just as the Court had
resumed, went to my heart. I imagine [you] as a small islet of mind
in a seething ocean of certioraris. And that court of yours reminds me that
I had my first judicial adventure the other day when I sat to hear a post
office case in the Civil Service Court.1 It was very interesting, and the
standard of argument was, throughout, very high. And I liked my col-
leagues, the more especially, I suppose, because they gave way to me on
two points in the decision. It was a new experience to write it, and
I certainly learned much about the art of phrasing in the endeavour to
5 Communism (Volume 131 of Home University Library, 1927).
1 See, supra, pp. 881-882.
884 LASKI TO HOLMES
find words they were willing to accept. We, alas, cannot have dissenting
judgments; and that will, doubtless, one day cause me pain. But I
certainly enjoyed the first dip in the judicial ocean.
This week Frida came along with me to Edinburgh and Glasgow,
where I had to give some university lectures. At Edinburgh we stayed
with the Kemp Smiths,2 he being a philosopher (vide his book on Kant)
and a most charming person. Scottish academic society is very interesting
— it has a flavour quite its own. No other world exists for it, and men
have a tendency to regard themselves as distinguished because they are
professors in Edinburgh University. It was queer to meet one emeritus
professor of law (aged ninety-three) whose grandfather had been a
student of Adam Smith at Glasgow which takes one straight back to
the middle of the eighteenth century; and the old gentleman told me
of Carlyle's visit to him in the sixties when he asked C. what he thought
of J. S. Mill and was given a scornful "He has nae roots in his mind" for
an answer. I frankly enjoyed his reminiscences, which went right back
to the Disruption of 1843, better than anything else except' Grant's
bookshop where I bought several books that maketh the heart to rejoice,
including an 18th century Moliere with plates by Moreau le Jeune in
6 volumes for a pound. Glasgow was more modest in itself but less at-
tractive— partly perhaps because everyone I happened to meet was
godly and a Hegelian and my mild expressions of scepticism about the
latter were not well received. When, for instance, in my second letter
[sic] I soberly and grimly took the general will to pieces, I saw the face
of the professor of moral philosophy look like an avenging angel. It
became his job to propose a vote of thanks to me; and with an unction
that I dare not even try to convey in words he warned the youth present
that this "iconoclasm about ultimate truths" was a path he did not advise
them to tread in their own lives; then, raising his sobbing voice, "it
leads to the slipping precipice of disaster." My withers, as you can guess,
were not wrung, but I had great difficulty in stopping myself from making
a satirical reply.
We came back to find that the way is now open for planning our new
house, and we are plunged in catalogic mysteries about fireplaces, parquet
floors, and other such things. My one triumph will be a series of cup-
boards at the base of the bookcases in which myriads of pamphlets can
be kept, and an armchair upon which I can write by the adjustment of
one of its arms. The house pleases us the more, the more intimately we
examine it, and I think that two months of decoration and overhauling
will make it a really attractive thing.
Outside of Scotland, I have not seen people since I wrote last as I
2 Norman Kemp Smith (1872- ), Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at
Edinburgh, 1919-1945.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 885
have been busy on my book. But I have read one or two things, including
I hasten to mention, a quite admirable detective story called The Murder
of Roger Ackwyd by Agatha Christie which I commend to your evenings
and defy you to solve honestly. And for lecture-purposes I have been
rather deep in Plato, often with irritation, but also with deep admiration.
From what you say, I should not dissent. There are parts of the Phaedo
which I rate as high as anything except supreme poetry; and the
Apology, the Crito, and certain pieces of the Republic, have given me
great comfort. But if Plato had not written them, there would not, I
think, be any reason to think of the Laws, the Statesman, or the Meno,
as other than third-class. On the other hand, Aristotle never fails to
refresh me; and though, of course, his literary appeal is nil, the more one
reads him the more one has the sense of the incomparable common sense
and judgment the fellow had — never loose, always perceptive, and
always balanced. And while I am on these Greeks I desire to emphasise
two heresies ( a ) I think Aristophanes a pretty poor sort of person —
rather like H. L. Mencken — and (b) that Xenophon hasn't any of the
qualities I read that he possesses in the books. The fault, doubtless, is
in me; but the other day I heard Mackail3 talk of "the faultless
simplicity" of Xenophon and picking him up for the first time since
school days, I was literally bored to tears. On the other hand by my
bed in Edinburgh was put the Greek Anthology and there I think endless
eulogy is amply justified.
You will, I expect, have neard that Asquith has resigned the liberal
leadership.4 I'm sorry, not only because a landmark goes from English
public life, but also because it really means, I fear, that the party rank and
file had decided to cleave to Lloyd-George. Asquith has had terrible
faults, and very limited horizons; but I know no man in our public life
more loyal or more generous. He has been lazy and self-indulgent and
indecisive, but no one has ever lost anything by trusting him and he
has never been charged with deception. I hate to think of him having
to yield before a fellow like L-G who hasn't a principle anywhere in his
composition. And the latter is so vindictive that he will set himself out
to ruin people like Simon who stood by Asquith. Ramsay MacDonald
said to Frida at the Labour Party Conference that he had never known
8 Presumably John William Mackail (1859-1945), classicist, literary his-
torian, and biographer; his works include Select Epigrams from the Greek
Anthology (1906).
*In early October representatives of the Liberal and Radical Candidates'
Association had urged Lord Oxford to take the leadership in restoring unity
in the Liberal Party. On the 14th, however, Lord Oxford announced his resig-
nation of the leadership of the Liberal Party, pleading that his age made it
impossible for him to undertake the formidable task of eliminating dissension
in the Party.
886 LASKI TO HOLMES
a peaceful hour since he entered Parliament, and then added, not less
truthfully, no peaceful hour, either, when he was out of it. Politics is
certainly the grave of the ultimate decencies.
Well, I must go to dress. I dine with Sankey before he goes off on
assize, and shall meet the new judge, Clauson,5 of whom good things are
said. But of this, next week.
Our warm love to you both, Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., October 13, 1926
My dear Laski: You were harried and bothered about writing your last
— and I am about answering it. The Lord knows when I can finish the
few words I begin now. Before I refer to what you say and before I
forget it: Do you remember Zane whom you ran against in some
criticism and who has had whacks at me and I believe Pound? 1 During
the war he excluded by one stroke all consideration of any work by
German jurists — another wiped out Hobbes, Bentham and Austin, and
in short left one to suppose that there was nothing worth considering
except what he as yet did not see fit to reveal. Incidentally he said that
anyone who thought my Kawananakoa case was law might give up all
hope of ever being a lawyer — which was rather hard on me. I saw a
notice by him of VinogradofFs Custom and Right,2 in which at last he
praised and seemed to think Vinogradoff the greatest jurist of the last
50 years, I have sent for the brochure ... and though I have had no
time to read it yet I have a deep inward conviction from V's book in the
Home University Library3 — poor — and his book on Villenage — good
— (I forget the title) that Vinogradoff was a distinctly finite being —
not I should think to be named in the same year with Ehrlich. You
know more about him. Am I wrong?
I agree with you, totis viribus, as to mathematics. Postulates depend
on insight, man's greatest gift — one man having it in one direction,
another in another. Mathematics like other reasoning starts from postu-
lates, and in my very limited observation, mathematicians show little
insight in the postulates that they accept. Of course I can speak of them
only outside their special province, but it has struck me with mathe-
maticians here — and I might add Bertrand Russell, and Haldane [il-
legible] in philosophy, although I was not thinking of them when I
s Sir Charles Clauson (1870-1946) was Judge of the Chancery Division from
1926 to 1938 and from 1938 to 1942 was Lord Justice of Appeal. In 1942 he
was raised to the peerage as Baron Clauson.
1 See, supra, p. 180.
2 35 Jale L. J. 1026 (June 1926).
3 Common-sense in Law (1913).
1926] HOLMES TO LASKI 887
began. They say math teaches accuracy of thought. I should think it was
the last thing to have that effect, as it is the place where an undistributed
middle is almost impossible. A is always A and X, X. You learn accuracy
where you have to do the quantifying. How I should like to run on —
but I can't, and must go to work — it is Friday now. We have an off day
and I am more busy than ever in the moment of leisure.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Washington, D. C., October 23, 1926
My dear Laski: Imprimis congratulations on your purchase of a house. I
think it adds to the pleasure of life to own your own headquarters. For
although when I first came to Washington I was in another man's house
with his furniture, without my books, and working in a room where his
marriage certificate, sporting and other prints, occupied the walls, and yet
had a good time, it wasn't near so good as it could have been if I had
been here. Secundo — What is it about your being member of the arbitra-
tion court? What is the Court? and all about it? This is your first mention.
If I may venture a hint, I hope you won't be too keen after the display of
ingenuity that you mention. I was afraid from your account that you
rather overdid it when you were on a jury. 3. As to the contribution to
the Harvard Law School I have shared your impression so far that I have
not forked out, and talking with Brandeis today found that he was even
more decidedly of the same mind. I don't remember the proposed pro-
fessorships now, but several of them struck me as more than doubtful.
Beside what you mention, wasn't there one on the History of the Law.
I wouldn't endow that. 4. As to the attitude toward royalty, of course I
have been struck by the same thing. I remember in the middle of an in-
teresting talk at a garden party at (Buckingham?) palace the lady I was
with broke off to rush and adore as some royal children went by. But I
don't think you should call it nauseating. It may be, and I don't doubt
often is not snobbish, but just a kind of religious exaltation, an ideal of
loyalty, really to England, personified. It is not relevant but I add that I
think Thackeray quite wrong in assuming that it would be discreditable
to be pleased to walk down Pall Mall arm in arm with a couple of dukes.
It very probably would mean only satisfaction at evidence of one's own
importance — which it is not base to feel, only foolish to believe (unless
you are a Christian) .
I have just been impressed with the doctrine of relativity in a different
sphere from Einstein's and one that doesn't require a knowledge of mathe-
matics although much used. At our conference yesterday p.m. (for now
it is Sunday) we had some rate cases, the question being whether the rate
fixed by the N.Y. legislature for gas companies in New York was con-
888 HOLMES TO LASKI
fiscatory and so, unconstitutional.1 We solemnly weigh the valuation of
the property and all the tests and decide pro or con — but really it is
determining a line between grabber and grabbee that turns on the feeling
of the community. You say the public is entitled to this and the owners
to that. I see no a priori reason for the propositions except that that is the
way the crowd feels. I tell them that if the rate-making power will only
say I have considered A. B. & C., all the elements enumerated, we accept
the judgment unless it makes us puke. It is like the ideal of woman — on
one end you have the dames of the Decameron who care only for God
and man," at the other a peaked, elbowed school marm who talks on high
themes and thinks man a superfluity of nature. A given community fixes
its conception somewhere midway according to the dominance of com-
panionship or dimples.
As to the communists I have little doubt that I shall agree with what
you say. I take no stock in any scheme for remaking society that begins
with property instead of life. And that means that I don't care much for
any scheme that could be thought of now. I utterly disbelieve all postu-
lates of human rights in general Those established in a given society
stand on a different ground. But I grow like my school marm above in
what I am writing.
Things have gone pleasantly with me so far, and the constant over-
pressure of the last three weeks will abate somewhat with our short ad-
journment tomorrow. I shall fire off an opinion2 and have only one to
wrjte — on a matter that interests me much and will let in about an inch
of theory contra some English intimations in your cases.3
Affectionately yours, O. W, Holmes
61 Warwick Gardens, 23.X.26
My dear Justice: Your ever-welcome letter has just arrived, and I must
answer it before I sit down to a ghastly brief 300 pages long on the wages
of Admiralty surveyors which I have on Monday in the Civil Service Arbi-
tration Court.1 Your mention of John Zane comes to me a little faintly
down the years as of one who wrote boisterously but without learning in
the Michigan Law Review. I should not, as now informed, take anything
he said very seriously. I have that little book of VinogradofFs about which
there isn't, I think, any reason to get excited. I knew V. pretty well. He
^Ottinger v. Consolidated Gas Co., 272 U.S. 576; OUinger v. Brooklyn
Union Co., id. 579. In each case the Court held that the rates established by
the legislature were confiscatory.
2 Palmetto Fire Insurance Co. v. Conn, 272 U.S. 295.
3 Deutsche Bank Filiale v. Humphrey, 272 U.S. 517 (Nov. 23, 1926).
1 Case of Overseers Admiralty ( #1258), 8 Industrial Court Decisions 316.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 889
had immense learning of which he always made a great parade; but I
never thought he had an incisive mind, and apart from that famous paper
on folkland 2 and the admirable preface to his Villainage in England 1
never could get really excited by him. He always struck me as immensely
pontifical and he always took disagreement very badly, indeed, like most
Russians, he seem[ed] to regard it as a moral offence. I remember writing
in some Oxford paper when Korkunov's Theory of Law appeared that I
thought it consisted chiefly of pompous commonplaces elaborated without
regard to their insignificance. Vinogradoff replied in an angry letter that
the book was of seminal importance. I retorted that discoveries like the
remarks (I) that law is the index to the mind of a people (II) every
legal system in the Western world bears the impress of Roman law might
be true but did not justify excitement to which his response was that a
professor could not be expected to argue with an undergraduate on these
matters. I drew my deductions accordingly and did not frequent his
Omnicompetence thereafter. I thought, too, that his volume of introduc-
tion to Historical Jurisprudence was all swiped from Pound without ade-
quate acknowledgment. But I grow profane. De mortuis nil nisi bunkum!
Much has happened since I last wrote. First and foremost a really de-
lightful dinner with Sankey, J. who was in great form. He told me much
of his colleagues that was amusing. The new Lord Justice, Lawrence, has
such a bad temper that the bar has privately suggested its hope that he
and Scrutton, L.J. will not sit in the same Court; that Horridge, J. was so
overwhelming in a recent assize that counsel for the plaintiff lost his
temper and said that if the judge would come down to the bar and argue
like a man he would deal with him faithfully; that the C.J., Hewart, made
a speech in Latin recently and was complimented by an eager Welsh
counsel on his skill in Greek! I went, too, to dinner with Jaeger,3 the great
German classic [ist] who has succeeded Wilamowitz4 in Berlin. He was
most attractive and his hostility to Aristophanes for daring to satirise
Socrates was one of the most charming things I have seen. He told us one
great story of Mommsen hearing that Max Miiller5 had been appointed
professor in Oxford. "Have they then no humbugs in their own country"
said Mommsen, "that they must deprive us of grounds for grumbling."
* "Folkland/" 8 English Historical Review 1 (1893); reprinted in 1 Vino-
gradoff Collected Legal Papers (1928) 91,
3 Werner Wilhelm Jaeger (1888- ) was at the University of Berlin from
1921 to 1936. Professor Jaeger then moved to the United States and since 1939
has been University Professor at Harvard; his best known work is Paideia: The
'Ideals of Greek Culture (3 vols., 1939-44).
4 Swpra, p. 50.
5Friedrich Max Miiller (1823-1900); comparative philologist and orientalist
who from 1848 until 1894 taught at Oxford and did much to popularize the
theory of Aryanism.
890 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
He was the old-time German gelehrte, modest, interesting, eager to ex-
change ideas, and with a pride in his job that was impressive. Yesterday,
I gave my inaugural lecture at the School, a copy of which I shall send
you as soon as it is printed.6 I greatly enjoyed it, for it gave me an op-
portunity to write a manifesto against the psychological school which talks
a lot of nonsense these days. My old tutor, Ernest Barker, was in the chair
and made a most charming speech, pleasantly flavoured with recollections
of my sins as an undergraduate; and Haldane and Beveridge spoke most
kindly as my compurgators. In some ways it was a difficult job for I had
at once to eulogise Wallas and plead for my own view of the job. I hope
he liked it; but I do not really know. One other interesting day was a
meeting with the Trade Union Council to see if we could find a basis for
approaching the government on the miners' lockout. We failed, but I was
most impressed by the shrewd commonsense of the trade union officials,
especially of J. H. Thomas.7 For a sturdy and well-informed insight into
practical politics I have never met the equal of these fellows. On the other
hand, it was very difficult to make them bend their minds to the wider
problems beyond. And when it came to research, the idea did not mean
the same thing as it did, for instance, to Tawney and me. They thought
of it as something one turned a clerk on to; the idea of research as dis-
covery was literally a thing that had never presented itself to them.
Your comment about my scepticism on mathematics gratified me as,
I suppose, agreement does. But it has a curious sidelight that will amuse
you. We have been having a fight in the Board of Studies about the con-
stituent parts of the degree; and Tawney and I have been fighting against
statistics as a compulsory subject. Bowley,8 its professor, is probably the
greatest expert in his job in this country. He was a senior wrangler, a
Smith's prizeman, an F.R.S. and so forth. He made a passionate speech
on the importance of statistics as the one discipline like to give accuracy
of mind. In support of his contentions he presented some tables of stu-
dents* work which, as I took great pleasure in pointing out, did not con-
tain one accurate calculation. His additions and subtractions were so
wrong that most of his deductions were meaningless. His colleague also
presented a large number of theses built, if you please, on three students'
work. Tawney asked if he would publish a paper built on the analysis of
three cases. He got, of course, an ardent "no." But it did not occur to
8 On the Study of Politics: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered at the London
School of Economics and Political Science on 22 October 1926 (1926); re-
printed in The Danger of Being a Gentleman and Other Essays ( 1940 ) , S3.
7 See, supra, p. 626
8 Sir Arthur Lyon Bowley (1869- ); Professor of Statistics, University
of London, 1919-1936; author of innumerable works on economics in general
and statistics in particular. See supra, p. 716.
1926] HOLMES TO LASKI 891
either that they must apply the same principles to themselves as they did
to other people.
We are having a fascinating time getting our new house put into order;
and I think Mrs. Holmes would enjoy our hunts round for the oddments
of Georgian furniture which give the note of completeness to the rooms.
At the moment we are searching for the perfect Chippendale sideboard —
not an easy thing. We have a perfect 17th century carved oak chest for
the hall; you would, I think, endorse it as a work of art. And for my study
I have had a large photograve taken of the National Gallery Portrait of
old Hobbes — a most noble head with a mouth that is a marvel of ob-
stinacy. And a small one of old Prynne which I have bought not because
I like him but because, as Maitland said, old Prynne munching crusts
in the Tower while he copies out records is an heroic figure.
My love to you both. Do not do too much. Life is more even than the
largest possible number of certioraris.
Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Washington, D. C., November I, 1926
My dear Laski: Is it that you are more suggestive — Is it that when I
am swimming in the law I have few ideas outside of it? Is it — ? Why is
it that I so often write half my letters in answer to questions that your
letter evokes? I don't know what Carlyle's remark about Mill meant to
Carlyle, but it seems to have an obvious truth in it. Carlyle's thoughts
were rooted in his temperament, his prejudices, and his imagination —
Mill's were detached by reason. People pay higher for luxuries than for
necessaries and Carlyle's pictures may outlast Mill's thoughts but I doubt
if Carlyle gave the world as great a shove as Mill. I have forgotten what
I said about Plato but I believe I have given him his dues of love for the
things you mention.
I feel much as you do about Aristophanes, bar passages no longer re-
membered by me when he says beautiful things — but the fun of the
ancients! Excuse me. Plautus I thought not as good as a circus or on a
higher level — when I peeked into him a year or two ago. Why you snub
Mencken in that connection I don't quite see. I have read what I didn't
care for in him but I took much pleasure in a volume of Prejudices.
Xenophon I haven't looked into except the Memorabilia since I was
young, except that a glance at one of the translations at our house at Bev-
erly led me to wait for better days.
You tell me of a new judge — but as yet nothing of my dear Leslie
Scott — I do want to see him on the Appellate Court. We adjourned this
morning. My last opinion — a case assigned to me on Saturday — has
come back in proof from the printer and after I have sent it out I have no
892 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
duties to speak of except a trifle of 8 certiomris that came in this morn-
ing. I mean to read Wallas's Art of Thought — though I believe you ^did
not care much for it and his antecedent synopsis did not look like a flash
of lightning — and a brochure of Vinogradoffs [of] which I hope to think
lightly for reasons of personal malevolence as I explained the other day.
It was so very highly cracked up by your friend John M. Zane.
Tuesday 2d. I mean to go out presently to look for some witch hazel
which my wife always gets on this day. I don't know what the day is, (it
should have been before Halloween), or why, except for the flower of a
bush that blossoms at this time. Returning to the fun of the past, it dies
quicker than the tragedy, I suppose because more generally dependent on
circumstances or special powers of mind. Artemus Ward I found last
summer had little that lasted — a few memorable things based on the
eternal, but largely mannerisms that no longer please and make one won-
der that they ever did. Ditto of a good deal of Shakespeare. The fun of
the middle ages is generally, so far as I know, the dirty talk of boys. All
of which I believe I have said before.
Beveridge has sent me another chapter which I now have opened and
begun to read. It is interestingly told but I hate to go over the squalid
preliminaries to the war as I hate to reread of the blunders and worse of
the war itself and its sequel. I don't see any great good to Beveridge in
my reading, beyond a few corrections of English and some occasional
point when my memory or local knowledge helps — but I think I have
encouraged him a little when he has been feeling down. Brandeis wishes
that he had taken Taney (Marshall's successor) instead of Lincoln — but
as he had a stomach for it I think Lincoln was the better choice. It is not
the kind of undertaking that would have tempted me, but no biography
— simple or auto — would. I like more abstract themes. I get letters from
time to time suggesting everything from my views of life to my recollec-
tions of my father which move me only as bores to answer. I believe this
sums me up. My opinion has gone forth — and when the irritation of the
remaining small matters is over I shall look out on a blank world and try
to take my ease. Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
Washington, D. C., November 5, 1926"
My dear Laski: Your letter October 23 came just after your Inaugural on
the Study of Politics and I have just read both, with equal pleasure. The
address seems to me admirable both in its specific suggestions and in its
exaltation of the service of thought. I notice with interest that you have
added affection for Sankey to admiration of him.1 I wish I knew more
1 Laskf s Inaugural lecture ( supra, p. 890 ) was dedicated to "my friend Mr.
Justice Sankey with enduring affection."
1926] HOLMES TO LASKI 893
of his work. I am delighted at what you say about Vinogradoff as it con-
firms the prophecy of my soul. I shall read him directly.
My work is over for the moment, but leisure comes, never. When law
and life run short of chores — the wondrous tale's filled up by bores.
However, I have had some enchanting drives and yesterday p.m. went
to my first and only show for years — The Barber of Seville — to see
Chaliapin, but alas he filled only a subordinate part and didn't give my
wife the impression that I wanted her to get — that I got in London from
Ivan the Terrible.
I sympathize with the preparations for a house of your own, but there
is a feeling of money in the background that makes me doubt if you know
how we felt at Mattapoisett when we decided to invest in a wheelbarrow
for manure to take the place of a [illegible] drawn by a bit of rope — or
the joy we used to have when we lived in rooms next the Athenaeum and
would skip off to the Museum to take 50 cent seats and sneer at the nobs.
You talk of Chippendale — I was devilish glad to get pine boxes for my
books. Not, though, that I don't believe you have shown more resolution
in that way than ever I was called on to show. I don't forget that.
My secretary,2 a very nice lad, has taken some walks with me. This
morning I showed him the Soldiers' Home with the blue sky seen
through the gold of the tulip trees, then over to the Adams Saint Gaudens
statue in the Rock Creek cemetery, then whisking across the town to
Arlington in the uncertain effort to tread the turf under which I shall lie
before long. I found a spot, but whether it was like it or it I know not.
I have returned Beveridge's chapters with some general criticisms that I
hope were not unjust. I think he seems unduly impressed by the Southern
point of view, which I imagine is new to him, before the war — an un-
fortunate atmosphere, if I am right, for a book on Lincoln. However he
honestly and sincerely wants to get the facts and let them tell the story.
Of course I was nearer to the events than he, and I don't think I'm preju-
diced — although in my day I was a pretty convinced abolitionist and
was one of a little band intended to see Wendell Phillips through if there
was a row after the meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society just before the
war. How coolly one looks on that question now — but when I was a
sophomore I didn't like the nigger minstrels because they seemed to be-
little the race. I believe at that time even Pickwick seemed to me morally
coarse. "Now his nerves have grown firmer," as Mr. Browning says, and
I fear you would shudder in your turn at the low level of some of my
social beliefs. With which, adieu for the time. I suppose this will just
miss a boat, but will muddle through in time. Affly yours, 0. W. H.
2 Thomas G. Corcoran (1900- ); later renowned for his role as anony-
mous counselor of President Roosevelt and thereafter private practitioner in
Washington, D. C.
894
LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
16 Warwick Gardens, 11. XI. 26
My dear Justice: A perfect delight of a letter from you warmed the cock-
les of my heart. It came after ten days in which I had been peculiarly
driven, and gave me a sense that there are things behind the endless
paperasserie in which I seem to have been deluged. Let me first answer
some of your questions. Leslie Scott, I gather, is talked of for a lordship
of appeal when a vacancy comes; but the proposal to create a place for
him which was, I believe, privately made failed because the Lords are
well up to their cases and there would have been opposition. But the
talk says that he will certainly get the next big post. I hear, poor fellow,
that he needs it, as he has lost a good deal of money in Russia. As to my
own Court. It deals with disagreements between the government and its
employees and means sitting with a permanent president and one other
person about once a month. So far I have sat on five cases and thoroughly
enjoyed them. It is an invaluable experience to me as I learn a good deal
not otherwise knowable of the inner workings of the civil service; and I
see its results reflected in certain alterations of previous judgments which
at least proves that my mind has not yet closed!
Since I wrote last I have been overwhelmed. First helping Frida to
make decisions about the decoration of the new house. She is a wonder-
ful person, and my new study, from the point of view of comfort, will be
even an advance on this one. The miseiy has been the packing of my
books with a view to having that ready the day we move in. So I write
with not a dozen books in this room, and, consequently an indefinable
emptiness in the heart. And I have sat on myriads of committees — at
the School, the Labour Party, and what not which were all necessary,
but built on the basis of a world in which there is no time. Also, as chair-
man of the mediation board of the co-operative societies.1 I had to settle
a dispute about the wages of some 1000 men; and four nights of evidence
plus the writing of a reasoned decision is not done with a flick of the
eye. And I had to give a lecture to a conference of workingmen which,
following one by Hugh Cecil,2 I took rather special care to make informa-
tive and found, as a result, that it was more laborious than I expected.
Finally, having been elected a corresponding member of the Deutsche
Gesellschaft filr Sociologie, I had to compose a rather elaborate address
of thanks for their proceedings. The result has been that both reading and
writing from my own standpoint have rather gone by the board.
But there has been one delightful encounter that has been a light amid
1 Laski was one of a panel of chairmen of the National Conciliation Board
of the Co-operative Wholesale Society.
2 Lord Hugh Cecil (1869- ), who became Baron Quickswood in 1941,
was the author of Conservatism (1912); see, supra, p. 603.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 895
toil. We went the other day to lunch to H. G. Wells. That, in itself, was
delightful. He is at once attractive and impossible, always stimulating,
always suggestive, flashes of great insight and not an iota of profundity.
I pointed out to him that in one lunch he dismissed 8 philosophers, 6
novelists, and at least a dozen statesmen as worthless. Mostly, he was
right; usually for the wrong reasons. But there I met a Frenchman, Abel
Chevalley, whom I do, do greatly wish I could bring round to 1720. He
was a diplomat, at one time Ambassador to Poland, and his hobby is Eng-
lish literature. We probed each other at Wells's as gentlemen should and
found we wanted to go on, so on Sunday he came and spent the morning
here. He talked as I imagine Renan talked — a grave humour in which
the irony of the receptive spectator is the predominant note. "Taine" (I
quote some of his remarks) "thinks that criticism is a branch of obstetrics;
but he does not see he is delivering a child whom the parent insists is
supposititious!" "Every aristocracy should be religious: ceremonial to a
nobility is like a finely chosen perfume on an elegant woman." "Chateau-
briand made God in his own image, and looking upon his handiwork
declared that it was good." "Dickens was greater than Thackeray because
he loved more greatly." I select, of course, at random, as I remember.
I wish I could sketch you the eager little man, with his eyes lit up, his
hands gesticulating, unable to sit still through excitement. One of his best
remarks was on Galsworthy. "He is so sensitive that he will not see
through his characters for fear of causing them pain." We discussed
everything — the classics, the French Revolution, Russia, and he was al-
ways suggestive and always well-informed. One or two of his judgments
interested me greatly — his high regard for M. Arnold as critic (he has
"justesse'}, his contempt for Macaulay, his insistence that of all English
writers Hazlitt had the best natural taste in the nineteenth century. I
wish so much you had been there. We parted vowing to meet in Paris
as soon as may be. And he sent me today a book on Deloney, the English
novelist temp. Elizabeth that is full of good things.
What else? A little reading — an excellent book on Plato by A. E.
Taylor, not to be read all through, but, wisely skipped, very helpful
especially (me judice} on the Protagoras and the Laws. A book of much
charm by Henri Tronchin, on his ancestor the Genevan doctor who was
a friend of Voltaire. A pleasant novel by an American lady named Edna
Ferber called Showboat which was, I think, indicative of great promise
unless it is the work of an arrived author whom I in rny ignorance know
not. And those vast opinions, sent me very kindly by Brandeis, in Myers
v. U.S.3 in which, frankly, I thought the case for dissent so obvious as
3 272 U.S. 52. A majority of the Court held that a portion of an act of
Congress requiring the consent of the Senate to the President's removal of post-
masters from office was unconstitutional, despite the fact that the executive's
896 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
hardly to need even your page. For a power to create a post is surely
a power to create its conditions; otherwise your President would be an
intolerable autocrat.
Beveridge is a wonderful fellow to stick at his job with that devotion.
My only doubt is the old one — is a new life of Lincoln likely to add so
much, either in outline or in detail, as to make it worth writing? I do
not know, hence, doubtless, my scepticism. I'd rather see a real life of
Jefferson. Harcourt sent me the other day a biography by A. J. Nock
which I thought pretty thin stuff. And I find Jefferson so real a puzzle
that I should be deeply grateful for a book which dug deeply into the
sources. Certainly had I continued to live in America that is the job to
which I should have devoted myself.
My love warmly to you both. Don't spend too much time on certioraris;
and remember BirreFs advice to me for leisure periods — while there is
life there is Dooley. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., November 23, 1926
My dear Laski: Your letter (Nov. 11) is most interesting, and tells me
about what I didn't know before, your appointment to the Industrial
Court, although I still have no idea beyond what you give me of its and
your functions. I should think it would be a very valuable experience to
you. I appreciate your sitting in the empty room. I worked in one for
my first year here, as I believe I have told you, with the marriage certifi-
cate of the lessor and pious, relieved by sporting, prints.
We began sitting again yesterday, adjourning at 2 for luncheon and
McKenna's funeral — a truly kind soul. The clergyman said that when
his daughter told him a few days ago that he had been a perfect father,
he said, "only a decent gentleman." I suppose like the rest of us he had
his vanities but I think he also had humility. Some of the brethren took
so long with their discourses that we shall take some time this morning
in finishing — I am not reached yet. I have one case that interests me
much, on the time at which the mark is to be valued in a suit here against
a German bank, when the demand was made at a time when the mark
was worth much more than when the suit was brought here (to leach
money in the hands of the Alien Property Custodian).1 It interests me
because the dissent by Sutherland — McReynolds, Butler, Sanford, accord
— seems to me to illustrate, as so many cases do to my mind, the notion
that the law is a brooding omnipresence in the sky, as I once put it. When
power to name postmasters was conferred by an act of Congress. Holmes de-
livered a brief dissenting opinion, and McReynolds and Brandeis, JJ., each
wrote elaborate dissents.
1 Deutsche Bank Filiale v. Humphrey, 272 U.S. 517.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 897
a man asserts a legal right he must refer to some law that creates it, and
I say that the only right that the plaintiff had was a right created by the
German law — and that was a right to so many marks and nothing else
— not to the value of so many marks in other commodities at a given
time — but to so many marks when the suit was brought. The tendency
of some English and other cases is contra, but they none of them that I
have seen seem to me to go to the bottom of the business. I think the
same thing turns up on the question of rights against the sovereign, or
center of legal authority however you name it. Borchard has a long article
on this last theme in the last Yale Law Journal 2 — interestingly learned
but to my mind helpless when he comes to this proposition. Also I have
just reread Bacon's Essays — many shrewd thoughts and some noble lan-
guage. I think I wrote the other day that great works survive largely by
sound. Style seems to me fundamentally sound. But you could get more
intellectual stimulus from a current number of the New Republic or the
Spectator — why read him then? I think the question not entirely easy —
and I should advise a young man to read mainly books of his own time
until his views begin to be settled. Then he will begin to extend his
boundaries. There is philosophy in knowing the vicissitudes of thought
through which one's crowd has gone before getting to where it is — and
it is pleasant to be cultivated, and so forth and so forth. At the same
time every summer when I read a few pages of classics I have an anxious
sense that it would be easy to waste time upon them. Of course pleasure
is self-justifying — but to me reading of old literature is but a moderate
joy — a nutpicker and a shagbark — when you might have a slice of
something better with less trouble.
1 had a line from Beveridge rather gloomy over his work. It is not the
kind of job that I should care for — but I have no doubt that it will be
the life and the only one when he has done. Also this evening a letter
from Wu. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
16 Warwick Gardens, 21.XL26
My dear Justice: A grand letter from you was an oasis in the midst of a
heavy week. But now, thank heaven, things will go more quietly until the
end of term. Last week the outstanding thing was a paper at the Socio-
logical Club by Sir M. Amos (whom you may remember) on the need
for scientific jurisprudence.1 I wish he would print it, for especially its
analysis of the sins of Pound was a masterpiece. His argument was that
2 Edwin M. Borchard, "Governmental Responsibility in Tort" (Part I), 36
Yale L. J. 1, November 1926).
1 See Sir Maurice Sheldon Ames, "Some Reflections on the Philosophy of
Law," 3 Cambridge Law Journal 31 (1927) which is evidently a portion of
the paper referred to.
898 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
a good many of Pound's "objective" results turn out on investigation to be
derived either from an unconscious expression of need he feels, or from
the way in which he classifies his material, the assumptions of classifica-
tion not being tested. The whole paper was a superb tour de force, witty,
eloquent, and full of curious knowledge. I was particularly struck by a
devastating attack on Stammler which in general seemed to me unanswer-
able. Minor events were a visit to Manchester and one to Coventry. On
the first I had a delightful evening with Alexander the philosopher, whom
I have known and loved ever since I was a boy. He was discoursing on
his spiritual history and interested me greatly by saying that what first
turned him to philosophy was reading Hobbes, being certain that he was
wrong, and not knowing how to prove it. We had much talk about
Spinoza, whom he rates extraordinarily high — giving him a moral in-
sight which only Plato equalled. I launched out at Hegel and argued that
much of his reputation depended on his obscurity and that he failed to
see that metaphysical speculation is meaningless unless it begins by ad-
mitting that its anthropocentricity is proof of its incompleteness; if a worm
wrote a philosophy it would have a different scheme of values altogether.
Accordingly the only thing we can say about ultimates is that we have
no right to say anything. If you guess, that is faith and incapable of proof.
A theologian there was angry, arguing that the pragmatic proof of duty
is entirely satisfactory. Alexander interested me much by saying that he
thought a moral science possible by compiling codes of behaviour and
relating successful conduct to generality therein. But, ultimately, he and
his colleagues seemed to me to be mystics who want a deified X in their
equation as a point d'appui when the machinery doesn't grind out the
good and the beautiful.
Coventry was a great experience. I spoke there in a lovely 14th century
hall with a piece of tapestry at its back which simply defies description.
That had some perfect Tudor portraits, one, especially, of Mary Tudor
by Zucchini which explains the Elizabethan reaction against Catholicism
better than most histories. It was, by the way, amusing to see the satis-
faction of the Mayor in an horrific picture of Lady Godiva, their patron
saint. For fear of libel, my memory suppresses the name of the artist; but
he made Lady Godiva a giantess with breasts like mountains, a fit mate
for Gog or Magog; and she sits on a poor little palfrey which would cer-
tainly have invoked the Society for Preventing Cruelty to animals, could
it have spoken. But the Mayor pointed it out to me with rapture and the
Tudor portraits, I gathered, were nothing by the side of this gem. I spoke
there with my friend Oliver Stanley,2 a young Tory M.P. who is Derby's
2 The ancestor of Oliver Stanley (1896-1950) would seem to be Edward
Stanley, fourteenth Earl of Derby (1799-1869), three times Prime Minister
and always the sharp-tongued critic of those with whom he disagreed.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 899
second son. He told me some amusing stories of an ancestor who held a
cabinet post in the sixties. The old boy lived in Westmoreland and was
passionately fond of shooting. From August to February he stayed in the
North and not even the Franco-German war brought him to town for
a cabinet meeting. All the departmental papers were sent him there, and
when Palmers ton who was Prime Minister, protested at the expense of
(I) a daily messenger in a reserved compartment (II) a special coach to
the minister's country home, 14 miles from a railway, Stanley replied "One
must have some return for serving the country." Certainly those were
spacious days; the old gentleman, by the way, got a cabinet minister's
pension and on his death it was discovered that he had assigned it in
equal parts to (I) his wife (II) his favourite ballet-dancer and (III) the
head-waiter at his London club so that a certain port was reserved for
himself. His elder brother remonstrated with him for his loose ways of
life to which he replied, "Damme, my dear brother, look at Pam; I can't
let the P.M. down by being better than he is." He left a will in which a
thousand pounds was put aside for the son who could guess which Prime
Minister in his period (1830-68) had not committed adultery; and the
answer was Peel, who, he said, was "too damned proud to break the
commandments; it would have given God a hold over him and Peel never
asked a favour from anyone." He really must have been the perfect 18th
century nobleman, brought up on the principles of Chesterfield and con-
vinced that the world was made for his personal amusement. Yet ex-
traordinarily shrewd. Charles Greville disliked him greatly and would
never go to the Privy Council when the old fellow was Lord President.
Stanley said nothing about it and Greville was piqued that his absence
was not commented on. He sent an emissary to investigate to whom
Stanley replied, "Tell the puppy I never look at my footman's face." But
I must not fill this letter with anecdotes.
I have had one or two nice book-finds lately. In Manchester I picked
up a beautiful first edition of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus for
half-a-crown; the bookseller having catalogued it under old Hebrew be-
cause of the quotations from the Old Testament. Also I found there Mans-
field's copy of Coke's Institutes which merely had his name in, but is,
I feel, pleasant to possess. I had one big failure. Bracton's Note Book is
out of print, and I have searched vainly for one. A Coventry bookseller
had a copy and I thought the chances were he would not know its value.
I enquired the price and was staggered when he said fifteen guineas (it
was published at three). I asked why so much; he said, "Well, Professor
Laski, I heard you speak last night and I concluded you knew a good
deal about books. So when you pick out a modern book from my stock,
I reckon it is worth something and I fix my price accordingly." I got him
down to twelve but he would not move from that, so I had to leave it,
900 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
being sad though wiser in the ways of booksellers. Frida by the way, has
picked up an old Persian rug for my study with the inscription woven in
"Tread softly upon this, for the maker took pains in weaving it." Don't
you think that is charming?
I had a long note from Felix yesterday, full of his crime survey of
Boston3 and the incredible Sacco-Vanzetti case.4 I hope the latter is set-
tled, for, otherwise, the working-classes will disbelieve in Massachusetts
justice.
Our love, as always, to you both.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., December 4, 1926
My dear Laski: A long desired letter meets me on my return from con-
ference this Saturday p.m. I am enchanted with your talk and wish that
I could match them — but I have little except personal news. I am wor-
ried about my Chinaman Wu who wants to come here for a year or two
and get 3 or 4,000 a year, delivering a few lectures. I wrote to Frank-
furter who doesn't hold out much encouragement. Wu wants it for his
soul's sake connecting it also more or less with me. I have an honestly
disinterested desire to help him. I cant help fearing that he may waste
himself in deserts of philosophizing — under the, as I fear, too great in-
fluence of Stammler — out of whom as yet I have got devilish little —
not of course that philosophizing is not the chief end of man — but it is
only useful when expended on a copious supply of crude facts — which
I fear he may not be in the situation to accumulate. Perhaps having to
stick it out, if he has to, will be a good test for the fire in his belly, and
if he comes through, his greatest lesson and his greatest triumph. Just as I
begin this letter I am shown a long screed about me by Miss Sergeant in
the New Republic.1 I rather wince at having a woman talk about me (in
public) — but I am surprised at some of the things she had got hold of
— e.g. a letter to Bill James giving some notions that later I expressed in
print. As to the rest I say no more than that women's rhetoric is different
from that of men — and that I hope my friends won't laugh at the praise.
8 The Harvard Survey on Crime and Law in Boston was currently under
way under the guidance of Felix Frankfurter.
*On October 23, Judge Webster Thayer, before whom Sacco and Vanzetti
had been tried and convicted of murder, had denied the motion of the defense
for a new trial. A few days later an appeal was taken to the Supreme Judicial
Court of Massachusetts.
1 "Oliver Wendell Holmes/* 49 New Republic 59 (Dec. 8, 1926) ; later re-
printed in Fire Under the Andes (1927).
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 901
I tried a little to turn her from the plan a year ago — and until recently
didn't suppose she was pursuing it.
I am reading a book by John Dewey, Experience and Nature. Wu put
me on to it saying that it was a great book and mentioning that it had
amiable words about me. I give you my word that it was this former re-
mark that set me to reading it — and I think Wu was right. It is badly
written in the sense that the style makes it more difficult than the thought
— but even in the writing it gives me the feeling that Walt Whitman
gives of the symphonic. Few indeed, I should think, are the books that
hold so much of life with an even hand. If you asked me for a summary
I couldn't give more than a page of ideas, but the stimulus and the quasi-
aesthetic enjoyment are great — and the tendencies those which I agree
with. I have read but half of it as yet for my time is limited. My legal life
goes on serenely — a little while ago I wrote a case in which I expressed
the result in terms to suit the majority of the brethren, although they
didn't suit me. Years ago I did the same thing in the interest of getting a
job done. I let the then brethren put in a reason that I thought bad and
cut out all that I thought good and I have squirmed ever since, and swore
that never again — but again I yielded and now comes a petition for
rehearing pointing out all the horrors that will ensue from just what I
didn't want to say.2 I think the opinion will be altered "by a few words
that satisfy the majority and that I privately think really mean my prin-
ciples, and all is serene again. I wish very much I could see Amos's paper
that you tell me about. I am afraid that I should agree with it more than
I want to — though I have no unwillingness as to Stammler — good man
though he be. My love to you all.
Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
16 Warwick Gardens, 4.XII.26
My dear Justice: Overwhelming days! But next Friday sees the end of
term and I hope then for six weeks of such peace as a bookless house will
give. I have finished my book on Communism — a hard twelve months'
job done — and await that evil hour when proofs convince you that it
was folly to write. But at least I have given it to the publisher on the
pledged day and that I take to be virtue.
2 It seems likely that the recent case referred to was International Stevedoring
Company v. Haverty, 272 U.S. 50 (Oct. 18, 1926), the one case at the October
1926 term in which Holmes had written an opinion and in which a petition
for rehearing was filed, It appears that no action on the petition was taken. In
its decision the Court held that stevedores engaged in loading operations were
to be treated as seamen within the meaning of that word as used in the Jones
Act. There is good reason to believe that the earlier opinion mentioned by
Holmes was that in The Pipe Line Cases, 234 U.S. 548 (1914).
902 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
We have been out a little. A grand dinner with Sankey to meet the
C.J.1 He's a good classical scholar, but a mean little soul, who lives on
trivialities and has no intimate zest for the law. He praised Dunedin
much and Sumner a little ("an able dog") but otherwise had nought but
jeers for the weakness of X or C. I frankly disliked him, even though he
had flattered me by asking to meet me; for I respect fidelity to colleagues
even though they are fit for the hangmen. But Sankey more than atoned
— especially when he had a great fight with Dean Inge upon Christianity.
The Dean isn't very good at personal controversy and between ourselves
he doesn't know his texts any too well And he uses big phrases like "eco-
nomic law" without any real knowledge of their meaning. The result was
a grand massacre which I quite thoroughly and deservedly enjoyed. Then
a good party with Charles Trevelyan,2 to meet his father, the historian,
Sir George. I like the old gentleman hugely. It was a first-rate experience
to hear tales of Macaulay from the angle of the favourite nephew; and
memories of Palmerston in his prime. He put Pam higher than I should
have done and Peel lower; and he was very interesting in his tremendous
admiration for Alexander Hamilton. He seems to read very widely, and I
was amused at the vehemence with which he trounced one Nock for a
bad life of Jefferson he had just read. Then a good dinner with the Webbs
whom I find more and more satisfying in their thoroughness and recep-
tivity. They are at work on the history of the poor-law 1689-1835 3 and
had much of interest to me to communicate. Frida started the hare of who
was the best talker they had ever known and I was astonished to hear
them say with great emphasis that it was Mrs. J. R. Green. They rated
Bernard Shaw very high, but said he was too obtrusive and sulked if he
was talked down. I put all this to Birrell last night, and he said he would
put Dean Church4 first for charm in talk and Liddon5 for eloquence; then
Birrell-like he added reflectively — "Those judgments must be true for
they come from a Nonconformist." I add a tale Birrell told me which I
like. He dined at Trinity, Cambridge in 1902 and Butler,6 the Master,
proposed the health of the College. He referred to the great part Trinity
played in the world and added that "it was well to remember that, at
Hewart, supra, p. 763.
2 Sir Charles Trevelyan, Bart., politician and civil servant.
3 The fruit of their labors was English Poor Law History (3 vols., 1927-
29).
4 Richard William Church (1815-1890), friend of Newman, select preacher
at Oxford, Dean of St. Paul's, and historian of the Oxford Movement. He was
noted for his telling style as writer and as preacher.
5 Henry Parry Liddon (1829-1890), canon of St. Paul's and lecturer at
Oxford, who was an intimate and devoted admirer of Dean Church.
8 Henry Montague Butler (1833-1918); before becoming Master of Trinity
lie had been headmaster of Harrow, and dean of Gloucester. See, infra, p. 1350.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 903
this moment, both the Sovereign and the Prime Minister are Trinity men."
Birrell replied for the guests. "The M aster, " he said, "should have added
that he can go further; for it is obvious that the affairs of the world are
built upon the momentous fact that God also is a Trinity man." Butler,
says Birrell, never forgave him that.
In the way of reading I have had some pleasant experiences. First I
have read Workman's Life and Times of Wyclif (Oxford) which is wholly
admirable, especially on Wyclif s philosophic views. Then a book by one
Catlin of Cornell called The Science of Politics (Knopf)7 which I do not
agree with, because I think it is nonsense to try and make politics an exact
science; but I liked the sweep of the fellow's mind and he writes really
well. Third I have read a brilliant German book by one Haym Die rornan-
istische Schule which is really first-rate and quite exciting. Finally, through
picking it up cheaply, I read Hume Brown's Life of Goethe which, with-
out being inspired, was thoroughly satisfying. It told one all one wanted to
know and avoided lyricism, and one felt at the end that one knew what
the fellow was like. But, in the way of reading, I think the most amusing
thing was acting as a referee for the Historical Review for a paper sent in
(by an Indian) on the corporation. The gent impressed the editor by his
immense apparatus of learning — something like 20 notes to the page. I
was able to show that it was a mosaic, five pp. of which came from
Saleilles, another section from Victor Morawetz,8 a part from Michoud,
a page from me, and a peroration from Gierke. The gent's own contribu-
tion were eight Indian references in his footnotes. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Your marks case is very interesting. My colleague Gregory was a wit-
ness in a similar one before the Mixed Tribunal here and had no difficulty
in taking your view; and . . . the Secretary of the Tribunal, tells me that
except for the first year, every case of a contract to pay marks has been so
decided. I had not seen that poor McKenna was dead. I liked him because
one always had a sense in his opinions of both growth of mind and a
genuine effort to understand.
I am not disinclined to agree with what you say about reading. But I
am pretty sure that the essence of the scholar is to see the roots of his
period pretty far back and to travel along the road. When I get a student
who wants to do political philosophy seriously I like to pick out a mod-
ern problem of some size and ask him to explain how it came to be a
problem. But I find, also, that knowledge of Plato and Aristotle doesn't
compensate for ignorance of yesterday's Hansard. Tm not, however, al-
together sure that I agree with you about style. I used to revel in Pater;
now I find him unreadable and I imagine that many have gone through
7 Reviewed by Laski, 119 Nature 519 (April 9, 1927).
8 Victor Morawetz (1859-1938), American lawyer and author of a leading
treatise on corporations.
904 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
my experience. Yet it is a great style in its way. On the other hand few
things are as ugly as the style of Kant or Hegel and yet the mind of each
is irresistibly big once you sit down to them. Admitting all the glories of
simplicity and clarity, isn't it true that there are things so complex that
one can't be either simple or clear about them without violating the ma-
terial? I tend more and more also to the view that the big man in each
age is the man who asks the new questions it is in a position to answer
if asked. Literature ought to be divided into what pleases and what de-
stroys. The first is eternal if it deals with ultimate things; the second
passes; but it is bigger because it clears the path.
But I must end and go to bed. Our warm affection to you both.
Ever yours as ever, PL ]. L.
Washington, D. C,, December 15, 1926
My dear Laski: Your letter just arrived worried me a little as it seems to
impute to me views that I cannot have meant to express as I never enter-
tained them. 1. When I speak about the literature of the past in flippant
terms I expect to be taken humorously, of course. Because, although I
think that if we are sincere with ourselves we get much more first hand
pleasure, yes, and profit, from the books of our own time, I deem it al-
most essential to our own thinking to understand its genesis, so far as
may be. Certainly I have spent a good deal of time on books of other
centuries and I don't know what I should be without it. Also I am far from
denying real pleasure derived directly from past literature — apart from
thinking about it. I am inclined to say that the greatest literary sensation
I ever had was in reading Dante (with a translation along side) — in
spite of all that I disbelieve, smile at or abhor. 2. As to style — never can
I have said or implied that simplicity and clarity were what I most or
even very highly value as compared with other things. I quite agree with
what Harry James said to me in our youth — that many things have to
be said obscurely before they can be said clearly. When a man is perfectly
clear he is talking what is commonplace to him — when the effort of
thought to him is over. I think I said and I think that the main element
of style properly so called is sound — but that is a different matter —
and may be no more than a question of how one uses words. As to clear-
ness — I have just read a book by John Dewey — on Wu's recommen-
dation — Experience and Nature — of which I could not have summed
up a chapter or a page — and which I should find it hard to give any
intelligible account of, yet which — to my surprise — I thought truly a
great book. I mention that he quotes me in it as one of our great Ameri-
can philosophers, and pleased me thereby no little, only to say that that
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 905
was not why I read it and is not why I think it great. I think it so be-
cause with all its defects of expression, he seems to me to hold more of
existence in his hand and more honestly to see behind all the current
philosophers than any book I can think of on such themes. But after him
Henderson on The Federal Trade Commission is an easy task — although
j golluped up the former with enthusiasm and do the latter as a useful
task.
I shouldn't think Birrell would have dared to make his joke about God
being a Trinity man in a speech such as you describe. I am delighted at
what you say was said about Mrs. J. R. Green. I am very fond of her —
although I haven't seen her since I last was in England and have heard
from her but only rarely. I stayed with her a week when she lived facing
the Thames above the House of Parliament and had an adorable time.
She is a heroine as well as a very gifted woman. Dean Church and Liddon
are only names to me — but I suspect they could not be the types of what
I admire. Bowen was a good talker — but he turned off serious subjects
with a story. Win. and H. James were pretty near superlative in their
respective days — Bill more especially I think.
We sat on Monday to accommodate lawyers who had come from a
distance — and then adjourned for three weeks. I had but one opinion to
write — which I circulated this morning and my other work is done. If I
don't feel bound to go to the dentist to be looked over I have some happy
leisure ahead. I mean to make my wife inspect me and see if she can
see any reason for my going. Dentists should be treated as I read in my
youth that embalmers were in Egypt when their dirty job was over —
pursued with stones. But on the whole I seem to have reached for the
moment a sleeping equilibrium — too soon to be upset I fear. The army
taught me some great lessons — to be prepared for catastrophe — to en-
dure being bored — and to know that however fine [a] fellow I thought
myself in my usual routine there were other situations alongside and
many more in which I was inferior to men that I might have looked down
upon had not experience taught me to look up.
Ever affly yours, 0. W. JL
16 Warwick Gardens, 1S.XII.26
My dear Justice: A fortnight has elapsed since I wrote last, and I am full
of apologies for not writing. But I have been busy with two things. First
the government appointed me arbitrator in a dispute as to whether miners
not yet taken back to the mines in Durham were entitled under the Act
to unemployment relief, and I had to go North for three days and hear
argument. Then, an uncle of mine died in London, and, my father being
906 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
in India, I had to make all the arrangements about his funeral and the
inquest (he had a sudden heart attack) which took time once more and
was rather nerve-racking as I am unaccustomed to these things.
The Durham experience was very interesting. The Act says that no
man who is "unemployed as a direct result of a strike or lockout shall
receive unemployment relief: quaere, after a settlement when the men
are ready to work what is the meaning of the word "direct"? The govern-
ment argued that it meant a condition which made the pit unable to give
work to all its former employees. Appeal was taken by the men and both
sides agreed on me as the arbitrator. I had little difficulty in holding that
"direct" meant only during the continuance of a strike or lockout and
that once an agreement to resume work had been made between the
parties unemployment was indirectly connected only with the strike or
lockout. I amused myself by making the basis of my decision an early
opinion of the present attorney-general I who had so held in the previous
Baldwin government (1923) —an opinion which counsel on both sides
had completely overlooked. So I took the high line and said that though
I thought a similar decision could be reached on ordinary canons of statu-
tory construction, I preferred to rest upon the applied instructions of that
eminent lawyer, etc. The satisfaction is that six thousand men will receive
eighteen shillings a week until the pits can be got to full work again.
I read with a good deal of pleasure Miss Sergeant's piece about you.
There were things I should not have said, and there was a sort of staccato
rhetoric I did not like. But on the whole she said much that is wise and
true; though I should have liked certain remarks of Maitland and Leslie
Stephen to be quoted. And I should have said that your influence on les
felines came from the fact that you wholly lacked complacency about po-
sition which enabled you to argue on the basis of intellect and not of
eminence. And I should have added that — teste H.J.L. — you have the
supreme art in friendship — the gift of talking through silence. But on the
whole she did well. I of course pride myself that I could have put in
the intimate touches she missed. That is of course my vanity.
You worry me a little about Wu. I should have said that he was off on
a wild goose-chase. A man who is in medias res can't expect to have the
carpet rolled out for him. His job is to stick to his last and make leisure.
Obviously he has brains, and, not less obviously, he is badly needed in
China. And Stammler is likely the better to fade away there. Of course I
don't nowadays know the openings for his like in America; but I should
guess they were few.
Since I last wrote I have made one or two pleasant purchases. The best
1 Sir Douglas McGarel Hogg (1872- ), first Viscount Hailsham, sub-
sequently was twice Lord Chancellor, 1928-1929, 1935-1938.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 907
are the works of one Richer2 of whom you probably have never heard,
but who revived Gallicanism in France in the early 17th century and
made possible the movement of which Bossuet and the Declaration of
1682 are the outcome. My set (bought from the catalogue of a bookseller
in Nice) belonged to the Abbe Gregoire3 whom you may remember as a
priest who went over to the Revolution and had much influence in those
times. Also I bought a quite fascinating attack on Rousseau's £mile by a
Jesuit contemporary which accuses him of wholesale plagiarism and cer-
tainly drives some points home by references to contemporaries now for-
gotten. But my best find was in a book-box in Kensington. One Lange
wrote a La Bmyere, critique sociale which, though published in 1909,
is terribly scarce and costs five or six pounds. I have searched for the last
three years for a copy but in vain. Now, yesterday, I walked up Church
Street, Kensington, and this, uncut, was the first thing I saw in the six-
penny box. I almost feel inclined to give it a dinner in celebration.
We are still working away at the new house. But I hope that the first
week of the New Year will see us safely removed thereto. I have all the
books on the shelves, though without arrangement; and I expect to spend
next week trying to bring some order out of the chaos. May I give you the
address, and ask you to write there after you receive this. It is Devon
Lodge, 5 Addison Bridge Place, W. 14. I wish you could see it, for with
its tricksy little Adamisms brought out, it is becoming a charming little
cottage.
Of reading I have done but little. I took a couple of volumes of Horace
Walpole to Durham, but I liked the letters from Mme. du Defiand to him
better than his to her. But I have reread Boswell with joy unutterable. It
is, I think, a mistake to dip into him; it's the whole picture that is the
thing. I like, by the way, the story in Birkbeck Hill's notes of the meeting
between Johnson and Adam Smith: J. "Sir, you are a Whig dog." A.S.
"Sir, you are the son of a whore." I wonder if five people lived in the
18th century who dared to say that to Johnson's face. I read, too, a grand
detective story which I recommend very strongly — The Three Hostages
by John Buchan. If you liked The Thirty-Nine Steps, you will like this.
And I commend strongly The Legacy of the Middle Ages by a group of
writers, with quite charming pictures and half-a-dozen admirable essays.
Also, have you ever read the works of Thomas Deloney? He was an
Elizabethan who wrote novels for the ostler and the 'prentice; I think he
is really remarkable and there is an insight into character which makes
him well worth the price of admission. The Oxford Press have an edition
2Edmond Richer (1560-1631); author of Libellus de Ecclesiastica et Politico,
Potestate (1611), a vigorous defense of Gallicanism.
8 Henri Gregoire (1750-1831), Jansenist advocate of a Gallican church.
908 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
and I wish you would have a peep at him in the Library of Congress.
Our love to you both. And may 1927 be all that it ought to be.
Ever afectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge
5 Addison Bridge Place, W. 14, 29. XII. 26
My dear Justice: A joyous letter from you was a relief in the turmoil of
moving house. In the last ten days I have arranged over five thousand
books on shelves, and I never realised how impish they are until I tried
to unpack them. The third volume of Montaigne insists on hiding itself
behind the fourth volume of Gibbon; and it is impossible to recognise the
eleventh volume of Carlyle upside down. However, they are done, and
my room is almost in working order. But I never, no never, want to move
again.
I don't think I dissent from your remarks on the classics, so long as the
emphasis is clear upon the value of knowing why we have come to think
as we do. And much of the older literature seems to me vastly overrated.
I get no pleasure from Ovid, little from Pindar, and not much from the
Latin historians outside Tacitus. I think the Greek orators enormously
overrated. I could point to half a dozen speeches by Bright and three or
four by Lincoln that seem to me every whit as good as the best ever got
off by Demosthenes. I do enjoy Seneca and Cicero, especially the Cicero
of the letters. And I think pieces of Sophocles and Euripides go with cer-
tain pieces of Shakespere and Shelley as the embodiment of what is
most superb in the human spirit. But I am pretty clear that I would give
most classical literature up quite gladly for Dickens, Balzac, Shelley,
Thackeray, George Eliot, and Maitland. And if someone could write about
our times as Carlyle lectured to his, I'd put him among my gods as well.
The past is only useful insofar as it aids us to be genuinely our con-
temporaries; otherwise, I'd rather read the last good detective story and
have done with it.
Since I wrote last week not much has happened. The most interesting
thing was a dinner at Haldane's when he and the Prime Minister and I
talked confidentially for a couple of hours. You can't help liking Baldwin.
He is far from intellectually first-rate, but he is good — a kind of Colonel
Dobbin to whom you could turn with your troubles and be comforted.
He interested me much by saying that Churchill was quite the ablest,
and Bonar Law the shrewdest, mind he had encountered in politics. He
had a high opinion of your present Ambassador Houghton;1 and an
amazingly low opinion (this between ourselves) of his predecessor Kel-
1 Supra, p. 700.
1926] LASKI TO HOLMES 909
logg.2 After our business talk we settled down to this kind of gossip and
one story I must not omit. A canonry of Westminster fell vacant. Three
hundred clergymen wrote in to him, urging their claims. He was im-
pressed by one man who forwarded a list of his books which looked most
formidable from their titles and said that he would not have ventured to
ask for the post had it not been that access to great libraries meant every-
thing for the future of his work. On enquiry it turned out that books with
such titles as Progressive Redemption, The Church in the Sub-Apostolic
Age, etc. — altogether thirty of them — concealed a lunatic who was de-
voting himself to proving that the British were the lost Ten Tribes and the
Kaiser a Jew.
It being Xmas week, my reading has been light but excellent. The
publisher sent me a one-volume Pepys, charmingly illustrated, and I fell
completely under his spell. Really he is better than Horace Walpole, for
he still knows how to take delight in things and lacks the pose of ennui.
For I declare with my hand on my heart that no one with any brains is
entitled to ennui in a world as interesting as this one is. I told a clergyman
who dined here the other night that the great mistake of religion lay in
its refusal to build upon the small daily incidents — the joy of finding a
rare book, the unexpected visit of a dear friend, the contemplation of a
picture. But he dwelt on the heights of prayer which has always seemed
to me a first cousin to blasphemy. If I went to church I should, I fear,
like Pepys, be interested in the pretty lady just behind the third column
on the left. I reread, too, in bed Felix Holt. Have you read that in recent
years? It is really very moving. Also a delectable story by one P. G.
Wodehouse called Piccadilly Jim which I urge you and Mrs. Holmes to
chuckle over. I made Frida read it, and last night was awakened by
shrieks of laughter from her bed. She had wakened up and recalled one
of its incidents which almost reduced her to hysteria.
Have I (I think not) told you of my delectable book-find. One Lange,
in 1909, published a La Bruyere critique sociale which is an invaluable
commentary not only on him, but on French social life in the 17th
century. It is now what the dealers call excessively rare and the only
copy offered to me in the last three years was 450 fr. which I thought too
much. On Xmas eve I went to Mudie's where there was a sale of foreign
literature and there I found this treasure for two shillings. And for five,
I got Atlay's Victorian Chancellors, a delightful book for bed-reading, and
a photograph of Leslie Stephen by Mrs. Cameron3 which would really
make your mouth water. I must say that some of those Victorians did
2 Frank Billings Kellogg (1856-1937), American Ambassador to England
in 1924 and Secretary of State in the Coolidge cabinet.
8 Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), Friend and photographer of illus-
trious Victorians.
910 LASKI TO HOLMES [1926
look the part — though, also, some of them, like Henry Taylor, looked
better than they were. And that reminds me that I have two most
wonderful pictures of Hobbes — about 6x6; would you like one? They
are quite small, essentially things to stand on a mantlepiece. But I know
few heads quite so massive or so inspiriting. I have been going round
the National Portrait Gallery, and I was enraptured by Hobbes, Selden
and Locke, beyond all others. I liked Newton, but thought him curiously
effeminate. And the picture they have of C. J. Fox seemed to me the
finest personification of good nature I have ever seen. Do you know it?
He has a vast hat in his hand, and a belly (it is not a stomach) that is
definitely Gargantuan in its splendour. Another thing that struck me
there was the almost feline cruelty of Jo Chamberlain's mouth. But this
needs an essay not a letter.
Our love as always to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., January 1, 1927
My dear Laski: A happy New Year to you and yours. Your last letter has
some remarks about Wu that please and relieve me. I had felt and written
to him in the same general direction. I cannot see the profit that
Stammler has been to him except as he may have introduced him to other
philosophic reading. I don't tell him that, but I did hint that contact
with actualities might be better for him than easy philosophizing in
comfortable circumstances. I am a little afraid that he may feel as if he
had more to say than he yet has in fact, as some of the things he has
sent to me seemed to be statements of the well known with a feeling
of discovery. When a man realizes a truth he feels as if he had dis-
covered it. I have seen the same thing in others — and am not sure but
I haven't caught myself in the same illusion. I say your judgment re-
lieves me, for I much desire Wu's welfare and have asked myself whether
I ought not to bring out some appreciable sum to help him to his desires.
I don't think so — but one is suspicious of oneself.
I have little to report in the way of reading. Since finishing Dewey's
book and a law book by Henderson on the Federal Trade Commission so
many things have come in to be done including an opinion to write and
many to read, that I haven't had much time. A Life of Loyola by
Sedgwick is the only item I think of. Very well done I should think,
but beyond the desirableness of not being blankly ignorant I don't care
a damn for Loyola. A martyr's efficiency on postulates blindly held
that today one doesn't even respect. There is something of that even
in Pascal, but with Loyola it seems too childlike and childish. Loyola
was a hero. Hell is full of heroes. I feel as I did when the late McCabe
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 911
(a friend of mine from Richmond)1 began to talk about gentlemen. I
told him nobody could know whether he was a gentleman or not. The
question was whether he was a breech or a muzzle loader. If the latter
he might get on a pedestal and feel as large as he liked but the world
would pass him by. I mean by the world the few thousand men in the
principal cities who as B our get says constitute the civilized world.
On Monday we begin to sit again and I expect a hard month. But
everything is done up to now and the year opens pleasantly and hope-
fully. I hope my brethren don't make allowances for me as an old man,
but they are very pleasant and kind to me, and I feel happy with them.
Also conscience made me go to the dentist and after worrying me and
doing some work he let me go and I don't mean to go near him again
until I have to. I believe Congress has increased our salaries, which I am
glad of although I have enough now.2 I couldn't live as I do on my salary.
And as no doubt I have said before I think an intelligent and regulated
avarice is one of the vices to be recommended to the old. There is no
headache in it. But the great thing is not to have to think about the
matter, and I don't. I couldn't tell you with certainty what my present
salary is, and I never on either bench stirred a finger in the matter of
my pay. I have been too happy to do the work.
Every good wish to you all. Affly yours, 0. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 11.1.27
My dear Justice: Vacation is over, and term has begun, quite the hardest
term of the year. But it is over with a flourish. We have finally moved in
here, and, practically, everything is straight; decorators feebly linger
in odd corners, but even the stair-carpet is laid and I feel morally com-
plete. It looks as though we are going to be well satisfied with the
house. It is smaller than the other and more compact. But it has much
more character and charm, and it gives both Frida and me studies that
are amazingly attractive for the purpose of work. I can write with you and
Felix, Maitland, Brandeis and Morley gazing not without benignity upon
me, with Mill, Hobbes and Locke near at hand. With such omens who
could fail to do good work?
We were both rather tired after the exertions of moving in. So we
went down last week to the Webbs for a couple of days, and had a most
pleasant time. Their virtues, if I may so phrase it, have to be dug for;
but I rate them high. They are open-minded, convinceable, eager for new
1 Supra, p. 322.
2 In February 1927, a bill was enacted increasing the annual salaries or
Associate Justices from $14,500 to $20,000.
912 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
knowledge, and warm-hearted. She has a curious love of religious
mysticism and an unsatisfied appetite for religious ceremonial which
baffle me a little, as also certain relics of society judgments of the
eighties. For instance she regards Balfour as a significant person, apart
from politics, where I should judge his work significant in a statesman
but otherwise mediocre. We discussed all manner of things, agreeing that
George Eliot was the greatest woman in the 19th century and that Mrs.
J. R. Green was the best woman conversationalist of the last thirty years.
We enquired why Haldane was so good at most things and yet not
superlative in anything and I heard, for the first time, the story of his
engagement: the lady, a typical society butterfly, turned him down
because the then reigning "great dame" Lady Londonderry sneered at
him for not being a hunting man. Could anything be more English? Of
other things I tried in vain to persuade them that Scott and Byron had
qualities of permanence and that there was rarely any point on a book
about methods of social investigation. This last I believe is most im-
portant. Anyone who researches has, if he has a real contribution to
make, to find his own sense of values in material, and I believe all the
rales that truly count and most of the alien experience he will find
helpful could be put down on a sheet of notepaper like this. But both
Wallas and the Webbs have a vast sense of long and painful excursuses on
things like the taking of notes, the method of personal enquiry, and so
on which I believe to be sheer waste of time.
From them I had to go on to Somerset to speak, of which the only
advantage was that I saw the ruins of Glastonbury by moonlight, a weird
but impressive spectacle. And on Sunday Nevinson came to dinner, back
from Bagdad, the Sanjak of Novi-Bazar, Damascus and Palestine. As
always he had great adventures as when his car got stuck in the desert
and they had to be fed from aeroplanes sent out on a wireless call to
Basra. He had a grim tale to tell of the French in Syria, and was pre-
pared to write an epic on the fleas of Arabia. But I think his prize
tale was of the Iraqui lawyer in Bagdad who was a student of Western
jurisprudence and was emphatic that Mainaust was a great man. Nevin-
son was stumped until he found that it was the child of a godless marriage
between Austin and Maine. The jurist, he said, was a simple soul whose
chief ambition was to meet the Lord Chancellor of England whom he
fondly believed to be Lord Brougham on the principle, I suppose, that
natures so varied as Brougham's are necessarily eternal. Last night, to
complete the tale, we went to see the play founded on the Constant
Nymph and so entitled. If it comes to Washington I do conjure you
both to go and see it. A little formless, but it makes one feel the con-
trast between the unconventional and the artificial as no play I have
ever seen.
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 913
A very little reading. A novel Jew Suss, a translation from the German
and, I swear, the finest historical novel since the Cloister and the Hearth.
... An adorable book on The Saint-Simonian Religion in Germany by
a Miss E. M. Butler which is a brilliant tour de force especially anent
Heine, witty, imaginative, and about as bizarre a tragi-comedy as I
know. Should it come your way, I am sure you will have a great after-
noon with it. Also an attractive book by one Daniel Mornet on the
French Romantics which gave me apergus, perhaps of the insignificant,
but assuredly of the insignificant who knew how to be delightful.
And let me add one thing that has pleased me hugely. A year ago an
Irish-American came to me and asked for the loan of ten pounds to get
back to America. I liked something in his ways and risked it. Months
elapsed and I entered the loan amid the great unpaid. Lo and behold
comes back the ten pounds with an admirable letter on American con-
ditions and a pound to give where I please in gratitude. Isn't that
admirable?
Our love, as ever, to you both. Afectionately always, H. /. L.
Washington, D. C., January 18, 1927
My dear Laski: Your last joy-giving letter has had to wait two or three
days for an answer because I have been so hard at work — my Sunday
job having been to write a decision against a very thorough and really
well expressed argument by two colored men — one bery black — that
even in intonations was better than, I should say, the majority of white
discourses that we hear. Your mention of Wodehouse led my wife to
try, not yet successfully, to get Piccadilly Jim — but also to read to me
Mostly Sally — which is good sport. Leave It to Psmith ("the P is
silent" the hero remarks) made me roar. In fact Wodehouse is unsur-
passed if equaled by anybody in power to make me guffaw. I note
Felix Holt. Last night Redlich dined with us and was most agreeable.
We talked for four hours which is more than I can stand without fatigue,
especially after having listened to four hours of argument in court, but
which did not bore me for a minute. Redlich is instructive, suggestive and
personally pleasant — altogether a dear. I was delighted by his appreci-
ation of you and Felix. He mentioned as to be read: Gilbert Murray's
essays, Tradition and Progress, and Felix Holt may have to wait for that.
You mention Seneca as one whom you enjoy. A morning's ramble through
his letters gave me the impression of admirable platitudes of morality
with good touches — as when he suggests to his younger friend, that per-
haps it never has occurred to him that his slave may be a better man
than he. But I decided to let him wait for better days. Of course I should
like the portrait of Hobbes — but do you remember the very vivid and,
914 HOLMES TO LASKI
for England, remarkably well-engraved likeness in the volume that you
and Felix gave to me? I always have meant to try to find out who could
have done it. The date of the edition is 1750 and I should not have
supposed that there was any English line engraver that could have done
it at that time — but my dates are wobbly. I had not thought ot
Chamberlains face as cruel — but his daughter Miss Beatrice Chamber-
lain, whom I knew intimately, when she was talking of the conduct ot
England and met an objection on the ground of morals at times had
a look of cynical unscrupulosity that brought out a wonderful likeness to
her father. I think I had the cheek to quote Thackeray to her: At this
moment her ladyship's resemblance to the late Marquis of Steyne became
positively frightful/' This is after many years and does not purport to
be accurate. Zimmern sent me his Third British Empire a month ago —
and I haven't acknowledged because I do not know where to address him
— have you a notion? Also I have not yet read the book. I should more
readily if it dealt with the Greeks.
Also a story, Green Forest, with kind remembrances from Nathalie
Sedgwick Colby — the authoress — who I find is wife of a quondam
Secretary of State1 and whom I knew — temp. Wilson — but why she
should send it to me I know not. I suppose I must read and write —
thus runs the world away. I am not getting nuggets of wisdom from the
arguments I hear or anything but practice in English from the run of
opinions that I have to write — yet I am busy as I can be and am kept
breathless till after dinner and solitaire. I agree with you as to ennui —
and yet life strikes me sometimes as my hobby of prints does — a few
superlatives and a finite number of fairly interesting things. How can
man take himself seriously when his view of life changes as the wind is
south or west? However my view is cheerful now — and would be
hilarious were it summer — Rockport — in your little house with you.
Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 21,1.27
My dear Justice: I have had a week in bed with a nasty dose of influenza;
hence my silence. But I am down today, and to be out again on Monday
so that titie world approaches normal for me. Your letter was a delight,
and I was glad that you agree with my view of Wu's plans. Indeed, were
it not for fear of the omnibrooding presence of Pound I think I should
whisper that much of the German jurisprudence about which he gets
so excited is stuff that a man should take in his stride without putting
on one side a definite period of intensive study for it. To be informed
by Kohler in five hundred pages that law is part of the Zeitgeist seems to
Cambridge Colby, supra, p. 312.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 915
me singularly irritating; for it implies that it might be something else
which I venture to disbelieve. I add that I am in general rather appalled
by the vast aids to research in the social sciences which America is
developing. X writes to me that he has been given a fellowship of 3000
dollars to write a report on the birth-control movement in England;
Frida, who is the Secretary of the labour party committee on the matter
tells me that a full and adequate account of it could be done in a couple
of days. Y writes from Wisconsin to say that he is to spend two years in
Europe studying comparative personnel administration in the public
services. Now (a) the literature on all this is now so vast that it needs
digest rather than addition; and (b) personal observation for two years
is about ten times longer than the subject requires. I look down the long
list of theses being done on these things in American universities and not
more than two or three per cent of them seem to me more than the
repetition of work already done or the elaborate proof of things too
obvious to need proof. Meanwhile the things that really need research
get neglected — partly because they are not easy, partly because they
require not a peripatetic student armed, cap a pie, with letters to all
the crowned heads of Europe and Asia, but a man in a room who knows
his material and sweats blood to get an idea. But all this may be bad
temper. All I can say is that I think the results attained by the new
dispensation could be reached at one-tenth of the cost.
I had a good time of it in bed with books. First, I had a long pull
at Trollope, always with delight even though I knew every taste of the
liquor. Then, with the great interest, I read F. W. Hirst's Early Life and
Letters of Morley. It's a little too long, as biographies usually are, but
it kept me enthralled all the way through. I don't think Morley quite
the size that Hirst as disciple does, e.g. I do not mention him with
Burke. But he was quite certainly the finest Englishman I have known
personally, and I think Hirst makes you see why. I was a little surprised
at one or two things. Morley's immense admiration for Frederic Harrison
means nothing to me. I never, to my knowledge, read a page by him
that seems first-rate. And L. Stephen comes less into the picture than
I imagined. I should have made a guess that on the side of religious
belief Stephen had more influence on Morley than any other person,
though less, of course, than the cumulative effect of his studies on
18th century France. And I had the same amazed sense I always have
of the way in which obvious and banal speeches by politicians seem to
each other epoch-making. That still exists, and I suppose the poor dears
believe it. But I am sure that one of the results of being immersed in
the actual conflict is to build things on personal influence of which the
latter is the effect and not the cause. I don't deny, of course, that men
influence events; but I think insiders tend to think that men are mountains
916 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
when measurement over the whole map makes them molehills. What is
above all curious in the book is the enchantment of Gladstone's person-
ality. Even people like Huxley, who detested him, seem to have felt it;
and I know no book which gives you any reason, except vigour of mind,
to see in him anything that makes you feel any special moral or intel-
lectual insight. All that he wrote is commonplace; and I cannot see that
his speeches are in the same intellectual class as those of Bright. Indeed,
the instinct of the contemporary working-man, who doubted Gladstone
and clove to Cobden and Bright, seems to me thrice right. There is
nothing in him of Lincoln's instinctive perceptiveness, or of the originality
of people like Hamilton, Yet, except Chamberlain, all of them are knocked
over by an hour of his company; and a great gelehrte like Acton never
goes into his presence except on his knees. What is the secret? Another
interesting book I read was a study of Trollope by one Michael Sadleir.
It had all kinds of interesting gossip in it; but what I think amused me
most was a review of The Belton Estate, one of the simplest and most
charming of his novels, by Henry James who declared it to be totally
devoid of mind. And I read one novel which, on my knees, I pray you
to read. It is called Jew Suss and is by a German named Feuchtwanger.
I take an affidavit that it is the finest historical novel I have ever read.
It's a picture of a German ducal court in the 18th century. To say that
is nothing, though its reproduction is a miracle of historic atmosphere.
The real thing is the detailed play of character and motive — the putting
into action of life as full of sound and fury and signifying I do not quite
know what. Buy or beg or borrow it, please; and do not let Mrs. Holmes
omit it from her hawk-like purview. ... I began a vast compilation by
Charles Warren on the history of your Court, but I did not find it was
made for bed.
Well, next time I hope to be about the world again and able to write
more sanely. Yet this, as you know, brings my love and greetings more
antique. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., January 28, 1927
My dear Lash: When a man has been busy — pronounce hizzy — which
abridgement I use for hurriedly busy — he is cramped at the end and
can't expatiate at once — at least I can't. I think you can, so that fact
and the hope that I may not be too late to catch tomorrow's boat —
imagined by me, since before the war, to sail on Saturdays — will lead
me to be short. We have adjourned and I am hoping for 3 weeks of
leisure — though the C.J. dangles a political case over my head. Fired
by Gilbert Murray, Euripides is on my table once more, and, who would
have thought it? Ovid. He, G.M., says such pretty things about him (0).
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 917
I, with you, had postponed Ovid to my Xth eternity and after I should
have written my work on Anthropology (1st Aeon) — mastered Mathe-
matics (2nd Aeon) and other unconsidered tasks accomplished, should
take up literature. The whole of which I suppose would take but a
few years.
I agree with you as to Balf our outside of politics — a very agreeable
man but I thought his books one for ladies' centre tables. But then I am
afraid that I once told Bill James that his discourse on free will would
please the ladies and Unitarian parsons. I remember once complimenting
a young lady to Haldane, having understood that he was attentive to
her, or had been, but he thereupon spoke sardonically of how young
women talked about books on the strength of having read reviews, etc.
Again I agree with you on the methods business. I have no use for
them. Taking notes, keeping diaries, etc., etc., may suit methodical
minds, they don't suit me.
I told you how I liked to hear Mrs. J. R. Green praised. She is a
great friend of mine though it is long since I have heard from her.
When you see Nevinson again remember me to him. I envy you for see-
ing him.
I have done nothing but write a little law, read a lot of applications for
certiorari and opinions by others, etc., but hope to do better by my next.
As I write this there is brought to me the life of Bernal Diaz del
Castillo by R. B. Cunninghame Graham. Tommy Barbour lent it to me
years ago, a chap that was with Cortez and tells a marvellous tale. To my
joy it seems to have been reprinted though not marked 2d edition. As I
remember it a priceless book. Affty yours, O. W. H.
Washington, D. C., February 4, 1927
My dear Laski: Your letter of the 21st reached me yesterday when I was
distraught with details — paying my income tax, fussing about a regis-
tered bond, expecting your Ambassador1 and his wife (pleasant creatures
— she suggestive of Mona Lisa to me) at luncheon and a call to be
made afterwards. This morning finds me free and serene. You speak of
\yu — a letter a few days back informed me that he had been appointed
judge of what seems an important local court2 — so I expect that his
yearnings will be appeased for a time. I do greatly desire success for
him and have great hopes. He never mentions local disturbances. He
seems to live in his world of thought. As* to Frederic Harrison and Glad-
1 Sir Esme Howard (1863-1939), later Baron Howard of Penrith, was British
Ambassador in Washington from 1924 to 1930.
2 John C. H. Wu had recently been appointed a judge of the Shanghai
Provisional Court.
918 HOLMES TO LASKI
stone I agree with you. I talked with both of them. F. H. when I first
saw him was a Comtist — I always supposed his good English was one
cause of his standing. The only thing I ever learned from him was to
turn from Hobbes to Bodin — but that was something — before the
days of Figgis — ni jailor. Gladstone had a voice like Emerson's and in
'66 seemed to me the one man who was like an American. He came
out to meet you and had gusto — but, bar his financial speeches of
which I can't judge, I never read anything of his that didn't impress me
much as Roosevelt did when he ventured into the higher reaches. I seem
to remember a discourse by T. R. which the N, Y. Sun pronounced great
but of which Remy de Gourmont made as it seemed to me deserved
sport.3 Possibly I have mixed up two deliverances but I am pretty sure
that they were eiusdem generis. Also my Secretary who knows more about
it than I, agrees, as I have every inclination to, with what you say about
the expeditions of students for research, from here. He says they take
any theme, the easiest, that will give them a visit to Europe.
I am rereading John Dewey's book — Experience and Nature — with
the same opinion as before — but with some mitigation as to his style,
There are moments that suggest that he could write well — but then
comes obscurity. Still there is very little that I have not articulately
grasped as I went along, though I shouldn't like to be called on to
recite. I think it a profound and illuminating work. I am not sure that
you would agree, but I shall stand firm. But I get up rather late and go
out to drive from 11:30 or 12 to 1:30 and am apt to get a snooze in the
afternoon — and after 9 p.m. play solitaire and listen — so I don't go
ahead at your pace — even if I could read as fast which of course I
can't. I have a delightful book on Fishing from the Earliest Time by
William Radcliffe — sometimes of Balliol College, Oxford which I read
some years ago and which I may reread. G. Murray's stimulus was short
lived. I couldn't but believe that he read into the /3ax%ae things that
weren't there — and although he made me appreciate the reasons for
Ovid's long reign, a reading of one book of the Metamorphoses was
enough. I appreciate the felicities but I couldn't go on reading silly stories
merely because they had been taken seriously by people — who couldn't
get Dewey and who would have burned him if they could have — or be-
cause they were a good lesson in style.
The time has come for me to go forth and so I will wind up abruptly
with eternally springing hope that this will go tomorrow — and carry
my remembrances. Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
3 The reference is, perhaps, to Remy de Gourmonfs observations on Roose-
velt's address delivered at the Sorbonne in 1910 during his zestful European
trip; Remy de Gourmont, Epilogues, 1905-1912 (1913), 162.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 919
Devon Lodge, 1311.27
My dear Justice: I am humbly apologetic for so long a silence. But for
the last four week-ends I have had to be away at Oxford, Cambridge,
Rugby and Nottingham and they have eaten up my time. They were
very interesting; but I was left with one or two impressions which I
hazard for discussion. I am sure, first, that it is excessively bad for dons
to live the cloistered life. They lose all sense of proportion and they get
to loathe contradiction. Moreover absence of contact with the great
world outside makes them magnify the inconceivably little into the
enormously big. One don at Oxford entertained me (quite uncon-
sciously) for an hour with an involved tale about a struggle with the
University Press over the size of Greek type in a forthcoming text of
Lucian; and he must have literally exhausted the vocabulary of vitupera-
tion in his anxiety to prove his point to me. At Cambridge a charming
fellow at Magdalene was eaten up with indignation because another fel-
low of the college had changed his first name to acquire an inheritance;
that seemed to him to take an undue advantage of one's parents. I
indicated humbly my willingness to change my name for a worthy sum
to which his angry retort was that like every damned radical I had no
regard for tradition. Of Rugby and Nottingham where I had to speak
to workers' classes I was distressed by the tendency, especially of the
university speakers, to idealise the working man and to attribute to him
virtues and interests in which other classes were held not to share
proportionately. It was, for instance, regarded as cynical on my part to
suggest that the main hope of the working-class was either unknown or
broadly a hope of ceasing to be the working-class. And when I said that
the phrase "emancipation of the working-class" was meaningless without
a schedule of details they obviously thought me a flinty person lacking
in heart. My chairman, the professor of economics, was hugely cheered,
for, as I put it, offering Gardens of Eden for twopence a dozen; and my
denial of a royal road to learning was not popular.
In between, I have done a little dining. One most pleasant dinner with
the Swedish Minister1 to meet Austen Chamberlain. The latter is a
curiously wooden person, who talks on stilts and never ceases to be
foreign minister. Ramsay MacDonald, who was there too, shone by
comparison. But what amused me most was Graham Wallas's effort to
explain to Chamberlain how he could improve his thinking by exploring
his foreconsciousness in the early morning. The scene was beyond words.
Wallas in deadly earnest, Chamberlain without the remotest knowledge
1 Baron Erik Palmstierna (1877- ) was Minister in London from 1920
to 1937 and author of works of political and religious subjects.
920 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
(a) of who Wallas was (b) what his foreconsciousness was, and (c)
anxious not to be dragged into discussion of this deadly unknown, and
Wallas determined that his victim should not escape. Then a jolly dinner
at Haldane's of a little committee we have on trade union law. I have
never seen Haldaae to better advantage, for here we were in the realm
of detail and he showed his real powers as a legal administrator. As
a rule, he suffers from a passion for vagueness and incoherency, but
that night he was certainly a big man. Your friend Jenks, who was also
there, was quite admirable too and enlivened by a certain dry humour
which pleased the trade union officials greatly. And I had a jolly dinner
with Nevinson who told me of his adventures in the desert near Mecca.
At one point they got stuck in the mud for four days and had to wireless
to Basra for food. This was brought them by aeroplane and dates and
bread were dropped therefrom. "At last," said Newy, "I understood
how the Israelites got their manna from heaven."
Of reading there is not much of excitement. I reread Whitehead's
Science and the Modern World, with even more admiration than before,
but with a still complete inability to know what the chapters on God
and Abstraction are about. Also a quite charming book on the Romantic
Movement in France by one Louis Reynaud with a particularly interesting
discussion of the influence of Swift on Voltaire. And a book on Spinoza
by one Brun[s]chvig which sent me back to F. Pollock's book with a
satisfied sense that it is quite easily and preeminently the best account of
Spinoza there is. I think possibly today one would emphasise more the
influence of Spinoza on Hegel, and the significance as a mode of thought
of the geometrical method. But, otherwise, I have nothing but admiration.
I must not, either, forget to add that I read after many years Wilamowitz's
Aristotle and thought it a mighty book. Of novels, nothing worth men-
tioning except a shocker by Agatha Christie called The Big Four which
would be a good accompaniment to solitaire.
You seem to have had a heavy time recently; and I was relieved
enormously by the Court's decision on the Senatorial power to investi-
gate,2 though I thought Jim Landis had already made an unanswerable
case thereon in the Harvard Law Review* I am sending to you in April,
my friend G. P. Gooch, the historian, whose work you will know, but
whose charm and sweetness you have still to taste. Wallas, by the way,
leaves for America on Tuesday and is, I believe, to live next door to
you for some months. Do look into his mind and tell me your thoughts.
Two items of news I reserve to the end. I may go out to Wisconsin
2McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135 (Jan. 17, 1927). The Court, without
dissent, reaffirmed the Congressional power to conduct investigations.
8 James M. Landis, "Constitutional Limitations on the Congressional Power
of Investigation," 40 Haw. L. Rev. 153 (December 1926).
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 921
in the spring of '28 for a couple of months; if so, I shall have May in
Washington and hereby provisionally engage your evenings in advance.
Second, you will be glad to know that Leslie Scott has-been made a
privy councillor. I hope that is a prelude to something more substantial
My love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, Harold J. Laski
Washington, D. C., February 25, 1927
My dear Laski: A letter, most interesting, as usual, comes from you to
enliven the first week of a sitting, in which as yet we have encountered
nothing very exciting. I should think that what you say about the dons
was human nature everywhere and marked in England. I am more than
pleased at your attitude about the working-man and the royal road to
knowledge. The eternal effort to discover cheap and agreeable substitutes
for hard work and talent has been the object of many sneers from me.
I thought skirt dancing when it appeared years ago a type. To evoke
the hope that you were going to see more the next high kick was to take
the place of the laborious gymnastics needed to make a danseuse. Some
of the modern painting strikes me in the same way — although I am
told that certain authors of what seem to me monstrosities are mas-
ters of the whole business. Of course I have thought the same way as to
the working man. I am sorry at what you say about Austen Chamberlain
— I haven't seen him since lie was young — and then only casually.
But his sister was a very dear friend of mine and I should like to believe
the best of him. The scene between Wallas and him must have been
amusing. I hope I shall see the former — and also Gooch. I hope also
that I shall be here to welcome you in 1928 — but as I shall be 86
about the time that this reaches you I don't venture confident predic-
tions. Since my adventures in philosophy and fishing I have read nothing
and have tried to enjoy a few moments of irresponsible idleness, driving
and sleeping, but I am afraid that I am industrious — an ominous tend-
ency. My wife is reading Pickwick to me, omitting the stories and my
pleasure is renewed. Next Monday I hope to fire off a few sardonic re-
marks in a dissent on the Constitutional powers of the States,1 beyond
that I am vacant. And I must stop and go to court.
Affectionately yours, 0, W. Holmes
I thought to write more.
Devon Lodge, 24.11.27
My dear Justice: At last I can look forward to an uninterrupted vista;
last week-end, when I went again to Oxford, was the final adventure
' Tyson and Brother v. Banton, 273 U.S. 418, 445 (Feb. 28, 1927).
922 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
away until next winter and I breathe again. It has been interesting but
tiring, and the great gain of an assurance that this university is the place
for me. All Souls, where I stayed this week, is most pleasant and hos-
pitable, but one gets really bored with the continuous round of small
talk about small persons, and the deference paid to the good and great
is a little painful. For example, at All Souls was Amery,1 the colonial
secretary; we were talking of America and he expressed the view that it
was nauseatingly materialist and appealed to me. I said I thought, in
that respect, it was much the same as England or France, but being
richer could more obviously fulfil its desires. This was just like a bomb-
shell. A cabinet minister had been contradicted (which is not done at
All Souls') and the conversation was at once turned to the memory of
a late fellow on which there could be agreement! Also the adulation of
Vinogradoff bored me; I think him an inferior Pound, but he was spoken
of there as though he was Savigny and Maine rolled into one. They are
a queer set of people with no open windows on the world. One man had
spent forty years on the mss of Ovid, of which he is just publishing an
account. I asked him if the results were significant, and he said that he
had seven important amendations of the usual text. I add that he was
happy in his discoveries which possibly should mean silence on my part.
1 have bought one or two books I should like much to show you. First,
for ten shillings, an exquisite 1556 Aristotle's Politics with a text as black
and a type as lovely as you can imagine, luxury, of course, but most
pleasing. Then a first edition of Diderot's Pensees stir la nature which I
had never read. It is tremendously interesting especially in its emphasis
upon truth as mathematical in its nature — the interesting reaction of
Newton. I bought also a complete set (for 7/6) of Boulainvilliers2 — the
French reformer of the age of L. XIV. I can't say he is important, but he
shows one or two interesting things — the persistence of the influence of
Hotman's Franco-Gallia, the persistence of the idea of fundamental law,
and, even more, the influence of Spinoza which he is half-ashamed to
confess. Also a fine Grotius in the Barbeyrac edition which is really
something of a miracle in the way of skilful and learned annotation, cer-
tainly better than any modern edition I have seen. But I add that look-
ing into the text which deals with general political philosophy I don't
think Grotius is very impressive. He merely marshals effectively ideas
which are trie commonplace of his time, and I should argue that Suarez,
Leopold Stennett Amery (1873- ), politician, was Secretary of State
for the Colonies from 1924 to 1929.
2 Henri, Comte de Boulainvilliers (1665-1722), defender, both against the
King and the people, of the rights of the noble families — particularly his
own. His published works, all posthumous, include Histoire de I'ancien gou-
vernement de 'France (1727) and Essai de metaphysique (1731).
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 923
Soto and Bellarmine and, especially in his realm, Franciscus de Victoria
are much abler and much more penetrating. Still these are attractive
things to have, and they give one an aesthetic sense of satisfaction when
they lie on the shelves.
I haven't been out once to a meal since my last letter and the evenings
have gone mostly to Spinoza, on whom I have to lecture next week in
honour of his tercentenary. I can't say, beyond general exposition, that
I have discovered much of any real import. I can, I think, show that he
really conceived himself to be answering Hobbes by adopting the latter's
principles and using them to diverse ends, and that he really influenced
Hume far more deeply than is generally supposed. I must say how im-
pressed I am by F. Pollock's Life which is the better the more one knows
of Spinoza; and I must drop a hint to you that Spinoza's letters are really
extremely interesting and extraordinarily revealing in a way that phi-
losophers' rarely are. I think T. H. Green really failed altogether to un-
derstand him and that, in general, he has not been given the width of
authority that is his due.
I met yesterday a most interesting Russian barrister who now practises
here, and of whom I propose to see more. He was appalled at the techni-
cal skill and philosophic ignorance of the average English barrister. He
told me a glorious story of having quoted to the House of Lords an opin-
ion of Shaw, CJ. of Massachusetts and being met with a blank stare of
amazement and the obvious need on his part to refrain from further de-
velopment. And one pleasant thing deserves record. In his Russian days
he used to buy largely from the famous old German bookseller, Prager
of Berlin. After he left Russia and settled almost penniless in London
he ordered a book there and received it without a bill. He sent a cheque
which he received back with a slip of paper: "Prager doesn't take money
from political exiles until they have the chance to re-establish them-
selves." I wonder of how many booksellers such a story could be told?
This fellow, by the way, was a pupil of Mommsen's in Berlin and he
said the latter's seminar was a great theatrical entertainment. The class
stood while the master made his way to his desk, and anyone of the
students who was called upon was so nervous that he would turn white
with excitement and one young fellow was so overawed by the great
man's acceptance of a correction that he promptly fainted from joy.
Those must have been great days! I had an Indian student the other
week who asked me to explain to him my theory of political obligation.
When I had done, he said, quite simply, that it was sad to think I had
spent so much time on elaborating pure moonshine. Which reminds me
of a story I must not omit. Two years ago we accepted an Indian student
named M . After six months we got rid of him on the ground that
there was no prospect of his ever getting a degree. Later we accepted
924 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
an Indian named A . M was assigned to Professor Cannan;3
A was assigned to Professor Dalton.4 About a month ago Cannan
wandered into Dalton s room and found him interviewing A . He
expressed surprise that M was still at the School Dalton explained
that this was A . Cannan insisted he was M . The resulting
investigation showed that M was A , and that being turned
out under his own name he re-applied (from India) under his family
name and being assigned to a different supervisor escaped detection for
nearly a year! That is, I think, a great tribute to the ingenuity of the
East."
Our love and greetings to you both. Ever yours, ti. J. L,
Devon Lodge, S. III. 27
My dear Justice: A delightful, if brief, note from you was heartily wel-
come. I am glad you broadly share my view of the Oxford dons. Constat
inter nos that it doesn't apply to special cases, but as a general rule. I
think it not unfair. Curiously enough two of quite the best younger men
have left Oxford this week for the reasons I tried to set out. I don t think
that the atmosphere matters so much if you are immersed in a discipline
remote from normal life. But otherwise it is devastating.
Since I wrote last week, all the events of life have taken place, so to
say, in the realm of the mind. The main thing otherwise was a dinner
with Spender the journalist1 and one with the Army officers of the
School. The first was the usual gloom about the state of the press with
which W. Lippmann will have made you familiar, diversified by some
wonderful anecdotes about Northcliffe. The best I think was that Spender
once protested to him against telling the public (in 1899) that the Boer
War would be over in a winter campaign. Northcliffe simply had in the
circulation manager and showed Spender that his optimism had sent up
the sales: "You see," he said, "I am right." The other, in its way, was
fascinating; they are all charming fellows, distinguished in their profes-
sion, and with all the limitations of their profession I got on splendidly
with them especially when it came to explaining to them why trade
unions can't be made illegal, and why it is possible to doubt whether
God consciously planned the British Empire, One sweet soul said he had
8 Edwin Cannan (1861-1935), economist, for many years a teacher at the
University of London.
* Hugh Dalton ( 1887- ) was Reader in Economics at London University
from 1925 to 1936.
1J. Alfred Spender (1862-1942), liberal journalist; editor of Westminster
Gazette, 1896-1922; author of numerous books on history and public affairs.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 925
never been a Christian until Foch began his offensive and then he found
the conclusion irresistible. I sought to explain that the inference was not
direct, but I do not say I succeeded.
Apart from this, the great experience of the week has been reading
Winston's two final volumes on the war.2 I hope greatly they will come
your way, for I know nothing finer or more revealing. He is, I guess,
wrong about Jutland, and throughout he is over-rhetorical. But he makes
you see the job of directing the war in progress as no other work except
Ludendorff that I have read. And he convinces me that in a democracy
at any rate you can never get the right relationship between soldiers and
statesmen. Either the former are too powerful and try to shape policy
(which they don't understand) or the statesmen interfere with technical
detail which is beyond them. You must not miss the great description
of November 11, 1918 where Winston is gorgeously picturesque on wait-
ing for Big Ben to strike the hour and the vast emotions aroused by the
first stroke; of which the point is that Big Ben did not strike that day
as it was being cleaned. Poor Winston! Huxley's "beautiful hypothesis
killed by an ugly little fact." But he has written a very fine book.
Otherwise I have been reading mainly for lectures, as I have been
giving some advanced graduate ones on English political ideas since
1875, and thus rereading Mill, Maine, Fitzjames Stephen, Carlyle and
Arnold. Many things strike one, first and foremost the immense influence
on them all of Tocqueville, and second the certainty that the events of
'48 were a kind of watershed in the century after which you either had
faith in democracy or you didn't. Of them all Arnold, I think, had by
far the deepest insight and Stephen the most masculine mind. Maine in
his own line was I dare say extraordinary; but as a political philosopher
I don't think he had gone much further than Tocqueville and India.
Carlyle interested me greatly. One simply can't read him without a stir
and a throb; yet ask yourself at the end what you have been stirred about
and it is very difficult to reply. Duty, the ever-lasting pen, the heroic
man, the folly of speech — but except that there is the poetic instinct as
no other prose writer of the period had it, and the perception of a man
when he met him, I doubt the positive element. I think he killed the
influence of Byron which seems the more enormous the more one reads
— but killed it for what? Did I, by the way, ever remark to you upon
my pet thesis that one of the great lines in intellectual development
(modern) is Spinoza — Lessing — Goethe — Carlyle and that this school
converges with Montesquieu — Burke — Gentz — Savigny — Maine to
form the philosophy and tactic of conservatism? A good deal, I think,
2 Volumes III and IV of Winston Churchill's World Crisis (1927) dealt with
the war years from 1916 to 1918.
926 LASKI TO HOLMES
could be usefully said by way of illustrating this: and it is surprising
how little has been written to defend conservatism of recent times in a
philosophic way,
This letter, I believe, will come shortly after your birthday. You know
how ardent my greetings are. If my Wisconsin plan comes off, I shall
hope faintly to celebrate it with you next year. I have leave for those
two months from here; now it all depends on the terms Wisconsin offers.
But mingled with my greeting is the plea to you at all costs not to resign
during the year. If I may venture to say so nothing you write on the
Court suggests fatigue of any sort or kind; and the especial note you
strike no one else could. Indeed I doubt whether the kind of approach
you make would be made by any one else except Learned Hand and
Cardozo and I gather that their elevation is not within the realm of the
possible. Hence my entreaties!
One exciting adventure of ours you will like to share. Frida went
motoring to Somerset last week and found in a cottage an old oak chest
in perfect condition. The man said he would sell it for five pounds. She
bought it and when it came home it had a Tudor rose in the panels. So
we had a man in to look at it from Bond Street and he acclaimed it is
certainly not later than 1580 and in quite perfect condition, worth, he
thought, eighty or ninety pounds. So behold us watching jealously all
who eye it and with the proper pride of ownership.
Our love and good wishes to both of you,
Ever affectionately yours., H. ]. L.
Washington, D. C.5 March 17, 1927
My dear Laski: An answer to one letter was skipped and one that comes
this morning must get but a hasty word. My birthday came in the middle
of a lot of hard work and I haven't known which way to turn — let me
get a new pen. You speak of lots of things that interest me — what you
say of Winston (Churchill's?) book and the troubles between soldiers
and statesmen, reminds of Patten (Development of English Thought)
"the sensualist in the field is always at war with the Mugwump in the
home office" 1 — I don't stop to verify but quote from recollection many
years old. I always used to say that Fitzjames Stephen was an 18th cen-
tury British controversialist, and he brings down his bludgeon with a
whack. Carlyle I never think of except as an artist. He didn't care for
truth as such, but only as it was pictorially available. As old James (the
father of W. & H.) said of Mrs. Browning "She uses the name of the
1 In Patten's lingo the sensualists are the active men of strong conviction —
the warriors, priests, and capitalists — while the mugwumps are the specula-
tive and frail intellectuals — critics, not actors.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 927
Divine Being as a pigment." As to the convergence you speak of to form
the philosophy of conservatism, I listen with much interested silence.
I have had some cases that interested me — and a dissent in which I
had a whack at "police power" and "dedicated to a public use" — as
apologetic phrases springing from the unwillingness to recognize the fact
of power2 — one upsetting a Philippine judgment declining to accept a
British judgment in Hong Kong3 — and one very plain one upsetting a
Texas Statute forbidding negroes to vote at Democratic primaries.4 I have
been kept humming and still am — I can say no more now except that I
am as ever Aff'ly yours, 0. W. Holmes
Some one wrote to me that it was said that I said I should not resign
until God Almighty notified me — (which is a fiction of the papers), and
asking what warrant I had for thinking there was one. I did not answer as
I thought it impertinent.
Devon Lodge, 20.IIL27
My dear Justice: The last fortnight of term ended with a bang. I had
something to do every night, and I have never looked forward so eagerly
as to the next six weeks. However, I am having a brief holiday in Paris,
at one stage, and one in the New Forest at another, so that I may recover
freshness.
And these days have been most interesting. First of all I count a visit
to Canterbury, where I had to lecture. I had never seen the Cathedral
before and it is certainly one of the things that sweep you off your feet.
It is not only the vast sense of historical association, but its calm, its
majesty, and the paintings circa 1150 in St. Gabriel's chapel. The latter
interested me enormously for I should have guessed that they show clear
traces of Byzantine influence. And I met there a delightful old Canon
who was at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford and heard
Huxley smite Bishop Wilberforce.1 He said that the sensation was beyond
words, and that on him, as on many others, it was a revelation of moral
power such as he has never seen again. The clergy, he said, were like an
2 Tyson and Brother v. Banton, 273 U.S. 418, 445.
8 Ingenohl v. Olsen and Company, 273 U.S. 541. Holmes wrote for a unani-
mous court.
4 Nixon v. Herndon, 272 U.S. 536 (March 7, 1927). Holmes delivered the
opinion for a unanimous Court.
1 The occasion was that on which Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (1805-1873),
"Soapy Sam" to his contemporaries, sought to refute the impieties of Darwin
before the British Association. Huxley, challenged by the Bishop to state
whether the ape in his ancestry was on the maternal or paternal side, expressed
his preference for descent from an ape to the ancestry of such a bishop as
Wilberforce, with such vigor that Lady Brewster, in the audience, fainted.
928 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
army in confused retreat, whose commander has failed them, listening to
an exhortation from their enemy which they try not to believe is true, 1
had, also, a fascinating lunch with Winston Churchill where we fought
over politics in solitude for three hours. Several things there interested
me hugely. (1) The politicians assurance: if I could pronounce judgment
on one thing with the same aplomb with which he settled a dozen, I
should be very happy. There is not a trace of scepticism in his nature.
(2) His sense of values. The scientist, the philosopher, the great artist, are
for him children remote from the real paths of life. He has no sense at all
of long-term influence. He feels that men don't go into politics for fear of
failing there, not because they literally don't want to. (3) 'The rhetorical
character of the political mind. It was very easy for him to slip from close
argument into peroration and I was never sure that he really grasped the
difference. I went, also, to an admirable lecture on "public policy" by
Winfield of Cambridge, which contained one perfect sentence: "Public
policy means the best judgment of distinguished men of the world as
distinct from persons learned in the law; English judges have regarded
their own views as the highest expression of the former category." I met
there Roche, J.2 who is a charming person. He told me that when he first
read Cardozo on The Judicial Process it was a bombshell to him; he never
realised that things like that went on in his mind. Examination convinced
him that they did and he began to explore. At sixty he discovered Mait-
land and, as he put it, underwent the phenomenon of conversion. I said
I wished he would bite the other judges. He replied that most of them
were vaccinated against the dangers of speculation by their careers at the
bar. In a very different realm I took the chair at a discussion on trade-
unionism opened by the secretary of the Trade Union Congress.3 He was
very able; but what impressed me most was his explanation of many
habits and practices we regard as destructive as the definite relics of the
old Combination Acts. As an example of the overmastering influence of
dead tradition, the thing was amazing.
In the way of books, I have had some nice finds. Item, a superb copy
of La Roche-Flavin's Treize limes sur les parlements which throws
great light on the whole problem of fundamental law, Then, second, a
nice copy of Saurin Traite de conscience, one of the best Hugenot de-
fences of toleration with notes in the margin which I believe to be in
Bayle's hand. Third a contemporary attack on Voltaire which is one of the
jolliest jeux d'esprit I have read in some time. It is not often that a theo-
2 Alexander Adair Roche (1871- ), Baron Roche; Judge of the King's
Bench Division, 1917-1934; Lord Justice of Appeal and Lord of Appeal in
Ordinary, 1934-1938.
3 Mr. Walter M. Citrine (1887- ), later first Baron Citrine, was General
Secretary of the Trades Union Congress from 1926 to 1946.
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 929
logian (pardon me!) is capable of wit; but this fellow, massing Voltaire's
lies and trickeries in a general way, makes them more deadly than he
could ever have done by solemnity.
In the way of reading, I have mostly been confined to work. But I read
Felix's little book on Sacco and Vanzetti and thought it a neat, surgical
job. Also the Webbs' new volume on the English poor law before 1835,
which, like all they have done in that Local Government series, is quite
masterly. And, breathe it low, a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, called Picca-
dilly Jim in which I thoroughly delighted. I read, too, Miss Haldane's
George Eliot, which she sent me; but I cannot say it impressed me very
much. She seemed always outside her subject. George Eliot was a great
woman; but I don't think it is necessary to get excited about Romola,
which is Wardour Streetery, or Daniel Deronda; and it is necessary to say
that Middlemarch is one of the supreme English novels of the 19th cen-
tury and quite patently inferior to the great romances of either Dostoievski
or Tolstoy. One's life isn't different because of Middlemarch; but one is
never quite the same after either the Brothers Karamazov or War and
Peace; and I should put Anna Karenina only just below those. Which
somehow reminds me that I picked up the other day Contarini Fleming
which I had never read. Dizzy must have had a really sublime contempt
for the English nation to publish such stuff, or, alternatively, the most
weird attitude to himself of any man who ever stood in the front rank.
For it is the weirdest mixture of Behmen,4 Cagliostro, Byron, Rousseau, I
ever looked at; and except for the light it throws on Dizzy himself, en-
tirely worthless.
Well, I must end. I have to make an index to my little volume on Com-
munism — a ghastly job; and I must get it done by tomorrow.
Our love to you both. I expect you are driving by the Potomac to see
the cherry-blossom. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., March 31, 1927
My dear Laski: Yours of March 20 just received and read and I was just
about to say I had a breathing moment in which to answer, when, as I
wrote your name a fat package came from the C.J. to be read. But it
shall not stop me. You are right in thinking that I have been driving by
the cherry trees and in one way and another trying to be unscrupulously
idle for a few days. But it is almost impossible. When law makes no
demand some bother of business pops up. However all is going well
enough.
4 Jacob Behmen (or Boehme) (1575-1624), mystical shoemaker whose
philosophy assigned to will a position of central importance and emphasized
the conflict between opposites, resulting finally in a new unity.
930 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
Graham Wallas called here the other day and took luncheon today. I
find him a most pleasant creature — so pleasant that I haven't Inquired
too curiously how much we have or have not in common — in the way
of opinions, beyond the general agreement of tolerant and civilized men.
Don t talk to me of Huxley. I thought him a boor on the only occasion
when I saw him — I would lock him up with Andrew Lang and a few
others and put S.O.B, on the door of the cell. Per contra Wallas lent me
Cardozo's first book and I read it and was reinforced in my conviction that
he (C.) was a sensitive, high-minded, delicate dear — but I think your
friend Roche, J. ingenuous if the book opened new vistas to him.
I don't get your point as to the effect of the old Combination Acts.
On the other hand I also read a sentence by the Treasurer of the American
Federation of Labor — that made my heart jump up with joy — and hope
that it was true — "Labor and capital are now talking the same language
— that of the Informed economist' " — although he goes on that their
differences are still acute. I haven't yet succeeded in getting Piccadilly
Jim. I have received the Life of Lord Bryce.1 I was fond of him and ex-
pect to find it interesting — but it came at a moment when it emphasized
what I was reflecting — apropos of Pound — that knowledge is a danger-
ous diluent of thought. The poison of the sting is thinned out and made
innocuous by too large an infusion of facts. One perfectly estimable side
of Bryce left me cold — the pleasure he took in the society of admirable
people like Charles Eliot who don't open the romantic perspectives of
life — yet as I say that, I hesitate — for Charles Eliot wrote "the business
of the scholar is to make poverty respectable" — a saying that has com-
forted me in my day — in the days when I lived on George Herbert's
"who sweeps a room as for Thy laws" etc. and Browning's "Grammarian's
Funeral." And didn't the good man when I wrote to him on his 90th birth-
day give me a kind of schoolmaster's summary of myself in four pages
quarto — though I said don't answer. Let me walk delicately before the
Lord — and it's a rum business — that of opening the romantic side of
life. Some men who have done it for me would not be suspected of such
a possibility by most of Boston. Old Norman2 (you may have known some
of the many sons whom I saw bear his coffin on their shoulders ) , a splen-
did old Philistine who had fought his way to wealth — Frank Parker3 —
the most squaretoed seeming of anglicised yankees — who had a green
baize door to his office with "Mr. Parker" on it — was counsel for the
1 H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce (2 vok, 1927).
2 George H. Norman (1827-1900) of Newport, Rhode Island, had made a
large fortune in civil engineering and the promotion of water works in the
United States and abroad. Following Norman's death, Holmes is quoted as
saying that few people he had known "have had so high a pressure of life
to the square inch/' Boston Evening Transcript, February 5, 1900, p. 10.
8 Francis Edward Parker (1821-1886),
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 931
Barings and the Cunard Co. etc. — but who had an inner fire that he
didn't show often. Decidedly the men who have made life seem large and
free would not always be picked out by the crowd.
I take it that Felix's book is a bit of heroism on his part — and I
vaguely hear has brought criticism upon him. Naturally I can't talk about
it — but it has left painful impressions. Disraeli I know more through
Thackeray than himself — though I have read one or two of his things.
I thought Anna Karenina the biggest ever when I read it — but was bored
by War and Peace. I suppose I am too old now. They made quite a row
on my birthday — which shows that I am really old.
Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 2.IV.27
My dear Justice: I got back yesterday from a memorable week in Paris
— one of the most intellectually exciting holidays I have ever spent.1
People, sights, books, all seem to unite to make things interesting. Of
people there are some I must mention. At a conference I met Jusserand
with whom I spoke about you. He looked very fit and eager, and is evi-
dently most warmly esteemed. He wanted to know all about my visit to
you and how you both were and what you were thinking about life. I
met, too, Andre Gide, the novelist. He is amazingly impressive, a queerly
interesting mixture of the Hugenot who has met Rimbaud and Mallarme.
Then, too, I had a lunch with Briand 2 who interested me enormously.
He lives in the moment, and yesterday, with him, is ancient history which
only the archaeologist will study. He is supple as no persons existing else-
where. He knows exactly what you want him to say and is skilful in the
art of pleasing in a quite remarkable degree. Also Rene Lalou,3 the critic,
a kind of Faguet de nos jours, clever, witty, and eloquent. One or two of
his phrases, "historiquement Platon a eu une trop bonne presse"; "Bossuet
a fait une religion pour des rois"; "Le Frangois est ne malm et meurt
sceptique au sein du bon Dieu" were admirable. I had all I could do to
digest these experiences; and I recovered the sense that few peoples have
the French power to play with ideas. They are not, I think, originators;
but in subtlety and analytic power they are extraordinarily impressive. I
saw, too, some interesting things. First the Exposition Louis XIV at the
Bibliotheque Nationale — mss of Racine, Arnauld, Saint -Simon, pictures,
etc. The interest, I think, was in the little things — their intense f ormal-
impressions of France are recorded in "A Little Tour of France/'
50 New Republic 292 (May 4, 1927).
2Aristide Briand (1862-1932) at this time was Minister of Foreign Affairs.
8 Rene Lalou (1889- ), author of Histoire de la litterature fran$aise con-
temporaine (1923), and Defense de rhomme (1926).
932 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
ism, the feeling you had of an overmastering power outside them to which
they had to conform. And I met one La Ronciere4 at the Bibliotheque who
showed me a thrilling map which he believes (with very strong evidence)
to be that out of which Columbus took his plans for America. I went, also,
to the Luxembourg and saw some Cezanne which were unforgettable —
especially the still life paintings which had a vigour quite enthralling.
In the way of books I did very well. I got some great folios of the early
lawyers, Guy Coquille, Lebret, Loyseau, one or two more of Jurieu, some
interesting Fronde pamphlets, some contemporary anti-Rousseau material,
and some stuff on the early history of toleration in France which, when
written up, will I think be quite new to the historians. And some modern
books were interesting — especially Lalou's quite enthralling Littemture
jrangaise contemporaine. I was struck in meeting the men of letters at the
degree to which they are bound up in groups and stick to them. One old
professor told me a glorious story of Victor Hugo. The great man used to
entertain on Tuesdays and the crowd in the street would stop by the
open windows just to catch the sound of the master's voice. One or two
general things are worth saying, perhaps. One gets the impression that
the Church gains ground — especially among the youth in the universi-
ties. The world in general is so confused that they cling to it as an anchor.
Also the degree of discredit into which parliamentary institutions have
fallen is as remarkable as it is painful. To take a politician as dishonour-
able a priori is commonplace wherever one goes; and one hears continually
of the need "passer par quelque phase d'anarchie a une nouvelle syn-
these" On the other hand I am quite clear that France is on the verge
of a great intellectual renaissance. Granted the confusions of the moment,
it is the confusion of bigness. Valery the poet, Gide the novelist, one or
two younger men like Dauden,5 Giradoux [sic], Lalou, are I think, the
precursors of a great period. It may be that I respond quickly to a sym-
pathetic environment; but I should say that the next ten years will give
France a different intellectual prestige from that of any other country.
And in herself she is more at peace. Most of the war-hate is dead; they
laugh at us and you instead of sneering; they dislike only Mussolini. Him
they flagellate in the comic press and the music-hall and, interestingly
enough, always as a threat to peace. I believe that they genuinely desire
European appeasement.
4 Charles de la Ronciere (1870-1941), historian and biographer; he wrote
of the map in question: La carte de Christophe Colomb (1924). According
to Samuel Eliot Morison, the foremost authority, there is much reason to doubt
the accuracy of La Ronciere's belief: 1 Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea
(1942), 134, 143.
5 Not identified.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 933
Of things read one or two tilings would I think interest yoti. Lasserre
Le romantisme francais would show you how the demand for order and
authority makes its appeal. Fay's Panorama litteraire is a most skilful
summary of intellectual tendencies in the last twenty-five years. And
Parodfs Philosophic frangaise moderne is good. There is, I must add, a
tremendous interest in Nietzsche; the shops are full of translations and
commentaries. That, I believe, is a good sign for Nietzsche was cosmo-
politan and it is a great thing for Frenchmen to shake off their insularity.
I add that I have just read Fisher's Life of Bryce which I found very dull.
Bryce is like the industrious apprentice who always marries his master's
daughter and never makes a mistake.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, Harold ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 15.IV.27
My dear Justice: I hope that by the time you receive this, you will have
had a call from Ramsay MacDonald; I wrote to him and to Esme Howard
that he should look in on you. For he is a likeable fellow and I think you
would have had a pleasant hour.
My main experience since I wrote you last has been a dinner at which
I sat next to a genius. He was, I gathered, a poet in his second year at
Oxford. He began by asking me if I liked his work; I had, very humbly, to
confess that I did not know it. "Perhaps not," he said pityingly "as yet I
have only done four things that will live." Then a pause; silence from me;
my poet, with an effort, "But at my age Shelley had hardly done more."
It is, I think, to my credit that I took him seriously and asked him to sum-
marise his view of life. "The poet," he said, "is a reflection of the world-
spirit. When I write, I feel as though I carry all peoples and all experi-
ences in my womb." I said it must be a heavy burden. "Yes/? he said, "I
try not to be too conscious of my mission, I play bridge for relaxation/*
He thought well of Dante and Shakespere. Homer, and especially Virgil,
were very overrated. Rimbaud was the greatest of Frenchmen — "I fancy
myself a twin soul with him" — but no German had ever written poetry.
Goethe was without lyrical powers. (He could not read German.) He
would never marry. A poet, like the bee, must sip from countless flowers;
matrimony must be a tie. I cannot express to you how miraculous he was.
He pitied my profession. He told me that "on a low plane" my books were
not without merit. He said he was sustained amid material cares by the
knowledge of eventual immortality. He had no religion; but he sometimes
recaptured an experience in Catullus or Shakespere's sonnets or Sappho
so vividly that he was tempted to believe in pre-existence. I keep the final
thing for the last "Have you relatives?" "A father." "What is he?" "The
934 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
best known black pig-breeder in Berkshire." I told my hostess that at any
time I would break any engagement to be permitted to sit next to her poet
again.
Outside of this I have been amiably busy without undue exertion A
wedding of a cousin; a visit to Bradford to give evidence before a munici-
pal commission on the undesirability of a separate university there; a re-
view of Fisher's Bryce;1 and a good deal of reading towards a quarcen-
tenary estimate of Machiavelli which I have to get done before the end
of the month.2 I must not forget to urge you to read a brilliant novel by
Anne Sedgwick called The Old Countess which has great qualities and
a certain Greek economy of line. Otherwise my main joy has been Don
Quixote which I enjoyed as I have rarely enjoyed a book. I have had a
good deal of pleasure, too, from Saint-Simon's memoirs, especially his
glorious self-esteem, and his portraits of the people he did not like. But he
is like Horace Walpole. You are glad he lived, but very grateful that you
did not know him.
I was depressed by the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in
the Sacco-Vanzetti case.3 Not only has Felix made me feel that, at the
least, a new trial was essential; but also the feeling here is very deep that
the whole thing is an injustice characteristic of the American courts, and
it is a thing difficult to combat. Frank,4 Mooney,5 and this in fifteen years
is unsatisfactory. It makes me distrust the jury system were it not that
Thayer, J. suggests that the average judge is not a whit better. And it is
especially disappointing to have it come in a state where judges are ap-
pointed and not elected.
I was amused by your remark on Andrew Lang. I met the other day
in Manchester an old journalist who had a complete set of everything he
wrote and proposed in his will to order them to be burned. I found that
he loathed Lang as the most wantonly insensitive person he had ever
met. Birrell told me the root of it was passionate ambition on Lang's part;
1 The review has not been located.
2 "Machiavelli and the Present Time," 249 Quarterly Review 57 (July 1927).
8 On April 5 the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts announced its
decision that it was powerless to review Judge Thayer's most recent action in
denying the defendants a new trial. On April 9 Judge Thayer sentenced the
two men to death.
*In August 1915, Leo Frank, a Jew who had been convicted of rape and
whose death sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment by the gov-
ernment of Georgia, was lynched. Over Holmes's dissent the Supreme Court,
in April 1915, on jurisdictional ground had refused to review the conviction of
the defendant; Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309, 345.
5 Tom Mooney (1885-1942), on the basis of testimony known by the
prosecuting officers to be perjured, in 1915 was convicted by the California
courts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. It was not until 1939
that he was pardoned by Governor Olson and released from jail.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 935
he could not bear to see other people even within sight of success. I take
your word for Eliot's bigness. I only saw him once, and was impressed by
his vigour and alertness. But nothing I have read of him suggested to me
originality or distinction of mind, and I imagine that it was the vivid
personal contact that gave him his power. Graham Wallas is a dear, but
he is really more self-absorbed than is decent, and constructs lions for
himself (which he proceeds to slay) where to other people they seem
merely tame cats. At bottom Wallas is a bishop manque. He has the germ
of unctiousness and would, I think, like to do good. But he has done fine
work and sacrificed something for his opinions. I wish you could meet
his wife, who is the real item in the series. She has a mordant though
winsome wit which is at once cleansing and devastating. Nothing escapes
her — and her defence of him against his own weaknesses is one of the
most exquisitely tender things I have seen.
But I must end; for Frida's taking Diana to the country for a fortnight
and I want to see that they leave adequately. My love to you both. Write
to me soon. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 23.IV, 27
My dear Justice: It has been a busy week; for I have been roped in to
help the trade unions in their fight against this incredible Bill of Bald-
win's,1 and most of my time has gone in conferences with lawyers and
politicians guessing at its legal consequences and the best way to awaken
a public opinion about the issue. It's frightfully interesting; and not the
least interesting side of it is the lawyers' sheer ignorance of trade union-
ism. You may remember an old plea of yours that lawyers should be
taught political economy. That was never so forcibly brought home to me
as now. I send you a comment of mine on a letter of Wrenbury's which
will explain the kind of problem we have.2 The fight, I fear, will be very
bitter, but if we lose the elementary right of combination will go; and
we shall be back in the old bad days before the repeal of the Combination
Acts. It's worth struggling against that.
Otherwise my main job has been writing a quarcentenary article on
Machiavelli — an interesting job, though difficult because it is so hard
to say anything new. But I hope I have brought out some points too
rarely noticed, and, at least, I thoroughly enjoyed reading him. I expect
1 On April 4 the government introduced its Trade Disputes and Trade Unions
Bill. Its most significant objectives were to make a general strike illegal and to
outlaw sympathetic strikes. After long and bitter debate the Bill, with some
modifications, became law in late July. Laski wrote of the matter in "Mr.
Baldwin attacks the Trade Unions/' 51 New Republic 63 (June 8, 1927).
2 The enclosure is missing. Lord Wrenbury's letter was in the London Times*
April 18, 1927, p. 11.
936 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
with this letter you will receive my little book on Communism. You know
with what affection it comes to you; and I have a belief that you will
sympathise with its general tone. However, that you will tell me, I know,
with the full frankness of friendship.
Of other things there is not much to record. Perhaps the most amusing
arises from a visit of mine two years ago to S. Wales where, one evening,
an old miner entertained me with tales of the mines sixty years ago. I
said, in a moment of enthusiasm that these reminiscences would make a
good book. Yesterday arrived a ms of 600 pages full of long disquisitions
on his religious beliefs of which the sum seems to be that the outstanding
thing in his life was when, in 1879, he read the sermons of Whitfield [sic]
he realised that Calvinist Methodism is the only path to heaven. I have re-
turned the script with as kind a letter as 1 can; and have written over my
heart, "Surtout point de I'enthousiasme" I had also a visit from a gentle-
man who amused me much. He was one of these crack-brained currency
cranks who can solve all social questions by the multiplication of paper
money. He wanted me to write a preface to a book he has written. I
refused, on the ground that I knew nothing of finance. "You must learn"
he said, and offered to give me free instruction in return for a preface.
I had great difficulty in getting rid of him and he told me that, like all
professors, I was harsh, unsympathetic and pontifical. I ask you frankly
whether one can be a Christian, (or even a Judaeo-Christian) in a world
so composed.
In the reading line nothing of supreme interest to tell. The most inter-
esting thing was a brief and quite exquisite little biography of Wesley
by Dean Hutton (Macrmllan) which I think you would both like. It
paints and explains; it is less than 200 pages; and it really tells you all
you want to know. I have also had to read and review a vast work on
the modern state by J. A. R. Marriott3 which seemed to me to say quite
obvious things quite obviously at intolerable length, but which the
"Tories'* thought of indispensable value. I also bought and read in bed
again William James's Letters. They are really entirely delightful, and his
sly digs at Henry do my heart good — but, as you know, I am a heretic
about the latter. In bed, too, I reread Acton on The French Revolution
which is, I think, in its queer, allusive way, about the most profound thing
there is on that portent. But there is still a great essay to be written on
its political philosophy, as on its political precursors. Have you, by the
way, ever read Lanfrey on the Church and the Philosophers in the
XVIIIth Century? That is the way to deal with the black gentlemen. You
assume that they are vicious. You insist that they cannot be sincere. And
8 Laski's review of Sir Jolm Marriott's The Mechanism of the Modern State
(1927) has not been located.
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 937
the result is the proof that they are blackguards. The only thing wanting
in him — he writes with superb verve — is the inability to dip his pen
in the blood of churchmen. I really enjoyed him; for a thoroughly angry
anti-cleric is a heartening spectacle. Birrell, by the way, whom I met at
tea told me a good story of Leslie Stephen. The latter called on Morley
at his house in Surrey and they had a two hour jaw on literature. As
Stephen took up his hat to go he said to J.M. "Oh! by the way, you know
that the Germans have taken Sedan?" And Birrell added that this was the
proof of Stephen's greatness — "he never magnified incidents into events."
I hear with joy that you and Brandeis have dissented in a labour case
where emphasis was demanded.4 I await the decision with eagerness.
My love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., April 25, 1927
My dear Laski: It is ages since I have written — but I couldn't help it.
I have been very busy and last week was rather under the weather with
my insides. As probably I have told you I have had all forms of belly-ache
known to the law except Asiatic cholera. So I have to mind my eye. How-
ever it is all quiet along the Potomac tonight (or more strictly, this morn-
ing).
Your Paris experiences are wonderfully interesting — what you say
about the literary groups falls in with an impression I got from a book by
a French interviewer in the time of Zola. The fierceness with which each
crowd spoke as if divided by a gulf when to me they looked as like as
Chinese — or had the same flavor throughout like herrings in a box. As
to a renaissance I heard a similar prediction for this country the other
day — that from the chaos of doubt and ruins of the old times would arise
a generation of philosophers and poets. I am not quite sure — I think it
was from Wallas. Wallas has come here two or three times and I infer
rather liked it as he said that he should telephone on his return in May,
He now has gone to lecture elsewhere. My secretary thinks that he doesn't
lecture as well as he talks. I of course have had no chance to hear him
ex cathedra — his talk is very agreeable. I have done nothing but law —
my opinion for this morning is held up by McReynolds for a dissent. That
which was given to me Saturday evening and was written yesterday con-
cerned the constitutionality of an act for sterilizing feeble-minded people,
4 Bedford Cut Stone Company v. Journeymen Stone Cutters' Association, 274
U.S. 37, 56 (April 11, 1927). Brandeis, J., with Holmes concurring, dis-
sented from the majority decision that under the Sherman act a strike against
nonunion materials was unlawful.
938 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
with due precaution — as to which my lad tells me the religious are astir.
I have just sent what I think to the printer.1
The Chief has given me a pretty interesting lot of cases this term — and
I have enjoyed writing them. I am always afraid that he is considering my
age &c. and giving me easy ones — but Brandeis seems to think not.
Frankfurter's book on Sacco and Vanzetti and the case itself has kicked up
a commotion and Brandeis says that Beacon Street is divided. Bishop
Lawrence2 and others of the elect, like Charley Curtis (jr.) taking the
side of the accused — per contra Bob Grant (ex probate judge and au-
thor)3 called yesterday and gave me a moderate statement tending rather
the other way. The wife appears and summons me to Court. Therefore a
premature adieu. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Washington, D. C., April 29, 1927
My dear Laski: You have written delightfully interesting letters to which
you have received inadequate replies as I have fewer things to tell and,
as I wrote a day or two ago, have been driven hard and for a few days
rather below par. I am all right now, but fate is plucking the leaves from
the old tree rather fast. The day before yesterday came a telegram from
Mrs. Beveridge telling of her husband's death that morning. And yester-
day a letter giving me my first news of the death of Lady Castletown one
of my oldest and most intimate friends.1 Beveridge was a surprise al-
though some years ago I got the idea from his doctor that he was running
the machine too hard. I shall miss him until I am missed. Lady Castle-
town had had a stroke coming on top of other trouble so that her death
seemed probably a release, but it makes a great gap in my horizon. It is
a great fortune for me to have the friendship of some of you younger men.
Tom Barbour turned up also two days ago far from well but he went on
to Philadelphia yesterday and I hope will have no serious trouble. Apart
from events all my ideas are in the law. I have had some rather interesting
cases — the present one, as I believe I mentioned, on the Constitutionality
of a Virginia act for the sterilizing of imbeciles, which I believe is a
burning theme. In most cases the difficulty is rather with the writing than
lBuck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (May 2, 1927). Holmes, for a majority, sus-
tained the constitutionality of Virginia's sterilization statute. Butler, J., dis-
sented without opinion.
2 Supra, p. 109.
8 Robert Grant (1852-1940) was later named to the commission appointed
by Governor Fuller to consider the application for the commutation of the
sentence on Sacco and Vanzetti. The commission recommended execution of
the sentence.
1 Supra, p. 782.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 93£
with the thinking. To put the case well and from time to time to hint ai
a vista is the job. I am amused (between ourselves) at some of the rhe-
torical changes suggested, when I purposely used short and rather brutal
words for an antithesis, polysyllables that made them mad. I am pretty
accommodating in cutting out even thought that I think important, but a
man must be allowed his own style. At times I have gone too far in
yielding my own views as to the reason for the decision. Years ago to
finish a case that had been dawdled with for many months I struck out
my reasons and put in what I thought at least inadequate and appear in
the books as sanctioning what makes me blush.2 This time, though I had
said, Never again, I did the same thing in a milder form, and now as then
have to accept criticism that I think pretty well justified. However, sooner
or later one gets a chance to say what one thinks. I believe today is our
last day of argument except one case on Monday. And the so-often-
expected and near-coming leisure seems to be near at hand. Apart from
the light stuff that I hear in the late evening I have read nothing, except
at odd minutes to reread Murray's History of Political Science, which I
believe you put me on to — a good book very ill written. I think I shall
do some other rereadings when I get the chance. Fred Pollock's Spinoza
for one and possibly a little of the old man himself. He comes nearer to
me than most of the old. I am much pleased with your poet. The English
are more ingenuous and innocent than we, even if capable of deeper
abysses. And the particular swagger of poets as admitted to deeper in-
timacy with the cosmos than the rest used to aggravate and now amuses
me. I gather that your lad was quite young. Probably he will get a jolt
someday that may open his eyes. I should think you would be curious
to look up his product.
How solemnly men have taken themselves. Theology has helped it. If
there is to be the revival that you for France and Wallas for America
predict, I hope that a corner-stone will be that speculatively man is in-
teresting only as part of the cosmos, and that he cannot assume that he is
specially needed as its confidential friend. The time for departure to Court
has come and I must say adieu pro tern.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 7.V.27
My dear Justice: Two most welcome letters from you. They remind me to
adjure your abdominal organs to behave themselves, I write with the bit-
terness of one who has been for two days in a diarrhagic coma, the more
intensely felt because each spasm has been disturbed by the telephone.
* Supra, p. 901.
940 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
But much of my pain disappeared on reading Felix's reply to that in-
credible Wigmore.1 Nothing is more delightful than a really great surgical
job. Certainly if I were Wigmore I would turn my attention to lesser
artists in dissection.
Life here is rapid because of this Trade Union Bill. I send you a letter
of mine with which, I think, you will agree; and if it is not a bother, I
would like you to hand it on to Brandeis. The problems are less interesting
than settling whether a feeble-minded Virginian is to remain virgin, but,
as Carlyle said, they make "bonny fechtinY'
The most pleasant thing since I wrote last was a dinner with Sankey, J.
to meet three of his colleagues. One, Mackinnon, J.2 a new man, I found
delightful for he was a real shark on Jane Austen, Dr. Johnson, and Pepys,
and made me feel a worm for my ignorance. Another was, I gather, a
great swell in commercial cases; but he seemed most interested in incomes
at the Bar, wherefore I led him up the garden gracefully. He said that
J. Simon was making sixty thousand a year, so I invented a quite imagi-
nary Bonville-Smith (don't you think Bonville a neat touch) who now
makes £100,000 and never appears in Court. The others nodded
solemnly and the poor judge was quite persuaded by the third glass of
port that he knew of him vaguely, but had no idea he did so well. A
killing little K.C. was there whose only passion in life was Waterford
glass. He had been to America twice to see two pieces and had no notion
that America had anything of interest except these. We talked of cathe-
drals and mentioned Salisbury. He pointed out that near the Cathedral
was an antique shop where he got a goblet c. 1776 for eight pounds, Had
he been to die Cathedral? No; he had not realised it was open on week-
days. I add an attractive dinner I gave at the School to introduce Church-
ill to some of my younger colleagues. He was like a great actor playing a
part. He did it supremely well, and, I think, enchanted them. But he left
me convinced that a political career is ruinous to one's simplicity. He
searched always to end a sentence with a climax. He looked for antitheses
like a monkey looking for fleas. At one time he was so asseverative about
loyalty to the state that I was tempted and asked him to define what he
meant by the state. I then fully understood why a wise minister rarely
answers supplementary questions in die House of Commons. But he is a
good fellow, incurably romantic and an arresting mind. His tendency to
aThe exchange of letters between Felix Frankfurter and Dean Wigmore
appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript from April 21 to May 11. Wigmore's
letters were infected by the petulance of a panicky patriot. See Joughin and
Morgan, The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti (1948) 260-262.
2 Sir Frank Douglas MacKinnon (1871-1946), Judge of the King's Bench
Division, 1924-1937; Lord Justice of Appeal, 1937-1946; author of On
Circuit (1940),
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 941
classify into black and white arises, I suppose from his profession. All
statesmen are theologians who have not taken holy orders.
Wallas writes me with enchantment of his visits to you. I gather he has
been Brahmmlsing at Boston and seeing Felix. I wish you had met his
wife who is adorable, with a touch of malice that does one's heart good.
Have you seen Redlich at all? You do not mention him; but I imagine you
must and have felt, as I, that few minds are richer or more stimulating
I did not know your friend Lady C. But I must not forget to tell you that
the other day at Haldane's — Mrs. Holmes, please, must hear this, —
Lady Oxford was talking of eyes and said that in the *90's, you had a
provocative gleam that might easily have tempted her had occasion of-
fered; and old Lady Horner was emphatic in the same direction. I must
say that these English friends of years ago have you most vividly in
memory.
Your word of Beveridge's death was the first note of it I had seen and
I was deeply shocked. I thought him not more than fifty-five; and I liked
him greatly. He was more expansive than I can always grasp, but his
affection was sincere and his devotion to his job unmistakable. Could
your secretary put his wife's address on a card for me? I would like to
send her a note of sympathy.
In the way of reading, I have little of significance to tell. I have been
mostly on Rousseau and the hard grind of a big case before the Industrial
Court where we may make the Government miserable by saying that
certain classes have been done out of a million. But in books I await in
trembling excitement for the result of a telegram to Holland. If it comes
off, I get the book I have searched for since 1912. But I got the catalogue
at one remove; the book is cheap; the bookseller does not know me; the
book is searched for; I hardly dare to hope. Yet when I tell myself that
even if I miss it, the world will still go on, I have a sense that it may be
less bright than before. To be a book-collector is bad for the heart. But
what does the heart matter compared to being a collector?
My love to you both. Get that stomach better, please. Sterilise all the
unfit, among whom I include all fundamentalists.
Ever affectionately yours, E. J. L.
Washington, D. C., May 12, 1927
My dear Laski: Bad days these for writing or reading (anything but
cases and certioraris) and I can't send more than a bulletin. When I
thought my work was done new stuff came pouring in and there has
been no rest. Your book on Communism came shortly after your letter
— and in crevices of time I have read half of it. It seems to me, if I may
942 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
say so, that your writing has improved again and I find it deeply interest-
ing, interesting not only in itself but in suggesting the rationale of the
differences between us. The deepest no doubt turn on what we like,
as to which argument is useless — but there are also differences in theory.
I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely
idealizing envy — I don't disparage envy but I don't accept it as legiti-
mately my master. If I am to consider contributions they vary infinitely
— all that any man contributes is giving a direction to force. The architect
does it on a larger scale than the bricklayer who only sees that a brick is
laid level. I know no a priori reason why he should not have a greater
reward. Kant did it on a larger scale than the architect. But you know my
views on that. I think the robbery of labor by capital is a humbug. The
real competitors are different kinds of labor. The capitalist by his power
may turn a part into directions that you deem undesirable — but if he
does he does it because he thinks a body of consumers will want the
product and he is the best prophet we can get. Some kind of despotism
is at the bottom of the seeking for change. I don't care to boss my neigh-
bors and to require them to want something different from what they
do — even when, as frequently, I think their wishes more or less suicidal.
It is not really theory but a prophecy that the crowd having got the power
will use it to smash this or that that lays the foundation for much of the
fundamentally innovating talk. I think it playing with fire and if I were
not reduced to a nearly exhausted spectator, should say I will take what
precautions I can and abide the result — reminding you that it may be
you as well as it may be I that is hurt. I should rejoice if as you say you
had written over your heart "Surtout point de Fenthousiasme." I am
amused by your currency man — I don't know but they are the hatter-est
kind of social tinkers. I wrote and delivered a decision upholding the con-
stitutionality of a state law for sterilizing imbeciles the other day — and
felt that I was getting near to the first principle of real reform. I say
merely getting near. I don't mean that the surgeon's knife is the ultimate
symbol. Your description of Lanfrey on the Churchmen has its parallels in
every cult. The abolitionists as I remember used to say that their antago-
nists must be either knaves or fools. I am glad I encountered that sort of
thing early as it taught me a lesson.
Well, dear boy, I wish I could go on but opinions and certioraris are
waiting to be attended to and this must let me out. My homage to the
missus. Ajfly yours, 6. W. H.
Washington, D. C., May 20, 1927
My dear Laski: (I) Before anything else let me give you the requested
address of Mrs. Albert J. Beveridge — viz. #4164 Washington Boule-
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 943
yard, Indianapolis, Indiana, or at least that was it a few days ago. I sup-
pose from the papers that before long she will go to Beverly Farms —
Massachusetts.
(2) Insides all right. I hope yours are! . . .
I have had no leisure till the last two days when I have had pleasant
drives and read Lawrence's book — Revolt in the Desert. I asked Wallas
who has just been here at luncheon what the inducement was. He spoke
of it as a contribution to the war — which of course — would make it
perfectly intelligible — but I got the impression of a previously existing
hobby. Probably I was wrong. I haven't quite finished your book. You
state the pros and cons fairly — but with an implied sympathy for beliefs
that I believe to be noxious humbugs — that grieves me. I feel as if the
idem sentire de republica tended to become less keen between us. Either
I am wrong or your present associations and reflections are leading you a
little further in a direction away from our common ground. Wallas is a
very pleasant fellow. I do not feel as if increased familiarity meant in-
creased intimacy — but he is cultivated and says a thousand agreeable
and more or less suggestive things. What an advantage all Europeans have
in learning so much of our historic environment through their eyes — not
to speak of object lessons in art &c. Of course faculty is more important
than education but certainly we are heavily handicapped. The melancholy
of the languid spring and of having finished work for the moment is upon
me. Luckily I no longer think such things important — as I don't think
man so, except from his own point of view or as part of this universe. If
the prophecy that Graham Wallas was mentioning of the return of the
ice cap in 1700 years may be accepted, perhaps it would cool our enthu-
siasms.
The afternoon grist of duties comes in and I must turn aside to opin-
ions and letters to be answered. Then I will sleep and cheer up.
Affly yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 21.V.27
My dear Justice: Your letter was indeed a delight; and though I should,
I think, deny almost the whole of your economic diagnosis as born of a
philosophy contradicted by the whole trend of modern fact and analysis,
I enjoyed every word of it. I add that it is at bottom the economics of the
soldier who accepts a rough equation between isness and oughtness. I
see no validity in such a creed except upon principles I would deny at
the stake.
Life has been a little overwhelming this past fortnight. I have sat on a
big civil service case in the Industrial Court which has so far occupied
three days. I have been chairman of a Conciliation Court in the
944 LASKI TO HOLMES
Co-operative Industry where, the case being left to me as independent
arbitrator, I had the satisfaction of establishing the six-day instead of the
seven-day week for milkmen — an obviously desirable change; and I have
been acting as legal adviser to the trade unions on the present Trade
Disputes Bill with the advantage of reciting judicial opinions to them and
their opponents on the unwisdom of words like "intimidation" and "coerc-
ing the community" drawn from your old Massachusetts opinions. Also I
had one great adventure with Frida which, psychologically, was most
interesting. We motored to Cambridge for the day and, on the way back,
skidded on a slippery road. The steering-gear went wrong and for one
minute we found ourselves headed straight for a stone wall at the bottom
of a ditch. It was certain death and in that one minute I found that I
certainly thought of these things: (I) Was there any danger of Diana
receiving a religious education from her grandparents? (II) If Frida sur-
vived me, would I leave enough to make her comfortable? (Ill) Who
would succeed me in the university? (IV) What a pity I had not finished
my book on French political ideas? (V) Would people remember to let
Felix know what had happened? (VI) What a curious contrast between
an hour ago in Cambridge and this moment. But just as everything
seemed ended the car turned slightly and grazed the wall on its side
instead of the front with the result that beyond a slight shock we were
absolutely untouched and after changing a buckled wheel able to proceed
home safely. It was intensely interesting even if uncomfortable; and I
was struck by the rapidity with which the mind went on working, as also
by the continuity of its operation. So far as I know consciously neither of
us had any sense of fear; it was rather a sense of fate. The thing was there
and one simply awaited the result like the fifth act in a drama.
We saw Chafee in Cambridge and hope to have him here next week.
I had a good gossip with him about the Law School and found to my
interest that he shares my doubts of Pound and the illusion of bigness. I
also had tea with Lowes Dickinson and heard much of the problem of
the unmarried don after he had passed the meridian — an interesting
issue. Dickinson was very definite that the semi-monasticism of the older
universities is a mistake. It may, he thinks, suit the great man with a
40-year magnum opus to finish. But the average don is then conscious of
powers that begin to sag a little, of new generations pressing on behind,
of lonely evenings and lonelier vacations; above all, he said, of the inert-
ness of an institutional routine instead of the freshness of a home.
One or two things I have read I must mention to you. A remarkable
American book, which I beg you to take at all costs to Beverly Farms —
Main Currents in American Thought by V. L. Parrington, 2 volumes (Har-
court) which is, I think, pretty nearly a masterpiece. It is learned, well-
written, and most stimulating; and it makes America part of the world
HOLMES TO LASKI 945
instead of an independent hemisphere. Do please read it and let me have
your views. Second a Russian novel by one Vieressiev called Deadlock
which is quite remarkable. It is a study of a tiny town in the Caucasus
during the Revolution which is taken one day by the Reds and retaken
the next by the Whites; and it studies the effect of change in the villagers
and others. I found it extraordinarily illuminating. It bears the obvious
marks of truth. It is well-translated and gives one a glimpse of an experi-
ence we ought to know and are never likely to see at first-hand. I read,
too, the much-vaunted Napoleon by Emile Ludwig. It is something of a
tour de force and powerfully written. But I found myself wondering
where Napoleon ended and Ludwig began; and the style in places was
nothing so much as Mr, Alfred Jingle turned historian. Much more arrest-
ing was Ducros's Rousseau which comes as near I think to solving that
enigma as we are likely to get; and it has a chapter on Rousseau and
religion which is quite masterly. Also I should note a pleasant life of
Burke by one Bertram Newman, which tells the story pleasantly and
straightforwardly and has an interesting sketch of political life in 18th
century England. It has no apergu of its own but it is a good bed book in
its way.
My love to you both. You must be pining for Beverly Farms.
Ever yours affectionately, H. J. L.
Postscript, Washington, D. C., May 21, 192?
My dear Laski: Another day has come — I have finished your book and
I don't feel quite so seedy as I did yesterday — wherefore this p.s. Of
course I appreciate what you and Keynes say, that the Russian Com-
munism is a religion and therefore cannot be expected to be just. But I
don't see why sympathetic understanding should be confined to one side.
Capitalism may not be a religion but it commands a fighting belief on its
side and I don't at all agree to describing its tyrannies with resentment,
as coming from bad men when you gloss those on the other side. I think
that most of the so-called tyrannies of capital express the economic neces-
sities created by the pressure of population — a pressure for which capi-
talism is not responsible and for which communism has offered no remedy.
If I praised or blamed (which I don't) either one, I should blame the
communists as consciously and voluntarily contemplating their despotism
whereas on the other side it is largely unconscious and the automatic re-
sult of the situation. I may add that class for class I think the one that
communism would abolish is more valuable — contributes more, a great
deal more, than those whom Communism exalts. For as I said the other
day, the only contribution that any man makes that can't be got more
cheaply from the water and the sky is ideas — the immediate or remote
946 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
direction of energy which man does not produce, whether it comes from
his muscles or a machine. Ideas come from the despised bourgeoisie not
from labor. With which I shut up and go for a capitalistic drive from
which I hope some little joy.
We look at our fellow men with sympathy but nature looks at them as
she looks at flies — and some of her dealings are hard but should not be
attributed to those who from the accident of position happen to be her
instruments. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 29.V.27
My dear Justice: Your letter was a delight indeed. And even though I see
a real disparity between us on intellectual problems, I can't say I greatly
mind. For your scepticism drives me back each time on first principle
which is an admirable thing for me. A good deal of our difference is, I
think, due to our different civilisations. You are living amid a system
where the classic principles of capitalism still work successfully, I amid
one where the growing inadequacy of that machine is most obvious. In
the result you, broadly, are satisfied, I, broadly, dissatisfied with the classic
economics. You see a general adequacy which makes you believe in eco-
nomic liberty; I see a general inadequacy which makes me believe in
economic equality. We are looking at different materials and drawing,
naturally, different results from their contemplation. I add that I think
you have not taken account of an immense new body of experience in
economic matters, and that you do not allow enough for necessary modifi-
cation of economic principle as it meets that new experience. Also, I think,
you are over-occupied with pure theory and make quite insufficient allow-
ance for a friction which makes pure theory relatively negligible in its
operative influence. However, one day I shall set this all down at length
in a short book and then, I hope, I shall drive you to revise your first
principles. And I add (not without malicious joy) a reminder of your
young friend's warning about building philosophies on fears rather than
hopes.1
I have been fearfully busy this last week. A big case in the Industrial
Court took two days from me; I had to lunch with MacDonald and talk
to him about our Trade Union Bill and we had a dinner for Chafee of the
Law School to meet some judges and politicians. Add to this a report I
have been asked to do for the Inter-Parliamentary Union2 and you will
guess that I have not slumbered. But there have been joys on the side.
Felix's second dose to Wigmore gave me pleasure. I cannot make out
1 Supra, p. 9.
2 "The Present Evolution of the Parliamentary System," Inter-Parliament art}
Bulletin for 1927 (n.d.), 81. y
1927] LASO TO HOLMES 947
what has happened to the latter, for he is not usually so ignorant or so
absurd. And a letter from a madman in a workhouse who wrote to me
that having just read my Communism he thought he ought to inform me
that he was an illegitimate brother of Karl Marx was not without its
pungency. I was afraid he might come to see me, but, so far, Providence
has been kind. Also I had a delightful lunch with Sankey, J. who told me
a good story of who has wangled himself — on what grounds I
do not know — into being called a K.C. wherefore in the Temple, on
account of his inability to get a brief, he is known as the "artificial silk."
Sankey also told me that on a recent Assize he and his colleague dined
with a nouueau riche who had gold plate on the table. The judges care-
fully refrained from comment and the host's face grew longer and longer.
At last, when the ladies had left, the poor man could stand it no longer
and burst out, "I suppose it would need diamonds before you gentlemen
would lower yourselves to make a kind remark."
In the way of reading not much of special excitement. Best of all,
Ducros's Rousseau which is at once the most sensible and learned discus-
sion I know and a well-told tale. And he interested me in that he was the
first person I have read on R. who makes out an intelligible case for
Therese Levasseur. Also he summarised admirably the whole issue be-
tween R. and Voltaire where, I think, most people go wrong. I don't really
think it is possible to doubt that Voltaire's Sentiments (Tun citoyen did
provoke Rousseau's insanity, and, also, the writing of the Confessions. If
it is available I think Ducros would give you pleasure down at Beverly. I
have been reading pari passu with this the lesser known things of Rous-
seau such as the Letter to Beaumont and the Reveries. The first is surely
controversy at its highest level and makes you feel the genius of Rousseau
as nothing else I know; the second, emotionally, overwhelmed me and
was especially fascinating because of the resemblance of its essence to
Wordsworth. I wish I had an extra life, or a year's leave, to write a book
about Rousseau; there is so much that could be usefully said that is no-
where in the literature. Especially I should like to show the relation of
his philosophy to that of Burke and how the two men converged to form
one stream of influence in the 19th century.
My bookhunting, I regret to say, has been a series of gloomy tragedies.
I missed the book from Holland by a day. I missed a Bentham on which
I bid at auction by five shillings through trusting a bookseller (who
bought it for himself) instead of bidding in person. I missed, also, a very
cheap set of the English Reports (70 pounds) at a country sale where I
could not go. The only relief is the prospect of our summer holiday in
the Savoy Alps which means that I can get to Geneva, Berne and Lau-
sanne which always yield fruit unobtainable elsewhere. On the whole, the
English shops yield but little nowadays and they have become (thanks
948 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
to Americans and Japanese) very expensive, But I still hunt cheerfully
and the actual joy of the chase is certainly as keen as ever I have known
it.
I am sending you separately a little French book on beggars which may
amuse you. I don't know if you have ever looked at the contemporary
Tudor literature-on the topic, e.g. Awdelay's Confraternitie of Vagabonds,
or if you know the delightful book of Aydelote's Elizabethan Rogues and
Vagabonds. If not, the temptation of the title ought to be strong, and it is
every whit as good as the title. And I do beg of you to read at all costs
and come what may Helen WaddelTs The Wandering Scholars which is
the most wholly delightful, and original book on the middle ages pub-
lished in the last generation. If you will but get it and begin you will
arise and call me thrice blessed for having been its sponsor. And do not
forget Parrington's Main Currents of American Thought of which I spoke
last week. That is really arresting and instructive.
My love warmly to you both. Heretic though I am I find that my eyes
look still to 1720 as the centre of my Transatlantic affections.
Ever devotedly yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., June 1, 1927
My dear Laski: Your letter is the last or last but one that will find me here
if all goes as we expect. Boston 8th, Beverly Farms the Saturday or Mon-
day following. Of course the first thing is your escape and your reflections
in the moment of imminent death. They do not surprise me as I have had
several experiences of that sort, and always have found that when you
are in the trap it seems perfectly natural and you think on that footing.
But it changes in a flash if you see a chance to get out. You put well a
philosophic rather than economic difference between us. I do accept "a
rough equation between isness and oughtness," or rather I don't know
anything about oughtness except Cromwell's — a few poor gentlemen
have put their lives upon it. You respect the rights of man — I don't,
except those things a given crowd will fight for — which vary from reli-
gion to the price of a glass of beer. I also would fight for some things —
but instead of saying that they ought to be I merely say they are part
of the kind of a world that I like — or should like. You put your ideals or
prophecies with the slight superior smile of the man who is sure that he
has the future — (I have seen it before in the past from the abolitionists
to Christian Science) and it may be so. I can only say that the reasoning
seems to me inadequate and if it comes to force I should put my [illegi-
ble] on the other side.
I am glad at what you say about Pound and his illusion of bigness. I
never have contributed until a few days ago, when my secretary said they
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 949
have got Pound's money but really need some to pay professors and do
some building, whereat I sent $100 — and some doubts whether I was
right — especially at this moment. I understand that owing to the hold-up
just before Congress adjourned and the failure to pass necessary bills our
salary will not be paid this month or next — so that I am calculating a
little closely so as not to have to borrow. I presume it will all come in
later with a rush, but the interruption is unpleasant.1
June 2. A new and pleasant day has come. My work is done and I am
divided between the business of packing one small trunk to be sent to
Beverly Farms and presently going out in a motor with my wife. When
in doubt let pleasure prevail over duty. One of the ways in which I avail
myself of my limited plutocratic advantages is to send my trunk by express
rather than have the bother of taking it with me and sending it on from
Boston. Yet I have scruples. I wouldn't, I think, smoke dollar cigars. To be
sure I am content with 12 cent ones, but I think I wouldn't even if I
wanted them, on the ground that I ought not to avail myself of my power
to levy that tax on the total stream of products. You see we of the ex-
terminand class have some conscience. I have had my drive and luncheon
at Rauscher's — as our women have left. Do you know how beautiful the
Potomac is? We often drive up to the Chain Bridge — some miles up —
cross and come down on the other side or return on our steps. I wish I
could go on to Ball's Bluff where over 65 years ago I climbed those banks
— but I doubt if I ever shall. 25 years of wishing have gone by — and it
does not grow easier except in the roads and means of travel. In a few
minutes when the victuals have settled I will turn to my modest packing.
I have made a note of your Parrington Book on American Thought for
Beverly Farms. Also Morley's Diderot. So I shall have something to read
at once beside my own volume of opinions which it is a first task to page
and index. I am pleased with this year. Apropos of your talk with Dickin-
son about the dons, I think Leslie Stephen used to speak of those who
lived on the reputation of a book that they were going to write.
"Weft — fire away my lad — I wish that we didn't diverge as much as
we seem to — but I am afraid that I am no less convinced than you.
Everyone thinks that he can account for the opposite convictions of his
neighbor. Affectionately yours, O, W. Holmes
Beverly Farms, June 14, 1927
My dear Laski: This paper marks the arrival at Beverly Farms and the
receipt of a letter from you, which leads me to say a word more about
our differences. I don t profess to know anything practically — theory is
xln March a Senate filibuster had prevented the adoption of the Urgent
Deficiencies Bill.
950 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
all that I can bring even to the law. But theory sometimes leads one to
keep in mind fundamental facts that one more versed in detail may for-
get. You speak of an immense new body of experiences — Hum — have
you had it? The modern books that I have read have seemed to me drool
on their theoretic side. But if you should say that you are dealing empir-
ically with an empirical case — I should listen respectfully. For I perfectly
admit that if you have the power on your side and find that present ar-
rangements cause you a discomfort that you can shift to somebody else,
you probably will do so — and I should bow to the way of the world. I
thought, however, that you also were theorizing — and stating or intimat-
ing things that you deemed ultimately desirable — and evidently what
you desire and what I desire are appreciably different. So we will put up
hedges to keep the unpleasing out of sight. When you write your book
that you think can upset my theories I will read it — if I still am going —
but you seem to be a trifle cock-sure.
I wish I had had your book-talk before I left Washington as I have
a good book of which I forget the name, author and almost the theme,
which deals with the rogues in literature. I'm afraid I shall not receive
your little French book until I get back — as only letters are forwarded.
I make a note of Helen Waddell The Wandering Scholars and will try
for it. I couldn't set eyes on Parrington while in Boston — it had been
taken out from the Athenaeum. The Corner Book Store didn't have it and
I didn't want to order it without inspection. I may try again later — but
I want to begin and for a few days have no piece de resistance. I brought
down a little book, Pourtales's La vie de Franz Liszt — which I haven't
finished. The portrait of him as a young man is loathly — and I bet he
didn't smell good — but Liszt and Wagner are noble and impressive.
They care more for art than for themselves. Perhaps that is true of all
who work with an ideal, and no doubt those gents are a little theatrical.
I will wait until I finish the book to see what I think of the subject. I get
the impression that the ladies who tumbled to him were facile, as were
those of Casanova, given certain preliminaries — in his case music and
fame. But I should judge that he did his anti-Malthusian damnedest —
which reminds me Fred Pollock speaks of Saint Jane (Austen). I shall
speak of Saint Malthus. Affectionately yours, O. W, H.
Devon Lodge, 5.VI.27
My dear Justice: Since I wrote last, I have had a stroke of ill luck; for I
had a bad dose of influenza — whence, I do not know — with the result
that the last week has passed mournfully in bed. However, I am up and
about again; and at least I have had a good dose of books in bed.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 951
Of them the most interesting has been Gibbon whom I took in at the
rate of a volume a day in Bury's edition. The effect is really overwhelm-
ing. He has a poise, a sureness of foot, and a rationality which make you
forgive him everything. And the sweep of the thing is beyond words. I
was very moved by Bury's notes; for he makes it clear that, the Eastern
Empire apart, it is detail rather than principle that modern criticism cor-
rects; and that, after 150 years, is a thing that cannot be said of any other
eighteenth century work. Then I read a charming thing on Mabillon and
the Benedictines by de Broglie — an exquisite picture of an exquisite
cenacle of scholarship. The controversy between Mabillon and Ranee is
most attractively done.1 Probably, like so much French work, the outlines
are too lucid; but it is a book one can read comfortably with the sense
that a number of instincts are simultaneously satisfied. I read also Emer-
son's essays in the Morley selection — I must add with greater pleasure
by far than I expected. There is really poetry in him, and amid much
sententiousness a good deal finely observed and even more finely said;
and the famous bit at Harvard showed that he was not merely clerical
in temper. Also a fascinating book on Robespierre — a defence of him —
by Albert Mathiez who is now, after Aulard, the most learned man on the
Revolution. I can't say I find the defence convincing; but I think Mathiez
explains his man better than others. For after all if R. had been only
what Morley makes him out to be he could never have beaten Danton.
I have been amusing myself, too, by reading a good deal of old Hobbes,
with what pleasure you can imagine. One thing struck me most forcibly
and that is that in explaining him nothing has been made in the books of
the really obvious fact that his view of human nature is simply Calvinism
set down in naturalistic instead of supernatural terms; and that anyone
who reads the old Arminian controversy will perceive without much diffi-
culty where he got his notions from — especially as we know how in-
terested in it he was. And that leads me to the further reflection that not
a little of the explanation of the Calvinist view is that it provided a basis
for controlling human nature in that period when the exuberance of the
Renaissance and the "follow your impulse" theories of Luther had re-
leased it from bondage and tended, accordingly, to make it a dangerous
thing from the standpoint of government. Also I add the reflection that
too much is made of the singularity of Hobbes's view. In the secular field
abroad he is very akin in substance to La Rochefoucauld (whom he prob-
1 Jean Mabillon (1632-1707), Benedictine scholar, challenged by Le
Bouthillier de Ranee (1626-1700), the abbot of La Trappe, to defend the
studies in which Maurists were engaged, published his Traite des etudes mo-
nastiques (1691) and Reflexions sw la reponse de M. L'abbe de la Trappe
(1691-92).
952 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
ably knew) and the Jansenists, whose works he had probably read. In
fact I should like to see an essay on Hobbes's contemporaries pointing
out how greatly he reflects a very general environment and transcends it
only in his ability to get rid of a good deal of theological rubbish.
You can imagine that I was delighted to see that the Governor of
Massachusetts had appointed a commission to enquire into the Sacco-
Vanzetti case — Lowell, I imagine, would be fair; and I think you have
some confidence in Judge Grant though I remember that at the time of
the Harvard inquisition into me he tended to look upon radicals as noxious
insects. The other man I do not know even by name.2 But a reading of
Felix's book ought to lead them to the salient points and result in a full
pardon. It would be terrible to have an unsatisfactory ending with the
Mooney case so recently before the attention of Europe.
I have been able to buy one or two pleasant things from catalogues.
The nicest is a fine eighteenth century Locke in 4 vast quartos and bound
by Roger Payne.3 It looks most ample and the correspondence is singu-
larly attractive on a big page with margins wide enough for annotation.
Then I got, too, a 3 volume collection of the Remonstrances of the Parlia-
ment of Paris in the 18th Century which is extraordinarily revealing. For
it shows conclusively how absolutely abhorrent to them was the Ency-
clopedist Movement. In their way these lawyers were as prejudiced, as
narrow, and as ignorant as the priests. Their hostility to reform makes one
wonder not why the Revolution came but however it came to be post-
poned for so long.
We have just arranged our summer holiday, We propose to go to
Argentiere, a tiny place at the foot of Mont Blanc and half an hour from
Chamonix. Sankey, J., who knows it, is lyrical about it, and it appears
from photographs to have scenery beyond words. Do you know the
French Alps at all? I like the idea of the place as it is only 2 hours from
Geneva and I can go and pillage what are, from my standpoint, the three
best bookshops in Europe, which I have been aching to see again since
I was there last year. There is one place especially where one can spend
the day going through 17 and 18th centuiy political philosophy in perfect
comfort and one's finds are limited only by one's pocket. And it is near
Grenoble where there is a shop I have never seen. This to me is a lyric
and I assume that the prospect even at 3500 miles makes your heart qud
hunter beat a shade faster.
My love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
9 Samuel W. Stratton (1861-1931), physicist and President of the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology, was the third member of the Advisory Com-
mission which Alvan T. Fuller (1878- ) had appointed on June 1
3 Roger Payne (1739-1797), London's eccentric bookbinder whose work was
notable for the originality of its design.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 953
Devon Lodge, 19.V1.26 [sic]
My dear Justice: I think I envy you a little the peace and quiet of Beverly
Farms. Since I wrote last life has been a heavy round of necessary jobs
unavoidably to be done. First the wearisome business of correcting exami-
nation papers. Then three hard days at the Industrial Court on an ex-
traordinarily complicated case where neither counsel nor witnesses were
very helpful. Then a couple of outside lectures long promised. Finally a
report for the Inter-Parliamentary Union on the prospects of Parliamen-
tary Government.1 But there have been compensations. First a splendid
talk with Redlich who came here to dinner. It rejoiced my heart to hear
of his enthusiasm for Felix; and hardly less to know that he thought (as I
think) that Mcllwain is the best man in the college. He takes very much
our view of Pound, and (entre nous) was not very impressed by the new
plans for the Law School.2 Redlich is a brilliant fellow — 1 do not know
five people who talk better than he does — and he made me feel in the
case of my half-dozen ultimate friends in America that my heart has not
misled my intellect. -How could one help liking a fellow like that. Then
Gooch turned up and gave me an account of his American Odyssey. It
was interesting that Harvard to him meant Felix, Haskins, Mcllwain.
Pound he thought learned, but felt that he let the scaffolding obscure the
building; and intellectually he thought Morris Cohen the ablest academic
mind (including Whitehead) he encountered. So all my swans really are
swans and I throw my hat up to heaven!
Of reading a little. Beard's two vast volumes for the business of a re-
view.3 I thought them interesting because they arranged reams of fact
that I had not had arranged before in my mind; but I had the impression
of disappointment one might have in visiting a place and finding that
the photographs had told one all one wanted to know. On the other hand
T. R. Glover Democracy in the Ancient World I do warmly recommend.
It is a fascinating and beautifully written pendant to Zimmern's book
written by a real scholar who is yet no pedant. If that comes your way,
please do not let it pass by. I read, also with great pleasure, the two
volumes of Michelet on Louis XIV 4 which are like Carlyle at his best —
not over-zealous for accuracy, a passionate partisan, but emphatically a
man who knows how to get hold of a period and explain what it is about.
And finally with sheer delight though with grave doubt as to whether it
1 See, supra, p. 946.
*The reference is probably to a new program of graduate research which
was to be facilitated by the expansion of the school's buildings.
* Laski reviewed Charles and Mary Beard's The Rise of American Civilization
(2 vols., 1927) in 41 Nation and Athenaeum 584 (July 30, 1927).
* Volumes XIII and XIV of Jules Michelet's Histoire de France ( 17 vols.,
1852-67) are concerned with the reign of Louis XIV.
954 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
is true, Miss Harrison's Themis which gives you the excitement of going
over a mountain on a Ford; you don't know what is going to happen to
you next, but the view is superb while it lasts.
I was amused to hear that Congress has defaulted over the judicial
salaries,5 What exactly is the technical position? In view of the guarantee
that judicial salaries shall not be reduced in the holder's life I don't under-
stand why there isn't the analogy to our Consolidated Fund which would
make them run on, whatever happened to the more questionable problems
of expenditure. But it must be extraordinarily inconvenient if Congress
often has fits of the kind! I remember well when I was at McGill Uni-
versity with a salary (God save the mark!) of fifteen hundred dollars that
the last week of each month was a nightmare through the fear that some
extra expenditure we had not allowed for might turn up. One awful
month Frida was ill and we had the choice between paying the doctor's
bill and the rent. Luckily I remembered that I had in London an etching
of Seymour Haden's and we sent home a night letter ordering it to be
sold and the proceeds telegraphed to us. We just scraped through, but I
decided then that debts are die child of the devil and, apart from one
book account, I have always paid cash on the excellent principles laid
down by our friend Micawber. That reminds me, by the way, that there
is an admirable piece at one of the theatres here called When Crummies
Flayed. They have dug up a play of his period and put it on as he might
have done it with his company — beginning with a prologue in which
Mrs. Crummies recites "The Blooddrinker's Burial." It is really gorgeous
and one gets the real flavour of Nicholas Nickleby from a quite new angle.
Our love to you both. Give my greetings to Rockport.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, June 16, 1927
My dear Laski: The little French book was sent on and I have just opened
it and read your letter. Both delight me. I do envy your book hunting —
and I sympathize with what you say of Gibbon although he told me
nothing that I wanted to know. I was equally impressed with his greatness
and with the changes in the emphasis of our interests. On themes of
perennial interest — the Roman Law — and Christianity — I should think
from what I remember that he was behind the times, now. I have finished
the little book on Liszt. You would read it in 2 hours. He was great in
his treatment of Wagner, and women seem to have offered themselves to
him up to the end. The writer treats him as a great originator in music.
Of that I know not — but I do not believe that music is the highest ex-
pression of man. Do you? I have just received from the old Corner Book
5 Supra, p. 949.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 955
Store, Hasldns, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century and Motley's
Diderot — I expect pleasure at least from the last, Haskins in his first
few pages seems rather verbose in explaining that the changes of history
are not accurately adjusted to centuries — but I have only peeked into
him. Also I doubt if he writes very well — but eminent authorities are
cited in the advertisement to show that he is a swell on his theme. Also
the book is from the Harvard University Press. Why is it that the literary
style is so different from that of talk? I am apt to hear the words as I
read (which shows, I should think, that I am a slower reader than you)
and the literary style makes them seem unreal. I don't see why men should
not write in the same rhythm as they talk. Owen Wister once told me
that a sentence of mine puzzled him until he read it aloud as he thought
I should and then he understood it. Which I am far from quoting to my
credit — but my prejudice remains.
I have received two copies of an English paper — The Commonweal 1
which no doubt you have seen, and which simplifies the problems of life.
"The rent of land belongs to the people; the first duty of government is
to collect it and abolish all taxation" — People for the most part believe
what they want to — their postulates are rooted in their total experience
and life. Those of us who flatter ourselves that we have intellectual de-
tachment only get one story lower in our personality — and in the end
are trying to make the kind of world we should like — I doubt if I should
like the world desired by The Commonweal.
I haven't said a word about the great excitement of these parts — Lind-
bergh. What pleases me is that one hears no detracting word — genius
provokes envy — but when a man bets his life on his own skill and cour-
age and wins the bet against long odds no one can do anything but praise.
We came away just before the Washington reception — our passage was
engaged long beforehand and all arrangements made, so we didn't
change. I am content to admire at a distance. I am as nearly idle as I
can be — and enjoying beautiful days and beautiful country as much as
it is in me to enjoy such things. Later I expect to diversify with certioraris.
Them we have always with us. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 28. VII. [sic] 27 [28 June 1927]
My dear Justice: It is good to know that you are settled in at Beverly F.
and, as your letter suggests, in fine fighting trim. My mind at the moment
is a little full of anxiety about Sacco and Vanzetti and I shall be glad
when the next week is past and their future is certain. Otherwise my
spirit has been given sustenance by the decision of the Government here
1 The periodical was edited by J, W. Graham Peace for the Commonwealth
Land Party.
956 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
to reform the House of Lords on the worst possible method.1 That is one
of the few subjects I really know something about and I can, I hope, add
a little to political wisdom anent it.
Life has been most busy since I wrote last. Exam papers, candidates for
the doctorate, a new assistant to replace a young colleague who has gone
to a better job, and dinner with Haldane and Graham Wallas. With the
former good legal gossip of the kind you know well; and with the latter
some first hand news of you and much explanation of why he is peculiarly
valuable to Americans. He is a good soul but I think more incurably self-
centred than any man I have ever met. He told me with simple honesty
that he had done for this generation what Bentham did for the early 19th
century and I hadn't the heart to be other than credulous. He selected as
the important Americans people who seem to me quite irrelevant; and he
expatiated on the theme that organisation produces the great thinker
which I cannot possibly believe. Organisation will develop the great man's
hypothesis, but it certainly does not produce the great man. And I must
add a visit to York to speak where I saw the Cathedral bathed in moon-
light — one of the most exquisite sights I have ever seen.
In reading, mainly Beard's two vast tomes on America, badly written
and full of irritating clicMs but immensely suggestive, and a couple of
volumes of Hazlitt which gain — especially Winterslow — by rereading.
Also a not uninteresting German novel by Thomas Mann called The
Magic Mountain — rather long but with apergus which made it worth the
adventure.
Americans are beginning to turn up. Harvey Davis,2 a Harvard physi-
cist was the first, a clever and attractive fellow buried in thermodynamics
and emphatic that Henry Adams's ignorance of the second law of the
same was quite devastatingly complete. Then Notestein from Cornell, a
first-rate archivist who is editing D'Ewes' Journals and is full of curious
lore upon parliamentary procedure in the 17th century. Of others I must
not omit a charming American instructor who explained that he could
only stay a fortnight but would like to be put on to a little problem about
which he could put an essay into one of the learned journals. I explained
1 In late June the government had indicated its intention at an early date
to propose reforms in the constitution of the House of Lords. The plan as
outlined would have reduced the size of the Upper House, made provision for
the choice of a part of its members by the House itself, and given the recon-
stituted body a share in the enactment of revenue measures. To the Labour
opposition, and to many Conservatives, the reforms as outlined seemed to be
designed to frustrate democratic government and to serve as a means of
forestalling socialism.
2 Harvey Nathaniel Davis (1881- ); Professor of Mechanical Engineer-
ing, Harvard University, 1912-1928; President of Stevens Institute of Tech-
nology, 1928 to date.
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 957
that I had no suggestions to make — so we talked, and learning that he
was interested in Bentham I suggested that Bentham's Constitutional
Code needed reprinting with an introduction. He did not know of it; but
by the time he is ready to leave I am sure he will have it done for he
set to work on it like a body of mechanics assembling a Ford car. Nor
must I omit a Chinese Christian who was returning to take up a professor-
ship in China where he would teach Sociology, Chemistry and pastoral
theology. Who can doubt the elasticity of the human mind?
Of book-hunting I have done none, alas, for I reserve my money and
my energies for Geneva. I did, indeed, at York pick up a copy of the not
infrequent Testament of Colbert which had belonged to Mme. La Pompa-
dour and was so bound that one caught the atmosphere of the lady pretty
1 clearly; and I bought there for a guinea a fine mezzotint of Reynolds'
Burke which seemed, if the dealer was honest, to be the second (and best
state). But these were trifling asides.
I had an interesting dinner here of half-a-dozen young Tories from the
House which I wish you could have attended. Two of them were really
able, and defended their creed with something of the gusto of Thrasyma-
chus. Two were traditionalists who wanted the eighteenth century back
and thought of the Rockingham Whigs as the best in English history. One
was a fire-eating Fascist whose simple remedy for discontent was the wall
and the firing-squad. The other was a Disraelite Tory who was nearer to
me in sympathies than many of my own party and about as attractive
as they make them. They were most pleasant lads who still retain a good
deal of that noblesse oblige which is so very attractive at its best.
Other news, for the moment, I must postpone. College, heaven be
praised, ends this week, and then I can settle down to reading and some
writing, and a greater stability of date in writing to you than has been
possible in this ghastly term. Tomorrow, I add, is my birthday and I
spend it doing Quaritch thoroughly.
My love to you both, Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Beverly Farms, July 1, 1927
My dear Laski: This morning there comes a delightful and desired letter
from you busy about many things to me as near idle as I can be. I have
read little — the most serious book: Morley's on Diderot. Morley seems
to me a razor not a sting — and the finest edge of his thought a little
blunted by respectability. I did Haskins, The Renaissance in the Twelfth
Century — a great wrong by the first impression that I told you of. I
found him very interesting and instructive — although already it seems
years since I finished the volume. Yet I believe my last letter — answering
your last, was written as I was beginning it. It seems as if I had men-
958 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
tioned The Road to Xanadu — I can't have. I didn't read the whole of it
but the best 100 pages, a search into the materials for "Kubla Khan ' in
what Coleridge had been reading is an admirable bit of work. Not a name,
not a thought, hardly an adjective that is not traced, so that all that was
needed was a dream, opinion and genius — and the writer fully appre-
ciates the genius needed to produce the poem. Then a French tale —
La nuit kurde, by Bloch — of which I do not see much use, depicting the
melodramatic doings of a young warrior, of which it is enough to mention
his emulating a spider by screwing a woman while he killed her by biting
and, put in as an extra, chewing her throat. Then a few pages in a long
book about a woman who writes would-be poetry and tales by the ouija
board.1 Pretty much drool to my mind — but exciting the admiration of
the commentator. It is a comment on man — when he absorbs himself in
a system or an atmosphere — Catholicism — Hegel — Spiritualism — it
doesn't matter what, he soon loses all relation to outside standards, and
becomes a satellite of the sun around which the system turns. I don't
see how we can help smiling at ourselves — so arbitrary, irrational and
despotically given are our ultimates. I feel as if I were wasting my
patrimony when I am not producing articulate words and merely re-
ceiving impressions that lose their form when I turn my back. An artist
would feel just the opposite — each yielding to a compulsion of nature
as he yields to the outside world, and having no better justification than
that he desires to live. Why? Why do I desire to win my game of solitaire?
A foolish question, to which the only answer is that you are up against it.
Accept the inevitable and do your damnedest. Meantime I do receive
impressions in my daily drives that are full of charm and that at least
enrich life if they don't enrich me. I can't get it quite straight in my
memory whether Redlich came to us last winter — but I agree to all
that you say about him. Frankfurter and Mrs. called the other day and
gave me much pleasure. His Progress Report of Harvard Survey of Crime
and Law in Boston impresses me greatly and makes me believe when
heretofore I have been a sceptic. I should rejoice if he produced what
promises (at least to my ignorance) to be a great and noble work. I had
only a glimpse of Gooch and wished that I had seen more — but I sup-
pose he was busy and so my talk ends in the doubtful hope that this will
catch tomorrow's boat. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 9.VIL27
My dear Justice: It has been a hectic fortnight since I wrote last. One of
my young assistants resigned; and I have been chasing round the universi-
ties to find a suitable successor. Also I have been busy helping the Labour
1 Probably Walter Franklin Prince, The Case of Patience Worth (1927).
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 959
Party to draft a scheme for the reform of the House of Lords.1 That has
taken time, and has been a finicky business even though it has been most
interesting. In the way of pleasure certainly the most pleasant thing was
to be a guest at the annual dinner of the Society of Teachers of Law.2
Sumner and Tomlin3 were the other guests and, especially the former,
they made admirable speeches. Sumner has a most attractively dry wit;
and his observations on the new Law of Property Act and on the relations
of bench and bar were brilliant. One remark of Tomlin's amused me, that
lawyers were to commerce what barnacles were to a rock. F. Pollock was
to have been the chief guest, but he took ill as you will probably know;
and it was very moving to hear the quality of the tributes paid to him in
sending him good wishes. We have had one or two dinner parties here for
the American tourists, of whom certainly the best-looking and much the
most pleasant was Freda Kirchwey,4 the sister of your old favourite,
Dorothy La Rue Brown. Of the others I did not make very much; though
I must in due decency add that they were all upright and purposive gents
determined to see all whom they could see and more. One was so moved
by my library that I had to part him forcibly from a copy of Jurieu's
Lettres pastorales for which he had been searching for years. Another
offered to publish my Mill mss with notes by himself as he was looking
for suitable material. One professional wife (from Colorado) was quite
wonderful. She told Frida that she did not like the West as "the social
tone was low"; and on enquiry, it appeared that she herself derived from
the upper reaches of Fort Wayne, Indiana! Oh God! O Montreal! Another
visitor was a Frenchman who had some trouble with his digestive organs
and was deeply interested in their operations. Introduced to a lady he
explained to her in charmingly broken English his difficulties — as thus:
"Lobster I vomit much; shrimps, a tiny vomit; strawberries, oh so sick;
chicken pleasant and quiet; p&che Melba enormous vomit," until I, a
generous soul, came to the lady's relief by side-tracking him on to Mon-
taigne which was his other hobby.
In the way of reading I have not been able to do much. I read the new
volume of McMaster5 with some enlightenment in detail but not much
in principle. He seemed to me to neglect all the essential problems for
1 See supra, pp. 955-956. Laski wrote briefly of the proposed reform of the
House of Lords in "Present Tendencies in British Politics/' 51 New Republic
192 (July 13,1927).
2 See Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law, 1928, p. 63.
8 Thomas James Cheshyre Tomlin (1867-1935), Baron Tomlin, Judge of the
Chancery Division, 1923-1929; Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, 1929-1935.
4 Freda Kirchwey (1893- ) was managing editor of The Nation, 1922-
1928, and since 1937 has been its editor and publisher.
6 John Bach McMaster, A History of the People of the United States during
Lincoln's Administration (1927).
960 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
the sake of conveying elegant chit-chat, I re-read after years Tom Jones
with perfectly unrestrained delight — quite easily the greatest novel of
the 18th century; and Squire Western is certainly one of the mighty
triumphs of fiction. I read too a most interesting novel about India An
Indian Day by E. Thompson which Knopf publishes in New York. I think
you and Mrs. Holmes would find it a good book for solitaire-reading for
it's a first-rate story and its portraits ring true. In the way of work books
nothing very much. Felix sent me a book on administrative law dedicated
to him and Pound by one John Dickinson, whom I do not otherwise
know, but he seemed to me to say in 400 pages what he could fairly
easily have said in forty; and he cited authorities to prove statements so
obvious that one got thoroughly bored. In a very different line I thor-
oughly enjoyed a book by one Carcasone Montesquieu et la constitution
jrangaise au XVIIIme siede which, though too long, was thoroughly in-
teresting as showing (I) the sources of Montesquieu and (II) the direct
French influence up to 1790. It's the kind of book for which one is grate-
ful partly because the job doesn't have to be done again and partly be-
cause the fellow saves one much and reasoning [sic] by careful summaries
of forgotten books. I add that he suggested to me that a French bluestock-
ing of the period (Mile. Lezardiere)6 sounds like a disciple who would
richly repay investigation. Also a charming book on Diderot by Ducros
which without novelties put its points forcibly and well. Oh! I must not
forget a new life of Brougham by Aspinwall which put that extraordinary
person in the clearest imaginable light; with an unforgettable picture of
him in his old age sitting by the Woolsack, spitting on the carpet and
wiping it in with his feet. If the book goes to the Athenaeum I hope you
will take it out, for it would give you some pleasant hours.
I have bought nothing since my last letter owing to journeys and the
need to spend in Geneva next month — always an occasion. I am anxious
to get away; but I have three cases in the Industrial Court, an examiner's
meeting, and a dinner with the P.M. before that interesting day can come.
I note with interest your remarks on music. I don't disagree. I like it as
one likes mustard with beef. But (I) I can't stand opera which seems to
me incredibly artificial e.g. Carmen with a vast soprano of 60 bursting
into song at impossible moments. (II) I can't stand musicians who, in my
experience, are poseurs to an impossible degree, without views on life,
and not really intellectual in any effective sense. But I add that I have
great comfort from my pianola which stands by my desk and fills in some
empty hours; and the other day I went with Frida rather under protest
6 Pauline de Lezardiere (1754-1835), disciple of Montesquieu and author
of Theorie des lois politiques de la France (4 vols., 1844); her resolution to
discover the principles of constitutional government through study of sources
was formed when she was fifteen and never was weakened.
HOLMES TO LASKI 961
to hear some negro spirituals (if they are music) and was deeply moved
thereby. But I grow profane.
My love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, July 8, 1927
My dear Laski: Your letter of the 28th comes this morning and gives me
the usual pleasure. I notice with amusement the innuendo in your remark
that I seem in fine fighting trim. Really I almost have sunk from the world
of ideas. I read little and for pleasure — a French life of Disraeli1 — and
Coningsby — the last as far as I have got gives me pleasure and recalls the
departed splendors of which I caught some last glimpses — e.g. a lady
driving in London with two outriders — on horses of the same color as
those in her carriage. But I am peeping back into glory — as yesterday I
began what I never expected to read, The Story of Philosophy by Will
Durant. I had thought of him as a vulgarisateur, and how could one who
calls himself Will write anything on philosophy that I should care to hear
(notwithstanding the case of our dear Chief Justice). But he is uncom-
monly good as far as I have got. Which means that I think his account
of Plato excellent. He brings out authentically the hints of future thought
— better than I ever have seen it done. He passes rather more lightly
than I should if I were introducing a young reader over the considerable
infusion of twaddle — and the ease with which the "merciless logic" of
Socrates very generally could be smashed. Also he tells the story inter-
estingly. Graham Wallas did not exhibit that self estimate that you men-
tion. Nor did I think of him as specially self-centred — though I am not
surprised. He used to come in rather familiarly, although by appointment,
to luncheon — I am afraid more because he liked the victuals and the
atmosphere than for any special interest in what I had to say. We found
him pleasant and companionable — which I dare say was a mutual im-
pression rather than anything more considerable. Gooch, I think I told
you only looked in for a fleeting instant. I won't read Beard — and possi-
bly may accept your recommendation of Parrington's Main Currents in
American Thought — or I may hold myself excused by having tried once
to get it and failed. I don't hanker for it greatly. Your mention of your
Chinese-philosopher brings up the thought of my friend Wu. I have not
heard a word from him since the troubles in his neighborhood became
acute and I am anxious. To return to Wallas — of course circumstances
don't make great men (though talking of William Allen I once said
"great places make great men")2 but there is a French book of which
Lester Ward gives an account, showing how large a proportion of the
1 Andre Maurois, La vie de Disraeli (1927),
2 Speeches, 51, 54.
962 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
greater names in France came from Chateaux and university towns — •
the moral being that there are mute inglorious Miltons — and that oppor-
tunity may bring out or the want of it obscure the first rate. I could jaw
with you with joy. Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 18.V1L27
My dear Justice: A jolly letter from you cheered me immensely. I have
just emerged painfully from the welter of examinations, together with a
series of cases in the Industrial Court in which I have been torn between
the obvious incapacity of the applicants and the low standard of living
from which they suffer. It has been rather like Midler v. Oregon1 again,
in which you have to keep a tight grip on your head lest your heart run
away with you.
And the callers have been innumerable. American professors, German
civil servants, French students — an unending stream of people who want
information about things for which it is most difficult to find words. And
the students who want jobs, always the best jobs, or who want to write
books and think that you write a book in the same way that you eat an
egg. Life is a peculiarly full thing at the moment and I more anxious than
I can remember to get away.
I add that there have been some admirable reliefs. First of all a novel
by P. G. Wodehouse called The Small Bachelor which is one of the very
funniest books I ever read, so much so that my guffaws in the tube where
I finished it must have produced the conviction of my insanity in my
neighbours. Then I read a most interesting book by one Coleman Phillip-
son called Three Criminal Law Reformers — quite excellent essays on
Bentham, Romilly and Beccaria — and as I was pretty ignorant of the
last and do not read Italian with any pleasure I enjoyed it greatly. Also
a book you would, I fear, go miles to avoid has interested me much —
by Feret, La faculte de theologie a Paris 1400-1760, which is extraordi-
narily informative about debates and ideas which are, doubtless, long
dead but are still fascinating to read about.
Also I have been reading a first-rate life of Domat, the French legal
philosopher, and have been much interested in the obvious relation be-
tween his ideas and Port Royal. And George Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay
which is really almost as good as Boswell. I wish I had that healthy cer-
tainty about myself and my age that Macaulay had about himself and his.
I have bought some nice things. First the 1606 translation of Bodin in
a beautiful copy. Next a copy of Justus Lipsius's Politics with all the
appendices complete. A first edition of Pascal's Pensees out of pure vanity
of acquisition and the fact that it was cheap, and an engraving of the
'208 U.S. 412 (1908).
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 963
Romney Burke which would, I think, even make your mouth water. But
I reserve myself for Geneva which I await with ardour.
We have been to several dinners. One at the Foreign Office to the
Egyptian Prime Minister2 was hideously formal — I was the only undeco-
rated person there and though smiled upon most sweetly I felt constrained
by the inability to speak forthrightly. I sat next to a dame who was
weighted with jewels and thought no novel of quality had appeared in
England since Robert Elsmere. She told me that the modern aristocracy
was too cheap and that all the present evils were due to the fact that
men and women nowadays married beneath their rank. She blamed the
King strongly for allowing the Duke of York to marry outside the royal
circle. I asked her what was to be done if they fell in love outside the
"royal circle" and she replied with simple aplomb that they could take
mistresses. But, alas, I could not answer her back and so provoke other
pearls; and it spoilt my evening. We dined, too, with Graham Wallas who
spent an hour outlining his new book to me. I gathered that its theme is
the need for imaginative insight in statesmen which I take to be true and
perhaps a book may be suitably written of the theme. An American lady
there — Bacon if I heard the name rightly — was very bitter about
Beard's book which she thought deliberately wicked; no one who read it
would gather from it that Roosevelt was a great man. I suggested that per-
haps he wasn't and she positively snorted. But my best story is due to
Frida who went to a drawing-room meeting on birth-control addressed by
a lady of, Frida says, the amplest ugliness she has ever seen in a human
being. The lady's point was the supreme glory of chastity; birth control
was bad because it was yielding to temptation without accepting responsi-
bility. "I," said the lady, "have often been tempted," (I forget to add that
she was an insistent virgin of 50) "but I have always accepted the con-
sequences of my faults." Could anything possibly be more glorious?
You will be glad to know that Sir F, Pollock has made a first-rate re-
covery from his operation and is at home again.3 He is a remarkable fel-
low. A cousin by marriage of his whom I met the other day told me that
at a challenge he turned a report of a House of Commons debate into
good Latin doggerel without a dictionary. Which reminds me of an epi-
gram now on the rounds which I must not omit:
I cannot help but think it odd
And jealous too of the Lord God
To go on ruling, when instead
He might give way to Birkenhead.
8 King Fuad and the Egyptian Prime Minister, Abdul Khalik Pasha Sarwat
of the Liberal Party in Egypt, were in London in July, kying the groundwork
for efforts to draft a treaty of alliance with Britain.
8 See 2 Holmes-Pollock Letters 201.
964 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
Which reminds me again of four exquisite lines of Belloc:
The accursed power which waits on privilege
And goes with women and champagne and bridge
Broke; and democracy resumed its reign
Which goes with bridge and women and champagne.
I think that worthy of the best of Martial.
My love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, July 23, 1927
Dear Laski: There are no such entertaining events, I fear, at this end as
those you tell me of. I received from the Clerk's office a big bag of 31
certioraris — and I was willing to bet on my surviving long enough for it
to be worth while to diminish the pressure of next term by examining
them now. I returned them this afternoon. Also I have been visited by
counsel in two cases of men about to be executed, seeking a stay until
certioraris could be brought. They both came from McReynolds' Circuit,
and as the first concerned two negroes who had been tried and convicted
of rape in a court room protected by machine guns I now suspect that the
lawyer wasn't very anxious to find McReynolds who dissented from an
opinion I wrote in a somewhat similar case — but I did not think of that
at the moment and granted the stay with a statement of the difficulties
to be encountered further on.1 I wrote to McReynolds about it and had
a very nice letter from him this morning in reply. The second application
I denied and if the expected came to pass the petitioners were executed
last Monday.2
Cranks as usual do not fail. One letter yesterday told me that I was a
monster and might expect the judgment of an outraged God for a decision
that a law allowing the sterilization of imbeciles was constitutional and
for the part that I had taken in other decisions that were dragging the
country down. Then your friend (? — he quotes you) Professor Borchard
of Yale sent me reprints of learned articles about the relation between
states and law3 that so far as I read them I thought irrelevant to the
decisions that I have written. I told him that I rather thought that you
agreed with me (when the point I had to deal with was understood) and
that if not I should think that you are off your beat and had gone astray.
He seems a really learned man — but as he signed a brief which, if my
memory is right, sought to hold the Soviet government liable in an action
^Not identified. The earlier case was, presumably. Moore v. Demvseu* 261
U.S. 86 (1923). H y
3 Not identified.
* Supra, p. 897.
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 965
here for things that it did under its law in Russia4 — I venture to doubt
his judgment.
I have been too busy to read much of anything. I have on my table
Spinoza's Ethics for rereading but haven't begun it. I think I told you of
my other books — except perhaps Lord Chesterfield's Letters — a pretty
good old sportsman — most of what he says and copiously repeats is
sound — though I think his prohibition of laughter is narrow, and now-
adays his horror at the thought of his son's learning to fiddle would seem
extravagant. I saw for the first time the other day a little theatre in the
woods that enchanted me — built by an Englishman named Buswell —
a man with good looks and flattering manners. His house is part of the
structure which might be four hundred years old — and looks down on a
charming fresh water lake that he created, and away over the woods be-
fore the Eastern Point of Gloucester and the sea. My wife thinks that she
yielded to my desires as I believe that I repressed my doubts to please
her in getting tickets for and going to a diminutive presentation of Faust
(opera) last Wednesday evening. It was our first outbreak for years and
whoever was guilty we enjoyed ourselves greatly. They were very con-
siderate to me, or to my age and advantages — and a pleasing dame gave
her hand down the steps. I am glad of what you say of the expressions of
good will etc. to F. Pollock. I had just heard and had written to him. I
understand all is going well. I hope so as he is a very dear friend. Once
more forgive this paper. Affectionately yours, O.W. H,
Beverly Farms, July 28, 1927
My dear Laski: You will have gone to the Continent if not returned from
it, when this reaches England, but your letter deserves an immediate
answer.1 1 stopped here to order The Small Bachelor from the Old Corner
Bookstore. Wodehouse can make me do what Lord Chesterfield says a
gentleman should not do, break from the well bred smile into the loud
guffaw, and as nil humani &c. I do not eschew the laugh — good old boy,
Lord Chesterfield. To read his letters puts Johnson in the wrong. I have
just read another life — the third down here — after Liszt and Disraeli —
that of John Sargent by Evan Charteris — which interested me by its
subject and its author — and when I read it by its execution. I don't think
Sargent himself, however, would have interested me greatly, had I known
him beyond a visit to his studio with H. James.2 He was musical, to be
* The reference is probably to Wulfsohn v. Russian Socialist Federated Soviet
Republic, 266 U.S. 580 (1924), in which the Court dismissed the writ of
error to the New York Court for want of jurisdiction.
1 Supra, p. 962.
2 See "The Letters of Henry James to Mr. Justice Holmes," 38 Yale Review
410, 432 (March 1949).
966 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
sure, and that may stand for complexities not otherwise manifest; but a
man whose aim was to set down what he saw strikes me as a little too
concrete for my more abstract taste. Now I have a volume of Everyman
with a translation of Spinoza's Ethics which I am rereading at odd min-
utes. Of course his theological machinery seems to me passe, but his con-
ception of the universe — his view of good and evil as human not cosmic
formulae, &c. make him come home to me more than any philosopher
of the past — even though he does think he has got God in a trap when
he snaps logic on him.
I envy you your purchases such as the first edition of Pascal's Pensees.
If I weren't so old I should try to snap up a morsel here and there, but it
seems foolish at my age — although I don't regard a moderate and intelli-
gent avarice in the same way. I think I have observed before that I am
trying to realize that a happy hour is an end in itself and does not need
justification. So I oscillate between the extreme points of Rockport and
Nahant and take in unimproving delight. I turned down by your house
the other day in honor of you. I think it is unchanged, but that there are
more structures in the neighborhood. I saw a paradise the other day. An
English chap, good looking with conciliatory manners, having acquired
cash, as I take it, built for himself a house and theater on an eminence in
a wood from which you look down on a fresh water lake before it on one
side — and in front, over the forest, the Eastern point of Gloucester and
the sea. There is near a mile of wandering through the wood, a public
park, before you reach this hall on the edge of it and feel as if it were
fourteen hundred and something. Taking the look of this man and the
theatrical characters &c. I should think that there might be wild moments
there sometimes. I broke through all my rules and went with my wife to
a miniature opera, Faust, and enjoyed it hugely. It looks as if before long
we should have more places worth seeing here than in Europe — were
it not for the fatal absence of history. But I recur to my axiom — that not
only all society but most romance rests on the death of men — and where
the most men have died there is the most interest. A good time to you
and may Geneva not disappoint. Affty yours, O.W.H.
Grand Hotel du Planet
Mont-Roc, Sur-Argentiere
Haute-Savoie, France, 2.VIIL27
My dear Justice: We arrived here on Sunday after an enchanting journey.
Views like Annecy and its lake — where Rousseau lived with Madame
de Warens — and Chamonix are beyond words. But here is enchantment
on enchantment. The hotel looks out on the massif of Mont-Blanc — an
awe-inspiring spectacle, the sun on the endless snow and the dull grey
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 967
rocks which look grim even on the brightest day. And the perpetual sound
of the waterfalls is like silver music. One or two discoveries will interest
you. The hotel belongs to an old guide, famous in his day, named Terraz.
He used to take Leslie Stephen up the Matterhorn in the seventies, and
was a warm friend of Whymper.1 He remembers Stephen warmly and
cherishes a photograph of him, all beard and eyes. The first day we were
here we hit upon Stanley King2 and his new wife on their honeymoon —
you remember the late pseudo-philosophic lady whom Felix and Lipp-
mann cultivated — and a little later there turned up Manley Hudson of
the Law School who is ending a world-tour here. Well! It is a great place
for a real rest, and even after two days I feel that many of the cobwebs
have been blown away.
I have read a good deal lately, above all Lowes's Road to Xanadu
which came to me for review. Like you, I found it a little difficult at
first, especially a kind of forced brightness about the style; but as I read
on I became completely captivated and was thoroughly convinced that
its theme is justly made. Also it pleased me mightily to have independent
confirmation of my loathing for Wordsworth who irritates me even more
than the theatricality of Byron with his oppressive and officious goodness.
And I am sure out of my own experience that the deliberate activation
of the unconscious is an invaluable way of attaining ideas. One finds so
often that a theory hangs just beyond the fringe of capture and that
search is illusory. Then to forget the chase and turn elsewhere does mean
that an unexpected moment produces the idea effortlessly often enriched
and decorated. Mind you, I think Lowes illustrates the process without
explaining why the process is. But that I do not doubt is the ultimate
mystery.
My last fortnight at home was a nightmare. I sat on the Court for six
days with two appalling cases full of detailed statistics which meant the
endless compilation of tables of new wages for half-a-dozen grades of
work. Then, when the President and I had agreed, my Treasury colleague
dissented, and we had another vast arithmetical effort in order to reach
a compromise.3 I was, too, plagued to death by a variety of visiting pro-
fessors, all of whom had to be lunched and provided with introductions
or bibliographies. Also two committees at the House of Commons before
1 Edward Whymper (1840-1911), artist and mountaineer, whose ascents of
Mont Pelvoux and the Matterhorn in the 1860's were great achievements in
the history of Alpine climbing.
2 Stanley King (1883-1951), lawyer and businessman, later President of
Amherst College from 1932 to 1943, was at this time engaged in business in
Boston. He had recently married Margaret Pinckney Allen.
8 See cases #1327 and #1328, 9 Industrial Court Decisions, 477, 486. The
other two members of the Court were Harold Morris, President, and Frank
Pick.
968 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
which I had to give evidence and one of them asked for a plan which
meant two heavy days work that I ought not to have been asked for. Then
old Ashley4 the economic historian died suddenly, and as I had a high
admiration for his work, I felt it a duty to accept the Manchester Guard-
ians request for an estimate of him; so I spent a good many hours polish-
ing my sentences — the most difficult of all types of writing I think. And
the sum of it was growing fatigue and irritation and I rejoiced as never
before when I saw the cliffs at Dover moving away.
Our plans here are simple. We shall stay, I think, until the end of
August. In between I shall slip into Geneva. But beyond that I shall vege-
tate here with a few books and a paper on the Natural History of the
Cabinet which I want to write — light-hearted and amusing.5 Take this,
please, as an interim announcement of survival. Next week I shall be
capable of philosophy.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Grand Hotel de I'Abbaye
Tdloire, Lac d'Annecy, Savoie, 9.VIII.27
My dear Justice: With us, as I expect with you, everything is obliterated
except the decision of the Sacco-Vanzetti case.1 Frankly, I do not under-
stand it. The evidence, on any showing, seems to us at this distance in-
credibly thin. The whole world revolts at this execution; and it will
remain, with the Frank case and the Mooney case, one of those judicial
murders which make the mind reel I agree fully with all that Felix says
of Lowell in this case. Loyalty to his class has transcended his ideas of
logic and of justice.
We stayed in the mountains a week. It was magnificent, but the height
did not suit Frida with the result that we moved to this place which is
adorable. I do not know if you have ever seen this lake — a jewel nestling
amid mountains. It is the centre of Rousseau's country — a few miles
from Les Charmettes where he lived with Mme. de Warens. The hotel
4 Sir William James Ashley (1860-1927), economic historian whose long
academic career had taken him from Oxford to Toronto, Harvard, and Bir-
mingham Universities; author of The Tariff Problem (1907), The Economic
Organisation of England (1914), and The Bread of Our Forefathers: an En-
quiry in Economic History (1928). An anonymous notice of his career, pre-
sumably by Laski, is in the Manchester Guardian for July 26, 1927, p. 18.
5 "The Personnel of the English Cabinet, 1801-1924," 22 Am. Pol. Sci. Qu.
401 (May 1928), reprinted in Studies in Law and Politics (1932), 181.
1 On July 27 the Advisory Committee submitted its report to Governor
Fuller, and on August 3 he announced that he found no justification for inter-
vention to prevent execution of the death sentence. On August 23 Sacco and
Vanzetti were electrocuted.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 969
itself is a partially transformed eleventh century abbey and we dine in
the great refectory with the stone walls and the great beams still in per-
fect preservation after 800 years. Near by is where Taine wrote most of
his history; and in the village is the tiny house where Berthollet2 the
chemist was born. I wish I could even begin to describe the beauty of the
scene; but you will find it in the early books of the Confessions and I
will not strive to compete. I add that it is curiously different from any-
thing I have ever seen — the French word "doux" describes it. There is
nothing remotely savage except the mountains beyond and the peasants
seem to cultivate every inch of the soil with vines and walnut trees. The
lake itself is a miracle of sapphire blue and in the evenings the varied
lights on the water make pictures as exquisite as I have seen.
Of writing I have done but little. I have played a little at a paper on
the personnel of the English cabinet, about which I have collected some
most amusing statistics and I have done bits of a paper on the idea of
fundamental law in France [in?] 1789. But I cannot claim serious devo-
tion in either. Partly I have been too lazy, and partly I have been dis-
inclined to do other than reflect and read and walk. I add that we did a
glacier before we left Argentiere and it induced in me sheer horror. You
I believe used to climb in the old days, and I only venture a humble
tribute of grace to your nerves.
So I have mainly read and talked. A fine detective story — The House
of the Arrow — by A. E. W. Mason which I warmly recommend pour
rectifier le solitaire certainly the best of its kind I have read since Trent's
Last Case. Carcassone's Montesquieu which on close reading is extraordi-
narily illuminating and convinced me of my pet hobby that most of the
history of the period needs to be redone. To understand him I am sure
that one has to get the perspective of what has gone before — Dubos,8
Boulainvilliers,4 and the general controversy over the nature of French
constitutionalism under the ancien regime. And when one does that it
becomes clear that there is a real relation between institutional develop-
ment in France and England. Also Montesquieu so viewed throws light
on the fact that he and Machault5 and Voltaire are the heads of a sect
which professed Anglomania and were vehemently opposed — certain ob-
servations of Rousseau about English liberty showing the degree of doubt
2 Claude Louis Berlhollet (1748-1822); distinguished French chemist who
was born near Annecy and began his studies at Chambery.
8Jean-Baptiste Dubos (1670-1742), abb<$ of Notre Dame de Ressons, and
learned historian of the origin of the French nation; author of L'histoire critique
de TStaUissement de la monarchie franpaise dans les gaules (3 vols., 1734).
* Supra, p. 922.
6 Jean-Baptiste Machault D'Arnouville (1701-1794), controller general of
France who raised a hornet's nest of clerical protest in seeking to reduce the
ecclesiastical immunities.
970 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
which Montesquieu and his school aroused. Certainly the historical book
on M. is still to seek. Ehrlich's paper in your number of the Law Review®
was the best general treatment of him; but it left much to be done in the
light of issues which E. hardly could know about. I read also a history of
the University of Paris by Jourdain — a very revealing book — which
made one realise how very modern and Anglo-Saxon academic freedom is;
the quarrels of the Sorbonne in the 17th century are monuments of per-
verted dishonesty in which one professor seeks to do in his colleague over
differences of doctrine without a shadow of suspicion that decency would
forbid. Also I read Dostoievskf s Brothers Karamazov which it is difficult,
as you read it, not to recognise as the greatest novel in the world.
I have been living, as you can imagine, in a milieu where conversation
is not easy to discover. A French priest whose main interest is the miracles
of Lourdes; an Englishman home on leave from Egypt to whom bridge
and tennis were the essence of life; another Englishman who has no in-
terest outside climbing and building bridges; a French professor of chem-
istry who is still living on war psychology and devoting his years of retire-
ment to the proof that all German chemical discoveries were made by
Frenchmen. I tried to persuade him that such quests were a waste of
time, but he was, of course, unpersuadable. I had an amusing hour with
the cure who was distressed that I did not share his interest in Lourdes
and tried to explain to me that he had seen miracles there — I offered
scepticism in terms of physiology and he was all on fire with indignation.
I asked him if he had ever considered the metaphysics of miracles and
te answered that I had the disease of curiosity. His only worry, I
gathered, was that there were no signs of the conversion of England to
Rome. But he thought a great conversion, the Prince of Wales, for in-
stance, might take place and then God would work a conversion in those
cold English hearts. You will be amused to hear that the only Americans
of this generation he had ever heard of were Cardinal O'Connell,7 Presi-
dent Roosevelt and Chief Justice White. I asked why Roosevelt and he
said that he was in Rome when R. visited the pope!
Our love to you both. I hope your weather has permitted a voyage to
Rockport And that you have read Parrington.
Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Beverly Farms, August 18, 1927
My dear Laski: A letter from you, delightful as usual, shows you on your
vacation, and rather unusually, I should say, taking an incidental pleasure
8 Supra, p. 77.
7 William Henry O'Connell (1859-1944), Catholic Archbishop of the See of
Boston from 1907 to 1911, when he was elevated to the cardinalate.
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 971
in nature. You couldn't help it with Mont Blanc in front. The Swiss moun-
tains, as my father said to me before I first went to Europe, stretch your
mind. Meantime I am in the main quiet here. But I have not escaped the
Sacco Vanzetti case. Stirred I guess by Felix, Arthur Hill has come in to
the case and last week appeared here with other lawyers and reporters
tagging on to try for a habeas corpus from me — relying on a case I
wrote.1 They were here two hours and a half and said all that they had to
say and I declined to issue the writ.2 I said that I had no authority to
take the prisoners out of the custody of a State Court having jurisdiction
over the persons and dealing with a crime under State law — that the
only ground for such an interference would be want of jurisdiction in the
tribunal or, as according to the allegations in the negro case that I wrote
where a mob in and around the court ready to lynch the prisoner, jury,
counsel and possibly the judges if they did not convict, made the trial a
mere form. They said these facts went only to motives (I suspect having
another Massachusetts case of mine in view) and what was the difference
whether the motive was fear or the prejudices alleged in this case. I said
most differences are differences of degree, and I thought that the line
must be drawn between external force, and prejudice — which could be
alleged in every case. I could not feel a doubt, but the result has been
already some letters telling me that I am a monster of injustice — in
various forms of words, from men who evidently don't know anything
about the matter, but who have the customary readiness to impute evil
for any result that they don't like. The house of one of the jurymen was
blown up two or three nights ago — and I was deeply touched on the
evening after Hill's departure to find Tom Barbour at my door wanting
to bivouak on my piazza against the chance of trouble. Of course I said
no, and I found later that he had just returned from four nights in sleep-
ers where he can't sleep as the berths are too short for him, and was
nearly worn out. Generous and gallant, hem? The papers this morning
say that Hill announces an intent to try me again in connection with an
application for certiorari? So I have no perfect peace. I believe I men-
tioned that I was reading — I now have read, Spinoza's Ethics — the
most valuable result a new article in my Bill of Rights viz: No man shall
be held to master a system of philosophy that is fifty years old. Comment.
All that any of the philosophers has to contribute is a small number of
1 Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86, McReynolds, J., dissenting.
2 Holmes's opinion of August 10 denying the writ of habeas corpus is in
5 Record of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case (1929) 5532.
8 On August 20 counsel for Sacco and Vanzetti presented a petition to
Holmes praying for an extension of time for applying to the Supreme Court
for writs of certiorari. Holmes's opinion denying the petition is in 5 Record of
the Sacco-Vanzetti Case 5516.
972 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
insights, that could be told in ten minutes. But, especially if he is a Ger-
man, he has to make a system and to write a big book. In 50 years, more
or less, the system goes to pot; posterity doesn't care for it — but you
have to read the book to get the author's apergus — and novices think
that the system is the thing and that they must master it, whereas the
old hand knows that really it is simply working two tons of sand to get
a tablespoonful of gold, and probably he knew the substance of the in-
sights as part of his general knowledge, before. I care more for Spinoza's
than for the other old ones but I don't believe his postulates or yield to
his logic. What I care for is an attitude and a few truths that are inde-
pendent of his machinery. If I have said all this before, forgive me. I have
sent for two books by (Ludwig?) on Napoleon and Kaiser Wilhelm. I
think you praised them and John Morse4 strongly admired them. I being
empty and lazy concurred. I have done over 50 certioraris for next term.
I shaE send this to London as safest.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Hotel Victoria, Geneva, 19.VIIL27
My dear Justice: I need not tell you how much I sympathised with your
difficulties in the Sacco-Vanzetti case. I cannot see that you had any
alternative, and I suppose the event must move to its tragic end. But I
wish I could make people like Fuller realise the immense damage his
action has done to the good name of America. This case has stirred
Europe as nothing since the Dreyfus case has done. And to me, at this
distance, and with the reliance I have on the substantial accuracy of
Felix's picture, it seems that it is indeed another Dreyfus case.
Minora canamus. We came here on Wednesday after ten quite perfect
days at Talloires. We are staying just outside the town with an amazing
view of Mont Blanc from the window. My first visit was to my bookselling
friends of which, perhaps, the results should be described as solid rather
than brilliant. I got a further substantial body of contemporary Rousseau
criticism, some invaluable pamphlets on the Oath of Allegiance contro-
versy under James I, some good contemporary criticism of Montesquieu.
The prizes I wanted were not; but I would not part with any of my pur-
chases. And the joy of the chase, the running of one's eye over row upon
row of musty volumes with the special palpitation that comes when you
hit on an attractive title — these are thrills you know and share with me.
I have seen a good deal of the League of Nations people here, and found
*John T. Morse, Jr. (1840-1937), cousin and intimate friend of Holmes,
who wrote the first biography of Dr. Holmes, and was editor of and con-
tributor to the American Statesmen Series of biographies.
1927] LASZI TO HOLMES 973
them very attractive, especially the German Dufour1 and the Englishman
Salter.2 I heard, too, a dazzling address by the Spanish critic, Madriaga,3
which was, doubtless, persiflage, but done with a grace and a verve which
were most attractive. The amusing (and amazing) thing to me is the
vast population of Americans one sees. They are, literally, unending —
professors of both sexes, travellers, business men. You are the conquerors
of the world. These folk have an easy certainty of their position, a deter-
mination to know, a relentless obstinacy (especially the women) which
leave me breathless. One professor from Iowa presented me with four of
his books on a subject that does not interest me one iota, and was un-
moved by my dual protest (a) of ignorance (b) of an inability to read
Midwestern local history seriously. I had to take them and in the face of
his relentless determination I merely succumbed. Another lady asked me
for a bibliography of the principal political writers 1200-1900 and was, I
think, genuinely offended by my gentle hint that I was on a holiday. But
I have heartily enjoyed talking to the officials who are extraordinarily
interesting from the very novelty and width of their experience. It is a
new thing to watch a committee at work on which an Italian, a German,
a Japanese and an Argentinian are all arguing. And I have had a jolly
dinner here with my old friend Lowes Dickinson — whose books you
know — and we dissected life as gentlemen should. He has a mellow
sweetness about him that is irresistible; and if only he did not think
Goethe's Faust the supreme human achievement, it would be difficult for
us to disagree.
1 was glad to note that you saluted Rockport for me; glad, too, that you
are with me on the subject of P. G. Woodhouse [sic]. Here I found one
I had not known before called Sam the Sudden and it tickled me as much
as any of the others. To more sober reading I make no pretence, partly
out of the pleasure of talk with people, partly because I am on holiday.
We stay here till Wednesday when we leave for Paris. We shall stay
there until the 29th and then home. I shall not be sorry, for more than a
month of idleness is bad for anyone.
My love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
aThe reference is probably to Albert Dufour Feronce who in 1927 was
Under-Secret ary General of the League of Nations.
2 Sir Arthur Salter ( 1881- ) at the time was Director of the Economic
Section of the League Secretariat.
3 Salvador de Madariaga (1886- ), man of letters and diplomat, at this
time was director of the Disarmament Section of the League Secretariat. His
address to the Geneva Institute of International Relations in August 1927, is
printed in Problems of Peace, Second Series (1928), 124.
974 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
Beverly Farms, August 2,4, 1927
My dear Laski: Your last letter shows you stirred up like the rest of the
world on the Sacco Vanzetti case. I cannot but ask myself why this so
much greater interest in red than black. A thousand-fold worse cases of
negroes come up from time to time, but the world does not worry over
them. It is not a mere simple abstract love of justice that has moved
people so much. I never have read the evidence except on the limited
points that came before me. As I remember the time of the trial I always
have appreciated the difficulty in getting a dispassionate verdict when
everyone was as excited as everyone was in those days. I also appreciate
what I believe was the generous knight-errantry of Felix in writing his
book. But I see no adequate available reasons for the world outside the
U.S. taking up the matter and I think your public and literary men had
better have kept their mouths shut. There were two applications for
habeas corpus to me, the first presented by Arthur Hill, the last on differ-
ent grounds the night before the execution, by other counsel,1 both of
which I denied, as I thought them beyond my power, on the case made.
There was also an application for a stay until the full Court could consider
granting of a certiorari, which also I denied, as I thought no shadow of a
ground was shown on which the writ should be granted.2 There was no
way that I knew of in which the merits of the case could be brought
before us. Of course I got lots of letters — some abusive, some precatory
(and emotion from women) all more or less assuming that I had the
power of Austin's sovereign over the matter. (Forgive my mentioning so
contemptible a personage.) The most sensible talk I have seen was a
letter by Norman Hapgood, who recognized the humbug of talking as if
justice alone was thought of. Not having read the record I do not consider
myself entitled to an opinion on the case — my prejudices are against
the convictions, but they are still stronger against the run of the shriekers.
The lovers of justice have emphasized their love by blowing up a building
or two and there are guards in all sorts of places, including one for this
house for a few days, which left to myself I should not have thought of.
A review of Circus Parade by Jim Tally in the New Republic begins
"Jim Tully is so goddam hard-boiled that his spit bounces," 3 which made
me guffaw when I read it and again when I remembered it in the watches
of the night. The only reading I have is Napoleon by Ludwig, but I have
to confess that his great Napoleon rather bores me. Living in a somewhat
narrow groove I am not interested by men whose view of life does not
1 The published records do not contain this motion or Holmes's ruling
thereon.
2 See supra, p. 971, note 3.
8 52 New Republic 26 (Aug. 24, 1927).
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 975
interest me. I shall take refuge in some more certioraris that have come.
Whether it was as my wife thinks the long jaw with Arthur Hill over the
case or something that I eat, this being the time when I am likely to have
a little trouble, I have been below par for a few days but I am on the
up-grade with nothing more than the occasional discomfort of wandering
zephyrs in the cave of the winds. I wish I had a book that hit me where
I live. But all is for the best in the best of possible worlds.
Affly yours, O. W. H.
Beverly Farms, September 1, 1927
My dear Laski; Your Geneva experiences are interesting and some of
diem amusing as you meant them to be. I am interested rather specially
at Dickinson's opinion of Faust. It is a theme on which I am not settled.
As to part 2 I hold my peace, silently not believing those who think it
great. It seems to me that you can't rescue a drama that does not interest
as such by asserting ulterior significances. If you put a thing in dramatic
form your first obligation is to make it a success as a drama. My recollec-
tion is distant, but it is of a piece in which the artists happening to be
available at the moment are introduced to do their specialties. Song and
dance by Homunculus etc., etc.
The echoes of Sacco and Vanzetti grow fainter, but I got an abusive
letter this morning and the police will guard my home at night for a day
or two more. The New Republic had an article that seemed to me hysteri-
cal.1 My secretary2 who turned up last night and who worked with Felix
thinks that he wisely dropped the subject after the case was passed upon
by the Governor's committee and that his general frame of mind is to
drop the matter as finished. So far as one who has not read the evidence
has a right to an opinion I think the row that has been made idiotical,
if considered on its merits, but of course it is not on the merits that the
row is made, but because it gives the extremists a chance to yell. If jus-
tice is the interest why do they not talk about the infinitely worse cases of
the blacks? My prejudices were all with Felix's book. But after all, it's
simply showing, if it was right, that the case was tried in a hostile atmos-
phere. I doubt if anyone would say that there was no evidence warrant-
ing a conviction, and as to prejudice I have heard an English judge sock
it to the jury in a murder case, in a way that would have secured a re-
versal in Mass., if the jury had not, as I thought rightly, corrected the
prejudice of the judge. As you know, I believe, I held that I had no power
Probably "The Ominous Execution," 52 New Republic 30 (Aug. 31, 1927).
8 Arthur E. Sutherland, Jr., of Rochester, now Professor of Law at Harvard;
his father (1862-1950) was a Justice of the Supreme Court of New York,
1906-1919.
976 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
to grant a habeas corpus and that I ought not to grant a stay, if I had
power, on an application for certiorari, as I thought there was no case
for the writ. I wrote an opinion on the spot, but left it open to apply to
another Justice. They then went to Brandeis who declined to act on the
ground that he had been too closely connected with the case. My secre-
tary says that thereafter a N.Y. paper called The Worker had in its
window "Brandeis, Pontius Pilate," and followed the analogy describing
him as washing his hands of innocent blood, etc., etc, How can one re-
spect that sort of thing? It isn't a matter of reason, but simply shrieking
because the world is not the kind of a world they want — a trouble that
most of us feel in some way. Well, I shan't expect to bore you about this
again.
Not much else to tell. I have been seedy but am all right again. Lady
Bryce has been here and gone. I have read very little, Ludwig's Napoleon,
nearly finished. Napoleon bores me. W. Lippmann's Men of Destiny came
from him yesterday. I see admirable writing in it. It winds up with a
pretty thing to me when I was 75 3 — eheu fugaces — that really touches
me. Mighty good talk about others so far as I have read. Also Diehl, "Fig-
ures byzantines, vol. I, borrowed yesterday and not looked at. I heard an
interesting suggestion from him, that when the Crusaders took Constan-
tinople the people there regarded it as an incursion of barbarians. Huns,
who couldn't appreciate the beautiful Greek civilization.
Affectionately yours, 0. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 2.IX.27
My dear Justice: Along with this, there goes to you a copy of The States-
man.1 It is, of course, mainly a \eu d'esprit. But it is full of commonsense;
and I hope it will pleasantly pass an idle hour.
I found your very interesting letter about Arthur Hill's visit when we
came home on Monday. Of course you had no alternative. If you sought
to probe motive the state courts would have no raison d'etre; and though
I think the decision a tragic one, I see no other course. The negro case,
obviously, is not in pari materia.2 The execution deeply affected me. We
were in Geneva when it happened. The riots there were very bad; and
both in Geneva and Paris the ill-feeling against Americans is obviously
profound. What has angered thinking people most is the incredible re-
8 "To Justice Holmes/' 6 New Republic 156 (March 11, 1916).
1 Sir Henry Taylor's The Statesman: An Ironical Treatise on the Art of
Succeeding (1832) had just been republished with an Introduction by Laski.
2 Moore v. Dempsey, supra, p. 971.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 977
mark of Borah3 that it would be "a national humiliation if any account
were given to European protests." As one Frenchman said to me, "if we
have to mobilise five thousand troops to protect American lives and prop-
erty, we are at least entitled to consideration."
We left Geneva last Wednesday and went on to Paris. There I had a
really thrilling time. The first day I gave up to showing Diana historic
sights; and the ancien regime through the eyes of an intelligent child
absorbed in Dumas was an interesting novelty. I discovered that she ad-
mired Richelieu and loathed Mazarin; but that Dumas had made Fouquet
her real hero. In the Louvre she interested me much by a distinct and
even passionate preference for Leonardo's Beatrice d'Este to everything
else there; and a loathing for the masses of Delacroix which augurs hope-
fully for the future. I add that we were lucky enough to find a small
collection of Meryon's etchings, and I spent a very satisfactory morning
with them. The next day I devoted, to people. A breakfast with Briand.
Lord Crewe4 who was there, said that Austen Chamberlain loved France
as though she was a woman, to which Briand at once replied, "Mais la
France doit exercer les privileges dune maUresse" He was very troubled
by the breakdown of the Anglo-American naval conference5 and vehement
in his denunciation of naval and military experts. "Ce bon Focli," he said,
"pense que les frontieres de notre France doivent etre a San Francisco a
une cote et a Vladivostock sur I'autre." He is an amazing creature — like
Felix in his capacity to get the best out of people; unlike him in his in-
ability to keep to one theme for more than ten minutes. I lunched with
Aulard, the historian of the French Revolution and met some of the
younger men in that line. They were all learned and "bien documentes"
but like footnotes in the great man's work. One was at work on one frag-
ment, one on another; none of them had large interests beyond his section
of the archives. They all talked well, (all Frenchmen talked well) and I
was very struck by their general agreement that Lord Acton's book was
much the best treatment of the Revolution in English. In the evening I
dined with my old friend Chevalley, about whom I have written to you in
the past. We had a great talk — first on Montaigne, then, with a clever
abbe, whose name I did not catch, on the degree to which Bossuet bor-
rowed from Hobbes and Spinoza (more than Frenchmen like to admit) and
finally with dear old L6vy-Bruhl on Bayle in which he rejoiced my heart by
affirming the philosophy of scepticism against a handful of les jeunes who
8 William E. Borah (1865-1940); independent Republican, ardent isola-
tionist, and United States Senator from Idaho, 1907-1940.
* Robert Crewe-Milnes (1858-1945), first Marquess of Crewe, was Ambassa-
dor in Paris from 1922 to 1928.
5 The United States, Great Britain, and Japan had participated in a naval
disarmament conference at Geneva in June. It had broken up, however, without
agreement.
978 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
were all ardent Bergsonians and made the elan vital a vehicle of transi-
tion to an ugly sort of fascism in which action for its own sake was impor-
tant and thought in the nature of a disease. Saturday I spent book-hunting
with great results. On the quai I found every work of Richer,0 the first of
the 17th century Gallicans, which I did not already possess; one a copy in
a superb tooled binding. I got a heap of contemporary attacks on Mon-
tesquieu — some of them rare beyond words. I got a fine Descartes, and
a very fine first edition of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. But what,
I think, pleased me most was to buy a first edition of the Nouvelle Heloise
for twelve francs and sell it across the road to a fashionable bookseller for
600 francs. That enabled me to get a large number of modern works I
wanted especially a new and delectable edition of Montaigne. The Sun-
day we spent out near Versailles — showing Diana the castle in the morn-
ing and then wandering further afield. In the evening we dined with
Larnaude the late dean of the Paris Law School. He was a scholarly old
gentleman but absolutely wrapped up within the confines of French law.
He knew the names of Littleton, Coke and Marshall but of no other ex-
ponents of the Common Law. He had read Maitland but thought him
inferior to Viollet; and he was uncertain whether the greatest of all law-
yers was Cujas or Domat. It was an interesting type of mind in its narrow
wav — sure 0£ itself, inflexible, putting aside doubt or criticism with an
exquisite politeness as completely irrelevant, I could not make out why he
had asked me to dine until I discovered that he had read an essay of
mine on administrative syndicalism and wanted to explain its errors to me.
But his standpoint was that of the second empire (when he began to
teach), and when I quoted eminent living Frenchmen in my support, he
put them gently on one side and with a serene self-confidence that was
charming. Only once did I disturb his complacency and that was when
he mentioned Mile, de Lezardiere as an 18th century writer hardly in-
ferior to Montesquieu. I explained that her qualities were chiefly due to
her fidelity to the Esprit des lois and the old gentleman was so astonished
that I knew her that he could only repeat "Tiens! Elle est connue en
Angleterre!" It was like peeping through a curtain at a bye-gone age.
I expect this will reach you as Washington begins to loom near. Who
is your new secretary? I have a faint hope still that next spring may see
me in Washington.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 10. IX. 27
My dear Justice: Let me say one thing about the Sacco-Vanzetti case and
I have done. I was strongly for re-trial because (I) Felix in whose judg-
* Supra, p. 907.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 979
ment I have great confidence made me fee! that the evidence was not
satisfactory; (II) because the conduct of the judge during the trial did
not suggest an open mind; (III) because at -least one of the jurors had
prejudged the case. I don't think the analogy of the negro is in point be-
cause there the problem of political prejudice does not arise. I add again
that I am warmly with you so far as your Court is concerned. I do not
think it was in any aspect your business,
Since I wrote to you last I have spent a .week-end in Manchester and
some busy days here. In Manchester I had one glorious experience I
would not easily have foregone. I stepped from the train and at the bar-
rier found a policeman's hand descend heavily upon my shoulder. Looking
up I heard a genial Irish voice say with satisfaction, "Well, Toscini, we
have been expecting you; come quietly." I never refuse an invitation that
has the prospect of interest so I walked quietly and silently to the police-
station. I was then charged as Luigi Toscini with being concerned in an
Italian jewel-shop robbery in Manchester on the 6th August and was
asked if I had anything to say. I said yes, and explained who I was. After
a minute or two my accent must have been revealing as the entire police
force of Manchester seemed to arrive and apologise. I was then driven
into a whiskey with the Inspector and spent the next three days in re-
ceiving grinning salutes from policemen on the streets. You will admit that
it was a distinguished arrival. I admit that, on the evidence of photo-
graphs, it was a perfectly reasonable mistake. The police were so re-
lieved that I made no fuss that I do not believe I could now be arrested
in Manchester.
While there I had one interesting dinner with Alexander the philoso-
pher. He pleased me by saying that F. Pollock's book on Spinoza was
easily the best; and he would have pleased you by his insistence on the
superiority of S. to other philosophers. He interested me greatly by his
admiration for Bergson and told me that in his judgment the most arrest-
ing figure in European philosophy today is Meyersohn [sic] and in Amer-
ica Morris Cohen. He made little of Dewey whom he thought overrated
and thought James a psychologist with a turn for metaphysic. He told
me, too, one good story of a Roman Catholic student who, on hearing him
relate the history of Giordano Bruno accused him of Anti-Catholic preju-
dice. Alexander explained briefly the facts and asked what else he could
say. The student said that Bruno's morals were bad. A. asked him for
evidence to which the student replied that he did not indulge in un-
savoury literature! When I got back I found that Frida had arranged a
jolly dinner with Gilbert Murray who explained to me why I do not find
comfort in Greek poetry as I should. He recites it really exquisitely so
that in the onomatapoeic phrases the very purpose seems to stand out, e.g.
in iuoXu<pXoicr{toKp he can make the thing ring in your ears. But he amused
980 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
me by putting Homer at the top of the world and poor Virgil in a fairly
low class. I said I thought this the typical prejudice of the sophisticated
for the simple as when the- jaded businessman weeps over a Barrie play.
He talked magnificently about Euripides and the Greek Anthology; and
he made us both see more beauty in Greek adjectives in Homer than I
should have thought possible in an ear so insensitive as mine. When he
ended up by denouncing Proust I could have hugged him, for the latter
bores me beyond words. Yet some one else there called him the most
significant Frenchman in fifty years, and he was a man who really knew
French literature. Yet I find elaborate descriptions of the insignificant
really foreign to the effectiveness of art. Are you a Proustian and have I
my shoes on holy ground?
I have done some reading in a mild way. A pleasant book on English
economic history by Lujo Brentano1 — the old Vienna economist — a
wonderful feat for a man of 80, well abreast of modem research. A charm-
book on Saint-Simon, the diarist by Rene Doumic which I commend to
you. A really informing work by one Allen [sic] Nevins on the American
states 1773-89 which I thoroughly enjoyed and Fanny Burne/s Evelina,
which is adorable. Birrell, whom I met in the street yesterday, told me
that Cecilia (which I have not read) is better and the Diary better still.
But I am not a diary-lover unless of people like Barbier who really effec-
tively paint the portrait of an age, and Birrell is so omnivorous that he
can even read the poems of inspired 18th century washer-women and
bricklayers (see Tinker, Natures Simple Plan) and enjoy them. He told
me that the other day he lunched with Lloyd-George who was cursing
some Parliamentary colleagues for wrongheadedness; upon which Birrell
said he always defined liberalism as the power to suffer fools gladly in the
conviction of imminent salvation. I think you did meet him once, if I am
not mistaken. Really he is one of the most delightful people in England.
I have had some luck, too, in the book-buying way. I got a very fine
set of Saint-Simon's political writings for a ten-shilling note; and a splen-
did Parkman at auction for even less. I tried hard for a set of the Supreme
Court Reports but it soared beyond my purse, and I had to content my-
self with the history by one Charles Warren for ten shillings which I
bought on the ground of cheapness without any other knowledge of value.
I invested, too, in a fine De Maistre in 6 volumes at a shilling a volume.
All this from the library of a defunct master in chancery who had taste
and discrimination.
Our love warmly to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
1 Presumably Lujo Brentano, Eine Geschichte der wirtschaftlichen Entwick-
lung Englands (3 vok, 1927-29).
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 981
Devon Lodge, 24.IX.27
My dear Justice: It has been an exciting fortnight; and I have only not
written because I have been overwhelmed. First I had to act in the Indus-
trial Conciliation Court of the Cooperative Societies, which took three
days; but I emerged as arbitrator with the satisfaction of knowing that
henceforth thirty thousand employes are henceforth entitled to ten days
sick leave with pay in the year. It was a grim struggle, especially the
difficulty of disclosing no views in the private discussion after evidence,
in case it should be left to me (as it was) to decide; and I had the pleas-
ure of hearing that neither side knew what I should do. Then I was sud-
denly asked to act as arbitrator between the Treasury and certain civil
service unions on the meaning of an agreement about over-time (it sounds
Irish) for non-overtime classes in the clerical division and that meant three
days with dull documents and an attempt to establish where reasonable
overtime without pay might be said to end. I decided that a non-overtime
class ought to give 52 hours without extra pay and receive a grant beyond
that. As neither side was completely happy with the result (the Treasury
opposed all concession, the men wanted the pay to begin at 44 hours) I
imagine I did substantial justice. But you will imagine that these cases
have meant some grim hours of work.
But some pleasant interludes. Last night we had MacDonald to dinner
and talked over the universe. He is a fascinating creature. To watch him
is like observing a really temperamental prima donna. He is brilliant,
jealous, eager for applause, quick, incoherent — the last person who ought
ever to lead a party. He dismayed me a little by his vivid certainty that
God is on his side; hardly less by his perception of politics as a struggle
in a theatre between contestants for the limelight. I was amused, too, by
his pose as a connoisseur of the arts — which seemed to mean legislation
against Romneys and Gainsboroughs leaving the country; and I do not
think he appreciated my remark that I rather wanted legislation to make
Goyas and Degas come in. He spoke most warmly about America where
he seems to think the future of culture lies; and with the Calvinisms con-
tempt for Latin countries. I told him that he would have got on admirably
with John Adams and found Jefferson wanting in delicacy and taste. Then,
too, a dinner with Sankey to meet Scrutton L.J. Do you know the latter?
I thought him quite one of the best minds I have met in many a day —
quick, wide-reaching, passionate about his work. He appealed to me
greatly by avowing a complete scepticism in re the greatness of Cairns and
clinched my admiration by his remark that judges should learn more
political economy. He told me that as a young man he met you at F.
Pollock's in the 'nineties but only as an undergraduate meets a master —
a great fellow. So too is Sankey who got off the remark that Mansfield
982 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
made law with the air of Moses receiving the Tables from the Lord. And
I lunched with Churchill who has been reading American history in the
vacation and is full of envy of A. Hamilton. Nothing, I told him, better
explains his own temper than that he should be unmoved by Washington
and Lincoln, incapable of seeing anything in Jefferson, miss the signifi-
cance of the West, and fasten on the one man in the record, who, with
big purposes, was anti-democratic, anti-idealistic, and incapable of ulti-
mate generosity. It was also an amusing index to the culture of our good
and great that until he read Hamilton's life, he had never heard of Mar-
shall C.J. and did not know that Madison was a President of the U.S. I
went also to dinner to Arnold Bennett who was like a very clever nouveau
riche asking you not to forget the power of the purse, even while he
emphasised his contempt for mundane things. But he did interest me by
explaining, as I thought with great power why, to a novelist, Dostoievski
is by far the greatest man in his line and why the Brothers Karamazov
is the proof of it.
In reading, several things I ardently recommend. First and foremost
C. E. Montague's Right off the Map — one of the cleverest and best
written satires upon mores anglicanae I have ever come across. Do, do
read it over solitaire. Second a delightful edition of Voltaire's Lettres
philosophiques by Lanson full of fascinating information about its sources
and influence. Third an attack of great power and interest by a Chinaman
named Hsiao on my political views called Political Pluralism by which I
hope I profited as certainly I enjoyed it.1 Finally a tip-top Histoire de
Jansenisme by Gazier — which was to me full of illumination not only as
completing Sainte-Beuve, but also as making one see the place of the
movement in three centuries of French history. When your first batch of
opinions are written I hope it may come your way. Frida interrupts me at
this point to say (rightly) that I must recommend Denis Mackail's The
Flower Show, especially to Mrs. Holmes, for it really hits off the contours
and hierarchies of an English village with the most amusing slyness. Next
week there is a new P. G, Woodhouse [sic] with which I hope to salute
the beginning of the academic year.2
Sir, I have had a great book adventure. I got a catalogue from Paris
over which my heart panted as the hart after the brooks. Four of the
Jurieus, three contemporary criticisms of him Haureau's Philosophie
scholastique, Bayles* Oeuvres diverses, a run of the best ten years of the
Mercure de France. So I decided that these things come but once in a
lifetime — sold the Encyclopedia Brittanica presented by an extinct uncle,
telephoned to Paris and they arrived. One Jurieu, La decadence des
empires was as lovely as it was rare — in contemporary red tooled mor-
1 Reviewed by Laski, 54 New Republic 197 (March 28, 1928).
2 Not identified.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 983
occo with the arms of Vauban the economist-engineer.3 Including the
telephone, I spent only a ten-pound note; and as I got sixteen pounds for
the Encyclopedia, 1 am awaiting most anxiously for the fellow's next
catalogues as this was A-L and M-Z has Montesquieu, Pascal, Rousseau,
Voltaire as prospects over which the eyes may light and the jaws work
as they did with the young clerks when Porthos dined with the wife of
the Procurator to get his equipment for the campaign.
Another week of freedom and then term begins. But my department
has doubled itself and I have as a result two new young men. So I am
hopeful that the year will be restful and that I can largely bury myself in
French history.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J, L.
Devon Lodge, 2.X.27
My dear Justice: A letter from you last night was a happy prelude to
term.1 I have had a busy week, with no interludes that can be called
pleasurable. Students, committees, reports from mom till eve. Some of
the first were promising; and there was a Chinaman whose English was
so devastating that for an hour I thought he wanted to write a thesis on
the history of the alphabet only to discover that he wanted in fact to
write on the history of the abacus in accountancy. And I entertained a
queer professor of criminal law from the middle west who was anxious
to know how our police arrest files de joie and prayed my aid for help
in seeking permission to go round at night with the police. He explained
that he had done this in Berlin, Paris, Vienna and Buda-Pesth. I said that
it was perhaps a vocation like any other but did he in the end find out
more than the fact that arrests took place where there was undue solici-
tation. He said that so far he had no clue to the technique, which made
the investigation more important than ever, so I made him happy by a
letter to the Commissioner of Police. Another queer soul was a lady from
Buffalo who came with an introduction from an old pupil of mine. She
had heard that I was good at finding books; could I tell her where to
get a complete set of first editions of Charlotte Yonge. I tried to be as
serious as I could and only at the end asked her why she wanted that
gravy-like writer. It turned out that someone in Buffalo's "literary circles"
had made a hit by having a complete set of first editions of Ouida's works
and this was the spirit of pure rivalry. So I sent her away happy and felt
that God must really feel sometimes that I have the temper of an angel.
8 See, supra, p. 737.
1 The letter referred to is missing.
984 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
Nor must I omit to tell you of the vicar of Hadleigh, Suffolk, who wrote
to me in hot indignation for reprinting Taylor s Statesman. An immoral
book; nothing about Providence in it; a mean code without any sense of
how God works in our lives. So for four pages, and enclosed a copy of his
Parish Magazine with a marked article on success proving that there can-
not be success unless God blesses your work. I wrote back thanking him
for his communications which I assured him would have the attention
they deserved.
I have had little time for reading this week. But I have read and en-
joyed Maistre on the Gallican Church, which is a superb piece of con-
troversy, and a very good novel by one Beatrice Seymour called Three
Wives. Also I have been delving a little into some contemporary mss
about Boussuet in the British Museum and discovered some notes about
him as a young man which are exceedingly interesting. The writer (evi-
dently some kind of church spy to Mazarin) says he is able and learned,
but above all things compliant and anxious to suit his opinions to those
whom he encounters. Now that is, I think, the real Bossuet. For if you
take the crucial instance of the Declaration of 1682 2 I could I think show
from his correspondence (a) that he was an ultramontane before the
Declaration (b) that he did not believe it while he was drawing it up and
(c) that he did not believe it afterwards. Yet he has the impudence to
refer to the Archbishop of Paris as a valet for his strong Gallicanism. But
I enclose a piece I have written on Bossuet for the Manchester Guardian
which is at least an exercise in careful denigration.3
1 picked up one nice thing this week — a copy of the Abbe Saint-
Pierre's Polysynodie. Now I am waiting anxiously for replies to orders I
sent to Nice and Paris for books. The latter had a copy of Buonarroti's
Histoire de Babeuf (which I have never seen for less than 600 fr.) for
20 fr., and the former had what, from the description, I take to be a first
of La Bruyere for two dollars. The latter is interesting because, as I ex-
pect you know, La Bruyere altered the first six editions in the direction
of continuously greater severity towards the court; and it would I think
be worth while tracing the evolution of that extra dose of indignation.
And I bought a fascinating Dictionnaire des Iwres Jansenistes by a Jesuit
(1724) which has given me a training in the art of invective such as you
would envy me.
2 Bossuet, distrustful of the Jesuits and therefore wary of supporting Papal
claims of supremacy, was reluctant to acknowledge all the claims of Louis XIV
and therefore in drafting the Declaration of the French Clergy in 1682 sought
to find a middle ground between the Gallican and Ultramontane positions.
8 "The Tercentenary of Bossuet," 17 Manchester Guardian Weekly 254 (Sept
30, 1927).
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 985
Well! I must begin to get my papers together for my lectures. I hope
the voyage to Washington was accomplished in comfort. Take care, and
do not have tornadoes in I Street.
Our warm love to you both, Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L,
Washington, D. C., October 9, 1927
My dear Laski: A delightful letter from you, 24th, deserves more than
it will get — a too frequent happening. For until this moment I have been
almost overtaxed. The usual business on arrival, but more than usual, with
an overhanging atmosphere of certioraris filling every crevice, and an
abnormal Washington heat that tackles the vitals. The result of everything
was that at the conference yesterday p.m. we didn't finish the work and
I have no opinion to write today — for which I am thankful, as it seemed
too much. I shall have my hair cut and try to finish the certioraris on
hand, knowing that a new lot will come tomorrow. My last secretary,
Corcoran, was admirable in doing all that was possible to save me trouble
and he seems to have imparted the ferment to the present one — Suther-
land — son of a N.Y. lawyer and ex-judge. Of course I read nothing but
records of cases. I am much interested by what you say of MacDonald,
Churchill, Scrutton et al. — but the Histoire de Jansenisme must wait for
better days. Montague's Right off the Map? — possible — but I don't do
much in present affairs outside the job. I remember reading Haureau's
book 1000 years ago — and being surprised to see how much Descartes
owed to the scholastics — but in what particulars I have forgotten. There
is a good article about Brandeis in the Nation of October 5 by Norman
Hapgood.1 I believe that Brandeis deserves all the praise that Hapgood
gives him and I am glad to have him get it. There is inserted a sort of
caricature sketch of B's face that I don't think pleasant, although by way
of caricature it catches something of him. The brethren seem in fair con-
dition except Sutherland, who is off for a month. I don't think there is
any organic trouble — but he is rather down, I infer. I have not seen him.
My hair is cut with opposite effect to Sampson's [sic] but still instead
of working all the afternoon I should like to lie down and sleep in spite
of a long night in bed.
When we called on the President he asked me if I had enjoyed the
summer. I said, Yes — towns that had celebrated their 300th birthday —
noble cliffs — and broad beaches with young ladies who didn't wear
trousers. He said when he reached my age perhaps he should notice them
— and that ended my conversation with the Executive.
Now for the certs. — damn theml Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
*125 Nation 330 (Oct. 5, 1927).
986 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
Devon Lodge, 15.X.27
My dear Justice: You must forgive my lapse in not writing last week; but
I was in bed with a nasty dose of 'flu which made the reading of P. G.
Woodhouse's [sic] Sam the Sudden the only bearable form of activity.
But I am all right again; and if a little wan, still fit for the job.
A good deal has happened since I wrote last. First a first-rate case on
the Industrial Court in which I had the joy of making the Crown abandon
the claim of privilege for a document they quoted without putting in; a
practice which I think abominable. Second a jolly tea-party with Hough-
ton, your Ambassador here, whom I like greatly and with whom I found
much community of spirit, especially after the discovery that he had the
right views about you and Brandeis. Then a dinner here for Allyn Young,
our new Professor of Economics, who comes from Harvard. He is an
extraordinarily able fellow, a little slow, and without the razor-edge I
I like in a mind, but perceptive and wise and intelligent. ... So life,
aided by Mr. Wodehouse, has had its pleasant interludes. Also I won a
guinea from Sankey, J. by predicting the new Appeal Judge (Greer, J.)1
whom he proclaimed an impossible appointment. How goodly are thy
tents 0 Jacobs!
One or two nice things have come my way. I found in a French cata-
logue an excellent copy of Dreyfus-Brisac's great edition of the Social
Contract — the one edition which (a) gives you a sense of its real relation
to the MSS (b) the other parts of Rousseau which amend and illustrate it
and (c) parallel texts from the other mighty which show definite parallel-
isms of thought. I have found it very useful. First it convinces me that
near to Book III Rousseau changed his mind on much as a result of meet-
ing Montesquieu. Second I think his attitude to religion and a good deal
in particular of the religion civile was determined by a real acquaintance
with Spinoza, and third I think that any effort to make Rousseau the
author of a really consistent body of political doctrine is quite impossible.
He is simply a great prophet in the same sense that Isaiah or Carlyle was
a great prophet. Also I have been reading (to review) The Correspond-
ence of George III 2 the last roi de metier we ever had and I find it most
interesting. Character B, Brains E, obstinacy A+, ignorance D; yet,
strangely enough, the letters show quite clearly that merely to remain for
long at the centre of affairs gives an authority and a flair unmistakable
even in a petty and stupid man. The misinterpretation of America is won-
1 Frederick Arthur Greer (1863-1945), first Baron Fairfield, Justice of the
King's Bench Division of the High Court, 1919-1927, Lord Justice of Appeal,
1927-1938.
2 The review has not been located.
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 987
derful. Right on from 1765 he thought the Americans revolutionists —
because they denied the validity of the Stamp Act. Yet to my thinking
their view was much that of the Channel Islands today or of Ireland be-
fore the Act of Union and could have been supported by a very remark-
able body of evidence. And I have read a charming book on Pascal by a
young colleague of mine named Soltau, a little too religious for me, and
hostile to Jansenism at all the points where I should be favourable, but a
most skilful portrait of much the greatest Frenchman of the 17th century.
And I went to the funeral of Mrs. H. G. Wells — a dear little soul with
whom Frida and I have passed many a pleasant hour. If, by the way, you
cared to write him a note I think he would like it much for he is very
unhappy. (His address is Whitehall Court, London, S.W.I.) I know he
cares much about you and would welcome a word of sympathy.
Of other things, there is not much to report. I refused to sit on a govern-
ment committee to deal with the relations of police and prostitutes, on
the good ground that I knew nothing of the problem, and was amused to
find that they replaced me by an Oxford don of whom Rivers the an-
thropologist once said admirably to me that he was constitutionally inca-
pable of seeing the distinction between a man and a woman. Also I re-
fused to go as a fellow to Oriel — after the freedom of London the narrow
environment of an Oxford College would, I am sure, be intolerable,
though, of course, the leisure would be attractive in its way. Frida inter-
rupts me to insist that I must strongly recommend you both to read
Walter Lippmann's book of essays which she says are admirable. I have
not seen them yet, but she is a very good judge.
Our love to you both. I write amidst fog such as only England can
create. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., October 28, 1927
My dear Laski: A delightful letter from you, just arrived consoles me by
its explanations of delay, since I also have slipped a cog. I have been so
pressed and oppressed by work that I simply haven't had a chance. But
the weather is clearing — we adjourn next Monday and all my cases are
written, up to date. Let me answer one or two items that you mention.
Imprimis — I did read W. Lippmann's essays before I left Beverly and
quite agree with your wife, uninfluenced, I swear, by the reprint of some
words about me when I was 75. I thought the notices of Mencken and
Sinclair Lewis A-l.
2. I will try to write a line to Wells — but one is so helpless on such
occasions — tie more so that the Godly common-places are not available,
as he wouldn't want 'em and I could not use 'em.
988 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
3. I am glad you got your guinea, but it shows how old I am that the
names now are all unfamiliar to me. Why don't they put in Leslie Scott?
4. Why do you call Carlyle a great prophet? Because he shows the
influence of the Old Testament? He seems to me a man of imaginative
humor who didn't care a damn for the truth except for its decorative pos-
sibilities and had no particular insight into it — present or future. Perhaps
I go a little farther than my fighting line — but I indicate my animus.
I can understand you as to Rousseau although I doubt if prophet is the
word that I should use, when I consider his reputed influence on what
happened in France and his very manifest influence on German phi-
losophy (Kant and Hegel).
I have read nothing except records and a short Essay on Conversation
by Taft's brother and The "Canary" Murder — a good detective story. It
amused me to see in the advertisements quotations from notices of a for-
mer and I presume similar work that spoke of it as not only a story but
literature. This one has some slight affectations of culture done in French,
put into the mouth of the detective — but seemed to me to want every-
thing except the fundamental one — a real puzzle, the answer concealed
to near the end, and things kept moving. I believe that in some past time
I have heard of or even read works of literature but from September 30
to October 31 1 have known and shall know nothing but law. I may have
remarked before — but if so I repeat — that it is harder work to live at
86 than at 26 — 56 or 76, but still the gusto has not departed. My wife
tripped and fell when she was out star gazing one night at Beverly and
I don't think that she yet has recovered from the shock — but we went
out early this morning and I took an hour off for an adorable drive in the
Rock Creek Park. Don't tell me that you have to go north for brilliant
color. It was an ecstasy. Brandeis generally comes with me as far as my
house, driving home, and we go by the Potomac and around the Lincoln
Monument, to get the wrinkles out a little. He is as good as ever. I owe
a line to Frankfurter — I owe everybody — but hope is not dead.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 23.X.27
My dear Justice: I picture you as a ghost, palely wan, wandering amid a
vast ocean of certioraris, I hope you will emerge scathless, and not, like
your most distinguished predecessor, disappear as the clock strikes mid-
night.
I have been pretty overwhelmed. A case at the Industrial Court, a lec-
ture (very good!) to the Fabian Society on Victorian Democracy, a din-
ner with Hewart, C.J., a couple of articles, and what you will find in the
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 989
last paragraph of this letter was much for a week. The Fabian lecture
pleased me, for Bernard Shaw came out with his typical onslaught on the
Victorians as hostile to new ideas. He gave as an example the refusal of
Henry Sidgwick to listen to him at the British Association in 1888 when
he urged the taxation of urban land values, Sidgwick, he said, denounced
the plan as criminal and left the room in disgust. Whereupon I produced
Sidgwick's own account of the debate, written to J. A. Symonds the day
after, full of eulogies of Shaw and saying that the general position com-
pletely convinced him.1 I have never seen Shaw at a loss before; but this
was really what your compatriots call a "sock-dologer." How amiable and
kindly a thing is a good memory. Hewart interested me a good deal. He
is obviously clever and quick and pungent. But he has no Weltanschauung;
he knows nothing of law in the sense that Pollock knows law; and he has
real contempt for those who seek to know law in that way. He is an at-
tractive intellectual parvenu, really attractive because so alert. It was
amusing to contrast him with a real German gelehrte, Gerland of Jena,2
who was there. The latter was heavy, but he really knew, and his obvious
horror at the ease with which Hewart committed himself on things of
which he knew nothing e.g. the German law of libel was most attractive
in its way. Gerland had the scholar's horror of committing himself with-
out full independent examination which is, I suppose, fatal to action, but,
still, a quality in favour of which I keep a sneaking prejudice. I must add
that there was a French fl&M-academician there, Bremond,3 whose
talk was quite marvellous and quite as marvellously wrong-headed. He
was a mystic devot who has written illimitably on S. Francois de Sales,
Pascal, Newman et al and he thinks James's Varieties of Religious Experi-
ences the ultimate key to everything. He was anti-papal in the French
Gallican way, but with that curious certainty that Rome will ultimately
triumph with which argument is quite impossible. When he spoke of the
Pope as the embodiment of the Holy Spirit I asked him how he reconciled
that view with the technique of the conclave as given e.g. in such things
as the election of Alexander VI and he replied almost casually that these
things cannot be understood by an unbeliever. I said "You mean that a
sense of evidence is distressing" and I gather that he meant that, but
preferred to say that faith has knowledge to which knowledge itself is a
stranger.
In reading I have got through Ludwig's Bismarck with some pain. I
1 See A. S. and E. M. S., Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir (1906), 497-498.
"Heinrich Gerland (1874-1944), distinguished jurist; author, inter alia, of
Die Englische Gerichtsverfassung (2 vols., 1910).
3 Abbe Henri Bremond (1865-1933), humanist churchman and critic; author
of Histoire litteraire du sentiment religieux. en France (11 vols., 1915-33).
990 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
was interested, but I think he faked his evidence to get a conclusion
which is certainly not there. I also read the Life of Henry Wilson, the
Field Marshal who seems to me to have revealed his own foolishness in
his diary about as fully as a man can. It is a fair proposition, I think, that
diaries of men who enjoy their own nudity ought not to be published
unless they are as interesting as Pepys. Otherwise it is really too distress-
ing for the observer. I read, too, a Trollope unknown to me before The
London Tradesman, sketches of types, which, without being mighty, was
full of his shrewd insight and would, I am sure, greatly please Mrs.
Holmes. He is particularly good and wise — if you share my outlook —
on the need for reticence in tradesmen.
I now end with my real story. I saw a pretty box in a second-hand
furniture shop which (1 foot by 2 feet) seemed to me a kind of 17th
century desk and Louis XIV in decoration. It was locked and there was
no key. I asked the dealer the price and was told it was three pounds.
I thought Frida would like it and brought it home as a present. We got
in a locksmith to make a key and when this arrived it contained 80 uncut
tracts of the Fronde — many of them really rare, and not one of them
available in any modern reprint. Some were things I badly needed for my
book; eleven are not at the Bibliotheque Rationale and 36 are not in the
British Museum. Do you wonder I kept this to the end, or that for at
least a month I shall go about with a light in my eyes?
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., November 3, 1927
My dear Laski: The ghost that you say you picture is solidifying down
a bit. I got through my work yesterday and through some business
bothers today and when my nerves have quieted down I shall feel like
a human being. I am doubting whether to say a few biting words in a
dissent on the differences between a penalty and a tax, but don't quite
know whether I shall take the trouble.1 If I haven't acknowledged the
things that you have sent me, I have appreciated them — and just now
was rereading the admirable appreciation of Bossuet,2 which makes me
think of Racine about whom I once wrote to you. When one strikes
fundamental differences of taste, especially national ones, one can but
bow the head (keeping up inside a silly little desperate conviction that one
is nearer the center of things than the other fellow) . We think of poetry
as uttering the unutterable, and don't care a damn for the most admirable
lucidity as compared with the most confused hint at the infinite. So
1 Campania General de Tabacos de Filipinos v. Collector, 275 U.S. 87, 99
(Nov. 21, 1927).
2 Supra, p. 984.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 991
coming nearer to Bossuet we don't warm up to allegorical figures of
Commerce and Plenty and other abstractions — and coming nearer still
we prefer one touch of passion or of first-hand perception of truth to
well modulated tremolo and majestic platitudes. But I dare say a noble
oration might be made in defense of platitudes as against our transitory
novelties, even though hot ones.
I wish we sympathized as much with regard to the social structure as
we do in many of our literary and philosophical judgments. But I haven't
your intellectual respect for Shaw. I think he is a mountebank — though
a very gifted one and I don't care tuppence what he thinks. But I dare
say I should like to see him. Your box story is beautiful — suppose the
dealer should sue you for the value of the contents that you have ap-
propriated. I dare say your answer would be complete — but an argu-
ment could be made. Suppose instead of pamphlets the contents had been
current money — say £ 1000 — do you think that you could maintain
a claim of title? If I thought the difficulty serious I should not speak of
it — but I regard it merely as a slight stimulus to inquiry. I suppose that
I ought to give some time to a German essay which the writer sent to
me intimating that it was more or less inspired by my book and was im-
portant, but there is so much bread in proportion to the sack in most
German theorizing that I shiver on the brink.
I wish I might hear something of Wu in China. My fears become seri-
ous. I suppose you have not heard anything. I feel as if I might be on the
verge of culture in some form — at least when I get through a little book
Rationale of Proximate Cause by Leon Green, Assistant Professor of Law
at Yale — dedicated to the memory of (a Texan?) John Charles Townes,3
"Lawyer, Judge, Dean, Teacher — He came nearer the ideal in each than
any other man I have known" &c and I never heard of the paragon. The
author is a cocky gent who dogmatizes about cases more than the notes
in a law student's Review — and thinks he is revealing more than as yet
I can see that he is. You tell of more interesting things.
Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 5.XI.27
My dear Justice: I have had my annual dose of 'flu, which is the reason
for my silence last week. However, it has gone, beyond a certain lassitude
which is, I suppose, inevitable. And I have been busy entertaining W. G.
Thompson,1 die Boston lawyer, whom Felix sent to me. We both liked
8 John Charles Townes (1852-1923), Texan practitioner and judge, and
teacher of law at the University of Texas.
1 William G. Thompson (1864-1935) had been chief counsel of Sacco and
Vanzetti in the later phases of the case.
992 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
him greatly. I like that type of Yankee simplicity and shrewdness. And
he moved me much by his account of your patience and helpfulness when
he and Arthur Hill interviewed you in August.
We have been about a little. The most interesting, I think, was a dinner
with Tout the historian.2 In a dry way, his work is, of course, first-rate and
important. But the thing which attracted me was the fact that he is about
to visit America for the first time, and he spoke of it as if he were en route
for Abyssinia or Tahiti. Beyond an occasional historian in his own life, and
some related academic people, it was literally an unknown idea to him.
He thought of the Mayor of Chicago3 as the typical American; of the
farmer as a Texan desperado who fired from the hip, or alternatively,
through the pocket; of the businessman as someone engaged in organising
a panic. What had completed his conviction that America was still track-
less wild was the fact that in the hotel you do not put your boots outside
the room to be cleaned. I disillusioned him as gently as I could. But he
was obviously baffled and a little disappointed that he was not setting out
on a desperate adventure. Frida thought I had made him angry because
I had destroyed his excuse for not taking his wife.
We motored down to the Webbs for a day and had a good talk. I had
an amusing argument with her about the influence of aristocracy in
England. I said that France and America had discovered significances in
social equality unknown here; and that the English religion of inequality
had plastered our cabinets with third-rate men there for no other reason
than care in the selection of their parents. She disagreed; but not I think
with cause. Then we had Haldane to dinner and we fought with vigour
over the allied question of the social influence of the monarchy. He tried
to maintain its value as an imposer of standards. We challenged him to
produce a single realm of life in which it had successfully done so; and I
must say I think he made a sorry showing. Then a lunch with H. G. Wells
who talked with unreproducible brilliancy about the modem novel.
Dostoievski was, he said, the supreme practitioner, then he put Balzac;
then George Eliot; then Fielding; then Turgenev. Of the Americans he
put Hawthorne first, both for style and matter. He rated Henry James high
but thought him bewildered by the convolutions of life with the result that
he lost his way and never saw a man or a plot as an idea. We visited also
Bernard Berenson the art critic. , . . Did you ever see him? . . .
In the reading line, bed of course has meant big opportunities. I read
with real interest S. E. Morison's History of the U.S. since 1783, careful,
2 See supra, p. 661. Professor Tout was a visiting lecturer at Cornell Univer-
sity in 1928.
3 William Hale Thompson (1869-1944); Chicago's mayor, 1915-1923 and
1927-1931, whose principal joy was in pulling the tail of the British lion.
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 993
sober and convincing narrative, with a pleasurable flick of the whip every
so often. Then the Greville Diary, in its unexpurgated form; a disgusting
piece of editing but full of gloriously malicious gossip and invaluable de-
tails on cabinet-making and the relation of the Crown to ministers. And
on Brougham the new matter is as good as a play. He quite obviously had
a streak of definite insanity in him. In a very different line I have got
much instruction out of J. M. Robertson's Short History of Freethought,
which is most revealing on the diverse currents of diverse ages, and their
connections. Now and again he makes a comment which shows that he
has not read the book he is writing about, but in general it is sound work
with a proper Voltairian spirit of "ecrasez Tinfame" I reread Adam Eede
with infinite enjoyment, and Wells's Tono-Bungay, which I incline to
think is the best of all his writings. And a reprint of pamphlets4 gave me
so much pleasure that I put a copy in the post to you. They are so short
that you can read them in between arguments; and as some are old
friends you will, I am sure, recapture some early moments of pleasure.
Our love to you both. I whisper that if some money comes in I have a
half-formed plan of a month in America at Easter.
Ever affectionately yours, E. J. L.
Washington, D. C., November 16, 1927
My dear Laski: A good letter from you just opened and read. I am very
sorry that you have been down and hope you will take care of yourself and
be cautious for some time. I am glad that you liked Thompson the Boston
lawyer. He made a very favorable impression on me. The further I get
away from the S. & V. case the more I am convinced that it was hardly
the occasion for kicking up a row that the facts did not justify. (I am not
thinking of Felix's book.) The New EepuUic has seemed hysterical to me
and when (if my memory doesn't deceive me) it talked of Governor
Fuller's Sadie or Sadish thirst for blood I thought it ridiculous.1 1 am sure
of the root of the adjective — after all liberals can talk twaddle as well
as the old fogeys.
I had a fierce Sunday to do two cases — one a case that has been
postponed because of doubts, the other an effort to escape by construction
from declaring an act of Congress unconstitutional — Sutherland is ill and
*A Miscellany of Tracts and Pamphlets (A. C. Ward, ed., 192T).
Perhaps Holmes recalled an editorial comment of August 31, 1927, in
which it was suggested that Governor Fuller and his advisory committee were
"filled with an almost sadistic satisfaction" in seeing Sacco and Vanzetti as
symbols of the poor and resentful classes in society.
994 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
it looks as if I should have not less than 3 with me — as against the more
arbitrary result.2
Monday the work begins again and although I have had some heavenly
days off I haven't had as many as I wanted, and I am not unreasonable in
my demands, for I thoroughly enjoy the work when not too crowded.
I never wrote to Wells as you suggested. Somehow I did not feel fa-
miliar enough. Without somewhat personal relations it seems an intrusion
to write to a man about intimate losses.
I have read nothing to speak of. I did reread Selden's Table Talk in
Fred Pollock's new edition — with renewed appreciation of the shrewd
sceptical old bird, who drew conclusions from his learning, I like your
capacity for getting pleasure from all sorts of books. I read most of them
I read with sweat upon my brow and noting how many pages there are
and how far I have got. I think I mentioned Walter Lippmann's last vol-
ume as an exception. He is a born writer. How many big books I have
read mainly to learn that I didn't believe them, because I was afraid to
leave the fortress in the rear, although I was to find as I expected that
the guns were wooden. But of course one learns something from them,
even Karl Marx. Works intended for pleasure generally give me but a
mitigated joy — e.g. your beloved (and F. P/s Saint) Jane Austen. I
imagine that I still could take pleasure in Scott, but I have been a little
shy of later years. One big book of Dostoievski I didn't finish. I think it
was called The Idiot — or some such name. It showed great gifts, no
doubt, but I got enough. Ditto as to War and Peace though I finished it.
I once read Phineas (Phinn, Finn?) with pleasure — but that was the end
of Trollope.
If I am sardonic perhaps it is because a big filling has jumped out of
my front tooth at a moment's pause from my writing so that I must haste
to the dentist in the morning, just as I was promising myself to give him
the go by. This world is transitory and a damaged judge is of little value.
Adieu till next time. Affectionately yours, 0. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 13.XI.27
My dear Justice: This week has been rather saddened by the death of my
brother-in-law. In a sense, it was a merciful relief. He had been wounded
at the Somme in 16, and had been an invalid ever since, hardly knowing
a day without pain. But death is always a stark fact, about which one can
*Blodgett v. Holden, 275 U.S. 142 (Nov. 21, 1927). In an opinion
concurred in by three others, McReynolds, J., found portions of the Revenue
Act of 1924 unconstitutional. Holmes, with Brandeis, Sanford, and Stone, JJ.,
concurring, found it possible so to construe the statute as to save its con-
stitutionality.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 995
say nothing; and it is difficult for a complete sceptic like myself to bring
any comfort in these matters to people who (Frida, of course, apart)
want essentially confirmation in what you believe to be illusion. I at least
could not bring myself to give it; and I found that I was on the margin of
brutality in a way which was very painful.
That apart, I have been excessively busy. I had to write the article
on Bolshevism for the Encyclopedia Britannica,1 and a hellish job it was.
They gave me 5000 words; and I found I had committed the elementary
sin of collecting enough material to write five or six times as much with
ease. The only comfort I have is that I now move with assurance amid the
mysteries of a hundred sects all with uncouth names; and, as yesterday
when lunching with Churchill, an attack on Bolshevism generally can pro-
duce from me one of those tantalising diversions into the particular so
irritating to ... [one] who desires, quite naturally, to live on the plane
of the universal, Churchill, by the way, was most amusing. After three
years at the Exchequer he believes himself to be a financier of genius
with a full insight into the great mystery of the gold standard. So
I teased him gloriously by asking with the guile of simpl[icit]y all
sorts of elementary questions. What did he think would happen if
the South African gold mines doubled their output? Did he approve of
Irving Fisher's theory of a compensated dollar? Didn't he think the
burden of proof was on those who accepted the quantity theory of money?
If 4.86 is better than 3.19 for the pound sterling why is not 5 better still?
He did not (neither did I) know the answers; but all his satellites waited
for papal bulls which did not come. As all this came on top of a denunci-
ation of the Labour Party for its inability to understand the questions the
City has to face, I am afraid I thoroughly enjoyed it. I add that I like him
much; and I greatly enjoy his unique power of convincing himself as he
goes along by the sheer force of his own eloquence. I was amused too by
his obvious contempt for most of his colleagues except Birkenhead; and
his pity for Lloyd George as a fellow adventurer whose boat has missed
the tide. He interested me much by the remark that to him as a young
man Joe Chamberlain seemed like an English Robespierre in the making;
and Haldane, who was there, added that Edward VII was always a little
afraid of Joe because of his radical activities in the 'eighties. It was amus-
ing to see at that table how much still the English aristocracy is a close
corporation. All of them were in some degree related to each other (ex-
cept Haldane) and they were discussing the engagement of the Duke of
Argyll's heir to the daughter of Beaverbrook, the great newspaper owner,
as a most distressing thing. They make their small talk charming and very
graceful; but their ignorance is really colossal. Churchill had never heard
*3 Encyclopedia Britannica (14th ed., 1929) 824.
996 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
of Port-Royal; the lady next to me thought that the Richelieu of Louis
XV's reign2 was the great Cardinal and was shocked by his amours of
which she had just read, as she thought, in reading about his great-
nephew; and another person there when Churchill spoke of a visit he had
received from a descendant of Madame de Stael looked so blank that I
had to explain in an undertone. But they know all the current books, or
pictures or plays, about which there is gossip. They have an absolutely
immovable opinion of all the politicians and the novelists and the painters.
They are charming people who do not know that other worlds exist, or
that any can compete with their own. One said of Esme Howard, the
Ambassador, that it was a shame to send a decent fellow like that to
Washington. Another asked me if there were any decent histories of the
United States; and a third opined that "those Yankee fellows want taking
down a peg or two, you know." One lady said to me that she was so sur-
prised by Ramsay MacDonald's charming manners, "and his father, you
know, was only a workman." I felt that the times of Charles Greville were
really less distant than one was sometimes tempted to think.
You, I gather, float from case to case; though I hope you are at the
moment in the leisure of an adjournment. When real leisure comes, do
read Sam Morison's History of the United States which is really an ad-
mirable performance. And I commend an American novel which I thought
really good — Growth, by Booth Tarkington, an unknown name to me.
I have been reading, too, a very good translation from the Italian —
Ruggiero's History of European Liberalism which, particularly in its ac-
count of Italy and her writers opened new vistas, though when I came
across the noun Jusnaturalism I confess I was almost tempted to put the
book aside.
I do hope Mrs. Holmes has recovered from the fall. What you say of
Brandeis warms my heart; I know he on his side reciprocates it fully to
you. When he writes to me he never fails to make you the centre of what
he has to say — always with a pride and affection that are wholly de-
lightful.
My love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 20.XI.27
My dear Justice: Let me begin with the bad news. The publisher of my
Communism has gone bankrupt; with the result that instead of the four
hundred pounds he owes me (it has sold some forty thousand copies) I
shall have, I understand, about ten pounds. As I had counted on that
2 The Due de Richelieu (1696-1788), Marshal of France, was the grand-
nephew of Cardinal Richelieu.
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 997
for my American holiday at Easter, it means, I fear, that I must postpone
it until the French book is done. It is, I think, bad luck, to have written
a "best seller" and then to be deprived of the fruits thereof; but I see no
other way of meeting it except to shrug one's shoulders and go on to the
next thing.
I was distressed at your news of Wu's silence; for I have heard nothing
of him for fifteen months; and in that seething cauldron anything may
happen. Your tale of the Yale lawyer with the declamatory dedication is
superb. I once thought of a little anthology of dedications, for especially
in the 17th and 18th century some are magnificent. I have a book by Dr.
Nathaniel Johnston The Excellency of Monarchical Government (1686)
inscribed to "My Lord Widdington and others of the learned and noble
gentry beneath whose feet I am but a worm to be crushed" which gave
me pleasure; and in our own day the dedications (worth a visit to the
Library of Congress) of Roland G. Usher's1 books are eminently in the
grand tradition. I was glad to note that Felix had dedicated his book on
your court with charm;2 though I thought (not that I should say so to
him) that he had broken a butterfly on a wheel in devoting 400 pages to
an analysis of what really was worth an article.
I have had a busy time since I wrote last. A jolly dinner with H. G.
Wells who gave forth judgments with vigour. Item, J. M. Barrie had never
written a line worth a damn (warm consent) ; item, Henry James spent his
life pursuing a vain shadow; item, Santayana had sacrificed essence to
form; item, Herman Melville was easily the biggest of all the Americans
as Dostoievski of the Russians. He was off to France for the winter and
full of reckless gaiety so that the evening was a delight. I don't know a
more stimulating fellow in England. Then dinner with Haldane at which
Baldwin was the other — an amazing evening, with Haldane trying to
make out (Great God!) that Gladstone was the most important English-
man of the 19th century. Baldwin and I argued in politics for Disraeli; in
speculation for Darwin. But old Haldane was hearing the magic voice
and the heaven-sent gesture and was immovable. Baldwin contributed the
amusing fact that when a judgeship is vacant an average of 100 K.C/s
write in to explain their charms but when a Regius professorship is vacant
he has to go out searching for news of the man. Modesty of the scholar,
said I; no, said he, for most of those to whom it is offered think them-
selves too big for it. ...
1 Roland G. Usher (1880- ), Professor of History at Washington Uni-
versity, St. Louis, best known for his The "Reconstruction of the English
Church (2 vols., 1910) and The Rise and Fall of the High Commission (1913).
2 Frankfurter and Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court (1927) was
dedicated "To Mr. Justice Holmes, who, after twenty-five terms, continues to
contribute his genius to the work of a great court."
998 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
De aliis, not very much is to be told. In reading I have read one
charmer, Haussonville s Salon de Madame Necker, which has letters of
Gibbon in the calf-love stage beyond all price; Feuchtwanger s Ugly
Duchess, in many ways a remarkable picture of the Germany of circa
1350; and Villey's Sources de Montaigne which is an amazing piece of
scholarship. But, for the most part, I have been finishing an article on
Bolshevism for the Encyclopedia Britannica and ploughing through dreary
wastes of Bolshevist literature. No one, I fear can call it in the least ex-
hilarating except the elect, and I, alas, am not of them. Did I tell you that
I had traced the origins of the famous "Dictatorship of the Proletariat"
to Babeuf? As that is Marx s chief claim to strategic creativeness, and as
I dislike Marx intensely it gave me peculiar pleasure, as there is little
doubt but that he had read Babeuf with great care.
I have bought one or two nice things. From the library of Bury the his-
torian I got the Abbe Saint-Pierre's works — a great rarity, and especially
interesting in bulk like that because the resemblance to Bentham is then
so very striking. And from France one or two nice eighteenth century
things, especially a defence of toleration by Holbach which is quite re-
markable. Given a month's wanderings in France with a free hand and
I think I could make this library of mine a useful tool in the period 1610-
1789. Anyhow you shall see when you come to read volume one of the
magnum opus. But I want Goldast's Monarchia most badly, and it still,
with striking persistency, refuses even to come into the auction rooms.
My love warmly to you both. I hope Mrs. Holmes has fully recovered
from her fall. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Washington, D. C., November 23, 1927
My dear Laski: Your old friend John W, Zane has written a book — The
Story of the Law — md James M. Beck writes a letter of introduction.
Beck, you may remember, is an ex-solicitor-general and thinks that only
strokes of ill luck prevented his being Ambassador and on our Court.
Zane has an irritating ability, at once undeniable and unsatisfactory. Evi-
dently he has read a good deal, but he seems a parvenu in the world of
intellect, from his arrogant dogmatism and, unless I am wrong, his some-
what painstaking introduction of quotations or allusions that he thinks
you will not expect. The book is intended for popular reading and does
not contain new ideas but it tells the story in an interesting way and with
a sense of actuality. He begins with man in a pack and works down. Of
course, there is more of the "would" in proportion to the "did" than we
are accustomed to in these days. You remember how reconstructors of
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 999
the past a century ago were accustomed to say that in the hunting stages
men would do this and that &c. &c. Wells has begotten a progeny. We
had the story of philosophy last summer and here the story of the law
and there are others. Wells I think produced a work of art. Whatever his
faults of detail he makes you realize the world and the story of man as
one — and realize something of what it was, This book so far as I have
read has a similar merit in a less degree and is well qualified to make
semi-civilized men out of the quarter civilized. But the conceit of the
writer is amazing and I am sure that divine providence arranged that
Beck should introduce him.
Nothing else to tell. We are sitting again. All my cases and a dissent are
fired off and I begin fresh and empty. I have had nothing as yet that
excited my enthusiasm — but there is a dim spark of interest in the mean-
est case. I had a letter from A. Hill saying that Frankfurter will write
nothing more about Sacco and Vanzetti for a year. I hope it will be longer
than that, as I think all those who were interested on that side seem to
have got hysterical and to have lost their sense of proportion — but I
don't refer to his book in saying that. He has published also a good one
on The Business of the Supreme Court. He is so good in his chosen busi-
ness that I think he helps the world more in that way than he does by
becoming a knight errant or a martyr — though I don't undervalue or
fail to revere his self sacrifice in his excursions and alarums. I might say
something similar of another friend of mine.
Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
Washington, D. C., November 29, 1957
My dear Laski: Just as your letter came I received a parcel from the
China Law Review with a judgment by Wu, of late date — and I suspect
the address to be in his handwriting but he used to be an eager corre-
spondent and he has been silent for more than a year, so that I don't quite
know what to make of it as no written word explains. You speak of him
in your letter which makes me mention him first. After finishing Zane's
book of which I wrote to you I had a few hours which I filled delightfully
with your Miscellany of Tracts and Pamphlets — very good reading —
and if one used those methods, worth resorting to for new words or tricks
of speech. My judgment of Zane was not changed as I read on. There
were some things that seemed to me disproportionate toward the end —
and renewed surprise at the boorish dogmatism of one who pauses in a
history to reflect on the advantage of being born a gentleman. But the
story interests and is made pretty real and actual, a grandchild of Wells's
book.
1000 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
I am truly sorry about the publisher of your Communism — in every
aspect. As to Frankfurter's dedication, do you know that I didn't discover
it till 3 days ago? A letter from A. Hill said something about the dedica-
tion which I did not understand — I looked at the book and had to cut
that page, when lo! I was quite overcome. It touched and pleased me
much.
Isn't it queer — what you tell me about the K.C/s writing when a
judgeship is vacant! I remember one or two cases of men who wrote on
to Eliot — and then to Oxford — stating their claims to honorary degrees
— I am happy to say in vain. As to your other themes, I remember years
ago being moved by Barrie's Window in Thrums — and I have seen some
of his short plays with sentimental emotion. I am inclined to agree about
Herman Melville with considerable qualifications — and as to Gladstone.
Little as I admire him in the higher intellectual spheres, I should have
thought him more important than Disraeli. I am glad you can bore a
gimlet hole in Marx, as I think him a humbug (I mean in his reasoning),
and he almost beats Zane for patronizing side. . . .
Our cases haven't been specially interesting but we have one on where
a man is going to try to make out that for a city to go into the gasoline
business is contra the XIV Amendment. Also I hear that they have pro-
posed a nationwide referendum on the drink question. I am amused at
the recurring question as to Coolidge's meaning in saying that he didn't
"choose" to stand for a third term.1 I regard the expression as perfectly
good English and presumably saying just what he meant. But those who
justify it generally go no farther than to speak of it as a local usage. I
must get 15 minutes reading — and I have barely time for it so I shut up.
I think of things I want to say to you and forget them before the time
comes to write. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, S.XII.27
My dear Justice: If my memory serves me right, next Thursday is the
25th anniversaiy of your entrance into the Court. I need not tell you how
warm my congratulations are, nor how affectionate. It has been a great
thing for America in particular to have you there, and, in a larger sense,
for the common law jurisdictions of the world. Made antiquae virtutis!
I have had grimly busy days. A case at the Industrial Court, in which
the briefs alone were a thousand pages, has occupied four long days; and
we have still to finish conferences about it. And I have had three lectures
to give of the irritating kind that one promises months ahead and forgets
1 On August 2, 1927, President Coolidge had released his famous brevity;
"I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty-eight."
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 1001
about until the night is on you. But much has been flavoured by a grand
dinner at Sankey's to meet a number of deans and bishops. I have never
before met the breed in bulk and a queer lot they are. First — their
ignorance of their own ecclesiastical history is appalling; I talked of the
Donatists and not one of them knew what Donatism was. Secondly they
were all incapable of intellectual honesty. For example I asked them if
they thought anthropological discovery affected the place of the sacra-
ments in theology, and they all said of course as regards Roman doctrines,
but not on the Anglican side. Then we talked much of the next Arch-
bishop and for them the essential quality they desired was tact; and tact
meant what American politicians call "availability" — X would not do be-
cause he was labour; Y was too high; Z too low. A was ideal — very
colourless but he had never spoken on dogmas and being 68 would not
reign long enough to disappoint the younger men on the episcopal bench.
I would not have missed the occasion for worlds; I left feeling like Vol-
taire. And as I left Sankey gave me a beautiful folio translation of Machia-
velli (1675) which provoked a vast and bucolic dean to regret that it
was a translation. He personally always read him in the original Latin.
O God! O Montreal! Also let me chronicle an amusing dinner at which I
sat next to a great lady whom I will not name. She had just come back
from America. How distressing it was! So uncouth, so uncultured; rather
like England before there were railways. The Americans were so con-
ceited. They lacked an aristocracy to give them the grace of cultivated
tradition. Thence to books. Did I know the works of Julia Freer1 (do
you?)? There was a great historian, learned and yet naughty! So many
love stories. She adored love! There was no love in America; it was all
money. England was losing ground because the working-classes wanted
money just like the Americans instead of loving their betters as they did
when the queen was alive. The Prime Minister ought always to be a peer
— it gave confidence to know that one of the right kind was in office. In
the old days peers were always Prime Ministers. I breathed the names of
Pitt and Peel and Gladstone which she swept aside with the sublime
ejaculation "canaille." I of course encouraged her by unconcealed ad-
miration. She confided to me that her ambition had been a salon but the
arts, alas, were dead. For instance only last month she had invited Kreis-
ler to dinner and asked him to "bring his fiddle" to play afterwards and
he refused. "These artists get so much money nowadays that they are
getting above themselves." And the girls of today! Words failed her be-
yond the remark that of the daughters of her twenty closest friends not
one was a virgin. I, of course, must know that. I disclaimed all knowledge
as tactfully as I could. "Ah! but you are a man, and no man thinks of a
1 Not identified.
1002 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
woman except as an object of seduction." This from a hag of sixty with
four chins and the dress of a girl of nineteen, the professional and perma-
nent ingenue. I could have listened to her effortlessly all day; and she
was so convinced that she was profound and important.
In the way of reading I have had little time for other than work —
mainly St. Augustine. I wasn't very profoundly impressed, except by a
certain unmistakable dexterity and fullness of mind — chiefly out of Plato
and Cicero. He seemed to me to run away from all his real problems, and
to lack altogether the ability to judge oneself that makes Spinoza so
formidable an analyst. Curiously, I was less moved by the magna opera
than by the letters some of which, e.g. No. 185, struck me as the work
of a first-class administrator; and in general I offer the bet that there is
no originality left in Bossuet after you have made your way through
Augustine. He did have the effect on me of wanting to know more of
Roman Africa which I have marked down as an enviable subject for
leisure. The Zane you mention I do not know even by name, but I should
like its exact title if you have it at hand. I cannot, I fear, quite bear the
thought that there is the hand of J. M. Beck upon it for the latter always
seemed to me an intolerable pompous ass — I remember his remarking
at a Gray's Inn dinner that "Pollock had quite a standing among American
lawyers" which is like an undergraduate explaining that his fellow thought
well of Bentley.2 I think I wrote to you that Felix's book seemed to me
over-elaborate for its theme. The essential stuff could have been put in
100 pp and the mass of notes were I thought not worth the labour; but,
of course, I speak here as an ignoramus on the subject. Another book I
have been reading with much pleasure is J. M. Robertson's Short History
of Freethought in which I have just got to the middle ages — really
learned and revealing. It confirms me in my old belief that religion ought
to make God abdicate if he knows anything of its habits.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., December 15, 1927
My dear Laski: My thanks for your references to my 25th anniversary.
I think that I should have forgotten it had not Brandeis and a few others
sent me kind remembrances and a little later Frankfurter's articles in the
Harvard Law Review1 reinforced his dedication — which I did not dis-
2 Richard Bentley (1662-1742), Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, whose
monumental classical learning has seldom been excelled.
1 "Mr. Justice Holmes and the Constitution/' 41 Haw. L. Rev. 121 (Decem-
ber 1927).
1927] HOLMES TO LASKI 1003
cover until a letter from A. Hill referred to it. You are better than usual,
if possible, with your account of the Dean who reads Machiavelli in the
original Latin, and the great lady with her penetrating criticisms of
America and her revelations about her friends (and of herself). I haven't
had time for reading yet, but I have got off my only opinion, a bothering
one, and received it back approved from the Chief, Brandeis et al.2 and
have done my certioraris, so that now all that I have on my conscience
for the next two weeks, is to try to make up my mind whether some gas
rates are confiscatory3 (Harlan used to call it confiscatory) and the den-
tist. At odd minutes I have read your little book of Tracts and Pamphlets.
Among the later ones I was rather touched by Wesley and stirred by Tom
Paine. I should have been slightly nauseated by Newman had he not
been too remote for anything but curiosity. I haven't quite finished Kings-
ley, the only one not read. He makes me squirm, even while I dislike him
as a wholesome parson imbued with convictions that I do not share.
Zane's book is The Story of Law. John M. Zane, Ives Washbum, pub-
lisher, New York. You did know of him and were savage — I forget
exactly the occasion. You will be pleased to know that he said in an article
that anyone who thought my Kawananakoa v. Polyblank decision right
might give up all hope of being a lawyer. In this book he dismisses Plato
as incredibly conceited, as formerly he dismissed all German law specu-
lation (but that was during the war) and spit on his hand and wiped all
the sequence from Hobbes to Austin off the slate. He never has told, so
far as I know, what the great philosophy is that takes the place of all
these — but I guess he thinks there ain't no such critter but just the sensi-
ble practising lawyer to be found in John M. Zane. He affects the tone
of scholarship yet somehow seems to me a parvenu in the business. But I
think he has told the story very well for its purpose. Perhaps you will
regard it as an index that he seems to consider Vinogradoff as the great
jurist of the century. Vinogradoff was learned, but so far as I have come
in contact with his thought on legal themes it has not struck me as im-
portant. Do you agree? I am not malevolent in my attitude to Zane, but it
tickled all that is evil in me to have him introduced and recommended
by Beck. (There are many who suppose that Beck is a great constitutional
lawyer.) I never read anything of Si Augustine except the Confessions,
which interested me, though I couldn't recite very well on them now. You
don't surprise me as to Bossuet, nor very much about Augustine, but on
the latter I don't know enough to speak. I see no one except the JJ., and
the rare caller who gets in, like your Ambassador and his wife, both of
2 Probably Equitable Trust Co. v. First National Bank, 275 U.S. 347 (Jan. 3,
1928).
8 The case has not been identified.
1004 HOLMES TO LASKI [1927
whom I like sincerely. I haven't yet got free from the cramp of continued
application that I have felt ever since I have been here. I suppose I may
live to expatiate free again.
My love to you all and a merry Xmas. Yours as ever, 0. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 12.XIL27
My dear Justice: I imagine that this letter ought to arrive about Xmas.
You know how warm are our good wishes to you both,
I was relieved to hear that you had received signs of life from Wu. I
enquired at the Foreign Office here about him and they have sent out an
enquiry. Could you let me have his exact address? They say that with it
they can obtain exact information adding that it will take some time.
I was amused by your further account of Zane. It reminds me a good
deal of a colleague of mine at McGill University who used to commence
his courses on English Literature by explaining that attendance thereat
did not constitute a personal introduction to him as a man of his birth
and breeding could not possibly know students outside the lecture room.
Only last night I was told of a young man who applied for the post of
secretary to Curzon. The latter asked if he was married. "Yes" said the
applicant. Curzon hoped his wife was a lady; if so when they were in
want of an extra woman for dinner she might be put on the list of avail-
ables. The candidate thereupon abruptly explained that he was no longer
a candidate. "Dear me," said Curzon, "do you think it fair to deprive your
wife of the social opportunities she could have by dining with us?" Could
the sublimity of insolence really go farther than that?
The days since I wrote last have been very full of that disease of com-
mittees which accumulate about the end of term. And students have
poured in relentlessly — including an American who only wanted me to
ask Lloyd-George for him who had bought peerages while he was in
office; and a German who presented me with an article upon the social
theories of Graham Wallas in which in twenty odd pages (odd in a dou-
ble sense) he compared him to thirty-one different German sociologists.
Nor must I omit the Chinese student who wanted us to let him do a LL.D.
and on investigation turned out to be the son of one of the most eminent
pirates now operating in Chinese waters. You must admit that an aca-
demic life offers the prospect of very varied experience.
The most pleasant person I have encountered at all intimately these
last weeks is our new professor of economics, Allyn Young, who comes
to us from Harvard. I don't know if you ever encountered him in his
Washington days. I find him learned, simple, and well-balanced. He
agrees with my main feelings about education, especially in the view
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 1005
that half the people now doing research, especially on the co-operative
plan are quite unfit for it. His affection for Felix and F. J. Turner is of the
right intensity; and he entirely dislikes the Harvard Business School.
These are the beginnings of wisdom. I had him in to dinner the other
night with Bonar the economist, and it was a delight to hear a series of
conflicts about purely scholarly matters e.g. where the physiocrats got
their ideas of natural law from, what is the most unintelligible sentence in
Hegel (a good subject for an anthology) and the real nature of Mrs. J. S.
Mill. I also had an adorable lunch with Birrell who told me he had been
reading the early Fathers of the Church and had been completely con-
verted to Manichaeism by the official proofs of its heterodoxy. He said he
had been going through his fee-book and found that after he took silk
all his biggest fees came from cases he had lost. We discussed the present
bench and he took the interesting view that, on an average, the political
appointments were vastly inferior to the non-political. I told him of Felix's
arguments about the value of a grasp of affairs through political experi-
ence in his book and Birrell denied this with vigour. He insisted that the
lawyer appointed direct from politics always showed hostility to experi-
ments in the direction which ran counter to his own political views —
that the word "reasonable" was something he could not interpret "reason-
ably." Which, as he confirmed my private prejudices, pleased me much.
With great deference, I submit that you, Learned Hand and Cardozo
would not have been better judges by coming to the Bench from a politi-
cal career; and it is surely significant that Bowen, Blackburn and Mac-
Naghten were all non-political while Jessel was a dead failure in the
House of Commons.
In the way of reading there is, I fear, but little to record, for I cannot,
I fear, hope to persuade you to follow my footsteps through the dreary
track of S. Augustine. More pleasant was a good detective story by one
Crofts called Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy and a charming
fantasy by an American writer named Thornton Wilder called The Bridge
of San Luis Rey. Otherwise I have not found time for experiment on any
scale and Augustine produced in me a sense of irritation. Theology cer-
tainly needs faith as a compensation for its incredible prolixity and any
bigger draught of it would make me a militant atheist anxious to do bat-
tle with the credulous.
I had an amusing book-adventure. I found a nice copy of a 16th cen-
tury Aristotle — the Politics — with a coat of arms on the binding. I paid
ten shillings for it and then went on to a shop where the bookseller prayed
me to re-sell it to him. I changed it there for a nice Locke in four quarto
volumes. When these came home Alexander, the philosopher, was having
tea here. I opened the Locke and he immediately sighed with envy and
1006 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
offered to exchange something for them. I acquiesced and am now the
possessor of John Adams's Works in ten volumes. Frida is urgent that the
process of exchange should stop there lest I end up with the Law Reports
and drive her to found a new house.
I go North on Thursday for a week to give two lectures at Manchester
University. Then home for Xmas and then a few days on the Continent
before term begins. I think Antwerp, and if the money holds out, on to
Amsterdam.
Our warm love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., December 24, 1927
My dear Laski: Your account of Curzon and the man who applied for the
post of Secretary is striking and British. There was a simplicity and single-
heartedness in Curzon's insolence that almost made it cease to be such —
an English quality that to such a double-dyed sceptic as me is impressive.
To be cock-sure is to have power. It comes in curious contrast to what I
was saying yesterday to Brandeis. When we were boys we used to run
tiddledies on the frog pond in the Common — that is jump from piece to
piece of the ice, each being enough to jump from but sinking under you
if you stopped. I said having ideas was like running tiddledies — if you
stopped too long on one it sank with you. The thought was suggested to
me by reading a collection of essays on The Social Sciences and Their
Inter-relations edited by Ogburn and Goldenweiser — Houghton Mifflin
& Co. The writers seem to take it for granted, as indeed do the scientific
men whom I see, that the Spencerian straight line evolution is a dream
— that there is no sufficient evidence that the matriarchate preceded the
patriarchate (as a general fact) that the original promiscuity is an inven-
tion of the anthropologists &c, &c, &c. I think I will cease straggling and
be an old fogey — for how the devil one can write decisions and do what
the newspaper men call keeping abreast with the times I do not see.
Before I forget it: Wu's name is John C. H. Wu — and his headquarters
or address used to be lla Quinsan Road, Shanghai — and a paper that
I received lately containing a decision of his I think came from the same
address. He was a member of the Shanghai Provisional Court. But if he
is there and all right and if he sent me the decision I can't imagine why
he has not written to me for so long. lla Quinsan Road seems to have
been the headquarters also of The Comparative Law School of China —
Law Department of Soochow University — described on the title page of
the China Law Review — Volume 1, 1922-24 as the publishers of the
periodicals — with that address.
It is Christmas Eve and I am so interrupted and upset that I will not
try to continue — except to send you every good wish. I have had two
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 1007
presents from disconnected men of a bottle of whiskey — which raises a
misgiving in the mind of a careful observer of the Volstead Act but recalls
the prayer Lead us into temptation.
Affectionately yours, O. W, Holmes
Devon Lodge, 28.XIL27
My dear Justice: I have lived in a whirl of business since I wrote last.
First two heavy cases at the Industrial Court which caused me pain and
woe in the mere discovery of the facts, but in which I hope we have done
substantial justice. Then a visit to Nottingham to speak at the University
there; then to Manchester where I lectured twice and spent a week-end
with my people. One lecture amused me a good deal. I spoke on the
prospects of parliamentary government and one young man — I should
guess a briefless barrister, at least I hope briefless — deplored my failure
to preach a return to the great ideals of Athens where the citizens
gathered in the market place and spoke their mind to Pericles. So ,1
pointed out, as nicely as I could, that if an English citizen wandered into
Downing Street and spoke his mind to Mr. Baldwin he would certainly be
fined a guinea for disorderly conduct and probably remanded for exami-
nation by a mental specialist. When I got back there was the necessary
excitement of Xmas and now we are busy packing for a week in Antwerp
during which I hope though a little vaguely to have a look at the book-
shops of Amsterdam.
I thought Felix's piece in the December number of the Law Review1
quite excellent in tone and temper, though he did not say one of the
tilings I should have said, namely that comparing what you write with
the judgments of Marshall you give a useful sense of a complex world
into which with great effort a few sign-posts may be driven while Mar-
shall always seems to suggest that the world is a damned simple place
and he especially knows all about it. Somewhere lingering in me is a
suspicion (dare I utter it) that Marshall is rather an overrated person
and that he would have been much happier with sturdy Philistines like
Field and Brewer and Peckham than with civilised creatures like you and
Brandeis. I add that I was amazed by the article by Pound which followed
on Felix's;2 at first it didn't seem to me to mean anything and a second
reading convinces me that if it does, what it has to say isn't particularly
worth while. If ever a man lived beneath the tyranny of categories it is
Pound, and the habit of thinking them realities seems to grow on him.
A page of Morris Cohen is worth a whole article by him.
1 Supra, p. 1003.
2 "The Progress of the Law: Analytical Jurisprudence, 1914-27" (Part I), 41
Harv. L. Rev. 174 (December 1927).
1008 LASKI TO HOLMES [1927
In the way of reading I have not been able to do much. I read the
autobiography o£ Haydon the painter3 which the publisher sent me and
thought it a painful and morbid document. Then a really excellent book
by one Allan Nevins (whom otherwise I do not know) on the American
States from 1783-9, full of curious and quite fascinating detail — a
worthy book for an idle afternoon. And a long train journey made me
pick out Maitland's Leslie Stephen which is, I swear, the second biog-
raphy in English, Leslie's Life of Fitzjames being indubitably the best,
I was grateful for details of Zane for whom I have sent. Evidently he
does not know BirrelTs definition of a gentleman — a man who makes
his opponent in controversy say "I wish I had said that first." But from
your remarks I infer there is the prospect of instruction.
I had one book adventure in Nottingham that will please you. You
perhaps know Forsytes Cases and Opinions in Constitutional Law — a
really rare book which sells for eight or nine pounds. I bought it in the
market-place at Nottingham for 7/6. When I got to Manchester my
brother's eyes fell covetously on the Forsyth and he spoke strongly about
the imminence of his birthday. I, therefore, with unshed tears, presented
it to him. The next day, in Manchester, I saw a copy for 5/ — and, of
course, gladly bought that. Going to the University to lecture I met
Powicke the historian4 on the bus, I having the book in my hand — he
cried out that he had looked for Forsyth for twelve years without ever
seeing a copy outside a public library. I, moved by his obvious, though
discreet, envy, and liking Powicke in every way, thereupon insisted that
he take rny copy and thereby, let me in honesty add, recognised that I
sealed him to myself forever. So I returned to London feeling that one
could possibly, at least in the realm of books, push the Sermon on the
Mount too far. Lo! cometh Xmas day and my assistants send me, with
their warm regard, a copy of Foisyth with the name of Lord Bowen upon
the fly-leaf. My dear Justice, cast thy bread upon the waters if thou start-
est with assistant like mine.
I was much distre^ed by a note in Felix's paper which indicated the
death of young Henderson.5 I did not know him well, but all I knew sug-
a Probably The Autobiography and Memoirs of Benjamin Robert Haydon,
1786-1846 (Penrose, ed, 1927).
* (Sir) Maurice Powicke (1879- ); Professor of Medieval History, Uni-
versity of Manchester, 1919-1928; Regius Professor of Modern History, Oxford,
1928-1947.
5 In 41 Harv. L. Rev. 126, note 15, Professor Frankfurter had referred to
the untimely death of Gerard Carl Henderson (1891-1927). Henderson, while
a law student, wrote The Position of Foreign Corporations in American Con-
stitutional Law (1918) and later published The Federal Trade Commission
(1924). His widow was the daughter of Professor F. W. Taussig, the Harvard
economist,
1927] LASKI TO HOLMES 1009
gested a mind of real penetration and candour. It must be a heavy blow
for Taussig.
Of other things there is little to tell, though I wish I could transcribe
a talk in Manchester with a youth of eighteen convinced that he was
born to write and urgent that I should tell his father (a wealthy cotton-
broker) that a couple of thousand a year was the debt parental toil owed
to filial genius. My refusal (I abridge an epic) ended with his hint that
middle-aged failures never lend a helping hand to the new generation.
He knew all the cliches of Ibsen by heart,
May 1928 bring you both all that I am eager it should!
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L,
VI
Devon Lodge, 8.1.28
My dear Justice: We got back yesterday from a divine week in Antwerp.
Talk of the best kind; food that even I appreciated as different; two per-
fect etchings; and a host of old books the mere finding of which was
ecstasy. The man I enjoyed most there was an old Belgian Jesuit who
had been for nearly forty years a missionary in China. Religion had ceased
to have much meaning for him and he had, I think consciously, devoted
himself to Chinese anthropology. He was a brilliant fellow, with that
suave sensibility which makes the Jesuits so much the ablest and most
attractive of all the Catholics. I asked him how he had managed to stay
so long without being moved; he said that he always arranged his diseases
at a suitable moment. I asked, too, much about his religious work. He said
that he went over convinced that he had a great mission and stayed con-
vinced that he was being humanised. Did he ever have religious doubts?
Yes, but when they came anthropology was an antitoxin. Had he ever seen
evidence that the Chinese were influenced by his teaching. Answer: a
good Chinaman will not be harmed by Christianity, and a bad Chinaman
is less likely to starve if he becomes a Christian. After all, he thought, it
was good for China to know that Confucius and Lao-Tse had their Euro-
pean confrere. He objected to no form of religion except Baptists; the
latter he disliked because they really thought their dogmas were impor-
tant. The only Christian dogma to which he clung was the necessity of
beautiful music in the church positively; and, negatively, the aesthetic
horror of extempore prayer. Another attractive person was an antiquarian,
who kept one of the finest engraving-shops I have ever seen; you would
have revelled in his Rembrandts and Whistlers and Rops. He told me
that he started as a boy in the shop he now owns. Thirty years ago the
proprietor was going to sell it; but Leys, the Flemish painter, could not
bear the notion that the place where he had coffee every Friday at eleven
might possibly cease to exist and persuaded a Belgian millionaire to lend
my friend the capital for its acquisition. Now it has become a kind of
centre for the artists of Antwerp and from dawn till dawn you can hear
why Rodin was bourgeois, why Cezanne is the greatest of all artists, why
Maeterlinck is tenth-rate, that etatisme is a crime against humanity, that
il faut soufrir pour etre dScore, and so on; all the most obvious back-chat
of an artistic milieu, and yet all fresh and living because so deeply felt.
The book-hunting was adorable, even though I did not, as I hoped, get
to Amsterdam. For the first two days I drew a blank, there being nothing
but old Flemish books; but I later found a man with a heap of things in
a stable and therefrom recovered a volume of contemporary criticisms of
Montesquieu, one of them intensely interesting since it attacked his in-
dulgence for the government of England and argued that on his own
principles English success in the art of government had no relevance to
the conditions of France. I found a charming volume of Abbadie, Les vies
1014 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
des hommes de lettres illustres with a most attractive account of Descartes
therein and a book by one Gin, of which I fear you may not have heard,
but which is important for me as it shows the influence of Bodin in direc-
tions usually unrelated to his ideas,1 1 bought also a new book by Thibau-
det, the French critic, called La repubticque des professeurs, a kind of
history of French thought since 1900 which is as brilliant and as brilliantly
written a book as I have read in many a day, Altogether a most satisfac-
tory visit. And I spent a day in the Mus£e Plantin and sat in the chair
where Lipsius corrected the proofs of his texts with the fear of Scaliger's
criticisms in his mind, not without emotion. The house we stayed in (an
architect-friend's) was itself a poem. Built in 1405, most of the original
remains, especially its exquisite interior court, and its perfect Gothic
fagade. Really it is a crime that you and I cannot have a month in Europe
together so that I could show you my Paris and my Antwerp and my
patch of Prague that I would not change for the wealth of the Indies.
Thanks for the address of Wu. I have written to Austen Chamberlain
and asked him to make suitable inquiries discreetly and you shall hear at
once. The court I believe still functions which, at least, means one has
ground for hope. But in China just now one ceases to expect anything
but the worst.
I came back to a flooded London and a dinner party at Bernard Shaw's
where the guest was Chesterton. They both, I thought, talked clever non-
sense interminably under the impression that it was metaphysics, and
Chesterton acted as though the creation of a paradox is proof of genius.
Shaw (to speak in your private ear) rather bored me. He talks as though
he knows that Europe is listening at the keyhole to what he says; and he
has, consequently, a reckless disregard for truth where this is in conflict
with sensation that I really find a painful thing. And the adulation which
surrounds him is irritating beyond words. He says something which makes
you revolt; you contradict; and his audience looks at you as though you
had spat upon the Eucharist. When e.g. he and Chesterton maintain that
there has been no intellectual freedom in Europe since the middle ages
what can you do except be vehement. Yet with his audience that kind of
cheap paradox is greeted as an ex cathedra pronouncement from Rome.
I am permanently anti-papal.
Our love warmly to you both. Please take great care in the cold weather
that I read of in Washington. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Probably Pierre Gin, Les vrais principes du gouvernement frangais (1777),
an attempted refutation of Montesquieu and Mably.
HOLMES TO LASKI 1015
Washington, D. C., January 11, 1928
My dear Laski: A double extra delightful letter from you this morning —
with the wonder tale of Forsyth — a work of which I remember the out-
side better than the inside — and your astute remarks on Marshall. You
may recall on reflection that in our Collected Legal Papers we had a few
remarks on that sage — which led Roosevelt to doubt whether I was the
right man to appoint to this bench. I only think you should not make it
a trait of Marshall especially — it was the mark of the time, a god-fearing,
simple time that knew nothing of your stinking twisters but had plain
views of life. Story and Kent seem to me similar in that way — and I
never have noticed any marked or extraordinary self-satisfaction to Mar-
shall. They were an innocent lot and didn't need caviare for luncheon.
I am all in the law again and reading next to nothing. I do constantly
miss my friend Rice who was boss of the print department. That depart-
ment offers a rather finite sphere of interest but there always was a little
mystery of possible enchantment when I went over for a morning with
him — and perhaps still more when I thought of going over without
going. I haven't bought a print since he died — bar a Japanese trifle or
two which I don't count.
Last night I set my wife to reading to us a Japanese woman's account
of her bringing up and life that interests me much. (A Daughter of the
Samurai — by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto. Doubleday Page & Co.) Her ac-
count of one of the old Samurai after the new order had come in was like
the most moving tales of the old French noblesse. She last sees him as
doorkeeper in a shop, opening and shutting for those who in her youth
would have touched the earth with their foreheads when he rode by —
but with the same old dignity and little smile. My first Japanese student
was like that. He was given 2 swords when he was 12 and told he could
draw one when he chose but that if he did he must kill either the other
feller or himself before putting it back.
As you say that you expect instruction from Zane by reason of what I
said, I protest — I hardly think much instruction, but, as I said before, a
realizing sense of the movement of the law — in a less degree the kind of
thing done by Wells — and oh my lights — oh my liver — introduced to
the public by that other great man Beck! I am pleased to notice how
frequently our estimates agree.
Last night in my hour off after dinner, being unwilling to take up
anything that I must finish if I began it, and having nothing particular in
mind, I browsed a bit in the Dictionary of Modern English Usage, which
embodies all my convictions so far as I have seen, and once in a while has
a wrinkle that had escaped me — e.g. the distinction between "especially"
and "specially" — but I think my instinct would have kept me right. It
1016 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
led to a misgiving for a moment after I had written especially on page 1
of this (last line) but I believe it is right.
You see how dry I am when I am in the Chamber of the Law, but I do
wish you and yours all good things for the new year. It has begun pleas-
antly for me. Your address Bridge Place has given me a slight apprehen-
sion for you as to the floods but I hope an idle one.
Affectionately yours, 0. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 21.1.28
My dear Justice: Your delightful letter of January 12 [sic] was very wel-
come; and I was glad that you did not feel unsympathetic to my heresies
about Marshall. The floods here were pretty ghastly — in places like the
desolation of a tidal wave. But the position of this house in a cut de sac
renders it, luckily, remote from any prospect of inundation. Two maids
in the house of a friend of ours — Haldane's niece — were actually
drowned as they slept in bed.
I have had a very busy time since term began. First a good deal of
writing to do, some of it, as a piece on Rousseau for the Yale Review,1
really pleasant as making one think out a judgment in general terms;
other parts, as book-reviews, irritating because you have never quite the
space to say what you want. Then I have had some lectures to give be-
yond my ordinary work; and the melancholy business of committees. If
academic people are Plato's philosopher-kings, I think I am in favour of
government by the ignorant. Yesterday I was at a board for over an hour
which devoted passionate energy to the question whether the title of a
thesis should be "Lord Odo Russell's Embassy in Berlin" or "Anglo-
German Relations while Lord O.K. was at the Embassy" I have rarely
seen such heat; and my tentative suggestion that the matter was not really
very important won only grim head-shakings and the expression of a fear
that I was undermining the standards of the university. On the whole
I am not very impressed by government by dons. They are remote from
life; they have what the Freudians call an "inferiority complex" about
business; and that makes them wrangle interminably about petty details
without much regard to their importance.
You will have seen about Hardy's burial in the Abbey — to me a mel-
ancholy spectacle. First the old man deliberately did not want it; and
second I object on principle to the Church getting kudos from men who
reject its doctrines. I never thought that men like Shaw would take part
in a ceremony which was built on dogma Hardy spent his life in deny-
ing; but I suppose even a neo-Jew like myself cannot quite grasp what
^'Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau," 17 Yale Review (N.S.) 702 (July
1928).
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1017
burial in the Abbey means to Christians. His death made me reread some
of his things. I marked him up for power and sense of the beauty in
nature; but I thought some crude and most of the poetry in no sense
poetry at all. But Tess and Jude and The Mayor of Casterbridge were
assuredly in the great tradition.
In reading, I have had rather a jolly time. I read Paul Masson's Reli-
gion de J. J. Rousseau, certainly the best explanation of him that there is,
and above all valuable because it makes so very plain the relationship of
R. to the religious reaction of Chateaubriand and his period. Then Miss
Haldane's Life of Descartes, good journeyman's work. It did not make me
admire Descartes unduly as a person — that cold self-centredness is singu-
larly unattractive, and the tone of his letters to Christina of Sweden makes
one literally sick. Then I read the new volume of Queen Victoria's Letters,
which I do urge you at least to turn over if they come your way. She was
just like the popular conception of the Kaiser except that she was the
formal head of a system able to neglect her opinions. Vicious, obstinate,
ungenerous, the creature of flattery, and with no power at all of self-
criticism. If Dilke and Chamberlain had known what she was saying of
them at the time, Republicanism in the eighties would have been a seri-
ous business. And finally — curious juxtaposition — I have been reading
St. Thomas Aquinas for my lectures and finding myself literally thrilled
by the perverse ingenuity of his mind. I am quite sure that in an extra
life I should devote my days to the study of medieval philosophy, and
especially that exquisite problem of the Arabs as a medium between
Greece and the medieval world. Aquinas getting William of Moerbeck
sent to Greece to find more accurate mss of the Politics is a fascinating
spectacle.2
1 have bought, too, some pretty things. Two nice volumes of Holbach
go far towards making my set of him complete; and I was tempted by,
and feel for, the new national edition of Descartes in which I find the
correspondence most attractive. Mersenne3 is an attractive person; and one
feels that he had a good many qualities like to those of Felix. Then a
glorious folio of Loyseau, and a not so handsome one of La Roche-Flavin's
Treize livres des parlements which gives me the French juristic tradition
from 1600 — D'Aguesseau, and interests me enormously because I think
I can see in it one day the prospect of a comment on what Bodin was
trying to do which might be provocative. I went, the other day, to
Sotheby's to bid on a book; and there I saw some Rembrandts that were
2 William of Moerbeke (ca. 1215-1286); classical scholar and orientalist and
the first translator of Aristotle's Politics.
8Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), theologian, mathematician, and philosopher
whose warm friendship for Descartes was proved when he became his ardent
defender in Paris when Descartes was in exile in Holland.
1018 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
literally as fine as the day they were taken from the copper, But they
brought prices which made me fade silently into the darkening shadows
of Bond Street.
We have hardly been out in the last fortnight through pressure of work.
But I have had a tea with Birrell and a dinner vyhich it may amuse you to
hear of. Birrell was very full of a book by Birkenhead called Points of
View. "He thinks/' said Birrell, "that if he spits in the street men will
think it the waters of Heaven." He has satisfied himself that Demosthe-
nes, Cicero, and Burke combined to give him birth; and having satisfied
himself that this is so, he has compelled every half-wit in London to take
him at his own valuation. I said to Birrell that he seemed to feel very
strongly about Birkenhead. "Wouldn't you?" said Birrell. "I met him on
the street fust now and the fellow had the insolence to say that Lamb was
not a loveable person." I wish I could reproduce the tone in which the
words "the fellow" tumbled from Birrell's mouth. Another great remark
of BirrelFs was that the new school of poetry (the Sitwells et al.) seem to
think that Apollo played not the lyre but a brass band. At dinner I sat
next to a great lady whom I leave unnamed. She asked me if I were a
Theosophist and I said I was afraid not. Then for 20 minutes she ex-
plained its glories to me and begged for my adhesion. She even offered to
meet me on the astral plane but not on Tuesdays and Fridays when she
had engagements. She told me that she vividly remembered living in 16th
century Italy where she was Lucretia Borgia, and that in retrospect there
was a cloying sweetness about her sins. Afterwards, her husband asked me
if she had told me this; I had to admit it. "There have been moments/'
he said, "when I wished I was the Borgian Pope." But the husband told
me the best thing I have heard in many a day. An Irish farmer and his
wife go round the Dublin gallery. He calls out the number of the picture,
and she announces its title from the catalogue. She reads slowly and gets
a little mixed. They stand in front of a nude by Degas and he calls out
"901" to which she replies "Queen Elizabeth preparing to receive the
Spanish Ambassador." But I grow profane.
My love warmly to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., January 23, 1928
My dear Laski: This begins a letter that I don't know when I can finish
seeing that I have a five to four case just assigned to me in which I am
the doubting fifth.1 But I must say that you stir depths when you speak of
showing me your Paris and your Antwerp. Also I am charmed by your old
Belgian Jesuit and delighted at your experience with Shaw and Chester-
1 The case has not been identified; perhaps it was Casey v. United States 276
U.S. 413, infra, p. 1027.
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1019
ton. I have told you often that I didn't care what Shaw thought about
anything — that I regard him as he once described himself as a mounte-
bank — good to make you laugh but not to be taken too seriously. When
Chesterton tackles fundamentals he seems to me incompetent. When he
utters paradoxical epigrams he amuses me — but as to him also I don't
care what he thinks.
'Tis done — my opinion has gone to the printer and I hope even that it
may convince Brandeis who took the opposite view. Two generations
ahead of me there was a well known lawyer in Boston, Charles G. Lor-
ing,2 whom my mother-in-law pronounced a really good man because he
never took a case that he didn't believe in — perhaps a more sardonic
way of putting it would be that he believed in every case that he took.
My senior partner3 was a student in his office and one day Loring working
on a brief said "I pursue this investigation with increasing confidence" —
a good touch of human nature which I now illustrate, having convinced
myself quite comfortably. Dear me — how can man take himself so seri-
ously — in view not only of the foregoing, but of the fact that a change
in the wind or the electrical condition will change his whole attitude to-
ward life. Of course he can't help being serious in living and functioning,
but I mean in attributing cosmic importance to his thought and believing
that he is in on the ground floor with God. This interjection comes up to
me so often that I can't help repeating it often as I probably have uttered
it before.
1 was amused last night by a number of the Mercure de France sent
to me by Gerrit Miller4 with an article intended to show that Casanova
when he wrote his memoirs in his old life was an omnivorous reader, and
as the reporters say in their rancid language — abreast of the times —
that therefore various coincidences with a work by Diderot then attributed
to the Chevalier de la Morliere, with Faublas and with Restif de la Bren-
tonne, indicate that he had read the works referred to and heightened his
memoirs with high lights from those sources.5 If you are a Casanovan this
may interest you. C's book did me good at a critical moment — just when
I had got out my Common Law and had some symptoms that for the
moment I mistook for a funeral knell. It is an amazing work as no doubt
you know. There is also a queer article on Goethe which I hardly glanced
2 Charles Greeley Loring (1794-1867'), enthusiastic conservative and lead-
ing member of the Boston bar whose energies were devoted almost exclusively
to professional affairs.
8 George Otis Shattuck (1829-1897); Holmes twice paid public tribute to
Shattuck's memory: 14 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society
(2nd Series) 367 (November 1900); Speeches, 70.
* Supra, p. 737.
5Edouard Maynial, "Les memoires de Casanova et les conteurs francais du
XVIIP siecle," 201 Mercure de France 112 (January 1928).
1020 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
at that interprets the seeming babble of the witch in Faust as a summary
of mystic doctrine and I believe the key to the poem and to Goethe.6
Probably I have told you, for you know all that I know, of seeing on the
fences just after our war an advertisement ST 1860 X and saying and
proving to myself that if one accepted that as a revelation of the ultimate
secret one would be surprised at the corroboration that a fortnight could
develop — which may be taken as an appendix to the second page of this
letter.
Also I have bought the new edition of the Greville Memoirs and per-
haps may read them and give serious thought a rest. They profess to be
unexpurgated although abridged, and to contain much that was left out
in former days on account of the Queen. But all reading is still in antici-
pation until the opinion is sent out. It is curious how many cases open
some, little it may be, vista of legal speculation, if the general interests
you more than the particular. I remember that the first time I was in
London Henry Adams remarked that interest in general propositions
means the absence of particular knowledge — a good caution for the
young but not true throughout life. I am not afraid to confess the foible.
My secretary7 at this moment tells me of a little girl who told her mother
that another little girl had white things in her head that bite — and her
mother was alarmed, needlessly — she meant teeth. I had a drive in Rock
Creek Park this morning, and walked down to the big open air bird cage.
There is a new one now below it and two smaller ones — but revocare
gradus [sic] and to walk back up the little hill I found a hardish job —
age creeps on. It was delightful all the same. And so I wait for your next
adventures. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
We have had almost no snow as yet — but February I always fear.
Devon Lodge, 28.1.28
My dear Justice: Today we got the distressing news that Felix's mother
was dead, and I feel for him so deeply that I find this distance from him
loathsome. Words of comfort on paper seem somehow to make one more
conscious of isolation. I had a great affection for the old lady. She had
such devotion to Felix — a sure way to my heart — such sterling com-
monsense and so vivid a personality. There stands out always in my
mind a dinner with Gertrude King1 when the latter was explaining her
exploits in Russia. "And did you learn the language?", asked Felix.
"Enough," said the great lady, "to get what I wanted in the shops."
"Pierre Masclaux, "Le grand oeuvre de Goethe/' id. 80.
7 Arthur E. Sutherland, Jr., supra, p. 975.
1 Supra, pp. 503, 618, 621.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1021
"Ah/7 remarked Mrs. Frankfurter, "when one has the money, one can
buy in any language." Twelve years after that strikes a happy chord in
my memory.
It has been a busy week. I have been arbitrating alone between the
Borough of Aberdeen and its employes, and though the procedure was
stately and dignified, it was hard work. And I had to deliver a founder's
oration to a little secular society which descends straight from the Ben-
thamites; and though I knew what I wanted to say, I had a fancy for
that polish in saying it which means a retirement into the corner to con-
sider one's adjectives. However in my reply to the debate I achieved
what I thought a not unhappy remark. A clerical gentleman who had
come to denounce did his duty vigorously, and represented with com-
plete adequacy theological knowledge circa 1500. He spoke of my eulogy
of the cleansing effects of Voltaire as "a shameful eulogy of a shameful
career" and congratulated himself on the hope that God would deal with
me. So I permitted myself to point out the danger of thinking that the
deeper the woolliness of one's mind, the more one would be identified
with the lamb of God, and left it at that.
I have been reading a good deal, though mostly in the line of work.
One book — Le rdle politique des protestants 1688-1715 — by Dedieu
has been a revelation, for it shows that Bayle's very eminent adversary,
the Calvinist minister Jurieu, was throughout the last twenty years of
his life a spy in the pay of William III and Anne; which, naturally, makes
one alter a good deal one's sense of his ideas and aims. I wish I knew
whether Bayle had guessed this. It would give a very different colour to
the famous Avis aux refugies and his subsequent contortions if he had.
Then I have been working rather hard at Babeuf for a school lecture
and discovering that when one gets at the texts — now rare and almost
irretrievable — a good deal of light is thrown on Marx's views about
political tactics — that as he raped Saint- Simon for one set of ideas, so
he raped poor Babeuf for others; and I can't find that he made even a
passing reference of thanks for what he took. Another impressive book
was Cahen's Condorcet which explains a noble man nobly. And in a
veiy different line I pray you both to read the recently re-published The
Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden. She wrote it in the thirties of
last century and after seventy years of silence someone gave it forth once
more. Frida and I both think it not unworthy of Jane Austen; and its sly
humour and the firm outline with which its characteristics are drawn and
(for me not least) its happy ending are altogether charming. I had also
one shock. I re-read Hardy's Desperate Remedies, and found the style
abominable and the incident forced and unnatural. I mentioned this to
Gosse at a meeting and he told me that he put it, apart from the Return
of the Native at the head of everything Hardy had written. So much for
1022 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
the value of my judgment! I also turned over a gift of poems by the
young moderns and found in it four lines by J. C. Squire which should,
I think, rank very high in quality, brevity, and point. They ran just as
follows: —
How Odd
Of God
To Choose
The Jews.2
Something worthy of Voltaire in that!
Among a variety of visitors this week one has pleased us immensely —
a young American playwright by the name of Behrman. His play The
Second Man has made a great hit here, after, I gather, a great success
in New York. But he remains absolutely simple and unaffected, and I
watched the hero-worshippers, especially female, crowd upon him with-
out turning his head. And when someone asked him what in his success
gave him most pleasure he said quite simply that perhaps the Americans
who helped him to escape from Russian pogroms 25 years ago would
now feel that their effort had been worth while. I thought that fine and
I envied him the opportunity of such a feeling. Compare it with a young
poet who, like himself, had a conscious metaphysic. I told this to Birrell
at tea on Tuesday and he said that he once had seen a man treat George
Eliot rudely: "I sat down in a corner," said Birrell, "and prayed to God
to blast him. God did nothing, and ever since I have been an agnostic."
Our love to you both. I must not forget to tell you that Sir Austen has
sent out to our people in China for full enquiries about Wu.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., February 5, 1928
My dear Laski: A most amusing letter from you of January 21 of academic
discussions and government by dons — Hardy, and his burial in the
Abbey — (I haven't read Tess or Jude and somehow shrink from them)
— reading — Masson on Rousseau, then Haldane's Descartes, Queen V's
Letters — (I dare say you are right about her — my prejudices are with
you — but I suppose there is good to be said) etc. — purchases — and
tickling tales of Birrell and the husband of the theosophic dame. I have
no such yarns. Indeed my only gossip is from the Greville Diary — new
edition. I don't like the mode of editing, or the sensational headings to
chapters, but I am entertained by his disillusioned pictures of the Royal
2 Laski was mistaken in ascribing the lines of William Norman Ewer to
J. C. Squire.
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1023
Family and the eminent statesmen of the time. He pictures most of them
as dishonest and doing fishy things for office.
I made a mathematical conundrum in that connection: X = > oo — to
find the number represented by X? answer No. 1. The old Duke of Wel-
lington seems to stand highest in Greville's respect — non obstant some
incapacities as a statesman. I didn't realize before the constant appre-
hension that George IV and William IV would fall into their father's
malady. Indeed Greville seems to think that they did, more or less. Do
you remember a sonnet written by a lady, I should guess near the time
of Lord Melbourne (qu. Mrs. Norton? I think not) ending as nearly as I
can remember "I had a friend who was all this — and more"? I have
listened to a good deal of Miss Gertrude Bell's correspondence with
pleasure — as perhaps I have mentioned. I had some good letters from
her once — but only a few. But my wife turns back to Miss Kingsley1
who is her pet. I saw her also once or twice, but when I was wanting to
talk to some one else. Did I ever tell you of our converse? I said she was
lucky to have seen the world before it was cut up into 5 acre lots —
which seemed to be its destiny. "Oh, I don't know/' said she, "Central
Asia was easier to cross in Marco Polo's time than now/' I wish now
that I had made more of my opportunities. If I last a little longer I shall
go into the last survivor business — and swagger on "I remember's." I
have some good ones for this country — and some old English judges
and generals — and Barry Cornwall2 — who was a friend of Charles
Lamb and went to school with Byron. Apropos of Lamb (and Birken-
head) you remember that Carlyle dismisses him rather contemptuously
as a snuffy person — or something of that sort — and although I am far
from justifying either B. or C. I suspect that there should have been
drawbacks. I doubt if he or Dr. Johnson would have smelt good. It gave
malignant joy to read (in Ste. Beuve?) of someone's saying that Louis
XIV smelt like a charogne. He has a stout heart who when he visits a
cathedral thinks more of that than of his pinching boots.
I am breathing free this Sunday p.m. I have readjusted an opinion
to hold (I hope) the bare majority that I have on my side and have
a week ahead before we sit. But one always has something to do and
when I have I always am worried until it is done. I have a worrying
nature — Brandeis says he has not. One generally can get the better of
it if one happens to think of thinking about it. After reflection one can
meet even great things calmly. The trouble with little daily fidgets is
*Mary Henrietta Kingsley (1862-1900); scientist, traveler, and author of
Travels in West Africa (1897).
8 Barry Cornwall ( 17.87-1874), the pseudonym of Bryan Waller Procter, poet,
lawyer, schoolmate of Byron, and friend of the literati
1024 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
that you don't get beyond the bother of the moment. My rambling on
in reply to your tales reminds of the story of Alcott going into a shop
and wanting two yards of cloth; "I cannot give you money for it — as
I do not approve of the use of it and have none, but I will converse with
[you] to the value of the cloth." I hope you will not repine at the
exchange. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 711.27 [sic]
My dear Justice: A perfect delight of a letter from you yesterday reminds
me of how much there is to say. The most pleasant thing that has hap-
pened since I wrote last was a lunch here with Siegfried Sassoon, the
poet, and S. N. Behrman the American playwright. We talked for hours,
and almost in all with assent. Sassoon, particularly, on the poets was
extraordinarily interesting — especially his insistence that Poe and Emer-
son of all Americans had the purest lyric gift, and his contempt for the
jingles of Kipling and his school did my heart good. And Behrman is a
delight. A Harvard lad, in his simplicity, eagerness, unspoiltness, he re-
minds me a good deal of Felix. London has been lionising him, and his
poise in the face of the dinners of the elect did my heart good, and I
was especially won by his contempt (you will agree) for the supposed
philosophy of Shaw and the sugar-and-cream of Barrie. Then we had a
most pleasant dinner here with Allyn Young, the economist, in which
we talked over research, and agreed warmly that most of the expenditure
upon cooperative enquiries in the social sciences where A directs B, C, D,
etc., co-ordinating their results, is piffle. A man must live by his own
materials, and the experience of them by another is no more adequate
than an attempt to know the Year-Books by reading Fitzherbert. An
assistant can tell you something, but not too much, of what to look for,
but the intuition which turns the key in the lock only comes from constant
brooding over the materials. In other words, as I put it to you — e.g. —
if you want to bear the child you must endure the pregnancy; and in
this realm, an obstetric metaphor is peculiarly in place. Then we went
to dinner to the Asquiths, in some ways a little pathetic. He is obviously
failing physically, and she is as obviously resentful at his resignation of
the leadership of the Liberals. The result is that the talk is for the most
part one long condemnation of everybody either for allegiance to Lloyd-
George or weakminded acceptance of Asquith's resignation. One feels an
angry shrillness in it all which makes you realise vividly the utter poison
of power. They (the politicians and their wives) obviously cannot bear
exclusion from the centre of things. They feel in prison, and their minds
fail to concentrate on anything outside the central illusion. He is quite
different from his women folk — serene and immersed in reading. But
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1025
they feel that a devil is at work which keeps its saviour from the English
people.
In reading, one or two things have interested me much. The first part
of Wilson's life (Ray S. Baker) is well worth the adventure. It confirms
my old views that he suffered from being not a moralist but a theologian,
and the women ruined him by adulation. He lacked the ability (my main
quality) to look at himself and laugh at the notion that there are some
people who really take him seriously. But in his great fight at Princeton
I was quite wholly on his side. He had a great conception and his op-
ponents were impossibly mean and petty about it. Then, secondly, The
Cabala by Thornton Wilder which I conjure you to read. As near as I
can describe it, it is a short philosophical novel, exquisite in style, with
one unforgettable portrait (a cardinal) and a delicate antiquarian flavour
that I lack the power to convey in words. Third, a book by one Sait on
the party-system in America, which, unlike most text-books, I thought
both accurate and amusing. And finally a critical study of Bayle by one
De[l]volve which I thought both fair and illuminating. The more of
Bayle I read the more I find to admire; and there really isn't very much
of the 18th century that is not implicitly in him. De[l]volve makes crystal
clear the intellectual succession and as he writes really well, the book is
a distinct joy.
Also I have bought some pleasant things. The one I should most like
to show you is fascinating because almost unknown. It is called Abrege
de Bodin and was written, I think, by a lawyer named Lavie in 1754.
The fellow had the wit to see that Montesquieu was greatly influenced
by Bodin with the result that he discusses each carefully in terms of the
other and makes a distinct critical contribution of his own. Then I found
two more small Holbachs which, if Barbier's Dictionnaire be right, means
that I have all his works with one exception and the acquisitive impulse
receives a momentary sense of satisfied harmony. You speak of Casanova.
I read him five or six years ago with delight. He interested me as being
with Mercier,1 Retif, and Chateaubriand, the obvious result of Rousseau's
discovery of the fascination of egotism in literature. Something Byronic
in his poses; and a feeling for the richness of experience that is attractive.
And I like, too, his contempt for the life ascetic since I have always had
a sneaking sympathy for James's definition of good as the satisfaction of
demand. Finally I bought Lenormand's [sic] J. ]. Rousseau, Aristocrate
(1790) which is one of the ablest attacks on the gent I have ever read
— and I don't in the least know who Lenormand was.
1 Louis Sebastien Mercier (1740-1814), dramatist who renounced the classi-
cal tradition in French tragedy and, denying the achievements of philosophy
and science, insisted that the earth was flat and was the center of the sun's
orbit.
1026 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
You will share my pleasure in today's announcement that Sankey, J.
has gone to the Court of Appeal — a too long deferred appointment.
Atkin, L. J. has gone to the Lords vice Atkinson — a very good nomina-
tion, though I regret it deeply that Scrutton whom I greatly admire,
should have been passed over again. They say it is due to faults of temper
— but bad-tempered judges have been promoted before. While I speak
of the Bench I must not forget to tell you that a young colleague of
mine has discovered a vast collection of private opinions on prize-law
written by Stowell when on the Bench for the use of the Admiralty. They
are the more interesting because they are often his best opinions in the
making and you can trace out the way his mind moved to his conclusions.
If we can get the money, we propose to print them.
And I end with a story. Theo Mathew2 is the son of Mathew, L.J. and
a witty junior at the Inner Temple. The other day, when lunching there,
he found his usual table full of Hindus, negroes, Angolese and Chinese
with one lone Englishman. Mathew walked up to him with outstretched
hand saying "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Could perfection go further?
Our warm love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Washington, D. C., February 18, 1928
My dear Laski: Two A-l letters from you — one closely following the
other and ending with the admirable tale of Matthew [sic] — I suppose
it was his father that took me to Court one day to witness a trial before
Sir A. Cockburn — in which M. was counsel on one side. Cockburn
seemed to be busy correcting proof — it was supposed of his charge, in
the Tichborne case, while the trial went on. I was much struck by the
way it was conducted. One side stated the facts — the counsel on the
other side at a certain point: "I shall have to trouble you to put on evi-
dence upon that." If he did it didn't take long and Cockburn said he
would direct a verdict. Thereupon one side said that he should like to
be allowed to address the jury — which he did in a short argument —
and then Cockburn charged strongly on the side for which he had been
inclined to direct the verdict and the jury found accordingly without
leaving their seats. Then one juryman stood up and said, "I understand"
— (a certain fact, I forget what) to be so and so." "No, no, no" said the
others — but he had put his finger on what seemed to me the point in
the case — which I thought the judge and lawyer had overlooked. The
jury put their heads together — discussed a little among themselves, and
then brought in their verdict the other way — I thought rightly — with
2 Theobald Mathew (1866-1939); son of Sir James Charles Mathew (1830-
1908), judge in the Queen's Bench division. Versions of the son's wit were
preserved in his Forensic Fables (1928) and their sequelae.
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1027
little help from Judge or lawyers. My memory may have distorted things,
but that is the way I have remembered it for many years. I don't believe
that I need to explain why it seemed to me to illustrate what Judge John
Lowell 1 said to me when I was a young lawyer: "They do everything on
honor in England." Well, this p.m., our last conference before going in
again on Monday for 4 weeks of argument. I had but one case to deliver
— a majority opinion of no great interest — Brandeis dissenting2 — but
at the last minute McReynolds said that he wanted to write something
(against the op.) and so it went over — it is rather aggravating to have
things hang up in that way because the Judge doesn't take the trouble
to be ready. He has three weeks of vacation for it. I tried to put a shovel
full of coals on his head by handing him my prospective dissent where
we stand 5 to 4 unless he changes his mind, and where he has the
majority opinion to write — which he has not started on yet.3 I despise
the notion that I think some of the last generation had that it was like
opposing counsel in Court and that it would be fine to spring something
unforeseen on the other side. I read them my views in another case4 in
which the following vote showed that I was in the minority but on which
I will have my whack if I live, if it is my last word.
Brandeis and I are so apt to agree that I was glad to have him dissent
in my case, as it shows that there is no preestablished harmony — I have
had almost no time to read — having had two hours of driving on pleas-
ant days. I have finished Greville's Diary and that is about all. I think
I mentioned Demogue, Notions fondamentales du droit prive — which
I was compelled to get hold of by the remarks of Morris Cohen in an
essay. Demogue is a good man evidently — but for 100 pages he has told
me nothing that I didn't know — substantially — has illustrated to me
that some problems are not dug down to the foundations as well as with
us — and yet I haven't the moral courage to stop — but feel obliged to
toil on through 559 more pages in a print that tires my eyes for fear of
1 Supra, p. 4.
2 Holmes delivered no opinions on February 20. On April 9, Holmes delivered
the Court's opinion in Casey v, United States, 276 U.S. 413, which Lad been
argued on January 11. Dissenting opinions were delivered by McReynolds,
Brandeis, Butler, and Sanford, JJ. The majority sustained provisions of the
Anti-Narcotic Act which made the absence of revenue stamps from pack-
ages of drugs prima facie evidence of unlawful possession. The majority also
found that the government was not chargeable with entrapment of the de-
fendant.
8 Not identified.
4 Quite probably Black and White Taxi Co. v. Brown and Jellow Taxi Co.,
276 U.S. 518 (argued January 13 and 16, decided April 9, 1928). Holmes in his
dissent, concurred in by Brandeis and Stone, JJ., objected to the theory that
Federal courts in deciding common-law questions arising within a particular
state could decide the law as they saw fit, without regard to state decisions.
1028 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
missing something — or because I don't like to back out. Your last letter
but one was the first news I had had of the death of Felix's mother. I
referred obliquely to it in writing to him — but could not do more.
I vehemently disagree with the "contempt for the jingles of Kipling" —
I agree that Kipling's attitude toward life seems to me wanting in com-
plexity and not interesting — but it will take more than Sassoon to con-
vince me that Kipling ought not to stir the fundamental human emotions.
I think he does — and that simple thinkers often do. A student of mine
long dead 5 spoke with contempt of the fighting lines in Henry V. His
widow was a mainstay of the sympathizers with Sacco and Vanzetti. I
was not with him. Aff'ly yours, 0. W, H.
Devon Lodge, 20.11.28
My dear Justice: A letter from you1 — as always a delight — reminds me
that nearly a fortnight has gone by since I last reported. In mitigation, I
plead the state of public business. I have had to write a vast obituary
notice of Asquith2 for the Manchester Guardian; sit twice on the Indus-
trial Court; go to Oxford to lecture; and entertain twice for Hocking, the
Harvard philosopher.3 Add to that a cloud of committees, and you will,
I hope, accept the explanation and say that there has been no contempt
of court.
I was much moved by Asquith's death. He wasn't, I think, a great
man, for that word ought to be kept for the originator or the man who
profoundly changes by skill in adaptation; and beyond the limit on the
House of Lords he was not, I think, the author of anything big. But he
brought qualities to politics which are rare; absolute loyalty, supreme
lucidity of mind, refusal to truckle to the mob, and a sense of honour as
exquisite as I have ever met among politicians. He had the great defect
of finding decisions difficult. But he really was a great gentleman with
less of the rancour in his temper than any of the political breed I have
met. There is no one quite of his type left, and this new world of a
stunt press and a devotion to the slogans of the market-place makes it
difficult to hope for more of his kind. Inani perfungor munere.
Oxford interested me a good deal, though in some ways it was depress-
ing. I was struck by the complacency of the dons and the preciousness of
the undergraduates. The former clearly thought that the world was an
5 Probably Glendower Evans (1856-1886), who had been a student in
Holmes's law office in the fall of 1881.
1 Supra, p, 1022.
2 Lord Oxford and Asquith had died on February 15.
8 William Ernest Hocking (1873- ), Professor of Philosophy at Harvard,
1914-1943.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1029
oyster they had opened, and their ignorance was profound. They each
had a little patch to cultivate and they saw no reason to go outside it. And
talk of America produced the astounding view that the great Americans
of today were Lowell and Murray Butler. I mentioned books like Parring-
ton or Beard in vain. When I was told that there was no great political
thought in America and summoned the period from 1780-1840 as my
compurgator and argued that only the greatest epochs could compete
with it I was met with polite incredulity. And I was irritated by the
immense volume of clericalism everywhere. Jesuits, Puseyites, Dominicans,
Cowley Fathers, you met them at every turn. The times demand a Vol-
taire to show what the whole farce means. One college was rent in twain
over the practice of auricular confession; another was passionately ex-
cited over the reservation of the Sacrament. Some men devoted their
energies to preventing the scientists from having any more buildings in
the Oxford Parks. Big sweeping views, a sense of the vastness of our
problems, the excited hunt for novelty, these didn't exist. I tried names
— Meyerson, Morris Cohen, Thibaudet; but they meant nothing. And I
left feeling that the glories of London where one might be a small fish,
but where, at least, the stream rushed by in the torrential excitement was
worth a hundred Oxfords. The reply, I gather, is the virtue of the life
contemplative; but that assumes the fact of deliberate reflection on great
issues and of that I saw no wide evidence.
On the other hand I remark that Hocking is a ghastly bore. Right-
minded, earnest, good, but he can say things like "the world needs
peace'* or, "Hegel is a very great man," or "the Gospels are exquisite" as
though he were communicating new truth. Each idea of his comes out
with a pleased self-regard as though it was a new law of gravitation; and
when he told me that the League of Nations was very important, I felt
I wanted to shriek. But at the second dinner there was a young American
lad from Yale (one Lippincott)4 who was a delight such as one rarely
experiences. He cared about art, and cared so as to want to know what
happened in him when he cared. He was full of enthusiasms which I
approved because I shared them; and he especially delighted me because
he had that eagerness which makes the world too short for the amount
of exploring there is to be done. I hope one day he will come to see you
in Washington. He reminded me greatly of what Felix must have been
at twenty-four.
Of reading, I have done little that is worth report. But I add that one
or two things in the way of work were distinctly worth reading. A book
by one Lindsay Rogers on the American Senate was distinctly worth read-
4 Presumably Benjamin Evans Lippincott (1902- ), who was awarded a
Ph.D. at the London School of Economics in 1930, and later became a professor
of political science at the University of Minnesota.
1030 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
ing and opened vistas I should like one day to explore. Also a book on
the History of Contempt by Sir J. C. Fox really exploded Wilmot's case
and gave me the pointers for a piece on constructive contempt which
I have long been anxious to write.5 Our English procedure whereby X
and Y decide that Z has been unfairly criticised after a decision has been
made and without hearing evidence opened the door, I think, to very
serious abuses; and a recent case here (R, v. the New Statesman)* was
little short of a scandal. Then I read an extraordinarily interesting his-
tory of the French Revolution by A. Mathiez who is the great swell on
Robespierre and certainly has evidence about him which one simply does
not get in the classical histories. In a lighter vein I commend "Mrs. D."
by G. F. Bradby which is a delicious analysis of English suburbanitis and
shows it to be as easy to have the small town mind just outside London
as it is in Fargo, North Dakota.
I was interested by your reflections on Greville, especially your liking
for Wellington which I warmly endorse. I would have liked the book
untrimmed, but, certainly, there is nothing better except Saint-Simon in
that genre, I shake Mrs. Holmes warmly by the hand over Miss Kingsley
— the big West African book is a stand-by of Frida's and mine.
I liked the G. Bell, but felt that much printed there was on the whole
small beer. But I did not know her and can well see that personal con-
tact may have given illumination. Apropos of George IV, did I ever tell
' you that I knew the grandson of the clergyman to whom he offered
£1000 to marry him to Mrs. Fitzherbert? The price was considered too
small for the risk; but when the row came he claimed and got a canonry
as compensation for his disinterestedness. Those were spacious days.
Our love to you both. Here the garden is a mass of crocuses and snow-
drops, and my window-boxes have magnificent mauve tulips.
Ever affectionately yours, H, J. L.
Washington, D. C., March I, 1928
My dear Laski: Your letter 20.11.28 stirred my sympathies wondrously
and made me wish I could be there or jaw with you. Your description
of the dons of Oxford seems to me a description of the usual Englishman
not enlightened by travel. To how many the ultimate is "We don't do that
in England." I grieve to hear of the irruption of Clericalism. I had
5 "Procedure for Constructive Contempt in England," 41 Haw. L, Rev. 1031
(June 1928). The case decided by Wilmot, J., was Rex v, Almon, Wilmot's
notes 243 (1765).
6 44 T. L. R. 301 (1928). The King's Bench there held that newspaper
criticism of judicial action could be punished summarily as contempt of court
if the impartiality of an individual judge were questioned and if the criti-
cism tended to undermine public confidence in the judiciary.
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1031
(too rashly) assumed that the civilized man everywhere had a quiet sub-
stratum of scepticism even if he didn't show it. But isn't this at least
largely true?
I have been staying at home this week with a cough that has bothered
me at intervals for many years. My doctor down here, . . . died a few
days ago — so I got the one who looks after the C. J. (in his more general
aspects — he says he has one for each end) — and he is inclined to my
opinion of the trouble and is trying some painting on my throat. I have
hopes of relief — at all events the spells pass away after a time. The
cases are sent to me and I shall send my votes (as we objectionably call
them) to the conference. As I get up latish I am kept pretty busy — but
I have had time for a little diary of Dr. John Ward who was Vicar at
Stratford-on-Avon a few years after Shakespeare's death — has a few
words about him and a number of shrewd remarks — a little book, but
worth looking through. Also Charles Francis Adams's1 Autobiography
which I never read. He is brutal to himself and his papa — but just — he
saw pretty straight. It is curious to observe, alongside of his judgment of
himself as not having exceptional gifts, the tone of importance that goes
through the story — and so dreary — those poor men were born without
the capacity of joy. I knew the whole lot pretty well — got much from
them — suggestiveness from Brooks — the best criticisms of some of
my speeches I ever had from anyone from Charles — and while Henry
chilled my soul when I came home tired from Court and stopped in, to
be told how futile it all was — he was grumblingly generous to me when
I first went to London, in the way of taking me about — and when he
gave up his Harvard professorship sent me a lot of his books on early
law. Ralph Palmer2 — nephew or cousin of Sir Roundell (as he was in
my day) thought Henry a great thinker. The whole lot certainly were un-
usual men. I may have told you of Bill James coming back from meet-
ing the three and saying it was like meeting the augurs behind the altar
and none of them smiling. They seemed to stir him up as he also said,
"Powerful race, those Adamses, to remain plebeians after so many gen-
erations of culture." This if taken seriously would be unjust — because,
though capable of queer things, they had an inward delicacy that was
very far from plebeian.
1 Charles Francis Adams (1835-1915); descendant of the presidential
Adamses; son of the American Ambassador to Great Britain during the Civil
War; brother of Brooks Adams and Henry Adams.
2 Ralph Charlton Palmer (1839-1923), lawyer and man of affairs, had be-
come a close friend of Holmes during the latter's first visit to England in 1866.
Palmer's father, George Palmer (1772-1853), was the uncle of Sir Roundell
Palmer (1812-1895), first Earl of Selborne, who was twice Lord Chancellor,
first from 1872 to 1874 and again from 1880 to 1885. Holmes's friend had been
secretary to Selborne during his second chancellorship.
1032 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
I don't think I ever heard of Hocking — your account makes me
chuckle — and I hope I shall see your young friend from Yale. I must
try to remember to look into that history of contempt — I have dissented
once or twice on that theme. You amaze me by saying, if I understand
you, that criticism of an opinion or judgment after it has been rendered,
may make a man liable for contempt. I thought that notion was left for
some of our middle western states. I must try to get the book and the
decision. Well — I have done as well as I can for a seedy worm (but
nothing serious). My love to you all. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 25.11.28
My dear Justice: Let me begin with my triumph. I have found, for six
pounds, a copy of Althusius's Politica methodice digesta (1610) and it
lies before me on the table as I write. I am immensely proud of it, as
there seem to be seven copies only in existence and no other in private
hands. It turned up in a Berlin catalogue, and after a moment's doubt
whether it would not have been snapped up before I could reach it, I
decided to telephone to Berlin. This I did, and, to my joy, there it still
was. It is a beautiful quarto, vellum bound, with wide margins, and most
exciting reading. I wish I could show it to you. But you will guess how
my week has been sweetened by it.
Of other news but little. My nose is being kept to the grindstone
rather more than I like and there are still three weeks before release
comes. I slipped out to dinner last night and went to Haldane's. He had
Barrie and Kipling there. The former hardly spoke a word, but sat like
a grim mouse in a corner until it was time to go. Kipling literally amazed
me. He took command of the talk (not an easy thing to do when Haldane
is there) and laid down the law like a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I
thought he had an essentially vulgar mind, incapable of any real finesse
or delicacy; and his main reply to argument was a bludgeoning "I don't
agree with you" which was never accompanied by any effort to lay his
mind alongside yours. I saw no power of reflexion, though there was a
real gift of happy phrase. I suppose it is stupid to expect that a great
story-teller should have other gifts than the power of telling stories, but
I certainly expected something better than I encountered. Let me add,
too, that he talked for applause in an irritating way. When he had said
anything especially good he looked up as if waiting for you to clap your
hands. Haldane amused me immensely. Much of what Kipling said was
gall and wormwood to him. But he liked the idea of having him at his
table and encouraged him to perform rather as a man persuades his dog
to go through tricks for his friends.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1033
I turn to other things. I have been reading much this last week on
contemporary France — one or two things were most illuminating. I
don't know if I wrote to you of Benda's Trahison des clercs; if not, I
think it would please you as much as it did me. And I was also impressed
by Alain's Elements d'une politique radicale which has both mind and
heart in it. I read, also, Charles Maurras's Avenir de Tintelligence which
contains the (to me) sympathetic thesis that the business of the intel-
lectual in society is to criticise the values the society maintains; descent
into the market-place, he argues, makes a thinker lose his perspective. I
meditate a piece on the social function of intelligence, so that I shall not
write a disquisition here. But I feel pretty certain that immersion in the
machine is fatal to the real business of thought and that the real need
is to think out the liaison between the superior mind and the practical
mind. How can one be sure for instance that a politician is made aware
of the kind of wisdom he would get from reading Morris Cohen? Is it
enough that it should filter to him at seventh-hand, say in an essay by
Walter Lippmann, in which stereotyped sophistication has blunted the
edge of the original vision? I don't know; but I am sure the problem of
these margins between categories of effort is more and more important.
By the way I must not forget to add that I have learned much, and with
delight, from a book by Edmond Villey called Les sources des essais de
Montaigne which I conjure you to think of for the time when Beverly
Farms swims once more onto the horizon. And I think I have already
mentioned to you De Ruggiero's History of European Liberalism, which
is excellent. Did I speak of Mumford's Golden Day, a good book on
America as interpreted by its men of letters? And may I pray you to
think of Hobbes's Elements of Law, edited by Tonnies, in a text (Cam-
bridge Press) which makes the mss intelligible for the first time and is
really illuminating.
Another little adventure has pleased me. A genial soul has published
a new edition of Junius with a vast introduction purporting to prove that
Junius was Shelburne.1 The proof is that one of Junius's letters is written
on paper with a watermark which is the same as some of the letters of
Shelburne and that J & S agree on eleven different points. I got the
volume for review and spent a couple of hours in the British Museum
on the matter. This enabled me to show (I) that Bentham, Blackstone,
C. J. Fox and Burke used paper with that watermark; (II) that on the
days when Junius wrote private notes to his publisher of which the
consequence is apparent in the newsprint the next morning, Shelburne
is known to have been in Italy, and, therefore, to conclude that a 49th
name may be added to the 48 which the new editor dismisses as im-
1 Charles Warren Everett, The Letters of Junius (1927).
1034 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
possible. I needn't add to you that I am a whole-hearted Franciscan;2
that kind of probability seems to me definite proof on the Sherlock
Holmes principle that when you have excluded the impossibilities, what-
ever remains, however improbable, is the truth.
On Tuesday last I spoke on Rousseau to the philosophical society of a
women's college here and was moved to reflection upon the nature of
the woman don. I am tempted to believe that forcible marriage would
be good for them. I met three philosophic ladies who all were like the
late Mrs. Proudie in temperament and spent tea-time in explaining to
me the unreliable character of the male sex. They were the modem breed
of feminist who, I gather, regard man as an excrescence and would like
the original Virgin birth to be capable of infinite repetition. They dress
badly; they deliberately forego all grace and charm; they call you by
your surname; and they regret the necessity of having men teachers for
women. Oh God! Oh Montreal!
My love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Washington, D. C., March 7, 1928
My dear Laski: A delightful letter from you to which I can answer but a
word. Tomorrow is my birthday and already I am somewhat crowded.
Also the doctor keeps me in the house — for a cough — nothing serious
— same old trouble — but he insists on my staying at home. I do the
same work here and am in all the cases that are being argued.
I am not impressed at what you say about Kipling. Many years ago I
made up my mind that he did not interest me — that his view of the
universe was too simple — and since then I thought that he had a break-
down. But as a story teller, and in spite of you, as a verse writer, I think
he makes a direct appeal to the simpler emotions which we never are
too sophisticated to feel when a man has the gift — as he has. Also,
where Stevenson laboriously selects a word and lets you feel his labor,
Kipling puts his fist into the guts of the dictionary, pulls out the utterly
unavailable and makes it a jewel in his forehead or flesh of his flesh with
no effort or outlay except of the pepsin that makes it part of him. But
I thought he was finished years back.
1 am tickled that you should have encountered the holiness of woman
and been assured of it by herself. Lester Ward in one of his books inti-
2 Despite the attempt of Charles Dilke in his Papers of a Critic (1875) to
disprove the contention that Sir Philip Francis (1740-1818) was the author
of Junius, men of learning have continued to accept the Franciscan hypothesis
as most persuasive; see, e.g., Leslie Stephen's "Chatham, Francis, and Junius,"
3 English Historical Review 233 (April 1888). Laskfs review of Mr. Everett's
book has not been identified; see, however, notice by L. B. Namier in 42
Nation and Athenaeum 688 (February 4, 1928).
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1035
mates that she produced man to amuse her — having previously done
very well without him to aid in continuing the race. With your belief in
some apriorities like equality you may have difficulties. I who believe
in force (mitigated by politeness) have no trouble — and if I were sin-
cere and were asked certain whys by a woman should reply, "Because
Ma'am I am the bull."
How fain were I to jaw with you but I must say good night. Tomor-
row I am 87 — and still Oliver asks for a little more — not that he is not
prepared to shut up with good grace — but, apart from the pleasure of
continuing as long as one can, to play one or two little fool games — the
newest one to outlive Taney — (who died 87, 6 or 7 months old) re-
maining active — not that I really care a tuppence for thatsort of thing.
Affly yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 9.III.28
My dear Justice: I hope that cough has gone; I have been in bed for
a few days with a nasty one and I have a healthy dislike for them. Please
report good news.
I have been extraordinarily busy this last fortnight. Committees seem
to have piled themselves up quite interminably; and I have sat long and
anxiously on the most complex case on the Industrial Court. Then a
learned German professor (Sombart)1 turned up to lecture at the School
and I had to give him a dinner which was not easy as he spoke only
German and French and three hours of interpretation in and out of three
languages is not the best aid, I find, to digestion. In a way, he was most
amusing for he took himself with the most profound seriousness. Each
person introduced was asked whether he had read the books of the
great man, if yes, which he preferred, if not, when he proposed to do so.
I only attended the first of his lectures which began with an explanation
of how he and Max Weber, but principally himself, had changed the
mind of learned Germany on all manner of important questions. When he
was off my chest there arrived a learned Hungarian who desired to in-
vestigate the new Trade Union Act in operation. I explained with exem-
plary patience that as only one case had occurred under it, no one could
usefully say much on the scheme at work. But the good man was not to
be deterred from work by objections of so feeble a nature, and demanded
letters to every member of the Trade Union Council. I gave him five and
spent long minutes of remorseful apology over the telephone to irate
1 Werner Sombart (1863-1941), Professor of Economics at Berlin since 1917.
Sombart's principal work was Marxian in attitude and emphasis, as in his
Der Moderne Kapitalizmus (3 vols., 1902-28); later, however, he advocated
national socialism in his Deutscher Sozialismus (1934).
1036 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
officials who demanded to know "who the hell this queer guy is" who
asked them if they would go to jail or buy over the jury when the Act
began to operate and had a notebook ready for the registration of their
answers. And, thirdly, a German student demanding to know if Mon-
tesquieu's letters to English friends were available and would not accept
my assurance that I knew of none unpublished but came back day after
day to pledge himself that if I would only tell him I should have full
acknowledgment in the preface. Fourthly an Australian gentleman on the
model of Huxley's man " — Have discovered the truth; shall I come over?"
He had read my books; thought I was not unintelligent; world needed an
absolute measure of value; he had it; I must give him a full opinion of
it; take the year's output of wheat; divide it into the year's issue of cur-
rency; that is an absolute standard; chairs and tables, books and dolls;
can be expressed in terms of it; once adopted, there will be no more
social problems; think it over; will call to see me in a fortnight's time; I
try vainly to reproduce his urgently staccato style. I omit the biography
of himself which emphasised the fact that he had an ancestor who ruined
himself for Charles II (I thought this a most dubious connection) and
that he had been awakened to Thought by reading Bryan's great speech
on his nomination as Democratic candidate in 1896. Do you wonder that
I am a little tired and that I shall regard myself as licensed not to be
at the School a fortnight from now. Of other things there is not much to
tell. The best is the discovery of a complete Savigny in eighteen volumes,
bound in full calf and in perfect condition, for thirty shillings. I wanted
badly the Roman Law in the Middle Ages and was grateful. Also a
very nice Suarez, De Legibus which I have long coveted and found
reasonably. But mainly I reserve myself for Paris next month where there
is much I hope to find.
In the way of reading some things I recommend warmly. A recovered
novel The Heroine I urge you to read as one of the most amusing skits
(circa 1810) on the Rococo extravaganza temp. Horace Walpole that I
know. Then I read the volume of "Ricardds Notes on Malthus which
Johns Hopkins have got out; it repays perusal, but with longueurs. Much
more impressive is Russell's Outline of Philosophy which I thought a
powerful book — wrong on a number of things, e.g. causation, but well
worth reading; and Wyndham Lewis's Time and Western Man which
makes effective hay of Spengler et hoc genus omne; and a little volume
Imperialism and Civilisation which puts effectively and simply the ele-
ments of the clash of colour. And, in bed, the first volume of Curzon's
Life which revealed him as even more intolerable than I ever imagined.
Think of a man who hales his college servant before Jowett for daring
to put a cracked teapot on the table; or takes notes of his own mental
state in any interval of leisure; or assumes at a meeting that a vote of
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1037
thanks to him must be moved separately from that to the other speakers.
Yet he seems to have suffered intolerable pain from spinal curvature all
his life and it may that much should be pardoned him on that account.
But he is rather like the Times in its patronising mood.
I was glad to note your surprise about our contempt case. I am sending
you separately a full report. I thought such a proceeding quite obsolete
and was angry with the judges for their attitude and the editor for not
standing his ground. In any case, I doubt whether such methods do any
good. Our new chief justice (Hewart) is, I hear on all sides, a sad failure;
self -satisfied, pushing, and rather brutal. Moreover he has the fatal habit
of making asides for the press which, next to actual corruption, is the
worst judicial sin I know. But I shall blow off my wrath in the Harvard
Law Review — I hope with the prospect of carrying you with me.
I write in the midst of an unexpected snowstorm which has made Lon~
done almost impassable.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 19.I1L28
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you tells me that not even the
87th birthday has charmed away the cough. I hope the coming of Spring
will do so. Yesterday we motored out to Box Hill (Meredith's old haunt)
and the trees in half -bloom, especially some almond blossom, were a sight
for sore eyes. And I found an amusing stone in a churchyard there ex-
plaining that at this spot in 1800, John Kra, the Dorking eccentric, was
buried upside down at his own request. Whether vertically or horizontally
the epitaph did not say; and I did not feel that I had the right to attempt
exhumation.
It has been a quiet time since I wrote last, with the blessing that term
is over. I have been to committees till I was sick of them and have had,
for my sins, to accept nomination as an appointed member of the Educa-
tion Committee of the London County Council; which means that I am
supposed to supplement the dubious skill of the elected members by the
exercise of a little competence. I was not anxious, but Haldane was very
insistent that I should, so with a shudder of envy for the lost time, I
succumbed.
I had an amusing dinner at Haldane's last night, with Winston as the
other guest. The latter being about to give birth to a budget was full of
the vigour of intellectual pregnancy and gave us a list of the dozen great-
est men in the 19th century. Characteristically it contained not a single
scientist or thinker and so I drew him on to a discussion of their influence.
It was really most illuminating. He had never read a line of Aristotle,
Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Hegel, or Kant. He
1038 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
had read every line of Machiavelli, any printed volume summarising
Napoleon's ideas, La Rochefoucauld, Stendhal (whom he greatly ad-
mired) and such like. Pascal and Goethe were hardly names to him; and of
Montesquieu he knew only the lubricious Temple du Guide. He watched
my amusement with complete bewilderment and could not be made to
understand that philosophy had the slightest relevance. When he had
gone Haldane told me that years ago he had lent Winston Eckermann's
Conversations with Goethe. It was returned in two days with the remark
that he literally could not understand what they were talking about.
I went with Frida to another dinner that was amusing. I sat next to a
retired judge of the county court who had been a distinguished wrangler
in his day and thought this generation soft. He explained the things a
wise man refuses to have any dealings with: (I) women (II) doctors
(III) betting men (IV) clergymen (V) the Court of Criminal Appeal
(VI) the Judicial Committee. Finding out that I was a university pro-
fessor he explained (I) that no one ought to go to a university unless he
knew the calculus (II) that the study of Laplace ought to be compulsory
(III) that Newton was the greatest man, except Christ, who ever lived
(IV) that all good mathematicians would make good judges. The great-
est man he had ever met was J. J. Sylvester.1 If Gauss2 and Jacobi3 were
in hell he hoped to go there. He never read novels; but he found he had
to give up the theory of numbers as a hobby for retirement as it made
him too excited. He was really a charmer and full of a winning smile at
his own absurdities which I found enchanting. He was 93, and only re-
tired, he said, as a protest at the quality of the younger men who were
being given him. "Nothing had gone right since Bowen died."
In the way of reading, not very much. Mostly I have been going to
bed early and reading Mommsen — always with delight, rarely with con-
viction; and a good brief history of the French Revolution by Mathiez
who is a skilful and learned enthusiast for Robespierre. Also Hobbes,
Elements of Law in a new edition by Tonnies, with intense admiration.
Really that fellow, though quite wrong, has the most powerful mind in
English political philosophy. Did you ever read the account of him —
quite delightful — in Aubrey's Brief Lives? The spectacle of Hobbes sing-
ing prick-song to himself in the early morning to expand his lungs while
not awakening the household, and telling Aubrey that he cannot remem-
ber being drunk above a hundred times is really glorious. And Frida read
1 James Joseph Sylvester (1814-1897), English mathematician, Professor of
Mathematics at the Johns Hopkins University and later at Oxford; founder of
the American Journal of Mathematics.
2 Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), German mathematician who made
notable contribution to the theory of numbers.
8 Karl Gustav Jakob Jacobi (1804-1851), Professor of Mathematics at
Konigsberg and expert on elliptical functions.
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1039
to me a novel which gave us both great pleasure as a picture of an Eng-
land I suppose the next generation will hardly know. It is called Winters-
moon and is by Hugh Walpole. If it comes your way, it would, I think,
suit the acerbities of solitaire.
I have now six weeks of freedom. I propose to get a paper done for
the Harvard Law Review, possibly on Constructive Contempt,4 and to
take my holiday in Paris, talking to people and hunting books. But mainly
I want to get the papers straight so as to begin writing the book on
French thought. I have read all I safely can, and have reached that queer
stage where I must set something down or burst. You will know the feel-
ing. I must not forget to say that Haldane last night remarked that he
had just fortified himself by a decision of yours in a P.C. case and that
its terms had warmed his heart.
My love eagerly to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., March 22, 1928
My dear Laski: You send me such interesting adventures with people
and books that I feel like the often quoted Vicar of Wakefield "All ones
migrations from the blue bed to the brown" or words to that effect. I
write opinions, dissents, and examine certioraris and then begin over
again. However, when I received a telegram on my birthday from my
quondam brother Clarke — saying why not live and come with me to
Rome and Athens or if you prefer to (some named paradise in the Pa-
cific), I answer that not only Age with his stealing steps hath caught me
in his clutch but the joys of sophistry beat scenery and the past. Are you
not with me? I have this moment come to my first leisure for a long time,
and I don't believe it will be leisure beyond the next mail. But I am
cherishing hopes to finish that damned Demogue I told you of, I think
— recommended by Morris Cohen. Also I have Afpergu d'une theorie
generale de Tetat an abridgement I gather by Hans Kelsen of a large
work by him in German. God knows how little nourishment I get as a
rule from such works — but I must look at it. Also Cohen sends me type-
written portions of a work — parts of which have appeared as articles,
Reason and Nature — an essay on the meaning of scientific method, and
dedicated to me — I am proud. Also (in the way of boasting) Ludwig —
the author of the lives of Napoleon, Wilhelm II, Bismarck, etc. called
on me some time ago and this week my driver, the faithful Charles*
handed me a copy of the Washington Herald in which Ludwig seemed
to have interviewed a number of our great men and wound up with a
puff of me that I should blush to copy. Luckily, as I no doubt have said
often, one who thinks of man as I do can't have a swelled head. Also,
4 See supra, p. 1030.
1040 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
although I only glanced at the article, I had the impression that L. was
saying soapy tilings about the whole lot of us, nevertheless, as I liked him
when we talked, I was more than pleased to know that he had carried
away an agreeable impression. Of course one runs through light things
that don't add much to one's credit side in the intellectual world. I think
I mentioned Charles Adams's Autobiography — last night I finished a
pleasant volume of Thackeray's letters to Mr. Brookfield. His style soothes
one's ear. But I made the reflection that no man of that time ever quite
looked himself in the face, or was quite candid in his thought, I leave
it as an impression — not amplifying. You speak of Russell's Outline of
Philosophy — second thought suggests that this may be Bertrand in a
book I've not heard of. I thought at first you had fallen on my friend of
last summer, Will Durant's Story of Philosophy, (fancy a man who calls
himself Will writing on philosophy), an entertaining enough book — but
one that I would spare you. I believe its success led him to think himself
competent upon the theme and to write articles on serious subjects — I
read a little of one and said no more for me, thank you. Things occur to
me to tell you, but I forget them before I write. I must away now — and
sooner than wait and resume, I will send this off.
Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 27.111.28
My dear Justice: A week of vacation has made me feel again a human
being. I have been to the play; I have dined out; and I have lain in bed
luxuriously with the complete works of O. Henry at my call. And on
April 4th I go off to Paris for ten days or so.
Much the most interesting thing that has happened since I wrote last
has been a dinner at the House of Commons where I met Sumner, the
Lord of Appeal. He is an amazingly powerful person, with a certitude
on all matters, as hard as nails, and with views compared to which those
of McReynolds can only be described as socialist. He interested me enor-
mously. He is widely read, a fine classical scholar, entirely self -made, and
yet completely deaf to external opinion. He said for instance that discus-
sion in the Court of Appeal was for him a waste of time, he had made
up his mind when he read the brief. He attacked me for disbelieving in
a second chamber and insisted that no thinker of repute ever believed
in single chamber government. I instanced Franklin, Sieyes, Tom Paine,
Bentham; he swept them all aside and said that of all writers on politics
only Aristotle, Machiavelli and Hobbes really counted. His heroes were
Caesar, Napoleon and Bismarck, because they really knew what they
wanted. I said that was because they wanted only what they knew and
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1041
was an expression of their limitations. He spoke warmly of your decisions
but regretted a tinge of scepticism in them; a judge must bring down his
fist with a thump. Then a dinner with Sankey to meet (and dislike) the
L.C.J.1 Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to like men who screw
up their eyes like pigs? He seemed to me full of malice, and to have a
certain queer sadistic pleasure in long sentences as a deterrent from
crime. But his knowledge of Latin (even down to the late silver age) left
me envious and gasping. At Sankey's was another judge — Mackinnon —
who was quite charming — polished, kindly, and a man of the world. He
told us one charming story of Halsbury at 96 envying the young men at
the bar because no moment in a legal life is so exquisite as the first time
you are complimented from the bench. He and MacNaghten were so dis-
tinguished by Baron Parke on the same day and it was a bond between
them all their lives. Sankey told us of his interview with the Prime Minis-
ter on his appointment to the Court of Appeal — the P.M. full of ex-
citement when the formalities were over because Sankey was an expert
in a patience he was trying to acquire.
In the way of books I have been reading a good deal. The best, I
think, was a study of Spinoza by one R. A. Duff which, though a little
difficult, amply repaid the price of entry and impressed me with the cer-
tainty that Spinoza had greatly influenced Rousseau. Then a queer volume
by American writers on the interrelations of the social sciences2 which I
thought a comment on my pet thesis that it is usually sheer waste of time
to discuss method. Write your book and if you have something real to
say the method will take care of itself. A still more queer book was Fay
on The Revolutionary Spirit in France and America (c. 1776-89) which
seemed to me to prove by excessive documentation that in those years a
large number of Frenchmen were interested in America and a large num-
ber of Americans interested in France. But I think I could have made its
point with ease in say fifty pages instead of nearly five hundred. Another
book that I thought admirable was an edition of Mandeville's Fable of
the Bees by one Kaye — a young American scholar — which was not
only excellent reading (Mandeville certainly could write) but also was
full of apercus. It explained to me that clever poem of Voltaire's Le
mondain that you may know. And it puts the relevant chapters of the
Esprit des lois in a new light. I wish I could do a critical study of M.
and accompany it by an edition of the E.D.L. The more I read him the
more I am sure that with his balance and poise he knows each time how,
in your phrase, to strike the jugular. And to my knowledge there is no
1 Lord Hewart.
2 Presumably William Fielding Ogburn and Alexander Goldenweiser, The
Social Sciences and Their Interrelations (1927); see, supra, p. 1006.
1042 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
really adequate book about him. I think Eugen Ehrlich's essay in your
number of the Law Review much the best thing I know,3 And a study
of Mandeville would include a great final chapter on his book and Toc-
queville's as models for the student of affairs who really wants to create
on the grand scale. Have you ever read Pierre Marcel's Tocqueville —
an admirable book with some very interesting inedits? Which, somehow,
reminds me of an amusing story of Bryce. A Japanese called on him
and asked for suggestions of books on America. Biyce poured out a vast
bibliography and saw a sense of bewilderment on the Jap's face. "Well,
well," he said, "read my book and Tocqueville's, and if you are really
pressed read mine." Birrell, who told me this, disliked Bryce intensely
and when I asked why, said it was because Bryce had never asked him-
self a really basic question in his life. On religion, for instance, he always
refused to read anything, however important, that might disturb his
mind; and Acton said that the only subject he really exhausted was the
origins of the papacy because the more he plumbed it, the less inclined
he was to doubt Presbyterianism. But Birrell has a pleasantly imaginative
malice, and I do not vouch for these stories.
I have bought nothing this week except a very pretty copy of Bellar-
mine's answer to Barclay in which a past owner had written in 1613 "This
booke hath become so diere by reason of his majestie's edicte that I did
have to pay Mr. Baldwin fower shillings for the same"; I reserve myself
for Paris. I was much tempted by a letter of Rousseau's written when on
the way to Paris and full of a young man's enthusiasm at the approach
of great hopes to be fulfilled; but it was ten pounds and, I thought, an
unjustifiable luxury.
My love warmly to you both. Ever afectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 4.JV.28
My dear Justice: A time of peace since I wrote last week, mainly taken
up by the writing of a simple little article for the Harvard Law Review.
But we have indulged in a theatre and a dinner party and on this second
I must dwell. It was given by Winston Churchill to celebrate his wife's
recovery from an illness and I sat next to the Master of the Rolls.1 He
was dull and rather pompous, so I turned to the lady beyond who was
what Felix would call a "star." She began by assuming that she had met
me before; then had heard my name. Was I going into Parliament? A
pity, for I had a clear voice. She always felt that the most important
quality in a politician. Was I interested in metaphysics? Personally she
8 Supra, p. 77.
1 Ernest Murray Pollock (1861-1936), Viscount Hanworth.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1043
adored Kant. She thought people made too much of Bergson except that
by his attack on reason, B. had proved that women were superior to
men. Was I interested in sex? She knew a charming doctor in Wimpole
Street who was able to trace back the weirdest experiences to sex-starva-
tion. She herself had a very rich sexual nature and when in 1925 she
began to drop soup-spoons a friend took her to this doctor. He said of
course that it was obvious that her husband no longer satisfied her and
she must for her own safety have a divorce. Her husband was most gal-
lant and the judge warmly sympathised with her. Her husband gave her
the beautful chinchilla coat she had on as a parting gift. Now she had a
wonderful husband who had decorated each of their six entertaining
rooms in sa different colour so that she had one for each mood. Was I
married? Oh, that was too bad for she would have liked me to come for
a really intimate talk, but she never invited wives of men to whom she
felt sympathetic. It simply would not do. Wives so rarely understand
Platonic friendships. Did I read Plato? He was too, too wonderful. Then
Mrs. Churchill, to my deep chagrin, took the ladies out. Meanwhile,
Frida, far away from me, was sitting with the lady's first husband. He
indicated her and explained that she illustrated the kind of woman meant
by Nietzsche when he said there were some women whom you could
visit only with a whip. He had never hoped for freedom this side of
the grave "until God in his infinite mercy" suggested that she visit a
psychoanalyst. "Then she enabled me to transform a personal pleasure
into a moral sacrifice." You can imagine the joy with which we exchanged
notes on the way home. I expect you will have seen that we have a new
Lord Chancellor.2 He is both able and attractive; though he has some-
thing of the Old Bailey type of mind. The late Chancellor was a very
sober and dignified person, but not, I think, first rate intellectually. He
was a man of great courage for he sat for two years with the full knowl-
edge that he was cutting short his own life.
You will like me to pass on the gossip, and very pleasant it is, about
Leslie Scott. He has gone out to India as counsel to the Princes on a
government enquiry and those not very amiable gentlemen, being most
anxious not to lose any further indicia of sovereignty, are said to have
marked the brief fifty thousand pounds with a hundred pounds a day
refresher. I'm very glad; for Scott has had a thin time this last few years
and this will certainly recoup his fortunes.
In the way of reading, my chief and quite unlimited joy has been the
complete works, recently reprinted in two volumes, of Arthur Binstead,
whom your London memories may enable you to recognise as "Pitcher"
of The Pink'Un. They are Gal's Gossip, Pitcher in Paradise, et al — quite
2 On March 28 Sir Douglas Hogg, raised to the peerage as Baron Hailsham,
succeeded Viscount Cave as Lord Chancellor.
1044 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
wonderful reminiscences of the demi-monde and racing sets of the 'eight-
ies and 'nineties. Birrell to whom I communicated my enthusiasm told
me that he never wanted to meet anyone so badly as "Pitcher" and
the latter would not because he never spoke to lawyers. But he once
spent a weekend with Rosebery who was so tumultuously entertained
that he had an inscription placed upon the seat that Pitcher occupied
in his house. Of other things, a fine novel of the Russian Revolution
called The Land of the Children and a very good detective story by
Agatha Christie called The Murder of Roger Ackroyd which left me
baffled and distraught until the end. You observe that I have taken life
lightly. But I have also been to five committee meetings which needs a
counterpoise.
Here I must stop for I have to pack and get my boat-train to Paris
within an hour. Frida is already down in Sussex and I hope tomorrow
to start a real intellectual adventure.
My love warmly to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., April 6, 1928
My dear Laski: You will get but a rotten reply to two good letters from
you. I am very tired — I don't quite know why — partly, I suppose, the
spring, which I always find hard here — and partly there has been almost
no relaxation in my work during the recess, when you add in the letters
and telegrams I had to answer after my birthday. I am tickled by what
you tell me of Lord Sumner — I have seen other judges like that. I re-
member a son of Fitzjames Stephen who seemed to divide men into good
and bad — and the bad were to be smacked. John Dickinson (author of
Administrative Justice and the Supremacy of Law dedicated to Pound
and Frankfurter) has sent to me a discourse Working Theory of Sover-
eignty1 which respects you and criticises some of your views, careful,
and I think perfectly correct to the point of obviousness. I infer from
the inscription (MS) that he approves of Kawananakoa v. Polyblank —
as who indeed that understands its limited scope, except your friend John
M. Zane, does not — but he does not understand it I infer.
I think your answer to Sumner that his heroes knew what they wanted
because they wanted only what they knew — an expression of their limi-
tations — was admirable. I think I told you last summer that Ludwig's
Napoleon didn't interest me because Napoleon did not, i.e., in his view
of life. By the by Ludwig was here — and made a short call on me —
and later in the public prints, talking of those whom he had seen, used
language that I should blush to repeat. He professed to think that I was
It. Here the scepticism that Sumner regretted comes in handy. It shows
*42 Pol Sci. Qu. 524; 43 id. 32 (December 1927 and March 1928).
HOLMES TO LASKI 1045
a simple nature to be capable of a really believing conceit. Beck, Brandeis
thinks and I incline to believe, is innocently naif — non obstant consider-
able intercourse with a hard and cynical world.
I have read almost nothing. I did read Demogue Notions fondamentales
du droit prive — misled to it by words of Morris Cohen in an article —
a most respectable 669 pages of print not too legible at night and not a
damned word from start to finish that I don't know or disbelieve — no
doubt a little profitable emphases here and there — but it enraged me
and kept me some time from reading a type-written skeleton of Cohen's
book, parts in print and not reproduced, parts not yet set up, which so
far as I could judge is truly admirable. He does not lightly yield to
popular superstitions — though he made me shudder and wonder by
saying that he believes in Natural Rights — I trust that it was but a
fagon de parler.
I have got two or three dissents for Monday next that I care about —
but one in which I stated my differences from McR. in a few words,2
Brandeis has taken up and worked out with such a mass of precedent
that I should think McR. would feel as if a steam roller had gone over
him. He in turn dissents from one of my decisions3 as does Brandeis on
other grounds and Butler — and I am not quite sure of my majority al-
though not shaken. Also McR. keeps me waiting on his good pleasure
to find out whether he will not change his vote (as we stupidly call it)
where a change would leave me in a minority.
Meantime I have beautiful drives in the spring. Magnolias divine and
today the cherry blossoms round the basin. So it is not all work.
Affly yours, O. W. H.
Washington, D. C.f April 17, 1928 — Tuesday
My dear Laski: It is astonishly hard to write down here — not that we
have had a particularly hard lot of cases — rather the reverse — certainly
so far as I am concerned — but the steady stream of certioraris seems to
fill every crevice of promised leisure. A week ago I was more interested
in delivering a dissent1 of which I shall try to send you a copy tomorrow
than in my judgments for the Court. I also dissented in another case in
a few words — but Brandeis took the same theme up and put into his
such a wealth of authority and such a lot of work that I should have been
inclined simply to note my agreement with him had he not wanted me
8 Untermeyer v. Anderson, 276 U.S. 440, 446. Trie issue concerned the retro-
active application of gift tax provisions of the Revenue Act of 1924.
* Casey v. United States, 276 U.S. 413 (Apr. 9, 1928); see supra p. 1027.
1 Black and White Taxi case, supra, p. 1027.
1046 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
to remain articulate.2 But we are drawing near to the end of arguments
— two or at most three weeks including the present one — I believe is
all. Your yarns about the ladies with rich sexual natures — I think this
is the second one — seem to me almost incredible. I find it hard not to
suspect you of embroidering — but they make bully stories. I remember
hearing of some dame who having a story to tell would ask — "Do you
want it naked or will you have it clothed?"
I suppose you are back from Paris by this time — I envy you your
excursions — and find it hard to believe that even little ones are at an
end for me. My reason tells me that the fun can't last much longer — but
it still is unabated and I don't encourage myself to dwell on the thought
of Finis. Indeed yesterday I had a call from the prospective secretary of
next year. When I have needed to enforce a little leisure on myself ultra
the solitaire at 9 pm I latterly have taken up Disraeli's Curiosities of Liter-
ature which has been on my shelves uncut since I was a boy. I am in-
clined to add it to Pepys and Walpole's Letters as a good third when
you don't want ideas and don't want to waste time. I just took up the
Third Volume and have read a few pages at odd minutes now and then
with much quiet pleasure. I have not your gusto over the printed word
— but as I have told you am apt to read with a sigh and an eye to the
number of pages. The other day Pound sent me the 4th edition of his
Outline of Lectures on Jurisprudence — a prodigiously learned work —
but I couldn't forbear saying to him that most of the authors that he
cites, so far as I have read them, seem to me to write much drool for a
few spoonsful of insight and that I doubted if most youngsters didn't get
all the jurisprudence they needed if they studied law under a man with
general ideas. Jurisprudence begins as soon as a man learns that the
parcel-gilt goblet and sea-coal fire are not essentials of the alleged con-
tract.
When the lamented Hough was alive and was chaffing a decision of
mine to the effect that a boat of the U.S. was not guilty of a tort in
running into another vessel — he said we don't talk of torts in Admiralty
but of collision, and would I say that there had been no collision? — I
wrote, alas just as he had died, that if he preferred to talk Basque instead
of French and to deny himself the benefit of the wider generalizations
of a more developed system it was all right but that having but one word
for two ideas he must distinguish.3 Collision in the sense of physical im-
pact of course is not denied — but collision with legal responsibility —
I certainly should deny. Collision might mean either — and I rather think
Hough really was the victim of his own ambiguity. If I have told you
2 Untermeyer v. Anderson, supra, p. 1045.
8 See, supra, p. 601.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1047
all this before forgive me. Old men forget — and most men repeat. But
this was a case where a little more jurisprudence was needed.
Wed. 18th. This morning a letter from Wu (I have had two or three
now) telling of inquiry from Austen Chamberlain via British consulate as
to his whereabouts — on account of O.W.H. I thank Chamberlain via
you. Wu seems troubled but does not give particulars — and his attitude
is so adoring that it worries me. He wants to get a year over here and
I believe Pound will offer him a scholarship though I doubt the wisdom of
taking his hand from the plough. I should like to see him again before I
die. I hope Paris was all you expected.
Ever affectionately yours, O. W, Holmes
Devon Lodge, 22.IV.28
My dear Justice: I came back yesterday from a divine fortnight in Paris
— certainly the queen of all cities. I talked till I had no voice left; I
bought books until I was footweary with mounting ladders; I went to
two unforgettable plays; and I had one adorable ms adventure. Let me
begin with the last first.
You will remember that the publisher of Diderot's Encyclopedia got
weary, at the end, of ecclesiastical opposition, and, to the great man's
disgust cut out all the parts of articles which might give offence to the
Jesuits. It has always been a problem where the original articles have
got to. Some thought they had just perished; others that there [sic] were
bought by Catherine II when she purchased Diderot's library. At the
Bibliotheque Nationale there is an exhibition about the Revolution. I saw
there a letter about Diderot which interested me. The name of the man
who had lent it meant nothing to me, but, on enquiry, I found that he
was Diderot's great-great grandson. I got an introduction to him and
discovered that he had all the papers, as well as hundreds of unpublished
letters of Diderot and his friends. But he was passionately religious, and
pretty well divided between pride and shame in his ancestry. He did not
think he ought to publish and raise the dust of an old controversy. M. le
cure too thought die papers had better remain dead. I saw M. le cure
who spoke vividly on the decay of the true faith, the sottises of those
wicked men, Voltaire and Rousseau, the horrors of the Revolution, just
as though he and I were emigres talking over the causes of the terror
we had just escaped. At least I was able to put the librarians on the
track; and they are hopeful that they will persuade the old gentleman
to part with his treasures.1
1 The papers in question, owned in 1928 by Baron Jacques Le Vavasseur, a
distant relative but not a direct descendant of Diderot, are now in the Archives
Nationales; they are inventoried in Herbert Dieckmann's Invent air e du fonds
Vandeul et ingdits de Diderot (1951).
1048 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
Then talk. I met Julien Benda, the author of La trahison des clercs,
and had thoroughly enjoyable discussion of the growth of Bergsonism,
and its disasters, the need to revive a faith in reason, the duty of de-
fending Western civilisation. Then Thibaudet the critic, who said many
fine things; of Bourget that he had shown how to make the ten com-
mandments perfumed fiction for the drawing room; of Proust that he
persuaded his readers that the infinitely little was infinitely important
granted only that it was infinite enough; of Renan that his doubts were
more powerful than the certainties of others; in every way an attractive
personality. I met, too, Maurois, whose Shelley you may have read — a
charming fellow, but quite obviously the man building his high-road to
the academy and careful above all to see that there are no rocks in the
way. And Mathiez, the historian of the Revolution, a great scholar, full
of a great subject, and speaking of his material with a fire and enthusiasm
that made one feel that there is no other subject save his. Of Taine, he
said it was the finest autobiography in the French tongue; how curious
that he should have chosen the French Revolution as the background
of his narrative. He had a high regard for Mignef s old history, and a
still higher regard for Acton; but he interested me enormously by saying
that the work which had done most to give new impulses to the study
of the Revolution in recent years was Kropotkin's History which, with
grave faults and many inaccuracies, contained invaluable hints. He was
a charming fellow, this Mathiez — the real savant, simple, unaffected,
passionately sincere. As it was election-time I saw little of the politicians.
But I went to lunch to the British embassy — a queerly artificial atmos-
phere — and met Briand there. Kellogg's note had just come,2 and it was
really amusing to watch the great man trying to convince himself that
I was serious when I said that the note meant just what it said and that
America was a pacifist people really believing that steps could be taken
to prevent the recurrence of 1914. Really these politicians live in an un-
real world. They exist by gossip, rumour, innuendo, suspicion; they have
formulae, but not general ideas; perorations, but not serried argument.
An hour of Morris Cohen's dialectic would reduce them to intellectual im-
potence. Give me the philosopher and the man of letters when you want
to know whether the world is really moving!
The book-hunt was most profitable. New books apart, of which there
were many I could not resist, I found Linguef s TMorie des lois civiles,
2 The American Secretary of State, Frank B. Kellogg, had recently laid before
the French government proposals for an international covenant for the out-
lawing of war. The negotiations which resulted ended in August with the sign-
ing of the General Pact for the renunciation of war. Laski wrote of "The
Kellogg Plan and the European Powers" in 55 New Republic 143 (June 27,
1928).
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1049
which I think as powerful and more realistic than Montesquieu; a book
curiously forgotten and rare, but about which I hope to make people
really excited one day. I got a good number of the pamphlets on liberty
of conscience published just after the revocation of the Edict, and one or
two of the attacks on Louis XIV's despotism, I picked up on the quais
L'alambic des lois one of the books to which Montesquieu gave birth,3
and quite good in its kind, the more interesting as it was the author's own
copy and has an unpublished ms preface by him on the purpose of his
work. Also I bought at ten cents each a perfect heap of Mazarinades,
some deservedly famous, some hardly known, but all useful to me as
illustrations of my pet theory about die difference between the English
and French civil wars. One interested me much as in it the French are
urged to grow a Cromwell as their liberator and to have done with
kings. This is, I think, one of the very few republican pamphlets of that
epoch. And I bought, finally, a set of pamphlets on the struggle between
Maupeou and the Parlements in the 18th century which are excessively
interesting from their attempt to show that France has a body of funda-
mental laws beyond the reach of the King's impious hands. I have a lot
to say about that theory in my book on the 17th century. But apart from
the things found you know and will share with me the delight of swing-
ing the ladder to the fourth shelf from the top in order to see whether the
inside of the red-bound volume is as good as it appears from the outside.
I enjoyed so much, too, the talks with the bouquinistes and their explana-
tion that the particular volume I wanted they had had in 1894 but since
then * * * and a French shrug of the shoulders into which you must
read the combined dramas of Racine and Corneille. One man was de-
licious. At first I could not examine his stock; then I bought one or two
items from his catalogue and was allowed inside; two more purchases
led me to the inner room; I then bought some twenty Mazarinades
which led me to the arcanum imperil — a cellar — with the remark that
I was then "vraiment serieux" A dirty but delightful race these bou-
quinistes!
Well, I come back to much work, as term begins tomorrow, and letters,
committees, articles to write, have all accumulated in my absence. But I
feel astonishingly fit, and though there rankles in me a sense of irritation
at not being able to get over to America — made more keen by your
and Felix's letters — I register a vow that it shall be next year.
I send you my warm love to you both. Brandeis writes me with en-
thusiasm about some of your recent opinions.
Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
*Auguste Rouille d'Orfeuil was the author of L'Alambic des lofa, ou
observations de Tami des frangois sur Thomme et sur les loix (1773).
1050 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
Devon Lodge, 29JV.28
My dear Justice: I am so glad your mind has been relieved about Wu,
and gladder still to know that he is all right. I enclose the Foreign Office
letter which shows that their job was properly done. I hope Pound can
give him a year at Harvard,
I was deeply interested in your taxi-cab case,1 and, if I may say so,
I thought your view demonstrably right. At the back of Butler, J's opinion
there seems to me to linger a quite patent fallacy, namely that there is
a body of common law dogmas to which, albeit unconsciously, state-juris-
prudence is seeking to conform; that where this is traversed, it must be
assumed, exceptis excipiendis, that it has been done in error. It is the
same fallacy which seeks to assume that a state unconsciously adopts the
dogmas of international law, and that municipal jurisprudence is adapted
thereto. But surely on the nature of the case, granted (a) the character
of American state-sovereignty and (b) the position of a state supreme
court, one cannot logically escape the conclusion that the common law is
for that state what that state chooses to make it mean, so long as the
federal constitution remains unviolated.
I have had a busy week, it being the beginning of term; and the room
for play has been small. On Friday we managed to smuggle in a dinner
for Herbert Croly, to which Graham Wallas and Allyn Young came; and
we talked the universe round. I like Croly, but I must say he seems to
me heavy and immovable; and there is about him a queer streak of re-
ligiosity I don't understand. Wallas is a dear; but if God ever made a
more self-centred man, I have not met him. One sentence in his talk
stands out in my memory, an insistence that no one had "put psychology
in its proper perspective between Aristotle and my Human Nature in
Politics." I wanted so badly to put in just a little plea for Hobbes, out of
courtesy, at the least, to the illustrious dead. But Frida held my eye, and
I remained an exquisitely polite host. Young is fine. He has immense
learning, great practical insight, and a sense of humour. I hope you will
meet him if and when he returns to America*
Of reading, a good deal. I am sending you separately a book that has
enchanted it — the sequel to Bentham's Fragment.2 The editing and the
introduction might have been better done — but the text, I think, is
Jeremy at his best and most characteristic. But only think what Lytton
1 See supra, p. 1027.
2 A Comment on the Commentaries (Everett, ed., 1928) was never pub-
lished by Bentham, although his Fragment on Government (1776) was an ex-
tracted portion of the Comment. Laski reviewed the Comment in 18 Manchester
Guardian Weekly 458 (June 8, 1928).
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1051
Strachey, or Sainte-Beuve would have made of that love story.3 Then
the collected papers of George Unwin,4 which Tawney has printed with
an admirable introduction. Unwin was one of the very best economic his-
torians of our time; and some of these papers have a quality that I do
not think Maitland would have disowned. I hope they will come your
way in the summer; and at least I hope you will read the memoir and the
two or three papers at the end.
I must not forget to tell you that at a lecture on Friday by Sarfatti,
the Italian jurist,5 I saw F. Pollock for the first time in many a day. He
looked astonishingly well, and his remarks on men and things were
pungent. Indeed he looked more like a man of sixty-five than one who
has passed into his eighties. And he had read all the latest books and knew
all the latest gossip in quite astonishing fashion. And I saw Nevinson,
who had just come back from Palestine, full of enthusiasm for Mahomet
on the ground that a man who could organise so shifty and dirty a race
as the Arabs into fighting material must have been a very great man.
Nevinson is wonderful. A book has just been published attacking the
Dardanelles campaign and its management. Nevinson, to whom each item
of that struggle is holy, was bursting with anger, and he used adjectives
which would have made a lady from Billinggate [sic] tremble with envy
against the author. I must not omit his story of the soldier who wrote from
Palestine to his mother in a Lancashire cotton-town. "I am now in the
land where our Lord was born. There are no movies and no football, and
it's very hard to get a drink. If I stay here long I shall have to turn
religious, too." Isn't there something of really epic quality in that too?
One other book I must eagerly recommend — by an American named
Margaret Wilson, Daughters of India. I admired it greatly; and people
who have been long there, like Ratcliffe6 and Lord Meston,7 tell me that
8 Mr. Everett's preface to the Comment on the Commentaries told, for the
first time, of Bentham's early love for Miss Dunkly — a love which led him
to write the Comment in order that he might support a wife. That he never
published the Comment may suggest that his passion for Miss Dunkly cooled,
or that her judgment told her that her greatest happiness was to be found else-
where than by his side.
* George Unwin (1870-1925), Professor of Economic History at the Univer-
sity of Manchester; author of Studies in Economic History (R. H. Tawney, ed.,
1927).
5 Mario Sarfatti was Professor of Comparative English-Italian Law at the
University of Turin.
6S. K, Ratcliffe (1868- ), journalist and lecturer, had spent some years
as newspaper man in Calcutta.
7 James Scorgie Meston (1865-1943), Baron Meston, filled many posts in the
Government of India from 1902 to 1919; author of Nationhood for India
1931).
1052 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
as a picture of the real Indian atmosphere it is quite unsurpassed. I think
that Harcourt publishes it in New York. And other books come to my
mind on which I have been feasting. Did I ever mention to you, Sanla-
ville, Moliere et le droit? It is a charming discussion of the lawyers in
Moliere's plays, and their relation to the actual lawyers of the 17th cen-
tury. I enjoyed it hugely. I read, too, a study of Saint-Simon the diarist
by Doumic, which had very great charm. I don't know if I ever said to
you that this constant research on the 17th century has sent up Saint-
Simon enormously in my opinion. He was one of the few who knew
what the disease was. I have been working this last three weeks at the
economic side of L. XIV's reign; I find that it cost 50% of the product
to collect the taxes, and that an average peasant paid over sixty per cent
of his income in taxation. So that the revolution is so inevitable that I
am sure the effective central problem is why it was postponed so long.
I wonder how far Anglo-French rivalry kept alive a national spirit which
disappeared when peace gave the prospect of civil discord. But this is a
mere ballon tfessai without much thought behind it.
I write on a perfect spring morning in the heart of London. And behind
me on a small rose tree Frida planted to make the garage less human, a
blackbird sings quite enchantingly; and by my feet the cat looks at me in
agony because the window is closed at the top and she cannot interfere
with the singing.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 8.V.28
My dear Justice: A week of literally overwhelming work, in which I have
emerged half-drowned from a mass of committees, lectures, dinners, and
book-reviews. To me the most interesting experience was giving a lecture
on the radio. To speak to an unlimited audience in an empty room and
know that the machine conveys the slightest inflection of the voice over
the habitable globe is really weird. I believe it came off rather well And
at least from the innumerable letters I have received asking for literature
about my subject I became convinced that it is a good way of getting
people to read.
Of dinners, the most interesting was one given by Sankey. Haldane and
Tawney were the other guests and we discussed the judge and his func-
tion for hours. I was astonished to find that whereas Sankey took the
obvious and sensible view that judges inevitably legislate, even if it is
what you have called "interstitial legislation," Haldane was insistent that
they merely "declare" what is already law, and not the combined efforts
of all of us could move him from that. It was amusing, too, to find how
completely he and Sankey disagreed in their estimates of particular
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1053
judges. Haldane seemed to look for what I may call a "man of the
world" quality in their decisions; Sankey was more interested in the
endeavour to make the case emit a big, working principle. Then we gave,
at the School, a jolly dinner to Harrison Moore, the Australian judge.1
He is quite charming, with none of the longueurs from which I have
suffered in Felix's hero, Higgins, J. and he told us some excellent stories,
especially one of X, now a judge of the High Court, who spoke for three
days; his junior then resumed his points in an hour; and Griffith, CJ.2
asked blandly, "Mr. X, are you and your junior animadverting upon the
same theme?" We had also Franz Oppenheimer,3 the German economist,
to dinner. He was a real delight, and his admiration for you and Felix and
Redlich went to my heart. He told us an excellent tale of Kohler —
Pound's omniscient hero — writing a paper on Ancient Chinese Law with
the aid of a Chinaman, to translate the texts; and an even better one o£
Mommsen's remark on hearing of the appointment of Max Muller4 to
Oxford: "Have you then no humbugs in your own country, that you must
import them from Germany?" Isn't that admirable?
In the way of reading, I have thoroughly enjoyed the fifth volume of
Carlyle's Medieval Political Theory. It deals with the 13th and 14th cen-
turies, and though no one could call it a great book, it is full of apergus
and opens up vistas I thought very suggestive. Then Chafee sent me his
new book,5 and though bits of it seemed to me not worth reprinting, I
thought it left a very charming impression of a mind at once liberal and
distinguished; though I add that he makes the common error in the
article on judges of thinking that the economic interpretation of history
deals with individual motives. I do wish people would read the texts on
which they comment. Then, too, an old but admirable book on French
literature in the 18th century by Paul Albert.6 If it is in the Boston
Athenaeum I hope you will take it to Beverly Farms; for the essays on
Saint-Pierre, Voltaire, and Rousseau are really as good as anything I
know, and it is pleasant to see a Frenchman free of the childish super-
stition that the 17th century is better than the 18th. And an equally ex-
*The reference is probably lo Sir William Harrison Moore (1867-1935),
who left England in 1*892 to become Professor Dean in the Law School of the
University of Melbourne, where he became a leading authority on constitu-
tional matters and published his work on The Constitution of the Common-
wealth of Australia (1902). He represented Australia in the League of Nations
Assembly in 1927, 1928, and 1929.
2 Sir Samuel Walker Griffith (1845-1920), Chief Justice of the High Court
of Australia, 1903-1919.
8 Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943), prolific writer on economics and sociol-
ogy who left Germany in 1940 and died in the United States.
* See, supra, p. 889.
BZecliariah Chafee, Jr., The Inquiring Mind (1928).
* La litterature frangaise au XVIII* siecle (1874).
1054 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
cellent book on feudalism (La societe feodale) by J. Calmette which is
a brilliant resume of the research of the last thirty years.
Queer things, too, have come in between. One of my students quarrels
with his guardian; said guardian tells him to leave the house and never
come back. Student does so. Guardian then calls me up to ask for aid in
the return of student. Laski searches for student who refused to go home
without an apology from guardian; Interview between them here which
is an education in the art of invective. Student then offers to apologise
to guardian if guardian will apologise to him. Guardian says he cannot
apologise to student but will apologise to me. Entrance of hysterical wife
of guardian to insist that Christians must forgive and forget. I nearly
explode the settlement by dissolution in laughter. Hysterical wife stands
chanting that "because of the war we must love: I love Professor Laski
and he loves me. Do you not love me Professor?" This in a high-pitched
scream which must have thrilled our neighbours. The curtain is then rung
down on a quite touching scene in which guardian and student combine
to impress upon me that it is all the fault of the hysterical aunt who is
incapable of loving anyone. Add to which an Indian student who tells
me that he feels very tempted by the lovely ladies of Leicester Square
and seeks a remedy against their charms. "I have called on my Gods, but
they answer not; I have asked my chemist for a philtre which would
repress my desires, but he knows not one; I come to you as to my father
for aid." Don't you think, in all honesty, that the work of a judge is
simplicity itself beside that of a professor? Or do you take judicial notice
of philtres?
My love to you both. Ever yours affectionately, H. ]. L.
Washington, D. C., May 12, 1928
My dear Laski: It may be that age makes it harder, it may be the endless
stream of certioraris — but I have found my work making it impossible for
me to write as often as I should like to. I should be very sorry if it led
to my hearing less often from you. However, the Conference this after-
noon that left me tired left me pretty well cleaned up — two opinions1
and three dissents2 to be delivered next Monday and nothing undone
except the delivery of one 5 to 4 opinion which McReynolds, one of the
5, held up at the last minute, two months or more ago, and keeps me
waiting on his lordly pleasure.3 He does not share the opinion of some of
1 Ferry v. Ramsey, 277 U.S. 88; Larson Co. v. Wrigley Co., id. 97 (May 14,
1928).
2 Long v. Rockwood, 277 U.S. 142, 148; Springer v. Philippine Islands, id.
189, 209; Panhandle Oil v. Knox, id. 218, 222.
8 Not identified; see, supra, p. 1045.
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1055
us that the work of the justices has the right of way and should be con-
sidered before looking out for No. 1. He has me in his hand as it depends
on him whether what I wrote goes as the judgment of the Court. There
seems a preestablished harmony between Brandeis and me. He agrees
with all my dissents and I agree with the only one that he will propound.4
There has been a succession of superlatively beautiful things here — each
being an event, beginning with the magnolias — but nature, jealous of
allowing us the superlative degree, takes the life out of me, at least, in
the spring weather so that I take a somewhat languid joy.
I have read almost nothing — W. Lippman's little book of course —
American Inquisitors. His writing is fly paper to me — if I touch it I am
stuck till 1 finish it. He writes so well — and sees so much that it is diffi-
cult to put into words — I think he talks as wisely as possible about our
fundamentalism and modernism. My wife has read to me (pendente soli-
taire) a good part of Mark Sullivan's book — Our Times — a deuced
clever evocation of the past that I remember — and most of which you
do. Also books of flyers and one that Miss Gertrude Bell was to have writ-
ten an introduction for — had she not died — The Marsh Arab or some
such name. Incidentally, not for the first time, am I struck by the cour-
age of an Englishman going alone among a lot of savages that would have
liked to kill him. I suppose that in that and other similar cases there is a
good deal of confidence in the power of the name of England, but there
is a lot of courage too.
Your adventures in Paris were most interesting. Not for the first time
does your talk with Mathiez the historian of the Revolution suggest that
one should read Kropotkin — I never did — but Brandeis once told me
suggestive things from him. Your names are sometimes illegible — who
wrote the Theorie des lois civiles which makes me prick up my ears? 5 And
what is your theory of the difference between the French and English
civil wars? Dear me, how many things I want to ask or talk about — and
I long to see your book on the 17th century — but I agree with Frank-
furter who says he urged you not to hurry. Your Grammar seemed hur-
riedly written. You have much to tell but only a thing well told lasts, and
you have shown often enough that you can tell your story well. What you
say about Croly agrees with the little I have seen of him — and what you
tell of Wallas somewhat surprises and much amuses me. I look forward
to Bentham's Fragment, and wish I could think of things that you would
like. For want of other things I may venture to dispatch one or two more
dissents. I have told you I think that my last letter from Wu spoke as if
his life was in danger — I can't tell how seriously to take it but it makes
*King Manufacturing Co. v. Augusta, 277 U.S. 100, 115 (May 14, 1928).
5 Supra, p. 1048.
1056 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
me uneasy, I begin to hope he will take the year's scholarship that I
believe Pound has offered him. I must stop. I am a pretty tired old cove
— but as ever Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 22.V.28
My dear Justice: I cannot complain of being underworked; for during
the last fortnight I have had, I think, only two free days and those had
to be devoted to necessary writing. However, half the term has gone, and
the slow approach of three months* freedom is inviting beyond words.
One or two things will, I think, amuse you. Since I began giving these
lectures on the radio, I have had the queerest collection of letters ever
sent to a human being. One man writes to say that his drains are out of
order (drains not brains); could I advise him how to put them right to
the best social advantage. Another tells me that the Court of Chancery is
illegally detaining twelve million pounds; would I take up his case? An-
other still simply thinks "I may like to know" that in his opinion no honest
man has ever been a member of Parliament. A lady tells me that her son,
aged eleven, has a genius for politics ("He already made speeches to the
local Primrose League"); what training do I think most suitable for
ultimate membership of the Cabinet? A gentleman writes from Germany
to say that he thinks we ought to correspond for I am clearly a kindred
soul and will I please start by sending him everything I have written with
affectionate (vom herzen) autograph inscriptions. Do you remember the
man who wired to Huxley — "Have discovered the truth; shall I come
over?" I have been going through a series of similar adventures.
We have not been about much, for I have been too busy. But on Sun-
day we took the day off and motored down to Hampshire to see the
Webbs. We had a delightful time there. They told us endless stories of
Bernard Shaw which explained much about him. Today, it appears, he
is so uncomfortable in the presence of poor people that he mingles only
with millionaires; which shows how little he is capable in an ultimate way
of manners. He now takes violent likes to people — the last being to T. E.
Lawrence of Arabian fame. He actually wrote to Balfour suggesting that
Lawrence should be given a pension of £ 1000 a year by the govern-
ment; to which Balfour replied that the government had no funds for
endowment of that kind but would welcome such or similar action on
the part of Mr. Shaw. Webb told me that in his view all Shaw's antics are
really the product of an inferiority complex; and I think this is not un-
likely. The Webbs together are really delightful people — humble, open-
minded, interested in all ideas, and endlessly kind to young people.
Of books, as Mr. Pepys would say, I have read a-many. First Shaw's
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1057
vast treatise on socialism which I had to review.1 It is strikingly written
but he has no idea of what has happened to economic or political theory
in these last forty years. Then Wells's little confession of faith,2 which is
mainly rhetoric but, I think, very moving rhetoric. Then Gibbon — the
last part — for a paper to a students club; and with a new admiration
greater than I have ever before experienced — its solidity, its pageantry,
its economy of words, its ironic note are all magnificent. How the man
of the autobiography came to write it, I literally do not understand. Then
Russell's Philosophy which I hope you will earmark for Beverly Farms —
a truly remarkable book, in which I note in passing a criticism of Bradley
which is masterly. Not everyone can annihilate absolute idealism in two
pages! And the new volume of Carlyle's medieval political theory which
has solid virtues but is quite totally devoid of any personality at all. Last,
but, God knows, not least, a volume of P. G. Wodehouse called The Click-
ing of Cuthbert which I beg you to buy. I laughed till my sides ached;
and the first story of all would, on my vote, go into any collection of classi-
cal humour. He is the Chaplin of letters.
I haven't had time to buy very much; but I picked up a nice collection
of Fronde pamphlets, and Carleton's Regall Jurisdiction which pleased
me. Also a copy of Bellarmine's De Romano Pontifice elaborately bound
circa 1700 in a tooled morocco binding, which proved [sic] a past owner,
the Rev. Edward Powys, to write on the margin in 1784, "Tis pity that
such ignoble poison should be so nobly preserved." Men, as you see, took
their faiths soberly in those days.
We have had Croly to dinner — a questioner but not a contributor —
and Abraham Flexner who is as delightful as he is dogmatic. And I went
to Allyn Young's to meet the German economist, Schumpeter3 and was
overwhelmed. He has Felix's charm and brilliance, together with a power
of analysis that is staggering. His picture of the weakness of German
politics was as superb a conversational tour de force as I have ever heard.
If he goes to America again I shall certainly send him to see you; I was
quite literally entranced by him. Flexner, by the way, confirmed all my
suspicions about such foundations as those of Rockefeller. He has in his
mind a "pattern" of what a university institution ought to be; and he
judges any particular university by the degree of its conformity with the
1 Laski reviewed The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism ( 1928 ) in 4
Saturday Review of Literature 981 (June 23, 1928). See, infra, p. 1059, note 3.
2 Probably H. G. Wells, Open Conspiracy; Blue Prints for a World Revolu-
tion (1928).
3 Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950), whose career in economics began
in Austria, took him to a Professorship in Germany, at Bonn, from 1925 to
1932, and then brought him to the United States, where he became Professor
of Economics at Harvard in 1932.
1058 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
pattern. He made, however, one admirable remark. He pointed out that
in the nineteenth century, when scientific discovery, political change, artis-
tic evolution, were all on a Titanic scale the movements which deeply
impressed Oxford were without exception theological in character —
Newman, the admission of Nonconformists and so forth. That is, I think,
true, and worth while trying to explain. I think probably the reason lies
in a kind of intellectual in-breeding that is fatal to a proper appreciation
of novelty. You see something of the same thing in Harvard in the period
before Langdell and in English Cambridge before they were shaken up by
Clerk-Maxwell.
I am longing for American news; neither from you nor Felix have I
heard for over a month. Did I, by the way, tell you that the University
of Geneva has asked me to give half a dozen lectures there next February.
I am very glad about it, as with the spoils I think it is pretty certain that
I shall be able to get to Washington in March.
Our love as always to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 28.V.28
My dear Justice: A perfectly delightful letter from you warmed my heart.
I don't think that you or Felix need worry about the French book being
completed too quickly. So far, I have been gathering its material for the
last three years, and I haven't yet put pen to paper. I plan to get out the
first volume sometime in 1930; as to the others, they may take until
the year I retire. But when they are done, I hope that people will have a
new view of the movement of the European mind in the 18th century.
I have had a jolly week. Last Wednesday I had the annual dinner of
my department, to which 4 young Tory M.P/s came as the guests. We
wrangled happily for three hours. I was intensely interested by their
enthusiasm for Winston and their contempt for Birkenhead. And in their
affections the more extreme a Labour M.P. was, the more they seemed to
like him. But what moved me much was their genuine and deep concern
about the lives of the working-class. I don't know, of course, how far they
could be taken as in any way representative; but, as I said to Tawney, so
far as people like themselves are concerned they differ much more about
the rate of change than about the direction in which change ought to go.
Yesterday we motored Nevinson out into the country for the day and
had, as you can imagine, a most delightful time with him. I was complain-
ing of Wallas's self-centredness and said this was new. "Oh no!" said
Nevinson, 'lie had it at Shrewsbury when we were at school together. He
always represented his chance thoughts as direct communications from
the Holy Ghost." He told me a wonderful story of Bridges, the poet
laureat, landing in New York and refusing to be interviewed. Next day
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1059
the headline in the papers was "King's canary refuses to chirp." Isn't that
superb? Then he refought the Dardanelles campaign with Ian Hamilton1
where we stopped for tea; and I was more moved than I can easily tell
you by the spectacle of these two trying twelve years after the event, to
think out alternatives which might have meant success. Nevinson has
nearly finished a volume about his latest wanderings;2 if it is as good
as the earlier you shall have it forthwith when it appears in September.
These things apart I have been working steadily in brilliant weather,
I have reviewed Bernard Shaw's book on socialism3 — teeth so concealed
as, I hope, to make the bile more bitter. He's a first-rate stylist, but he
hasn't read a book for thirty years and seems not to understand that
changes in social organisation mean changes in economic principle. More-
over for a man to tell you that the desirable thing is equality of income,
without telling you how to get it is simply irritating. Then I have been
writing a long paper on the general will for a symposium in July at the
Aristotelian Society4 and I am less discontented than usual with the result.
For I have worked out a thesis about the general will in Rousseau which
resolves the contradictions usually discussed between the second Dis-
cours and the Social Contract. It is a pretty point and I shall look for-
ward to hearing what you think of it later. And I have got some pretty
results from assuming that in politics good means the satisfaction of de-
mands and working out the consequence of a modified utilitarianism
along those lines. All of which reminds me to beg you, when leisure
comes, to read two simply masterly essays of McTaggart in Studies in
Hegelian Cosmology. One is called "Is the State an Organism" and the
other "The Supreme Good and Pleasure as a Criterion." I think that I
have never read discussion in that line since Hume in which destructive
power was so perfectly at work. My little advanced seminar has been
thrilled by reading and discussing them.
I apologise for my writing.5 The man who said (1767) "UEsprit des
Lois cest la Propriete was Linguet a journalist-lawyer who was guillo-
tined in the terror. A quite wonderful fellow — a combination of Marx
and de Maistre. There's a good account of his earlier period in a very
pleasant book by one Cruppi called Un avocat fournaliste au XVIIlme
siecle.
I am sorry you are being driven so hard on the Court. But it will com-
1 General Sir Ian Hamilton ( 1853-1947 ) commanded the Mediterranean
Expeditionary Force in 1915; author of Gdlipoli Diary (1920).
zLast Changes, Last Chances (1928).
8Laski reviewed The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism (1928) in 7
The Labour Magazine 67 (June 1928). See, supra, p. 1057, note 1.
* Mind, Matter and Purpose (Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume
VIII, 1928), 45.
6 Supra, p. 1055.
1060 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
fort you to know that Brandeis in a note to me last week said that he
"does not know what he would do without you there." I hope you will
send me anything you write of special note, for, otherwise, I do not see
them until the printed volume appears.
I must not forget to say that returning last night in the car I heard my
first nightingale. I was disappointed beyond words. There is something
harsh in its note, which has little of the liquid sweetness of the thrush.
Nevinson disagrees, and he is a real swell on birds, so that I am probably
wrong. But as I listened I felt that I would like to annotate Keats with
quite unexpected adjectives.
You note that I say nought of books bought or read. I have bought
none. But I am reading with immense interest Rostovsev's (or some such
spelling) History of the Ancient World — one volume the ancient East
and Greece, one volume Rome, and superbly illustrated. There's a great
holiday book for you. I got really worked up over its picture of Assyria
and Babylonia, even to the point of looking out places on a map.
My love to you both. I write while Frida is motoring to Devon.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, June 12, 1928
My dear Laski: There seems to be undue delay in the post. The last let-
ter from you is dated 28.V. To be sure it may have waited a day or two
for my arrival last night. You ought to have received two or three of the
little dissents that I scattered more copiously than I could wish this last
term. But the Court has rendered some decisions that I deeply regret.
Brandeis and I are together as we are so apt to be, by a sort of pre-
established harmony. However it is over now and I am beginning to
conceive the possibility of relaxation. Following your suggestion, which
I should not have needed if I had known of the book I bought Russell's
Philosophy — and following an older one of last year that I attributed to
you I have bought Parrington's The Colonial Mind.1 The something illeg-
ible of Cuthbert2 had not reached these shores but is ordered, I believe.
I wish I had kept a list of your recommendations as they came along —
but some were off the beat to which in a general way I confine myself,
While at the Touraine I read Genghis Khan — (by Harold Lamb) — an
interesting picture of what a man can do with a moderate force that can
get there quicker than the other feller. I was a little interested too by his
indifference to life — at least to the life of other people — by way of
antithesis to our sentimentalism. I am rather hard-hearted in theory and
xThe first volume o£ Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought
(1927-30).
2Wodehouse, The Clicking of Cuthbert (1928), supra, p. 1057.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1061
deal imaginary death more easily than I should find easy in the real case.
Yesterday morning before coming here I was taken over to the Gillette
Safety Razor factory and was greatly impressed. You are familiar I sup-
pose with the mechanism of modern great establishments. I am a child
in most matters of practical business. Perhaps because I was a friend of
Brandeis who used to be Gillette's counsel, I was presented with a parcel
on leaving which flabbergasted me when I opened it. It was such a com-
plete and pretty outfit of safety razor, blades, soap and brush in finest
form. As yet I just own it as a miser, but in a day or two I shall begin
to use it and cakes of soap will seem bristly compared with my face —
a new comfort has set in, since in last September my secretary bought a
safety razor and blade in a 10 cent store and gave them to me. I am as
converted as St. Paul — which reminds me — did I mention the seeming
revivification, with reenforced arguments, of the notion that Jesus was a
myth? It really sounds very plausible. To one who concludes from read-
ing the story that one knows nothing certain of the sayings or character of
Christ it doesn't much matter whether there was or was not a centre of
radiant energy in the form of a man. Does it occur to you that there are
more modern things in the Bible than in other ancient literature. I think
"Father forgive them — they know not what they do" — beats all the
classics. Think of those words being attributed to the supposed author
of doctrine absolutely irreconcilable with such skeptic tolerance. Also "a
thousand years are as a day in thy sight" — as embodying the possibility
of the same period being an instant or an eternity according to the state
of mind. It seems as if vacation had begun.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, S.V1.28
My dear Justice: I discovered to my horror yesterday that my secretary
had forgotten to send you the Bentham. I am so sorry, for you may have
been bothered by the thought that it has gone astray. However, it is
now in the post; and I am sending you, too, an article of Max Beerbohm's
on Andrew Lang which seems to me one of the most delicate pieces of
malice I have ever read.1 And as I think you share my dislike of Lang it
will, I hope, give you peculiar pleasure.
I was enormously interested in the three dissents you sent me, above
all in the Springer case.2 I can't even begin to understand the process by
*Max Beerbohm "Two Glimpses of Andrew Lang," 1 Life and Letters 1
(June 1928).
* In the Springer case, supra, p. 1054, Sutherland, J., for a majority had held
that the Organic Act of the Philippines included principles of the separation
of powers and that the legislature of the Philippines therefore could not im-
1062 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
which Sutherland got a majority on his side. And in the others I would
much like to know why our brother McReynolds thought it necessary to
add notes which are both insubstantial and inelegant.3
This has been a most pleasant week. First of all it has been one long
burst of sunshine and Frida's little garden, which stands just outside my
study window, has been one mass of flowers. Then two of my students
have won prize fellowships, and I feel like a duckling who sees her
brood take to the water. Then, in a way most remarkable of all, my blind
student, one Whitfield was given the Ph.D, for his thesis on Mably,4 and
to have his courage in undertaking it and his endurance in completing
it crowned with a summa cum laude goes to my heart. Every word of the
material he used had to be read to him, noted by him on to a Braille
machine, and then re-made into the book by the Braille notes. If you
think that he could never "page" a book, and realise what it meant to
recover a lost reference you get a sense of his courage. I ought to add his
wife's too, for she read every word to him of the countless books and mss
he had to go through. Doesn't that make you feel better about your kind?
I hope you will get the June number of Harper's Magazine and read
an article of mine on the American political system.5 I ought of course to
have sent it to you; but they sent me only one copy, and it does not
appear procurable over here. I badly want to know how much dissent it
provokes in you and Felix. I told the Harvard people to send you my
piece on Constructive Contempt. That is, I know, sensible and I am con-
fident of your approval even before it appears.
We had one jolly dinner this week — Allyn Young the economist,
Eileen Power the historian, and Brinton,6 a young Harvard professor who
in days gone by was a pupil of mine. We got on to the problem of national
decay. Brinton propounding, with modified support from Young, the old
thesis of maturity and old age in every people. I denied it; and argued
that all such biological analogies are a betrayal of science and that when
you look at a nation in decline there are always causes of a non-biological
kind at work. You can't e.g. say that biology explains the decline of
Greece and Rome. In the first you can put your finger, as in the second,
pose executive duties on legislators. In his dissent Holmes emphasized the
difficulty in discovering sharp lines between the legislative and the judicial
powers of government.
8 This refers, perhaps, to the fact that McReynolds, J., wrote a brief dissent
from the Court's judgment in the Panhandle Oil case, supra, p. 1054.
* Laski contributed an Introduction to Ernest A. Whitfield's Gabriel Bonnot
de Mably (1930).
5 "The American Political System," 157 Harper's Magazine 20 (June 1928).
6 Crane Brinton (1898- ), now Professor of History at Harvard, had been
an undergraduate at Harvard College when Laski was on its faculty.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1063
on a body of specific economic and political causes which have nothing
whatever to do with the quality of a national stock. Then we got on to the
effect of Oxford on Rhodes scholars and Brinton who was one of them
told us that they are in general disappointed with Oxford and disappoint-
ing in their achievement after their return. He interested me greatly in
his analysis of Oxford. He said that the average American was horrified
by its preciousness, by the free and easy habits of the undergraduates,
and especially by their intellectual and moral irreverence. I argued that
these were exactly the qualities there ought to be, especially the last,
among the youth of a university, that e.g. at 18 art for art's sake is a phase
as normal as measles in a school-child and that irreverence at twenty
connotes a prospect of choosing your own gods that is quite fundamental.
But Brinton was I think even more horrified by my approval than by the
habits of which I approved. Then he started on a eulogy of Ludwig, the
German biographer. I said I thought him much overrated and disliked this
psychological analysis which entitled the biographer to show more knowl-
edge say of Napoleon or Christ than either had of himself or his con-
temporaries of him, especially as the material was always a body of in-
ferences unsupported by documents e.g. it led Ludwig to accept the
St. Helena legend of Napoleon as the man of peace quite uncritically
when Elba ought to have made him see that Napoleon made his legend
because you cannot get ready to escape from St. Helena. Similarly the
Life of Christ seemed to me ignorant and cheap, a history of how Lud-
wig would have felt if he had been Christ without regard to the problem
of squaring his private feelings with the most complicated and dubious
body of documents in the world. Brinton argued that even if this was all
true, still Ludwig made people interested in history, at which I leave it.
Of other things, a dinner with Mackinnon, J. was interesting — he
is an attractive person with a quiet scholarly flavour and his colleague
Maugham, J. who has written a pleasant book on the Calas tragedy7 was
charming. The latter told a good story of Jessel who said of his colleagues
that it was quite untrue to say that seven of them didn't know a legal
principle when they saw one; that was only the case with five, and of
these, four were Chancery judges. He told also a charming tale of Davey
helping on a junior by attributing to him an argument of which he
(Davey) happened to be particularly the proud author, and JesseFs com-
7 Frederic Herbert Maugham (1866- ), Baron Maugham, was Judge of
the Chancery Division of the High Court from 1928 to 1934, later becoming a
Lord Justice of Appeal and Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and, in 1938, Lord
Chancellor. His book, The Case of Jean Calas (1928), was concerned with the
trial of Jean Calas (1698-1762), who was executed for having murdered his
son. The murder was committed to prevent the son from becoming a Roman
Catholic.
1064 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
merit, "Well, of course he is young and no one can be expected to under-
stand equity until he is forty." Also a story of B. B. Rogers,8 the trans-
lator of Aristophanes, bringing in a quotation from the Greek text into an
argument. Jessel glared and snapped out, "We can't have your domestic
pets in my Court, Mr. Rogers."
I have read little and bought less. But I do urge you to read The Semi-
Detached House by Emily Eden — a recovered novel of the 'forties with,
I think, certain quaint enchantments about it. I have been reading for
review the second volume of Curzon's Life and finding him even more
intolerable than I feared.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 16. VI. 28
My dear Justice: As I write there sits facing me an admirable snapshot
of you and Brandeis which Felix sent me from some paper; it's a perfect
joy to me for it makes you look so well. I hope the summer in Beverly
Farms (to which I am sending this) is going to be all you can desire.
I am full of work just now, buried beneath a mass of examination
papers. And dull work it is since, to take the last set, there are four
people whose papers were worth reading; and when you have had your
remarks regurgitated to you for the fiftieth time, you begin to wonder
whether it was really worth while to have made them. But this, I expect,
is the special disease of end-of-term; and when next Friday comes and
I know that for three months I need not give another lecture, life will
take on a different hue.
The last fortnight has been full of queer experiences. I spent a day
with Mrs. Asquith who talked brilliantly if maliciously about the good
and the great and told me one remark of Balfour's about Lloyd-George
which deserves permanence; "Even his dishonesties are irrelevant." I
went, too, to hear the debate on the prayer-book in the House of Com-
mons and marvelled alike at the continued strength of sheerly vulgar
anti-Romanism and the passion which a faith in the magic of sacramental-
ism can still inspire. I went, also, to a dinner to commemorate Graham
Wallas's seventieth birthday where he made a speech more unconsciously
egoistic (and therefore quite charming) than any other I have ever heard.
Its keynote was that in ancient Greece this [sic] was the influence of Plato
and Aristotle; have I, G.W., too kept the faith? I was amused that Sir
Herbert Samuel, who spoke after me, said, clearly intending a compli-
ment, that anyone who could "speak so eloquently as Prof. Laski" had
8 Benjamin Bickley Rogers (1828-1919); successful barrister and distin-
guished translator of Aristophanes.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1065
a duty to go into the higher walk of the House of Commons. An interest-
ing essay could be written on the politician's assumption of superiority. I
wish you could have heard Samuel explaining to Gooch, the greatest liv-
ing authority on the subject, the origins of the war, as though because S.
was in the Cabinet when it broke out his views were necessarily final.
Then, too, a jolly dinner with Allyn Young to meet Elton Mayo,1 who
does research at Harvard into industrial physiology and is, I should
judge, as sane and scientific a mind as has ever dwelt in those difficult
realms. And yesterday, Frida being away on holiday, I had Birrell to
supper, and we talked books till the small hours. He interested me by
insisting that Emily Bronte was the greatest genius of all who dealt in
fiction in the nineteenth century — a view I cannot understand — and
expressing contempt for Mrs. Gaskell whose North and South and Mary
Barton seem to me big achievements. We agreed in thinking that the
equation Gosse = 0 is an essential truth of the higher literary mathe-
matics and in putting Burke on the summit of the mountain. Birrell is
really pure delight, the 18th century bookman in breeches, with just
enough malice in his composition to give spice to all he says. He told me
the very interesting story that when Blackburn, J. got his offer of a judge-
ship he was so depressed by his failure at the bar that he thought it
meant a county court judgeship and accepted it in that sense.2 And of
Bob Romer3 who, you remember, was senior wrangler, a remark to
Fletcher Moulton, also a senior wrangler, who in a patent case was making
some mathematical observations, "I do not think it advisable for my
brother Moulton to recall the indecencies of our past when the junior
bar is present." Don't you think that charming?
I have had too little time for reading since I wrote last, though one or
two pleasant things have come my way. I note a really good shocker to
be read over solitaire at Beverly Farms — Extremes Meet by Compton
Mackenzie which I guarantee to hold you both breathless. But otherwise
I have been almost wholly occupied with Pascal and in the very laborious
1 George Elton Mayo (1880-1949), professor of industrial research at
Harvard, 1926-1947; author of The Human Problems of an Industrial Civiliza-
tion (1933).
2 When Colin Blackburn (1813-1896), Baron Blackburn, was named to the
Queen's Bench in 1859 he was by no means the only member of the profession
to be surprised at the unexpected elevation of a relatively unknown barrister,
with no public career behind him, to such high office.
3 Some years after Sir Robert Romer (1840-1918) was advanced from the
Chancery Division to the Court of Appeal in 1890, there were three Senior
Wranglers on that Court. Sir James Stirling (1863-1916) was Senior Wrangler
at Cambridge three years before Romer and eight years before Fletcher
Moulton.
1066 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
job of finding out how far he was just to the Jesuits and especially to
Escobar.4 On the whole he comes out astonishingly well from an examina-
tion of that kind. In certainly not more than six cases is there misrepre-
sentation of his authorities. Then I have been trying to work out the
effect of Descartes and am reaching the conclusion that it is not until
some such time as 1680 that he really became generally acceptable. Be-
fore that the Christian current of thought was much too strong for one
who implied the complete rejection of scholasticism, and the types of
religious revival in the period were not favourable to philosophic innova-
tion. This has been hard work, but well worth it. And I ought not to
omit telling you the title of an 18th century pamphlet it brought my way
"Newton's Geometry not fatal to the Incarnation" — by the Rev. Josiah
Biggs of Bethal Chapel, Stoke Newington — bound up in a volume I was
consulting at the Museum. I can only say with emphasis that I should
have liked to hear the Reverend Josiah preach, and that something has
gone out of life in the realisation that in the hereafter the crowded state
of the heavenly mansions, plus the natural excitement of the day of judge-
ment will probably make me forget to ask for him. I suspect, from his
pamphlet, that he will be near to Jonathan Edwards et hoc genus omne.
In the way of purchase I announce with pride and pleasure that the
misadventure of earlier years is relieved and I have got a beautiful Ben-
tharn for the ridiculous sum of three pounds. It is a good copy — like
yours in the 22 parts and uncut; I got it in Germany from the library of
a Baron Wangheim, where I suppose it remained unhymned until the
last member sent it to the dealer. And I picked up also a superb Holbach
— the Examen des proprieties, a delicate blasphemy that would, I think,
give you much pleasure. But recently the catalogues have been poor.
Our love to you both. Give my greetings to Rockport.
Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Beverly Farms, June 16, 1928
My dear Laski: A letter good as usual has just been forwarded from
Washington. I shall not receive books or pamphlets until and (in view of
age) unless I return there. I don't recognize the criticism on McReynolds
for notes — that is Brandeis's specialite — which I criticised to him at
the .beginning, but which he sticks to and which certainly enables him
to put in a lot of facts that no one but he could accumulate and which
overawe me, even if I doubt the form. I will get the Harper. As to the
old age of nations I never could see much more than an a priori applica-
* Antonio Escobar y Mendoza (1589-1669), Spanish Jesuit whose Summula
Casuum Conscientiae ( 1627 ) was severely criticized by Pascal in his Provincial
Letters for its tendency to justify conduct if intention was pure.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1067
tion of a superficial analogy. I daresay you propounded China. As to
students, I of course approve scepticism — though I regret irreverence.
Don't ask me to disapprove of Ludwig — Einstein1 sent me a German
article by him, the other day, in which he said the best man he met in
the U.S. was the oldest — "who but Lippo, I?" Ludwig must be all right.
As you see we are here — and have been since last Monday and I am
as near bliss as I often get. I have read a little of Parrington — Main
Currents of American Thought — with unmixed pleasure and instruction.
Also a little of B. Russell's Philosophy — as yet without great edification
although with pleasure — as he, so far, simply works out in more detail
what one is in the habit of taking for granted. But I blush to admit that
I know only by inference and only inadequate inference what Behaviorism
is. I also have perused But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes — that nothing
be lost.
But I am trying to take life easy — which I find hard. There always
are things to do. However I have indexed my this term's volume of my
decisions, and finished up — so far as my part goes, business that re-
quired attention. Yesterday afternoon we drove around the Cape and
skirted the shores of your Rockport — everything was divinely beautiful.
The sea its deepest blue — the quarries scarped omens of death — the
long beach between R. and Gloucester beginning to look like a picture
by Zamacois — picked out with figures of every colour — the roads
through the foliage of June — and even the lilacs not yet quite gone —
we have got the season at a little earlier stage than usual, this year.
I stop that I may creep out for a few steps in the fresh air and sun-
light. During the winter I pretty nearly gave up walking — and now am
making little attempts to revive the art.
Affectionately yours, 0. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 28.VI.28
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you tells me of a visit to Rock-
port, which opens up vistas and makes me a little envious. But I want to
begin by my warm salutation over the dissent in the wire-tapping case,1
a copy of which Felix sent me. If I may say so, that was a perfect thing.
I found Taft's presence on the other side a little difficult to understand.
I have been hard-worked since I wrote last. A big case at the Industrial
Court took two days; examination papers have multiplied; and I have
1 Presumably Lewis Einstein.
1 In Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (June 4, 1928), a majority of
the Court over the dissents of Holmes, Brandeis, and Stone, JJ., held that
evidence secured by tapping telephone wires in violation of state law was
admissible against a defendant in a criminal prosecution in the Federal Courts.
1068 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
had some ephemera like book-reviews to write. The first irritated me by
its excess of needless verbiage; the second was, as you may imagine,
tedious and joyless; and the third is, at best, a thankless job. And today
put the comble on a hard period when I examined a young American
who had written a Ph.D. thesis on "Political Motives" and had to fail him.
It was like telling a man that he must go to the electric chair. The lad is
so charming and his work so bad that one is divided between personal
regard and intellectual honesty. Hinc illae lacrimae!
Of other things much that is pleasant. A dinner here for the Sankeys
and Salvemini the Italian exile. Sankey was in great form, telling us tales
of the Bishops (whom he much frequents) and saying that between
them (there are 37) they represent a complete acceptance of the 39
Articles. Salvemini told us tales of his escape from the Fascist regime,
which made one's hair stand on end; and he interested me profoundly by
his insistence that the intelligentsia of Fascism were all trained in the
Hegelian theory of the state. Then a dinner with some young lawyers in
which I found pleasure for first of all they all regarded F. Pollock as the
most eminent English lawyer living, and, secondly, they were all very
critical of the legal training they had received, insisting especially on its
separation from economics and political science. I was interested, too, to
find that two of them who had visited America were insistent that every
Harvard Law School man they met seemed five years more advanced in
legal knowledge than an English lawyer of equivalent standing, and one
of them, who had attended a sitting of your Court, thought it infinitely
more business-like than the House of Lords. I went, also, to lunch to
John Burns, who assured me (I) that a revolution was coming (II) that
the English people would look to him to lead it (III) that he had kept a
diary compared to which Pepys was negligible and (IV) that half the
Webbs' knowledge of trade-unionism was derived from talk with him. I
did not think it kind to comment and felt that I was infinitely kind. An-
other experience worth mentioning was a meeting of the Japanese Stu-
dents Union at which I spoke to some sixty Japanese on the need for
scepticism and found that for nearly an hour I could not even begin to
guess what emotions or impressions I was evoking. Then after questions
the Ambassador2 moved a vote of thanks to me in a speech I wish I could
reproduce. I began by being the sun which gives light, the rain that
cleanses, the wings that fleetly carry, the moon which controls the tides
of thought. I was food, drink, a stimulus to digestion etc. As he spoke I
counted nearly forty metaphors until I was lost in bewilderment. And
when one little gentleman was introduced to me (he looked about 30)
he spoke saying "Sir, I and my son have derived benefit to the soul and
instruction for the mind from the perusal of your honourable writings" I
2 Baron Keishiro Matsui (1868-1946).
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1069
stood tongue-tied and helpless, feeling that the salutations of this grave
oriental courtesy can only be adequately answered in a bow. I must add to
this a German who called to see me this afternoon explaining that he
wished for conversation to point out my errors systematic-epistemologica!
and psychological-analogical. This with the air of an Atlas bearing the
world on his shoulders. He arrived in a pair of grey flannel trousers, a
blue velvet coat, an artist's tie which reached the pit of his stomach and
a vast portfolio of unpublished writings which he hoped I would go
through with him. I, poor boob that I am, gave him an hour and when I
found that he was an exponent of what he called the anthropotheosoph-
ical theory of the state, which emerged when he began to tell me the
significance of my horoscope (which he had cast from the data in Who's
Who) had to plead an engagement which did not exist and hide in a
colleague's room until I knew he had left the School.
I have had, as this chronicle will make clear, little time either to read
or buy books. One thing I have read with very great pleasure, English
Prose Style by Herbert Read which would, I think, interest you much;
and in a different vein an attractive biographical essay on Granville Sharp
by E.G. P. Lascelles which paints a really charming picture of that ador-
able eccentric; and a clever biographical study of Retif de la Bretonne
(most perfect of pornographers!) by Funck-Brentano. But the Read did
delight me, and I hope the Boston Athenaeum can produce it for you.
Tomorrow we have a vast party to celebrate my birthday, and on
Saturday we are motoring to the Cots wolds for the week-end by Oxford
and the Wye valley. Then back to another week of the Industrial Court
after which I hope for freedom.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, Mass., June 28, 1928
My dear Laski: It seems like resuming a long interrupted conversation to
write to you from here. For though you have been delightful I have been
no good until I reached this breathing place. I think I mentioned having
at last taken Parrington — Main Currents of American Thought. Now I
have read him and were you here we would jaw a volume. Imprimis,
His work seems to me solid and probably as just as any one man would
be likely to be. I felt as if I had seen the movement of New England as
I never had seen it before. Yet I was conscious all through of an an-
tagonism that would have reached issues had we both been articulate as
to fundamentals. The dogmatic postulate implied in the word "exploita-
tion" occurring on every page, and the sympathy that I infer with the
church-descended talk of the transcendentalists as to the infinite value and
potentialities of every human soul, got my hair up. I know that we are
1070 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
not at one on these themes — but I don't think that politeness requires me
to disguise my opinion that the implications are noxious humbug. I will
not amplify on that, but I can't retain my opinion. Some of his judg-
ments do not commend my assent, but they are matters of detail. I am a
long way off from believing that Thoreau was a thinker in any important
sense. I am not surprised at what he said about my father, nor at his
having missed what I think true, that although my father did not con-
centrate in his later days as he did when he wrote on puerperal fever,
still he had in him a capacity for profound insight — that occasionally
flashed out as I saw him. I think Fs whole estimate of the federalist per-
formance of making a nation in place of squabbling states is inadequate
— &c &c. But in spite of all criticisms Parrington has instructed and
stimulated me more than anything that I have read for some time.
We have paid our respect to Rockport which always moves me, and
this morning have been at another moving spot, the old burying ground
and lookout of Marblehead. One is in a different world, as one zigzaggles
through the crowded streets, and pretty near heaven when one gets to the
top of the hill where the old first settlers were buried and the point from
which one gazes far out to sea. Within a rod or two of the top is the
well by which the girl (Agnes Surriage) he made his mistress, and after-
wards married, used to meet Sir Harry Frankland in the old days.1 I
guess the old Marbleheaders still stick to their traditions. I was told there
of two old men talking of a third just dead whom one spoke of as of the
place. "He wasn't no Marbleheader," said the other. "He was six months
old before he came here." I have heard many yarns about them, which
seem to show them as dogged as any Britons ever were. Of other books
— a gentle yearning volume by Cardozo2 — lovable creature I am sure.
Stories by Owen Wister who is coming here for Sunday, and Bertrand
Russell in process — not revelatory so far — though sound talk I doubt
not. Many things in your letter give me pleasure — inter alia — Gosse —
and the tale of Romer and Fletcher Moulton (at whose house I have fed
and drunk well). It is a happy time here. Age has taken something from
my capacity for delight but there is enough left for practical purposes.
Affectionately yours, O.W.H.
Beverly Farms, July 8, 1928
My dear Laski: A letter from you delightful as always comes this morn-
ing. Your ennuis (industrial court, examination papers, &c) have my sym-
1 In his poem "Agnes," Dr. Holmes wrote of the romance of Agnes Surriage,
servant in the Fountain Inn at Marblehead, and Sir Charles Henry Frankland
(1716-1768), Collector of the Port of Boston from 1746 to 1757.
2 Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928).
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1071
pathy. (I have received a first batch of certioraris.) Your pleasures and
successes are my pleasures too. Your account of John Burns surprised me.
Is he gone soft in the uppers? That seems to be your implication. I sup-
pose he is pretty old. Your German who wanted to explain your errors
to you makes me realize the advantages of the blessed Atlantic upon
which I look. You tell me of your birthday but don't tell me how old you
are. Please do. My time since my last has been taken up in good part
by the business incident to July 1, bills and accounts. I haven't read
much — I think drives more important. After Parrington I did finish
Bertrand Russell's Philosophy — devoutly as I believe him (ex rel. you
and Cohen) to be a great mathematician there seems to me something
wrong in his speculative apparatus. He spends infinite time on matters
that I am quite ready to take for granted, and in his general views seems
to me to wobble between reason and sentiment. I should suppose that
he hadn't given up the notion that absolute truth is attainable, though
perhaps I am wrong on that. I don't retain his book in articulate form
in my head but only impressions which I couldn't refer to specific texts.
Expound the merits to me if you think me blind. Owen Wister was here
last Saturday — Sunday and we went through Rockport again. It always
moves by its simple majesties of granite and ocean — and I always look
over to where you were and wish that you were there again. If you were,
no doubt you would put books into my hands — as it is, my only slight
piece de resistance is Morison's Oxford History of the United States lent
to me by Miss Loring1 the other day — as yet I have read but a few
pages. Also I have partly read an account of Russia after Ten Years —
report of the American Trade Union Delegates to the Soviet Union —
optimistic, but intended to be fair. Perhaps it comes down to the question,
as so many things do — of what kind of world you want. Personally I do
not prefer a world with a hundred million bores in it to one with ten. The
fewer the people who do not contribute beauty or thought, the better to
my fancy. I perfectly realize that the other fellers feel otherwise and
very likely would prefer to get rid of me and all my kind. Perhaps they
will, and if they do I have nothing to say, except that our tastes differ.
That is the justification of war — if people vehemently want to make
different kinds of worlds I don't see what there is to do except for the
most powerful to kill the others — as I suppose they did in Russia. I
believe Kropotkin points out the mistake of the French Revolution in not
doing so.
I have a line from Wu this morning. He is now engaged on a code —
under government employment and has given up or was contemplating
1 Katharine Peabody Loring ( 1849-1943), North Shore friend of Holmes, and
sister of his associate on the Massachusetts Bench, William Caleb Loring, supra,
p. 758.
1072 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
giving up his judgeship. His paper is headed Nationalist Government of
the Republic of China. He proposes to come over here in about a year,
Pound having offered him a scholarship. I warned him that so far as
seeing me was a motive, as he says it is, it wasn't safe to calculate so far
ahead — but he replies that he hears (seemingly with belief) of a man
who is 250 years old and in good health. I am afraid that the oriental
criteria of evidence are not stringent. Tell your wife that though I don't
often mention it I always put my faith in her to prevent your working
your machine too hard. I have heard of men who exhausted their whole
stock of vital energy in getting double firsts and did nothing afterwards.
You have passed far beyond that stage, but I still fear that you run up
bills against the end of your life. Remember the Peau de Chagrin. Another
drawback to reading is slumber. I feel as if time couldn't be better spent,
but you can't put it down on a list of things done.
Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 7.VIL28
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you breathes the peace of the
country, and told me, as I hoped, that you had derived pleasure from
Parrington. Of course he writes as a Southerner, with a permanent bias
against the North. I, who believe most of the claims made for the South
are either untrue or undesirable, remain unmoved by that side of him.
But he has real intelligence and insight, and a delightful style.
We have had some pleasant days since I wrote last. We celebrated my
birthday with a party chiefly notable for talk from H. G. Wells which I
shall not easily forget. Part of it was judgment of people — always quick
and sober and vivid: of Galsworthy that he was always about to be an
artist, but at the moment of insight a gift of unshed tears blurred the sure-
ness of his vision; of Shaw that he wrote of government as though peo-
ple had never cared for liberty; and of Henry James that he failed be-
cause he could never accept the possibility that life was simple. Then to
my surprise he told us that he had been studying the art of prose and
felt strongly that three English lawyers were among the great artists —
Selden, Maitland, and Macnaghten — an interesting choice. And I was
immensely touched by his kindness. I had a young Hungarian novelist
here, on the verge of making his way. To watch Wells discussing his job
with him, his patience, his tact and his discrimination were a real lesson
to me in the greatness of a great man. I wish there were more like that.
My young Hungarian said he felt, like Pizarro, that a new planet had
swum into his ken. Then next day we motored down to the Cotswolds
and spent a divine week-end in divine country. I have an old school
friend near Gloucester there who teaches in a village school and we spent
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1073
an afternoon with him. It was very interesting. He is the son of a clergy-
man who, in my day at Oxford, was an intense Catholic. During the war
his faith left him and, with it, most of the ordinary ambitions. So he
lives in this tiny village, teaching history, and working slowly at a book
on the early history of the Christian apologetic. His greatest friend there
is the vicar, who is something of a scholar and the two spend the long
evenings with Tertullian and Cyprian and Gregory Nazianzen1 on the
table fighting it out together point by point. For neither of them is there
much real outside of that; and they speak of Harnack, Wellhausen,
Strauss2 as men across the road whom the village constable should either
protect or arrest. I, as you can imagine, spent some delightful hours there;
not least of which was derived from the spectacle of Frida's amazement
at a man whose wife is a simple country girl much like Heine's Mathilde,
happy if he buys her a ribbon or a gown, and thinking him sweetly mad
because he is a "scholar" and probably not so bad as her simple Catholic
faith would assert because he gives her so happy a time. We came back
to a world which (for me) began with the Industrial Court and continued
by my drafting a report for my colleague Lees-Smith on- what we call
the Savage [sic] case3 — the kind of police mishandling of witnesses with
which that Chinese case4 will have made you familiar. Then a stream of
foreign visitors — a German who wanted to discuss Gneist5 (whom I
imagined now to interest no living being) an American lady who said
she was a sociologist but seemed to me merely to regurgitate the worst
excesses of Mr. H. L. Mencken, and an Italian lawyer whose Italian I
understood better than his English and had to make to speak Italian. Then
a Polish lady who came to me in the mistaken belief that I was related
to the film magnate and could only be convinced with great difficulty
that I was unable to get her work in Hollywood, and an Indian gentle-
man who stayed with me an hour to denounce the British government. He
began with the sins of Clive and when he got to the mutiny I explained
1 Saint Gregory Nazianzen (c. 325-389), Catholic Bishop of Constantinople;
poet, orator, and theologian.
2 Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930), Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), and
David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) were Protestant theologians each of
whom sought to pursue Biblical criticism without regard to dogmatic con-
sequences.
8 Hastings Bertrand Lees-Smith (1878- ) was a Parliamentary member
of a Tribunal of Inquiry to investigate the interrogation of Miss Irene Savidge
by Scotland Yard. The report of Mr. Lees-Smith is in Command Papers ( 1928 )
#3147, p. 17.
*Wan v. United States, 266 U.S. 1 (1924). The Court in an opinion by
Brandeis, J., had held that a coerced confession was inadmissible in evidence in
the Federal courts.
5 Rudolf von Gneist (1816-1895), jurist, historian, politician, and ardent
admirer of English institutions.
1074 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
that I had another engagement, He left protesting that he would return
to bring the history down to more modern times and I was sufficiently
attentive (I did not have to open my mouth) to leave him persuaded that
I was deeply moved. Let me add as a final embellishment a student who
came to tell me that he had discovered the secret of Hegel and wanted
funds to publish. I suggested the more normal expedient of a publisher
and he accused me of a desire to suppress the truth. I asked him if he
had read Hegel and he said that he knew all that had appeared in Eng-
lish. I suggested that a knowledge of German was not without its bearing
on the secret. He made a grandiose gesture and said "that is necessary
only for the pedestrian mind of an academic."
I have, too, been writing a little, but mainly some book reviews, one of
which, on Balfour's preface to Bagehot,6 I hope to send you later. And
some reading — the most interesting being Rouse Ball's History of Mathe-
matics which has literally fascinated me, especially in its account of the
period between 1650-1800. What knocks me flat is the extraordinarily
early age at which these fellows seem to make seminal discoveries. There's
Jacobi or Abel,7 both dead before thirty and yet with quite imperishable
names; and, at the other end, the amazing degree to which that faculty
retains its original vigour into extreme old age. Another book from which
I have had much pleasure is Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man —
a brilliant and to me wholly sympathetic onslaught on Bergson. And I
have enjoyed a good book by one Cresson on the main currents of French
philosophy. Nor has fiction been neglected. I made an effort and re-read
Proust — Chez du Cote Swann [sic] — and gave it up with relief to read
G. Sand's Consuelo with infinite delight followed by a superb detective
story by A. Christie called the Mystery of the Blue Train which I com-
mend to you both as connoisseurs.
Books I have bought none, for the catalogues have been unkind. But
I hope shortly to commence operations.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, July 20, 1928
My dear Laski: Whether this will get off in time to catch the evening
mail and then be in time to sail from New York tomorrow I doubt — still
6 The review has not been identified.
7 Laski was in error in believing that Karl Jacobi, supra, p. 1038, died before
he was thirty. Niels Abel (1802-1829) was a Norwegian mathematician who
discovered the impossibility of solving the general equation of the quintic by
radicals. He and Jacobi independently formulated the theory of elliptical
functions.
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1075
more whether the effort can give you anything so interesting as your last.
I didn't know Parrington was from the South. That explains some things.
Your account of Wells has some little surprises in it. I didn't remember
MacNaghten as a master of style and had not thought of Selden in that
connection. There are fine and famous passages in some of the [illegible] .
It gave me pleasure to hear of Wells's kindness and magnanimity. I don't
know but you are right in calling him a great man. I have just received an
account of the Cohen dinner1 — to match you with a possibly great man
on this side. It must have been very moving — and it is pretty to think
of his old father and mother being there to see the triumph of their son.
I notice that the toastmaster quotes Cohen as saying that Bertrand Rus-
sell comes nearest to being his philosophic God — and you seem to lean
in that direction. I haven't got that religion from anything that I have
read — and I did get pleasure from Fred Pollock a few days ago (writing
of B.R.) "His theodicy so far as I make out consists in being angry with
the gods for not existing, because if they did he would like to break their
windows." I think that quite perfect.
I have finished the Oxford History of the United States2 with continued
pleasure and feel that I learned from it — incidentally to modify my old
impressions of MacLellan and A. Johnson — at rare moments there is a
pert turn in the end of a sentence — and sometimes hints at convictions I
don't share. He seems (from a very few words) more than respectful to
Christian Science.
One or two minor experiences — Owen Wister sent to me The Sun
Also Rises by Hemingway — youngish American author, living in Paris,
and I am told one of a gang that call one another great. Wister thought
that when he left the garbage can he had a future. It is a queer thing —
some rather every-day doings of people indicating no superiority of any
kind, never expressing an idea — but conversing in the language of
toughs, making up for their inability to find a discriminating word by
"damned" and "hell" — all getting more or less drunk every day — with
a hint of fornication, not overstressed — and yet one is interested. Mrs.
Curtis suggests, because it is pure narrative which she said always in-
terested— but rarely had been practised since Swift. That may be it,
and anyhow I read on when so far as appeared I should have thought the
dramatis personae in real life worse than bores. Item. A good article by
1 In October 1927, Morris Cohen's students at City College had given him a
dinner honoring his twenty-fifth anniversary as a member of the Faculty. Felix
Frankfurter was toastmaster, and messages of affection and admiration from
many distinguished persons were delivered. See Cohen, A Dreamers Journey
(1949), 148-149.
2 By Samuel E. Morison.
1076 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
Frankfurter on "Distribution of Judicial Power between United States
and State Courts," 3 I should think he was doing a public good in tackling
as he has an ungrateful and, but for him, tedious subject.
I now await from the Athenaeum a Life of Villon, said to be A-l 4 and
from the bookseller, Henry Osborn Taylor, Human Values (and something
else that I can't read certainly) recommended by a professor whom I
met the other day and who had been examining brains. He found no
explanation in the brain of Morse of Salem — of his power to draw
equally well with both hands — and I believe at the same time.5 In short
there was very little evidence of the localizing of faculties. You get a lot
of things quicker than we do if we ever get them — but I am surprised
to learn how many eminent writers of books &c &c there are here that I
don't know about. I was frightfully impressed with the same thing on a
larger scale when I read These Eventful Years. There promises to be
enough to keep me busy during the short time that I have left. My love
to you all. Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 23.VIL28
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you cheered up some grim days
of work. I have had to run it hard this last fortnight in order to clear up
things for Friday when, at long last, we get away to a haven of peace
in the Ardennes. First I have had examiners' meetings, which are a fright-
ful bore; and this year, as chairman, I had all the work with the addi-
tional burden of trying to steer an even keel with a crew which naturally
enjoys fighting over every question of pace and direction. Then I had
to go down to Bristol to speak on the "General Will" to the Aristotelian
Society.1 I found myself in the midst of a gang of old-time Hegelians
out for blood, including one passionate lawyer (a county court judge
named Dowdall)2 who said with, I am sure, perfect sincerity that he
had met a general will six times in his life; and an ancient professor
named Mackenzie3 who said that the general will of America was per-
manently embodied in Woodrow Wilson's speeches. I enjoyed it in the
3 13 Cornell Law Quarterly 499 (June 1928).
4 D. B. Wyndham Lewis, Francois Villon (1928).
5 Not identified.
1 See, supra, p. 1059.
3 Harold Chaloner Dowdall (1868- ), Judge of the County Court of
Lancashire, 1921-1940.
8 Probably Professor John Stuart Mackenzie (1860-1935); Professor of
Logic and Philosophy, University College of South Wales and Monmouth-
shire, 1895-1915; author of Outlines of Metaphysics (1890).
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1077
way that one likes to strike a note of scepticism in a meeting where
people are testifying to private revelation from on high; but I thought it
rather a childish performance. Then three days at Oxford giving some
lectures to five American students ensconced there for the summer, That
I thoroughly enjoyed. They cross-examined me with machine-gun rapidity,
and I felt at the end that I had really earned my keep. Also I found some
nice books there, especially some early 17th century French pamphlets
which I would have gone far to obtain. And I dined in New College and
thought that the older dons were like the unburied dead. One of them,
a classical scholar, made it a point of honour never to find out what
happened to his old pupils; it was he thought dangerous to his peace
of mind. A second explained to me that he was greatly distressed at the
declining influence of the aristocracy who so clearly represented the best
brains of England. And one of the younger .dons kept telKng me that
America was for him simply a mass of uncivilised brutality — "no stand-
ards; one suspects, no values, no ideals." I spoke sharply upon that head,
especially as the impudent puppy had never visited America, and was
merely attitudinising. He could not bear, he said, to open American books;
he was so afraid that the style would spoil his ear. I had a picture of a
narrow and self-satisfied little community too acutely conscious of the
demerits of others to consider its own. But I met there Hardy the mathe-
matician,4 and he atoned for much. He reminded me somewhat of Morris
Cohen — the same width of interest and razor-like mind, and his honesty
was remarkable. He said that England historically had only one supreme
mathematician in Newton and perhaps a dozen to whom the word emi-
nent was applicable, and he traced much of this to our insularity on the
one hand and bad academic methods on the other. I thought his standards
the kind of thing that makes one inclined to creep into a hole and die
there, but you could not help being impressed because he so clearly felt
that mathematics were the most important thing in the world. Then a
dinner with Sankey to meet Scrutton, L.J. They speak of the latter as
ill-tempered; but I found him wholly delightful, and when he praised
Shaw of Massachusetts, Watson, MacNaghten, and divers others of my
heroes, my heart went out to him. He told us a good story of Jessel, M.R.
saying to him as a junior that he must always believe the solicitor honest
while the case is in process and dishonest until the fee on the brief has
been paid. He divided judges into 3 classes; those who listen, those who
won't listen, and those who can't listen, and said that the middle class is
the best because they lead straight to the Court of Appeal. He was, as
I hope I faintly indicate, wholly delightful. I gathered that he met you
4 Godfrey Harold Hardy (1877-1947), Professor of Pure Mathematics at
Cambridge.
1078 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
once years ago on a tramp with F. Pollock, Leslie Stephen and, if I
have it right, Douglas Freshfield.5 Finally I record a dinner here for Neil-
son of Smith College,6 an old Harvard friend, who warmed my heart with
a great account of Felix and comforted my fear that I may be wrong in
refusing to give money to the Law School by hinting that Pound has
the illusion of bigness in a dangerous degree.
I have had but little time to read anything serious, and in trains and
bed novels have been my lot. One, Trollope's Way We Live Now moved
me much, and interested me by its clear anticipation of the modern re-
alistic novel. An American one, Home to Harlem by Claude McKay
I thought had very moving parts, but was over-sexed as is so much of
fiction just now. . . .
We go off on Friday to a place called Waulsort in the Ardennes near
Luxembourg. We were there two years ago and liked it greatly. We shall
stay there till the end of August and then have a look at Amsterdam
which I have never seen. Whatever comes I have two full months of com-
plete peace ahead. After that I am always ready for work.
Sir, in answer to your enquiry, I beg hereby to state that I was born
on June 30, 1893. I have not ceased to talk, except at nights, since about
June, 1896.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Grand Hotel, Waulsort-sur-Meuse
'Belgium 31. VII, 28
My dear Justice: It could hardly be more delightful than here. My room
looks down on to the Meuse which is as clear as a mirror of silver; and
above it are hills of iron-grey granite which are in parts masses of yellow
gorse. It is a perfect place to rest, for beyond a little tennis there is
nothing to do except read and write and talk. The Belgian friends we
are with are charming people — he an architect and his brother-in-law
an artist whose specialty is etching, much in the genre of Meryon — by
which I mean that a careful scrutiny of his detail will display all kinds
of attractive and unexpected blasphemies much as Meryon put those
devils' faces in the dark comers of his bridges. We talk much of artists
and their critics and two things always keep emerging that interest me.
The first is their refusal to recognise any relationship between what they
see and the philosophic account of what aesthetic is; it is as though they
5 Douglas William Freshfield (1845-1934), geographer and mountaineer.
6 William Allan Neilson (1869-1946), President of Smith College, 1917-
1939, had been Professor of English at Harvard while Laski was on the
Harvard faculty.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1079
felt possessed of a private world from which a body of rationalised prin-
ciples is warned off. The second is their insistence that Anglo-American
art means Turner, hors concours, then, at a distance, Whistler, and then,
once more at a distance, Muirhead Bone, Cameron, Mary Cassatt. For
the well-bought names, Raeburn, Romney, Reynolds, they seem to have
unmitigated contempt. But the architect is lyrical about American archi-
tecture which with that of Holland he insists leads the world. And his
explanation interests me. Americans, he says, are experimenting with new
forms in which they are free from the hampering effects of dead tradition,
They can therefore suit both design and material to the purpose they have
in view. Their work is accordingly more original and self -expressive than
English, which is always pseudo-Jacobean or pseudo-Georgian or French
which is always pseudo-Louis XIV or XV or empire. Being ignorant of
these matters, I take it all on trust. But it does, I must say, seem not
unreasonable on a priori grounds.
One other thing is extraordinarily interesting, and that is the intense
patriotism of these small nations. They speak of their poets, historians,
philosophers, as though they were world figures. Have you ever heard of
a Dutch epic poet named Vondel? Yet I assure you that beside him,
here, at least, Dante and Milton are pigmies indeed. So, too, they do not
doubt that the standard of medicine, law, education is infinitely superior
to what exists elsewhere. It isn't exactly complacency; some of it is
whistling to keep up their courage. But it goes down to the root of them,
and is delivered as obiter dicta in a way quite impervious to argument.
And when a Belgian colonel tells me that Italy has swarms of spies here
in its desire to annex the Congo for an African Italia Magna I can only
wonder whether there are ten Italian politicians living who ever remem-
ber more than (say) once in a week that there is such a country as
Belgium.
But it is all amusing and all peaceful; and there are some queer char-
acters to give it salt and savour. I instance a bargeman who looks after a
coal lighter which plies for hire up and down the Meuse. I gave him a
cigarette and we fell into talk. He had sailed the four seas, knew every
line Conrad had ever written, regarded Moby Dick as the greatest piece
of literature ever produced by man, and desired only the abolition of the
female sex for the world to be quite perfect. "Women," he told me, "are
all money one week and all children the next." No woman has ever set
foot on his boat and the four members of the crew have all to prove their
capacity for mending clothes before they are admitted to its ranks. The
boat is kept marvellously clean, and the crew has to bathe with the master
every day or leave the boat. There are two bottles of grog for them every
week and if they are not consumed the old man (he is 73) holds an in-
1080 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
quest. Let me add that the only American he appears to care twopence
about is Farragut1 and the only Englishman Duncan2 because he beat the
Dutch. These he loathes because they eat too much and let themselves get
fat which he holds (after marriage) to be the supreme sin. He dislikes all
schools, priests, vegetarians and drunkards. He knows half a dozen words
of Latin (especially veni, vidi, vici) of which he is enormously proud and
they come in upon the most unexpected occasions e.g. "M'sieu, I was at
Namui last week, and got some wonderful tobacco very cheap — veni,
vidi, vici" He is having some repairs done here, so I shall have the joy
of talk with him until Sunday. He forgives my marriage on the ground
that I was too young to know what I was doing.
In the way of reading I have little to report and less to recommend.
Westlake on International Law, Redslob's Histoire des grands principes
du D.I. cannot be called exhilarating, but I have to read them from grim
need. To me the outstanding thing in this particular literature is the
sheer genius its authors possess for elaborating the obvious; and at the
end the result seems to me far less impressive than the labour involved
would warrant. But I have enjoyed greatly Ruggiero's History of European
Liberalism, which I recommend to you, even though it is over-Hegelian
in temper; and Pendennis, which Diana brought with her, has com-
pensated for long pages of Westlake and company. Also I brought with
me Macaulay's History, and Philistine as the fellow is he can certainly
tell a story as no other writer I know except possibly Parkman or Hous-
saye3 (1814}. The portrait of the early Bank of England is simply
supreme as narrative.
I hope your heat wave has passed. My colleague Gregory who was in
New York circa July 10 said he prayed quietly for death.
Our love warmly to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, August 13, 1928
My dear Laski: Your first vacation letter has arrived and has given me
the usual pleasure. I have told you about Vondel, quoad nos, before.
My father amused himself with the thought that Vondel and Wendell
might be the same and had his works and his portrait (which I now have)
by Janus Lutma engraved in a manner peculiar to Lutma — while I have
1 David Glasgow Farragut (1801-1870); Union Admiral, in the Civil War,
whose most famous pronouncement, "Damn the torpedoes," was uttered dur-
ing his greatest triumph, the battle of Mobile Bay.
2 Adam Duncan (1731-1804), Viscount Duncan, whose victory over the
Dutch fleet occurred in the North Sea in October 1797.
8Henri Houssaye (1848-1911), military historian who in his 1814 (1888)
and subsequent volumes told, with devoted eloquence, the story of Napoleon's
last campaigns.
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1081
Lutma by Rembrandt in my dressing-room. So I am glad to hear that
Vondel is the Belgians* great man.
1 have no great things to tell about myself. I am tired this morning as
we had a feller here for Sunday and more than an hour and a half of
talk takes it out of me. My wife if she sees signs of fatigue always at-
tributes it to the certioraris — I, not. But I have done 125 and have told
the clerk to send no more unless I ask for them. If they have not tired
me they have kept me from reading more than a very little. I have on
hand a book by one Dill — Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius,
which was recommended to me and which has information that is for
the benefit of my immortal soul — and which therefore I expect to finish
— but which is almost the ne plus ultra of what I dislike as writing. Fat
and flabby adjectives — much repetition — the conventional attitude that
any loose talk on Juvenal et al is painful — deliquescent phrases about
the corruption of the nobility by the example of Nero and the others —
Oh Lord — he makes me tired. But as Sidney Bartlett1 said of an argu-
ment by Evarts: "But through it all there ran a vein of thought — atten-
uated at times to be sure, but never wholly lost." (S.B. patronized every-
thing human). So I keep on. I read Lady Oxford's novel — Octavia —
and it made me a little sad — good hunting talk — and horses described
in human terms. But the tale sounds to me as if years had not added
wisdom. Also some things by Ernest Hemingway that I think I have men-
tioned.2 Art shows in making you interested in the picture of people
doing and saying what in life would not interest you in the least. I hope
now to read a little more and presently shall go to sleep over Dill. I
am even thinking of taking a book by your friend Trollope, perhaps
Barchester Towers, and seeing how I get on with that. Always there is
imminent some brief touch of the classics — but with them almost always
the feeling of wasted time. It would be a momentarily pleasant and pos-
sibly a wholesome change to have two or three days come when I didn't
quite know what to do. There is always something and partly from
temperament it generally presents itself in the light of a duty. You seem
always to read no matter what with gusto. I almost always read with a
groan, a mark, and with a count of the number of pages. Even my taste
for novels like my taste for meat has faded, although I still am all there
on a real story of the old fashion, not necessarily detective — provided
there isn't too much of it — as there was for me in La guerre et la paix.
I suppose it is the Old Testament's grasshopper become a burden — but
Sidney Bartlett (1799-1889), for years a leader of the Boston bar and an
imposing figure on the profession's national horizon. Holmes spoke of him
briefly in his Speeches, 41.
2 Holmes read both The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Men Without Women
(1927) during the summer of 1928.
1082 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
cases don't, nor philosophical books that hit me. I wish I had kept a list
of the books recommended by you. Some shaft more lucky than the rest
might seek my heart. Farewell — I am glad you are having such a good
time.* Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
* Don't mistake me — I am.
Grand Hotel, Waulsort-sur-Meuse
Belgium, 4.VIIL28
My dear Justice; F. Pollock's remark on Russell is one of the most bril-
liant things I have heard in many a day. I don't, I think, go myself
anything like so far as Morris Cohen in my respect for him. I thought his
Lowell lectures a big piece of work;1 and I like the general ethos of his
mind. But he reminds me too much of the little boy who rings the street
bell and runs away, to give me ultimate comfort. All this, I add, is subject
to my complete inability to know what his mathematical logic is about,
and to my contempt for his political writings as obvious paralipomena
done merely to make money. I do greatly admire his courage; and I share
his desire to break the windows of any heaven there be.
I am having a delightful time here, favoured by excellent weather.
I write and read from 9:30 to 1; walk and talk in the afternoon; bathe
and play tennis from 5-7; and perform my social obligations in the eve-
ning.
My boatman has left; and the one pleasant adventure has been in the
book line. The nearest town to this is Dinant, and I went there on Tues-
day to get some money. In a junk-shop by my bank I found a notice about
books for sale, and explored it between trains. I found for a franc a piece
ten valuable pamphlets of the period 1610-15; all of them dealing with
that Gallican controversy I hope to make a feature of my book; the com-
plete political works of Justus Lipsius in a nice quarto for five francs; and
a perfect first edition of Diderot's Pensees philosophiques for two francs.
The man was glad to get rid of them and I went on my way rejoicing. He
had also an admirable old map of Antwerp (1573) published by the
Spaniards to explain the fortifications. I bought this from him for thirty
francs and resold it to my friend Van Overloop,2 who deals in these mat-
ters, for six hundred; Van Overloop being overwhelmed by my modera-
tion as I left it to him to make the offer. He has resold it to the Musee
Plantin for two thousand francs. So, like Artemus Ward, I combine pleas-
ure with instruction.
In the way of reading, I have much that is pleasurable to record. First,
a really amusing novel I conjure you to read — Inisheen by G. A. Bir-
1 Our Knowledge of the External World (1914).
2 Not identified.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1083
mingham, one of his most admirable pictures of Irish impossibilism. Then
a really good and illuminating book by a Frenchman named Schatz called
VindMdualisme — a history and a defence at one and the same time.
It is even stimulating on old themes like Hobbes, and on forgotten peo-
ple like Dunoyer3 it is quite excellent. Then I have been re-reading, longo
intervallo, Carlyle's Medieval Political Thought. At this point I am over-
whelmed by an idea and, at the risk of boring you, I must get it off my
chest. My idea is that the Christian doctrine of equality has nothing to do
with political equality at all, and that insofar as it has any basis for politi-
cal inferences it is against and not in favour of equality. S. Paul's view
seems to me to be that men's equality before God is negative i.e. our
distance from him is so vast that we all stand upon much the same level;
and since all beings are dependent upon him because his grace only is
the canon of salvation, no one has an equal claim since the will of God
predestines some and not others to it. There is therefore (a) no right to
salvation (this depends on the will of God) and (b) no equality since
persons predestined to salvation are worth more than persons not so pre-
destined. I build on passages like Galatians 1.15. II Timothy 1,9. Romans
9, 11 and there are plenty more; and this view would fit in with the
complete acceptance of slavery in St. Paul, Matthew, Mark and Luke. If
I am right it means that Christianity did not in the least take over the
Stoic philosophy in its beginnings; so far as I can see this was a Scholastic
development of the tenth century which reached its best expression in the
13th. Carlyle, of course, preaches the ordinary Christian view, with the
test of "Jew nor Greek" etc. as its foundation; but this, I think, means
that among the predestined there is, in the sight of God, neither Jew nor
Greek; i.e. his grace is so wonderful that he can for salvation neglect all
differences. I should therefore argue that the Christian ethic was at no
point of itself a liberating influence until it rediscovered natural law in
the Scholastic revival. I put all this to a Jesuit from Louvain who is in
this hotel and he was so horrified that I was tempted to feel that it might
be right. Have you ever looked at the problem from this angle?
Of other things, there is but little to tell, I re-read Bryce's Modern
Democracies for lecture purposes and found it dull; on the other hand 1
was impressed by Lowell's book on Public Opinion. And I read with
pleasure Villard's American Portraits, liking especially the one on Colonel
House, probably because there are few political types I dislike so com-
pletely as eminences grises. I hope you share that view.
My other remarks must be discreet. I note that the Dutch have the
largest appetites in Europe. On the average their normal lunch here
8 Charles Dunoyer (1786-1862); champion of economic liberalism both
against the authoritarians of the Restoration government and against the new
democracy; author of De la liberte du travail (3 vols,, 1845).
1084 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
begins at one and ends between 2:15-2:30, They do not talk but make
what William James called a direct march upon the meal. They look so
serious while they are at it that I believe for them it has come to acquire
a sacramental character. I note, second, the extraordinary parsimony of
the French. Three people here from Paris combine (quite different fam-
ilies) for one morning paper; and a terrific row developed between hus-
band and wife because the former put a I5c stamp too much on a letter.
I note, third, that the Germans like to discuss the origins of the war, and
as soon as they begin the French bristle up and Allemands become
Bosches, Acton's formula "when in doubt, play national character" has
real points.
Our love to you both; and forgive the rambling gossip of a minute
village. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Grand Hotel, Waulsort-sur-Meuse
Belgium, 1S.VIIL28
My dear Justice: Life moves so peacefully here that it is difficult to think
I was ever caught in the whirlpool of term. I am having the happiest
possible time, enough reading and writing and talking to make each of
them specially attractive as it comes. This week we have had with
us James Ensor, I imagine the best of living Belgian artists, a man of
seventy and a great causeur. I have enjoyed him hugely. To discover an
artist whose God, so far as he has one, is Henri Poincare — is remarkable
enough. But to find him also a perfect tempest of ideas on everything is
really exhilarating. He is that rare thing — an artist conscious of the need
to understand his own art. He pleases me by rejection of all effort to
distinguish between the highest forms of creative effort, That, for him,
is the attractiveness of Poincare; he recognizes, he says, in P's account of
his scientific experience the same creative impulse which has led him to
his own best pictures. And to hear him on the Church in Belgium is a joy.
He had not been to confession for thirty years when he married and the
cure punished him by refusing to allow him to enter the Church by the
front door. So Ensor marked his sense of tihe fitness of things by giving the
verger a hundred francs and the cure ten when he left. He would please
you by his enthusiasm for van Ostade. He puts Peter Brughael at the head
of all the Flemish school, and, to my surprise, M ending very much in the
second rank. And in his literary tastes he is curiously classical. He sees
things in Corneille and Racine that literally do not exist for me; and, con-
versely, I cannot persuade him that there is anything at all in the poetry
of the 19th century romantics. He loathes Scott and Dickens and Meredith
and George Sand, and makes a God of Voltaire. It is curiously fascinating
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1085
to walk with him and watch how his eye fastens upon a proportion in
the landscape, an unexpected contour, some sudden cluster of flowers in
one of the promontories of rocks in which the district abounds. I would
give much to bring him to I Street and spend a night with you both. And
Mrs. Holmes must know that he cannot avoid a perfect passion for tiny,
absurd, bizarre ornaments, He wanders into shops and cottages and comes
out with little china dogs, or a cup with a scriptural illustration, or a kind
of sampler with verses telling the child its duty to God. Altogether a
splendid person.
In the way of reading, I have had a jolly time. The most interesting
thing was Redslob's History of the Principles of International Law which
illuminates for me a side of things I did not know. What interests me
especially is the number of really second-rate minds who have had great
influence in that subject. I can't see that Puffendorf, or Wolff or Vattel,
or Bynershock, are much more than, say, the average text-book writer in
an American University; yet each seems to mark an epoch in his subject.
And, intellectually, Grotius seems much more to have amplitude than
profundity. I should have said that Suarez or Franciscus de Victoria in
sheer rational power could have given him points every time. Then I have
been reading an attack in the name of the classic French jurisprudence on
Duguit and Co. — very ably done except for the exhausting proof that
jurisprudence must have a metaphysical foundation.1 I have never been
able to take seriously poor Duguit's denial of metaphysics in law for the
simple reason that he is himself the slave of Comte who is riddled with
metaphysical presuppositions. Also a charming book on the origins of the
French Romantic movement, by Daniel Mornet, (Hachette) a book I
warmly recommend both for the new (at least to me) knowledge it gives
and the charm with which it is written. And lastly a topping novel of
William de Morgan's Joseph Vance, which I had never read and really
enjoyed as one enjoys those spacious three-deckers of the 19th century
written "upon the assumption that time does not exist. And here, of course,
that assumption is gloriously true.
I have also been writing happily for three hours or so each day — at
what the French call a legon d'ouverture for a course of lectures a col-
league is arranging on the 18th century in France.2 I am trying to explain
what the Age is intellectually and enjoying it more than I can say. I think
it has some new things in it tucked away, and some old things set in a
light different from the usual account. I have at least offered some expla-
1 Perhaps Julien Bonnecase, Science du droit et romantisme (1928).
3 "The Age of Reason," in The Social and Political Ideas of Some Great
French Thinkers of the Age of Reason (Hearnshaw, ed., 1930), and reprinted
in Studies in Law and Politics (1932).
1086 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
nation of Rousseau which it would be worth while to explore in detail.
The lecture will be printed one day in a joint volume and I shall, of
course, send it along to you.
Of other things, there is not much to tell Once a week I have been in
to Dinant to get money from my bank; and I found there some nice 18th
century pewter bowls which pleased me since Frida has a passion for
ancient pewter. And I bought there also a volume of Bernardin de S.
Pierre's Etudes de la nature with the name of Manon Phlipon on the
title — the bouqiiiniste not knowing, or perhaps, not caring, that Manon
Phlipon became Mme. Roland and was certainly a lady worth knowing.3
I add one final experience that will interest you. We motored with a friend
on Friday to Bouillon4 — the remains of Godfrey's chateau of that ilk,
and in the visitor's book at the inn under, I think it was 1873, I saw the
name of Henry Adams with the remark — "food excellent; the light wines
distinctly good/* I fancy I can imagine his satisfaction at striking a note
which left in at least one region the sense that there had been a faint
disappointment he was too stoic to emphasise.
Our warm love to you both. I hope the heat wave of which we read has
left Beverly unmoved and unscathed.
Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Grand Hotel, Waulsort-sur-Meuse
Belgium, 18.VIIL26 1 [sic]
My dear Justice: A perfectly delightful letter from you gave me immense
pleasure. But you must not even allow the sombre notion of resignation
to play over your mind; and you must not even want intelligent eulogy in
the press to confirm our sense that you are where you ought to be. We
your disciples, Felix, Brandeis, Mack, Cardozo, Hand, Cohen and I,
hereby after proper deliberation put our hands on our hearts and swear
unreservedly that we perceive only in your work the qualities that have
made us proud of you and in undiminishing degree. Macte antiquae w~
tutis, and set your barque for ninety.
Mrs. Asquith sent me the novel you have been reading, but I must con-
fess that I did not extract much enjoyment from it. I suppose it was be-
cause I have never even seen a meeting of the hunt, and beyond an acute
8 Manon Phlipon Roland (1754-1793); Girondiste and revolutionary, whose
last words at the guillotine have preserved her name: "Oh Liberty, what
crimes are committed in thy name!"
4 Bouillon, the "Key to the Ardennes" is the site of the remains of the castle
of Godfrey of Bouillon (c. 1060-1100), the leader of the First Crusade.
1 The dating of the letter is manifestly wrong, perhaps in the day, certainly
in the year; the month is evidently August.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1087
affection for dogs am not unduly moved by animal kind other than man.
But the judgment of F. Hackett which you recall to me2 was really simply
silly. She has amazing defects, flippancy, slap-dashness, huge tracts of un-
justifiable ignorance, a zest to be in the limelight; but I think, too, that
she is capable of really profound feeling and that she has in a high de-
gree that indefinable quality we call esprit. I don't think, moreover, that
her husband, who had exquisite sensitiveness, would have had the affec-
tion for her he did unless she possessed great qualities. Most of what
Hackett felt about the English aristocracy is, in my belief, pretty accurate.
But it doesn't happen to be true about her.
Stimulated by your interest, I sent for Hemingway's Men without
Women? Certainly real power which makes one attentive throughout.
But I make two observations for your comment. First, he has the talent of
the butcher rather than of the surgeon. He hacks off a great piece of life
without undue attention to the cost of the operation; compare and (I
hope) approve the exquisite grace and sensitiveness of Maupassant. Sec-
ond he has a nasty nostalgie pour la "bone which is, I think, due to a quite
mistaken belief that to make his reader smell dirt is realism. That is pure
juvenility; the same thing that makes a youth visit a brothel in the belief
that thereby he is proving his manhood. I should guess that he is an
American living in Paris with the excessive romanticism which, in expatri-
ates, always reveals itself in that queer form. But he has obvious power
of narration and a certain crude effectiveness in style.
Life here proceeds very peacefully. I have done an essay on the eight-
eenth century in France,4 which I really like, and begun a short piece on
the origins of French nationalism which I hope will prove a pretty trifle.5
Its theory is that when at the death of Louis XIV ecclesiastical and mo-
narchical authority was utterly discredited, two traditions formerly in ob-
scurity at last reaped their harvest in the philosophic movement. The one
is the libertine tradition in which the succession is Renaissance humanism
— Rabelais — Montaigne — Saint-Evremond; the other the Cartesian
with Descartes, Bayle, Fontenelle as the chief names, the last of these
linking the two schools together. I should think that eminently sane as
an account of what happened, and perhaps it may tempt a young man
somewhere to explore it in detail. I add that I know nothing so good for
one's self-respect as a human being as the re-reading of Montaigne and
Bayle. They really are absolutely A-l; and the way in which the latter
pokes fun with sublime seriousness of face at human credulity in the
Pensees sur la com&te is adorable.
8 See, supra, pp. 1081, 300, 313.
8 See, supra, p. 1081.
* Probably "The Age of Reason," supra, p. 1085.
8 Not identified.
1088 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
In reading not too much to record. But I must mention because I have
so thoroughly enjoyed them, two books, One is Legouis and Cazamian's
History of English Literature (in French or English) which on bended
knee I pray you to get. It is by all odds the finest account of the move-
ment of literature in England, above all as the expression of its social
milieu, 1 have ever read. The chapters on Shakespere, Milton, Richardson,
the 19th century novel, to pick out only a few are really tours de force
of brilliant compression. If you will only read it, you will bless the day you
met me. The other is more sober, A Short History of Free Thought by
J. M. Robertson which, though lacking in charm and delicacy, tells you
and me the actual movement of an attitude we both care about with great
learning. I found the history of freethought in Italy and Germany as in-
teresting as it was novel; and his detection of little oases of rationalism in
the middle ages and the Reformation is full of all kinds of sudden and
arresting apergus. If the idea of it tickles your palate, please let me know,
for I doubt whether the book is published in America. I read it in a
couple of days and though, as I say, it lacks grace, I could not leave it
until I had got to the end. Of other tilings I have smiled over P. G. Wode-
house's last novel 8 (less than usual) and read a book sent me by an
American lady named Van Doren about New York intellectuals who seern
to talk twenty-four hours a day about their need for sexual intercourse
with each other's wives and husbands.7 I must live in a queerly constricted
world for as yet (please mark my respect for the unknown) marital in-
fidelity has merely seemed to me dull and destructive.
We proceed here in a quiet way to infinite enjoyment. Last week we
spent a day motoring around Bouillon (of Godfrey of that ilk) and seeing
a country there as majestic and unspoiled as I have ever seen. We pic-
nicked for lunch by a tiny river which as it flowed over tiny cascades
seemed literally to sing with joy. And it was impressive to stand on the
walls of Bouillon and look out over forty miles of country. One realises in
these ancient castles on an eminence of rocky heights that only famine
could have compelled them to surrender. Their sites are marvellously
chosen; and they illustrate most impressively the self-centredness of the
middle-ages. Each of them is a good two days* march from anywhere.
Then as you pass to the 16th or 17th century chateau you get distances
that are obviously meant to imply neighbourliness and suggest the decline
of internecine conflict both by their sites (flat, approachable country, usu-
ally near a river) and their construction. I was enormously impressed too
by the charm of the outhouses round the chateaux — the stables had
dignity and grace in a degree one rarely sees in a modern edifice. Please
•Not identified.
7 Dorothy (Mrs. Mark) Van Doren, Strangers (1926).
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1089
realise that I write in entire ignorance of what one ought to know of these
things.
We stay here another week and then proceed leisurely home by way of
Antwerp, where I always enjoy a good hunt for books. I hope, by the
way, that the August number of Harpers' was sent to you with a piece
of mine I badly want you to read.8
Our love, as always, to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
This is the only paper I can buy in the one village shop.
Beverly Farms, August 23, 1928
My dear Laski: This marks the moment when I have just finished reading
your portrait of Rousseau in the July Yale Review.1 It is beautiful and
stirs me deeply. I wonder if in depths of your nature that I have not
fathomed there is a corresponding religious fervor for some convictions,
notwithstanding your formal scepticism. At all events your subtle appreci-
ations go to my heart. None the less do I repudiate the passion for equal-
ity as unphilosophical and as with most of those who entertain it a dis-
guise for less noble feelings. While I know very well that divinations
come before proof, yet I hate (intellectually) every appeal to intuitions
that are supposed to transcend reason, all the way down from Rousseau to
Bill James. But this is by the way. What I began I end with — you have
made a wonderful portrait that gives me delight.
I have had an unmixed vacation feeling since I sent back my last batch
of certioraris. I doubt if I shall send for more, lest I should tempt destiny
to snip my thread. If I made too much preparation for the future, fate
might like to wink and say: "Sold." Perhaps my interjected protest was
helped by my just having finished a book I began some time ago — Dill
— Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius — (a dull, interesting
work — like an address to the jury in its eternal repetitions) . While show-
ing how much there was alien to Christianity in the air, so that you almost
would think a sceptic was talking, he patronises it all from the Christian
point of view, as not having intuitions that I should regard as products
of ignorance, egotism, and conceit. As I have said before I think man
needs to learn to take himself less seriously when he attempts to phi-
losophize.
Just now I have on hand Mallock's Memoirs of Life and Literature.2
8 Supra, p. 1062.
1 "Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau," 17 Yak Review (N.S.) 702 (July
1928).
2 William Hunnell Mallock (1849-1923), man of letters and fashion; author
of The New Republic (1877), The New Paul and Virginia (1878), and for-
gotten novels. His Memoirs of Life and Literature was published in 1920.
1090 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
As in other books he makes me feel that I don't like him — and at the
point that I have reached he seems to wish to impress you with what
very exclusive society he frequented. Also I have some stories by Chekov
lent to me yesterday — and I have sent for Petronius — but &<; T^OT*
I purpose to read a novel of Trollope s — as a sacrifice to the Muses.
Haldane's death3 moves me — I knew since we both were relatively
young — and I thought him a great man — on the strength of his book
about what he did before the late war &c. My horizon grows pretty bare.
I suppose you will have got back when this arrives — I hope well and in
high spirits. Macte virtute. Aff'ty yours> °- w- H-
Beverly Farms, August 26, 1928
My dear Laski: You keep me envying your power to read a book in a
wink and to remember what you have read. I suppose that Petronius
whom I have taken up just now could be swallowed in an hour. With a
translation alongside it will last me several days. To be sure, I hardly read
at more than odd minutes. The dead pen is generically of all time but
specifically blunter and coarser than what makes us laugh. Do you remem-
ber in Verdant Green (itself I suppose now antiquated) the student over-
heard walking up and down and chuckling at some wretched jest of
Aristophanes? I believe I expressed my sorrow at the death of Haldane in
my last. The horizon narrows. I feel like the prisoner in the room the walls
of which draw nearer every day. That is true not only of lif e but of vaca-
tion. In a month I shall be due in Washington, Today there is a dense fog
and perhaps for that reason I don't feel cheerful about it. Normally one is
glad of vacation when it comes and, in turn, glad to go back to work.
Perhaps I should feel better if I had read any book this summer that
made a great mark, or if it was a sunny day and the wind not from the
South. I have had no conversation to compare with your Belgian artists'.
An Indiana judge et al. lunched here on Friday, pleasant and discreetly
soapy, but nothing memorable.
One of the country people, or rather a couple, leave a mark. He com-
mands a vessel in the winter and works with his wife on her flower garden
in the summer. Last winter two voyages to Buenos Ayres, etc. While he
was away two police dogs that they kept showed signs of trouble. She
shoved her hand down the throat of one thinking to relieve him, then
the doctor said it was rabies. I believe she is undergoing some treatment
but didn't seem worried at all — but the arches of his feet had given out
on ship board, and the rains had destroyed most of his wife's flowers, and
the authorities were taking a piece of his land that he wanted for his
8 Lord Haldane Had died on August 19.
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1091
road, and he was blue. I came to know them by stopping to buy flowers
at the roadside two years ago, and his melancholy quite took hold of me.
I worry easily. I don't know that I do more as I grow older, but less
things than that make me uneasy, even a long communication from a
crank among a series that the C.J. would throw into the wastepaper
basket. But I should give you a wrong impression if I made you think
that I was not happy in the main. I have talked more about such things
than you ever do. I hardly know whether to apologise or to assume the
privilege of age. This letter was interrupted by a call from Reginald
Foster. Did you know him? A clever man, who like you reads, as he puts
it, down the page instead [of] across line by line like nous autres, the
worms. He like you reads Trollope recurrently, also Dumas and Scott
which last I have done in my time. Now I am expecting a call from my
quondam secretary, L. Curtis, who lost a leg in an airplane accident while
training for the war. Hard lines, which he takes with admirable courage
and good temper. I wish I had as interesting things to tell as you do.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Beverly Farms, August SO, 1928
My dear Laski: Your letter came this morning and after returning from
my drive I wrote to the Old Corner Book Store to see if they could get me
in French or English Hazimeau's or Maziaranfs or somebody else with
a name looking like that (the first name illegible but immaterial), History
of English Literature — thus having obeyed your behest.1 It would make
me easier to get an improving book. There has been a lack of them this
vacation and while I more or less emulate older men who say they now
read only for amusement, it is vain. I feel that I ought to be taking in fuel.
Although I wrote lately I forget whether I mentioned that Dill the tire-
some put me on to Petronius. I think I did. And that has a certain im-
provement in it as it suggests reflection, verified observations of others,
and had a surprising number of quotable sentences, of which of course, I
made no note. I do not greatly admire the writers of diaries and the eco-
nomical noters of their happy thoughts and the felicities encountered in
reading. Ad interim, I have read some stories by Chekov (qu.sp.?) well
told but squalid — not the swinish instinct you attribute to Hemingway,
but none the less displeasing to me. I am just rebeginning Moby Dick,
which I surmise with your boatman of the Meuse to be great.
You rather seem to be defending Lady Asquith against me. Lord bless
you — I know her pretty well and I think I appreciate her fine qualities
as fully as anyone. The book however did not please me. Unlike you,
1 Supra, p. 1088.
1092 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
though ignorant, I did enjoy the hunting and horse talk, but the emo-
tional parts and the end seemed to me as if she had not learned by grow-
ing older.
Morris Cohen was here at luncheon yesterday and we talked for three
hours plus and then at his suggestion I took a rest. I get tired with talking
and normally consider an hour and a half my limit. I needn't say that I
enjoyed it greatly. He said that he came back to the classics feeling as if
he was wasting time with modern books. While I on the other hand al-
ways fear that I am wasting time if I dally long with the classics. He ex-
pounded an interesting theory of the Sadducees as the national party —
the priests and upholders of the theocracy — the Pharisees as reformers,
saying that every man might be his own high priest, but still upholding the
ceremonial side — and Jesus, condemning the Pharisees more than the
Sadducees, foreseeing the downfall of the theocracy (I forgot to ask him
whether this attribution wasn't on the strength of words as to which one
may take the liberty of doubting whether Jesus ever uttered them) and
making it all a matter of the heart, or internal, not ceremonial. Also he
had been rereading Kanf s Critique with great admiration, while of course
not accepting the structure. Cohen is a wonderful and noble creature. I
will try to get the Harper, but your Rousseau in the Yale Review is
enough for one year.
I thank you deeply for your encouraging words about resignation.
Affectionately ever, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 2.IX.28
My dear Justice: As you can imagine, I was deeply moved by Haldane's
death; one does not dine with a man weekly for eight years without a
sense of real affection for him. Heaven knows he had his faults; but he
was generous, and warm hearted, and a very great organiser. I remember
above all two things. First a talk with Haig in which the general insisted
that Haldane alone had made the British army a really efficient instru-
ment and, secondly, a talk with Haldane about amendments to the Trade
Union Act of 1927 when he showed a fertility in inventiveness and a skill
in drafting which were really incomparable. Only five weeks before he
died Mrs. Asquith and Mrs. Webb — as different as chalk from cheese —
had both said the same thing to me, that if they were in trouble they
would go to Haldane before any other person. We all felt that about him.
I add, what you will like to know, that he had immense respect for your
work, and followed your decisions year by year with the fidelity of a man
who knows the best when he sees it. He always asked for news of you
and he always remembered the journey to America with you with quite
special pleasure. Inani perfungor munere.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1093
We came back last Wednesday from the Ardennes; and except for a
week with my people in Manchester (whither I go tomorrow) the holi-
day is over. But it has been a great time, and I feel as fresh as paint. So
much so that I almost begrudge the week up North as it interferes with a
piece I have begun to write for the American Encyclopedia of the Social
Sciences on the rise of liberalism1 — a perfectly thrilling subject on which,
I think, I can manage to say something new. I sat down to it with the
kind of extra-thrill one gets when one feels that the job was really made
for oneself; and I only regret that I can't have a real year of leisure to do
it amply.
I can't tell you what pleasure your note on my Rousseau article gave
me. I like that fellow, even though his ideas make me see red. I like him,
I think, because there is something of the child and the exile about Mm,
and one feels that one wants to come to his rescue and make the rough
places smooth. I was amused at your struggle with Dill. I got through him
out of grim need. But I thought he wrote less as a scholar tiban as a cleric
who knew when he began that paganism was going to have a bad time.
Of other things in the reading line I have read Wells's new novel 2 — by
all odds the finest thing he has done in many a year, not quite, but nearly,
at the level of Kipps; and with an incidental footnote about Felix which
warmed my heart. Then an adorable P. G. Wodehouse which I implore
you to read — Jill the Reckless which is worth the price of admission if
only for two lines in it about Omar Khayyam. I beg you to make it the
companion of your solitaire. Then a vast tome on administrative law sent
me by Freund of Chicago which I thought useful but dull.3
Everyone is away at present; but I must not forget to tell you that
a Chinese friend of mine came in to tea yesterday who saw Wu only six
weeks ago. He says Wu is very well, and doing excellent work both in the
Court and on some codification job to which he has been assigned. My
man says Wu talks of a year at Harvard, but prays me to urge the friends
of Wu to impress on him the need to stay in China. He says Wu is getting
a real reputation there as one to whom important work can be confided
and that he will forfeit this if he goes off to some interim research which
he does not really need to do. If you have the occasion, you might pass
this on quietly but firmly.
I say I have seen no one; but I must tell you of a caller at the School
of Economics. He was from the Balkans — I guessed a Rumanian — and
I think he was a professor in a technical school. He had haunted the
place, the porters told me, for two weeks. He had read my Grammar of
Politics, believed I was a great thinker, and wished to tell me that I would
I 1 Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (1930) 103-124
9 Mr. Blettstoorthy on Rampole Island (1928).
'Ernst Freund, Administrative Powers over Persons and Property (1928).
1094 LASKI TO HOLMES
be even greater if I would only realise the need for religion. I was polite
to excess, and he stayed with me from 10:15 till 11:30. He spoke of the
Atonement, the Resurrection, the New Prayer-Book, Luther, Rousseau's
Civil Religion, the death of Socrates; and as he spoke English of a special
Balkan type he filled in the gaps with words I dare not try to reproduce.
When he left he went on his knees, and I thought he was going to ask
me to pray; but what in fact he wanted was to borrow a pound and ask
for my photograph. The latter I explained I did not possess; on the for-
mer I offered to give him ten shillings on condition he did not come back.
This he accepted eagerly, and said that ever since the Battle of Navaimo
he had known that the 'British were a generous people. I was weak with
suppressed laughter when he left; and my condition was not improved
when the porter told me that his exit was crowned by the need to avoid
a taxi-driver who had been waiting for him since 11 o'clock. What a race
is mankind!
I hope Maggs's catalogue of engravings reached you safely. It made my
mouth water, especially the Rembrandts and that superb engraving of
Burke; and I thought you would have pleasure in turning over its pages.
Did you see that the Six collection4 is to be sold in Amsterdam? There is
a Verrneer there I would give all my books except two for; and a com-
plete set of all the Rembrandts bought from him direct by Six,
Our love to you both. Don't do any more certiomris until you are back
in Washington. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 18.IX.28
My dear Justice: 1 have been busy doing nothing this last ten days; hence
an unusual silence. We went to Manchester to spend our annual week
with my people and I find it impossible to write or think there. One lives
in an atmosphere of such luxury that the main feeling which arises in me
is that of the poor relation who ought to crouch in a corner. The vital
questions turn either on market-movements in cotton, on which my stock
of information is small, or on the comparative merits of Rolls-Royce
against Daimler — upon which I probably know even less. Frida manages
wonderfully by an assumption of knowledge about dress which I am
confident she doesn't possess. I feel woe-begone, and count the hours
until I return. We made up for it by a delightful week-end with the
Webbs where we talked the political world round. Webb told me some
interesting tales of Woodrow Wilson whom he visited thirty years ago as
a professor at Princeton; and he wrote down in his diary that W.W.
would like to be a Virginian Calvin if he got the chance, which was a good
judgment for that early period. He told me, also, an amusing story of how
4 John Six (1857-1926), descendant of Rembrandt's friend, Jan Six.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1095
Herbert Spencer appointed Mrs. Webb his literary executor just before
her engagement; when it was announced that she was to wed the arch-
collectivist he wrote warning her that if she persisted he would have to
change his will; and his wedding present to them was a set, finely bound,
of his writings against the state. We had a pleasant evening on Saturday
when Russell came over. He talked, as always, brilliantly; and, I should
have said, with less regard to the grim need for fact than any man I have
ever heard. But when it came to judgments, his dismissal of Bergson was
a superb piece of analysis, and his explanation of the significance of mod-
ern cosmology left me with the feeling that any really sensible person
would specialise in astrophysics instead of a stupid subject like political
science.
In the way of reading, one or two things are worth reporting even
though, when you get this, you will, I fear, be on the way back to Wash-
ington. First, P. G. Wodehouse's new novel Money for Nothing over
which I chortled happily until two in the morning. Second, Russell's vol-
ume of papers, Sceptical Essays of which one particularly on recent phi-
losophy is a supreme piece of exposition. Third, a stiff dose of Hobbes,
especially the pre-Leviathan pieces, which left me in raptures, alike for
the style and for the superbly masculine common-sense. Disagreement
with the foundations noted, he seemed to me beyond compare among
English political thinkers. At the Webbs I read Asquith's Recollections,
but beyond one or two amusing tales, it seemed to me very thin stuff. It
reveals what one would expect, a solid and loyal nature, but not, I think,
any distinction of mind unless a power of grave and lucid statement is
distinction of mind. He makes one feel that he was immensely superior
to most of his colleagues, but also that it was not remarkable to be so
superior. And curiously enough, the best thing in the book, by all odds,
is a letter to him on his resignation from Baldwin, a model of exquisite
feeling expressed with a delicacy rare among politicians. I must not forget
to add one thing culled from the pages I turned over in Manchester.
Fallieres, the French President,1 visits the studio of Rodin and is told
that he should make a polite remark to the great man. He gazes around
the studio and notes the plaster-casts, torsos etc. His eye lights up, and
he says with great energy to Rodin, "I see, monsieur, that you, too, have
suffered much from removals."
I have found nothing in the way of books to buy since I came home.
But I have done one thing that has pleased me much. I sold my desk,
and bought instead a nine-feet oak refectory table of the 17th century,
and, for papers, an old oak chest beautifully carved. So my study looks as
though tiie books and furniture had grown up together and I have a
1Armand Fallieres (1841-1931); politician and President of the Republic,
1906-1913.
1096 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
pleasant sense of aesthetic adequacy. Now I hope to find half-a-dozen old
prints of Hobbes, Locke and Selden and such like to finish off the walls.
I have not, I think, told you of my interview last Friday with the
American gentleman who wished to see me urgently. He had just returned
from Geneva, and was mightily impressed by the League. But he felt
strongly that it was handicapped for lack of funds, and in the present
state of Europe, more money was unlikely. So he proposed to compile a
great volume of autographs in which all "the illustrious" living should put
their names, and this was to be raffled at a pound a ticket, the proceeds,
less expenses, to go to the League. He wanted a secretary to collect auto-
graphs in each country and thought I might act for England. I told him
I was no good and that for access to the illustrious he could not possibly
do better than get into touch with Nicholas Murray Butler. I hope he
really starts his project; it is too divine to leave as a mere thought in
abstracto,
I have three more weeks of peace; and I suppose you are just bidding
farewell to the red-gold of New England autumn. Here we enjoy summer
sunshine, and in Surrey, the beeches are still a vivid green.
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, E. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 2.X.28
My dear Justice: I have been ruthlessly driven — hence this silence. Two
long cases in the Industrial Court, a week-end conference in Cambridge,
(with two speeches to make) and two lectures to some five hundred
working men in Peterboro* have stolen some precious hours. You will
understand and forgive.
Cambridge interested me much, the conference apart. I stayed in Trin-
ity and sat, the first night, next to a world-famous astrophysicist. In con-
versation it emerged that (I) he thought all Catholics wicked because of
Galileo's treatment (II) that modernists in the Church of England ought
to be ruthlessly expelled for heterodoxy. I suggested that there was a
slight confusion of mind in the two statements; but not forty minutes"
hectic discussion would make him see any illogicality. On the second
night I sat next to a most eminent bishop. He explained to me that Chris-
tianity was the hope of the world. He himself did not believe in (I) the
Incarnation (II) the Atonement or (HE) the certainty of an after Me. I
suggested that he was not a Christian in any sense of the word to which
meaning could be attached; this he repudiated with violence. On the
third night I sat next to an eminent judge. He told me that his great de-
sire was to see the study of Roman law made compulsory for all students
for the bar as nothing else was so good a discipline for the legal mind. In
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1097
conversation it developed that Muirhead's text-book1 was the only book
on the Corpus Juris he had ever read and the text itself was, I think,
quite unfamiliar to him. I mentioned the case-system with appropriate
eulogy. He dismissed it with contempt because the student who studied
disconnected cases lost sight of principles. Now here were three really
eminent men not one of whom could pretend to logic outside a narrow
realm of technique. Is there such a thing as general intelligence? Please
note that I enquire and that I do not decide.
With the workmen of Peterborough I had one thrilling experience. An
old engineer came up to me and explained (with a strong Scotch accent)
that he read philosophy. Could he ask me one or two questions? I sug-
gested an adjournment for a cup of tea and a gossip. He then proceeded
to show a quite amazing knowledge of English philosophy, even quoting
Mill's Examination of William Hamilton. He was nearly eighty and the
whole urge to this study came from an accidental meeting with Thomas
Davidson who, you may remember, started off Morris Cohen. The old
man was enchanting — one of those hard-headed Scottish secularists who
proved ruthlessly step by step. Did I believe orthodox religion false? Did
I think falsity ought to be exposed? What steps did I take to expose
falsity? It was like listening to a prophet when he explained the evil effect
of faith upon the working-class. And he said to me as we left, "If there is
a God, I shall say to him, 'Lord, pardon my unbelief, but I had too much
self-respect to accept thine appointed instruments/ **
In the way of reading I have read one or two things amply worth
while. Above all, Allen's History of Political Thought in the 16th Cen-
tury— the book I like to believe Lewis Einstein would have written if
he had not given up to the State department what was meant for scholar-
ship. It's a fine book, and especially on Machiavelli, Hooker and Bodin, I
beHeve of quite fundamental importance. If leisure comes at all your way
I do hope you will send for it from the Congressional Library, for it is
brilliantly written and will, I am sure, give you some happy hours. Then
the last volume of Curzon's Life., quite interesting because not even an
admirer like Ronaldshay can prevent him from emerging as other than
definitely unpleasant. And a book on Pascal by one Chevalier, a professor
at Grenoble, which I thought as good in its way as anything I have read.
He did what one so rarely sees done — explain in detail the worldly
Pascal as well as the theological-mystic. And another sheer delight which
I beg you not to omit, beg you earnestly, for in the night-train it kept me
passionately interested — an admirable life of my dear Hazlitt by P. P.
Howe who has done it so well that he is never to be sufficiently praised.
1 James Muirhead, Historical Introduction to the Private Law of Rome
(1886).
1098 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
And all he says is what he ought to say — that is, you emerge feeling
that the post-1820 Wordsworth is a seventh-rate Stiggins, and that not
ten men in the world have been more completely adorable than Lamb.
Hazlitt took me to the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt which has just ap-
peared in a cheap edition (World's Classics). And that is another gor-
geous thing — a book to read aloud if ever there was one. I must, too,
commend a novel — St. Christophers Day by Martin Armstrong. I won't
spoil a hope that you may enliven solitaire with it by reflection except to
say that it accomplishes one of the most difficult things in the art of nar-
rative with what I think is a signal success. But above all, I entreat you
to read the Hazlitt. I wish I had not, so that I could have the pleasure
of beginning it afresh all over again.
Term begins a week today, and I am taking the last gulp of freedom a
little sadly. For there's so much I want to do before term begins; and
with a full uninterrupted day one can find out so much. Today, for in-
stance, a careful comparison with Bodin has revealed to me that Mont-
chretien,2 usually acclaimed as the founder of political economy, has, in
fact, taken 300 pp. wholesale from Bodin, merely inverting the order of
B's remarks. And in the books this unblushing plagiary is exhibited as
supreme originality. One editor of his Treatise actually says that he is as
good as A. Smith. A good American professor (who had plainly never
read him) says that his book is the first since Aristotle to deal clearly
with the place of economics in statesmanship. So I hope to have some
kindly but firm footnotes in my chapter on economic thought in the 17th
century.
But, say you, why should I have to read of Montchretien (of whom I
have never heard) and his debt to Bodin (whom I will not read) when
I must go through certioraris and write a dissentl I apologise. But most
sins are the consequence of affection, and mine for this job is endless.
I send my love to you both as always. So would Frida were she not
away. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 9.X.28
My dear Justice: In the midst of term I cry unto thee. For a week I have
been drowned amid students, of all colours and races and nationalities.
It is exhilarating, but it makes me want to retire. If a land American
Foundation sent me a cheque for twenty thousand pounds I should take
a cottage in Hindhead and write there for the rest of my life. But I am
full of good works, and never, I think, nearer to salvation than just now.
Which reminds me that we have a new member of the staff — a geog-
2 Antoine de Montchretien (c. 1575-1621); author of Traicte de Toeconomie
politique (1665) who christened but did not sire political economy.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1099
rapher — whose induction to our mysteries is worth recording. He is a
fervent Baptist and at dinner was offered some port by Hobhouse. "I
would sooner commit adultery" said the Baptist. "So would we all" said
Hobhouse. Can you produce a finer retort than that?
As you can imagine, with term and its attendant committees I have had
little space for other things. But I sneaked in a jolly lunch with Arnold
Bennett who, inter alia, said (I) that the average of American fiction is, at
the moment, higher than anywhere else in the world (II) that Dos-
toievski is the greatest novelist as a technician (III) that Proust is a snob
writing for snobs and (IV) that he received an earnest letter from a
clergyman urging him to write a novel helping God to the victory. A.B.
replied that he had no knowledge of how to set about it, to which the
reverend gent replied that if A.B. would supply the art he would supply
the theology and that he would not ask for more than one-third of the
profits. And I went to a jolly dinner with my colleagues on the Industrial
Court to which we had Sumner as guest. He was very interesting with
reminiscences of some of the old judges, especially of Bowen (whom he
put first among the 19th century) and Blackburn. The latter told him
that when the offer of a judgeship came along he was doing so badly
that he had thoughts of giving up the bar and becoming a solicitor! And
Frank Pick, the manager of the Underground,1 told us of a group of men
at a station who asked for an increase of pay on the ground that they
had recently increased the number of arrests for pickpocketing in their
station by fifteen per cent!
Of reading I have little to report. I read one excellent novel (My
"Brother Jonathan by Brett Young) . . . But mostly I have been reading
things connected with my lectures and not finding that I have much that
is genuinely new to say to what I have said before. On the other hand I
have been reading in odd moments the essays of Emerson, and I want
to sing a palinode about him. He is infinitely better than I ever imagined
or admitted and the ripe wisdom of his aphorisms (I mean aphorisms
and not epigrams) seems to me unsurpassed in any writer of English
prose. Indeed I should say that of all Anglo-Saxon people he is nearest to
La Rochefoucauld in his uncanny skill of being able to put a year of ex-
perience into a phrase. I don't think he has ever had his deserts; but that
may mean that in the past I have always thought eulogies of him exces-
sive through my own blindness to his merits. I have bought some pretty
things, of which the most pleasant is a collection of about a dozen con-
temporary attacks on Montesquieu, one or two of which are able, but all
of which are interesting because they show that to his own generation he
was really caviare. What they appreciated was not the philosophic
1 Frank Pick ( 1878-1941 ) was for many years associated with Laski on the
Industrial Court.
1100 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
outlook, but either the esprit or the discussion of early French constitu-
tionalism. And I got also a fine engraving of Hobbes In which the old
gentleman looks quite the most benign philosopher who ever threw a
monkey-wrench into the philosophic works. He hangs now next to a pic-
ture of Rousseau and the contrast between his sweet complacency of
feature and the malignant uneasiness of Rousseau's expression is very
striking.
Of other things there is but little to say. Felix bombards me with litera-
ture upon the election campaign on which I have only the distinct impres-
sion that I like Smith and dislike Hoover; but upon his own activities he
is silent and I am much more interested in them. One student who has
come over from the Law School talks of him, to my joy, as easily the
most respected teacher there, I have been interested, too, in a certain
current of criticism that comes to me of Pound — how true I know not —
but which in sum suggests the dawning sense that the mere amassing of
materials and the refined separation of categories does not make a new
jurisprudence. To one such I ventured the dictum that Morris Cohen was
the outstanding legal theorist in America and found, to my pleasure, that
a sense of this as a possible truth was not outside my visitor's powers of
credence. But he queerly felt that poor Morris did not deserve the repu-
tation 1 had given him because he had not written a book. My visitor, I
add, spoke of anxiety felt at the Chicago Bar lest you be tempted to
resign. He said he hoped you would go on without any fear that you
iad outstayed your welcome.
Our love to you both. Take care, please, and remember that life is even
greater than certioraris, Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
1729 I (Eye) Street N.W., October 11, 1928
My dear Laski: As a previous letter predicted, I, like you, have been filled
with work till the cup overflowed. Unlike you I have had no amusing in-
cidents to put a fizzle into it. I thought I had done well in polishing off
125 certioram in vacation. But when the term began there were near 250
and the Chief wanted to dispose of them all at once — with dramatic
pauses in the announcement to meet the invincible scepticism of the Bar,
that won't believe that we each and all examine every one. The result for
me I have indicated. Some of the JJ. are ready — some worked late into
the night, which I won't do, but I managed to be able to recite on all but
3 — which didn't matter. Now we are hearing arguments, and the new
certs, that came in on Monday are done. The papers got hold of the fact .
that this month I have reached a greater age than any judge who re-
mained upon the Bench since the Court began — which has added letters
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1101
to be answered to the other chores. It doesn't look much like reading your
books at present. I have given a note of them to my secretary to be called
to my attention if leisure comes. I have read your piece in the Bookman.1
As you know I think you tend to confuse the necessary point of view taken
by Courts (called Austinian by way of belittlement but really the only
possible view for them) with ethical or social theory. As to this last you
know that I also disagree. I don't know anything about the right of every
man to an equal share on chances — that doesn't seem to me the order
of the universe — and I am far from believing that man has in himself
an independent fulcrum from which to react against that order. Of course
it is open to you to prophesy that yours is the next step in the organic
movement — but I don't bother much about prophecies as my time must
be very short.
At odd minutes before and after coming here I have run through
Philip LittelTs This Way Out. He has an amusing pen and in his shorter
pieces has written sentences worth a week off the end of one's life. This
seems to me a little too much for the theme. It is Adam and Eve in the
Garden — with diabolic accompaniments in the form of a parrot, called
Paul, (Apollyon), a stork, &c with occasional messages from "Jovan" —
it would seem incredibly blasphemous to a fundamentalist, and seems, as
I said, a little too detailed for an outsider. It leads up to the discovery of
the function of sex indicated and predicted but not indelicately detailed.
There are very amusing touches. One of the Mephistophelians — Lucifer
I think, takes a cigarette and lights it by breathing through his nose on the
further end. Lucifer also gives an account of how he drafted a petition
which 92% of the workers signed, and notwithstanding Jovah's reply that
the works couldn't go on with the proposed hours, the new arrangement
was made for 9 hours adoration instead of 12 — and that fatigue, which
formerly had set in at about the 9th hour, was virtually eliminated and
production costs instead of increasing were lowered by 7 4/10% — "a
saving we passed on to the consumer. The output was larger, the produc-
tion was of better quality. Grade A adoration was before long the order
of the day and night." Enough of this — I thought it might amuse you
from one of your cooperators in the New Republic. I don't see but that
sheet has become as frankly partisan as any party paper. But though Croly
is a thinker he is not a writer and I skip his pieces. Butler told me a tale
today that pleased me. Walker the mayor of New York was asked to come
to a meeting just about to take place. He said he'd come if they wouldn't
ask him to speak. They promised and of course the promise was broken —
so he rose and said "Ladies and gentlemen, as Marcus Antony said when
he entered the boudoir of Cleopatra, 1 didn't come here to talk/"
1 "The Crisis in the Modern State," 68 Bookman 182 (October 1928).
1102 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
Apropos of what you get about Lamb from Howe's Life of Hazlttt I dare
say it is true in a sense — and I dare say that Carlyle's description of
him as a snuffy, dingy, person is also true. So also I agree to any language
of delight in his essays or letters — yet when I went through them I felt
as I used to feel when working in the old Law Library and saw the
scenery that had charmed me on the stage the night before run out
through a slot in the wall and loaded on a cart. But I have drooled long
enough. Your letter rec'd this morning was delightful.
Jours affectionately, 0. W. Holmes
Washington, D. C., October 19, 1928
My dear Laski: Your report of your latest experience comes this morning
and brings the usual pleasure. The tale of your Baptist colleague and the
glass of port is superlative. I have heard nothing corresponding, even
though it would call a blush to the cheeks of innocence from my col-
leagues; though Sutherland and Butler maintain a good average. The
tension of work grows a little less. I have written my first opinion and
it has been approved by all but Sanford who was the other way ab
initio.1 I felt a queer nervousness until I got it back, lest it betray some
symptom of decline that I had not noticed. But I always have a nervous
apprehension that someone will discover a chasm, until I get the opinion
back. For the moment I am cheerful I am delighted at what you were
told about Frankfurter. My secretary2 agrees, subject he says to a differ-
ent kind of respect felt for Williston,3 which is easily understood. Willis-
ton is a delightful creature, and admirable in the regular ruts. Frankfurter
brings fire and invites to new adventures. I have just run through a little
brochure by Zimmern on Learning and Leadership, at the beginning with
some coolness, at the almost indefinite Oxford exquisiteness and at the
readiness of the scholar to offer schemes for the world, but in the end
with delight in his discourse on the relation of ideas to action, a subject
that always stirs me and on which he talks nobly. He is a fine creature,
but I should doubt whether he had quite found his proper place in the
world. Only a few days ago did I discover that you had sent me Ben-
tham's Comment on the Commentaries, for which, warm thanks. No time
to read it yet A number of other books also encourage me. Liberty in
the Modern World,4 essays by people ranging from John Dewey and
1 Money v. United States, 278 U.S. 17 (October 22, 1928).
2 John E. Lockwood, now a practitioner in New York, had graduated from
the Harvard Law School in June 1928.
8 Samuel Williston ( 1861- ), beloved Professor of Law at Harvard, 1890-
1938.
'Freedom in the Modern World (Kallen, ed., 1928).
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1103
Chafee to Clarence Darrow. Lewis, America, Nation or Confusion. Sir
Siraswamy Aiyar, Indian Constitutional Problems. What seems an enter-
taining little book sent by Mrs. Brandeis — The Russian Land by Albert
Rhys Williams, etc. not to speak of articles including one on Legal Sci-
ences by the, I suppose, great Kantorowitz.5 Damn them all but one or
two. You speak of Morris Cohen as an outstanding legal theorist. As you
know I regard him with affection and reverence, but I hardly am aware
of anything that I have felt to be a great contribution to legal theory.
Like Henry Adams to someone who said that he had been with Charles
and found him delightful — "You found Charles delightful? You interest
me." I suppose I may as well make up my mind that I am an old fogey,
and sit down, but there is little legal theory that strikes me as worth talk-
ing about.
One week more of arguments and then there may be some repose. I
have not known this feeling since I got here.
Ever affectionately yours., 0. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 16.X.28
My dear Justice: Life flows on merrily, and the term so far has been far
more peaceful than I ever dared to hope. I have a new assistant to relieve
the pressure, with the result that I have been able to get all my work
concentrated on three days each week so that I confront the unwonted
experience of real leisure in term-time. And that really means that I can
work happily and uninterruptedly for four days each week. It feels quite
wonderful and leaves me happier than I have been in years.
Of news there is not a great deal, for the first fortnight in term is al-
ways swallowed up by students. But we had a jolly dinner on Sunday
with Nevinson as the guest of honour (his 71st birthday) and as he gazed
upon your photograph he said "Tell him that if ever my faith in the
United States falters, I think of him and am comforted" which I report
because I agree with it. And to tea on Sunday we had a Calif ornian pro-
fessor by the name of Kirk1 (whom I know not otherwise) who said of
you that for him and many of his colleagues your opinions were a source
of permanent inspiration. So that you can feel how wide and deep is the
sense of the ideas you have contributed to men of the most diverse ex-
perience.
The most interesting thing that has happened to me since I wrote last
is for your very private ear. I got on Saturday a sudden summons to
6 Herman Kantorowicz, "Legal Science — A Summary of Its Methodology,**
28 Columbia Law Review 679 (June 1928).
1 Probably William Kirk ( 1880- ), Professor of Sociology at Pomona Col-
lege.
1104 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
Downing Street and went quite bewildered as to its purpose. When I got
into the P.M.'s presence he said with extraordinary kindness that he had
followed my work with great care and wanted to offer me the secretary-
ship of the research committee of the cabinet with a salary about three
times what I earn now. My breath was taken away and I said that I must
have a day to think it over. After talk with Frida I went to see him this
morning and declined it. For it would mean (I) that I could write no
more (II) that I should research into things I might not believe in and
(III) that my hands and tongue would be tied. He was extraordinarily
land and said he regretted it as much for his sake as any other, that
Haldane had urged it strongly and that he knew no one more fit for the
post. Then he urged rne to go in for politics and tried to explain to me
that I had a big career there. I was very moved by his kindness, but, of
course, without a shred of doubt that what I am doing, especially with the
independence it connotes, was five times more worth while than any offi-
cial job. He could not have been more kind and I felt that after all the
mere offer was some little Justification of what I have been trying to do.
I wish I could picture to you his extraordinary kindness both in what he
said and the way in which he made his offer. But I'm quite sure I was
right. It would be appalling to be silenced and not to be able to work
with the people and the things I really care about. Liberty once felt is too
precious to make it worth while to go into harness.
This little squeal of triumph must be forgiven me. I add to it (I know
you will want to share in the things that please me) a letter from Meyer-
son, (the best of French philosophers) telling me that he had read what
I wrote in the Yale Review about Rousseau and that he was really moved
by it. I suppose all flesh is heir to flattery and I was enormously pleased.
In the way of reading, one or two things are worth recording. Item, I
have read with immense pleasure a book on Metaphysical Foundations
of Modern Science by one Burtt of Chicago, which I thought a first rate
piece of work, well-written, thought provoking and learned. And I read a
novel My "Brother Jonathan by Brett Young which, for some unexplored
reason, moved me greatly and unlike most novels, made me feel that we
underestimate in life the "pull" of personal influence as a factor for good.
And I read one book which with all its crudities had much merit in it
The Rise of Learned Societies in the 17th Century by an American lady
(apparently dead) named Omstein. I also read Charley Merz's book
about America called Bigger and Better Murders but, as I feel about most
books on America, I thought it suffered from excessive simplicity. Of other
books I read in the train a volume of Stevenson's letters and loathed him
as a poseur who enjoyed invalidism and made the supreme use of it for
publicity purposes. And I mention because honour commands it one per-
fect book by E. Villey called the Sources of Montaigne. It is a superb
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1105
tour de force for not only does it explain Montaigne as no other book I
know but it is by a man blind from birth who is dependent absolutely on
others both for reading and writing — an amazing record.
And I have bought one thing that pleases me. A first edition (only
edition) of Grace's Nouvelle CynSe (1623) for a hundred francs, the
first book pleading seriously for the organisation of Europe for the pur-
poses of peace. I bid also for a Rembrandt etching (a little boy) in the
third state. I risked eight pounds — a sudden cheque from the publisher
— but it brought nearly eighty and I realised that Rembrandt is not for
the likes of me.
I suppose when you get this you will be scrutinising a new President.2
I am not greatly moved either way. I like Smith's speeches, and I dislike
Hoover qua person; and as Smith's election would please Felix I am for
Smith. But that isn't very intelligent.
Our love heartily to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
October 24, 1928
October 21, '61 — (67 years ago) was Balls Bluff
My dear Laski: Your letter just come starts the day with joy. I am really
delighted at the offer made to you by the P.M. You deserved the recogni-
tion and it makes me happy to know that you received it. I also con-
fidently believe that you were right in declining, although I don't suppose
my judgment to be worth much, except as to the general principles. I
also am glad at the letter from the illegible French philosopher about your
article on Rousseau. I wrote to you to this same effect some time ago. I
was moved as he was. Also I thank you for the kind reports as to myself.
Eternal doubt is the fate of old age unless it slumps into self-satisfaction!
I suppose that I never shall see Nevinson again, but I wish that I might
My wife showed me the other day an account of an interview with you
— inter alios — in which you are reported to have said that you found
President Wilson easy to work with. I did not know that you ever were
in contact with him. When and what was it?
1 have no reading to report except records. I wish that I could creep
along upon — I can't say your tracks, for you fly — upon your lines of
travel. There is a tale from Brandeis that Miss Norton (Charles's sister)1
is or was (I think she is or was 90 or more) a great authority on Mon-
taigne, as to whom you tell me a wonderful story and that this is a trans-
lation in 4 fat volumes with prefaces or headings or something supposed
2 On November 7 Herbert Hoover defeated Alfred E. Smith in the Presi-
dential election.
1 Grace Norton (1834-1926), author of The Spirit of Montaigne (1908) and
editor of Montaigne's Essays (3 vols.s 1925).
1106 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
to be by her. But I don't want fat volumes or a translation. The book you
mention I should like to see.
I am just in the suspense incident to having circulated an opinion in a
case, where we stood 5 to 4 after a reargument2 I have not yet received
the assent of my 4. V. and Br. have answered — the rest not yet. It is a
case that could be decided either way but one in which most of the argu-
ments against my view I thought drool. I hope I didn't show it too freely
— but I am nervous.
I wish I could tell you some tales like those you sent me, but I am too
much a recluse to hear any. How one is bothered by past civilities — peo-
ple to whom one has been polite write that the Venerable Archdeacon A
or the Chief Justice B is in one's neighborhood and that it would be nice
if you were to do something. I just settle back and do nothing. The Su-
preme Court is called upon before it calls, and if and as they don't know
enough to call I let them slide down the ringing grooves of time. But such
things are bores and tax the nerves. Then a woman whose husband one
knew once in some correspondence writes that she is ill and hard up and
can't I contrive a plan for her relief. Answer no I can't — with a check,
but it makes me uncomfortable for weeks.
I began this letter joyful this morning. I send it grumbling after a day
in court but things are not going badly. Af 'ly yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 28.X.28
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you was welcome beyond words;
and I note your emergence from stacks of certioraris with calm joy. I have
been pretty busy, but I have now got the term well organised so that I
have time to read and write a little. I have not been out much, though
yesterday I did an amusing thing by going to Canterbury and speaking to
the Dean and Chapter on the problem of Church and State. I left them, I
hope, thoroughly uncomfortable by arguing (I) that a church which
claims to be under the lordship of Jesus Christ cannot take its doctrines
from the King in Parliament (II) it ought therefore to be disestablished.
Some of the canons obviously trembled for their delightful houses; and
when I saw the Deanery with its Tudor-panelled rooms, its sixteenth cen-
tury portraits by Holbein, its 17th century by Van Dyck and Lily, its 18th
century by Reynolds and Gainsborough, I thought I understood why even
the difficulties of establishment are endurable. I had also a jolly political
2 Boston Sand and Gravel Co. v. United States, 278 U.S. 41. The majority
held that under a special statute authorizing a particular claimant to sue the
United States for the recovery of damages suffered in a collision with a naval
vessel, interest should not be included in the award. Sutherland, J.> delivered
a dissenting opinion in which Butler, Sanford, and Stone, JJ., concurred.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1107
dinner at the House of Commons with MacDonald where I heard men
speculate on the next cabinet in that curious way politicians have. Jones
won't do because he has a bad temper. Brown we can't have because he
tells everything to his wife who is even more indiscreet, and so on. It's an
attractive game; but it amused me even more to note that each of the
guests was most careful to assume that his claims could not be passed
over and that he slept, so to say, with office as his bedfellow. Strictly entre
nous, you will be interested to hear that Sankey L.J. is almost certain to
be the next Labour Chancellor. Personally he would be an admirable ap-
pointment, but deep as is my affection for him, I should be very sorry to
see a judge taken off the bench to have office. It would mean the stirring
of undesirable ambitions among many who have now ceased to be politi-
cally-minded. I went also to heai a day's evidence before the Police Com-
mission1 and listened with amazement to the Police Commissioner say
that the force is quite perfect and that things like the third degree, illegal
questioning, etc. only occur in America. What the commission thought I
do not know, but the witnesses I heard were quite incompetent for their
jobs if they still thought that fairy-tale true after such things as the
Savidge case. And when I heard a police inspector say that a witness
can make a statement continuously for 13 hours without undue fatigue
my eyes were certainly wide open. I went, too, with Frida to hear Mrs.
McPherson, the evangelist from Los Angeles.2 She spoke in a hall for ten
thousand — about 600 people were present. She aroused no enthusiasm
at all, and what she had to say, in a hard, metallic voice, was never even
commonplace. The most amusing thing was the presence on the platform
of a famous English music-hall actress who is just cited as co-respondent
in a notorious case; the lady evangelist chose her to lead the hymns which
seemed curious in a fundamentalist assembly. But then I am ignorant in
these things. I must not, inter alia, forget a visit I had from an old school
friend who is now classical master at a great public school. He got a
double-first at Oxford and every classical prize in sight. He came to tell
me that he was about to resign, in order to devote himself to the British-
Israel Movement — an organisation which lives to show that the British
are the lost Ten Tribes and insists that the Pyramids contain a detailed
forecast of the future, e.g. another world-war in 1948; a great disaster in
New York in 1962 etc. All this he told me with the calm simplicity of
absolute conviction, leaving a vast bundle of literature more incredible
than any I have seen. And he is a superb classical scholar whose sceptical
critiques of the supposed Epistles of Plato are, I believe, considered first-
1 See Report of the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedure
(1929), Command Papers #3297.
2 Aimee Semple McPherson ( 1890-1944); sensational in faith, in manner, and
in personal life, her great successes, not surprisingly, were in Los Angeles.
1108 LASKI TO HOLMES
rate even by scholars like Jager [sic].9 I tried to find out the cause of this
aberration but quite vainly. What he wanted from me was introductions
to MacDonald and such like people whom he might warn of the truth
before it was too late. I tried to be kind, but, of course, he took my re-
fusal hard, and I felt that he left with the sense that I was a lost soul
incapable of the higher ideals.
In reading, one or two things have come my way I have really enjoyed.
First a really brilliant American novel — The Strange Case of Annie
Spragg by Louis Bromfield which I conjure you and Mrs. Holmes not to
fail to read. Then a work by one Brandt, a Dane writing in English, on
Hobbes's System of Nature which is very learned and a real key to all
sorts of unexpected avenues of 17th century thought. And a book by an
old student of mine (Belasco) called Authority in Church and State wkich
is a singularly moving account of the early Quakers and their political
philosophy. I read, too, the Memoirs of Benes, the Czech who helped
Masaryk found Czecho-Slovakia. He was a brilliant fellow to whom truth
and honourable dealing never seemed especially important; and I was
amused by his confidence at critical moments that "philosophy of history*'
necessarily meant that things would turn out just as he wanted. It is a
comfortable feeling to know that as you take each step inexorable fate is
on your side. I have, finally, been reading A. E. Taylor's Plato which is
entirely remarkable — easily the best general book on Plato I ever read.
On some points I am doubtful e.g. his view of the Laws as the finest piece
of political thinking Plato ever did. But I got enormous pleasure out of it.
And as the catalogues have begun to come from the booksellers I have
picked up one or two things. The nicest is a perfect copy of Le nouveau
Cynee (1623) in a charming old morocco binding. But nearly as nice is an
Elzevir Tacitus in red morocco and as new as the day it was printed. I
found, too, a good copy of the Hume-Rousseau letters which belonged to
that queer old fellow Lord Kames,4 and a one-volume edition of the works
of that gloomy anti-democrat Fisher Ames5 which belonged to Robert
Lowe6 who has marked all the anti-populace passages vigorously, obvi-
ously, I expect, with a view to their use in the House of Commons.
Well! When you get this you will have a new President. Felix sends
me weekly eulogies of Al Smith and certainly he seems infinitely more
3 Presumably Werner Jaeger; supra., p. 889.
4 Henry Home (1696-1782), Lord Kames; Scottish judge and philosopher
whose Essays on the Principles of Morality and National Religion (1751) was
an attempted refutation of Hume.
5 Fisher Ames (1758-1808), Yankee Federalist whose every instinct and
prolific pen were dedicated to the war against Southern Jacobins.
6 Robert Lowe (1811-1892), Viscount Sherbrooke; politician, whose greatest
parliamentary achievement was effective leadership in opposition to Lord John
Russell's Reform Bill in 1866.
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1109
attractive than Hoover. But I am afraid that I shouldn't vote for either
of them if I were an American.
Our warm love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
1720 I Street, N.W., November 13, 1928
My dear Laski: A moment's breathing space and I turn to you. We are
adjourned and my work for the moment is done. My last case, given on
Saturday evening (it now is Tuesday), has been written, printed, dis-
tributed and returned approved by all but one, who I don't doubt will
approve it.1 I have gone over the Cert.'s that will be presented when we
come in next Monday and I have just this minute sent round a little
dissent.2 I can't think of anything more to do to make myself virtuous
and disagreeable. I even have had time to read a good part of Warren's
new book The Making of the Constitution, which is excellent, and so far
as I can judge finally smashes the humbug talked about the economic
origin of the Constitution. I thought Beard's book on that theme3 a stinker,
for all its patient research. For notwithstanding the disavowal of personal
innuendo, it encouraged and I suspect was meant to encourage the notion
that personal interests on the part of the prominent members of the Con-
vention accounted for the attitude they took. Warren has the sense to
realize that some men have emotions not dependent on their pocketbooks
and brings out very forcibly what I don't doubt were the real dominant
motives. Einstein (our minister) was here for a short call and away. He
left a volume of Sceptical Essays by Bertrand Russell, which entertain so
far as I have read, but seem rather light stuff. I suspect B.R. of being a
sentimentalist disguised as a sceptic. E. also left an account of Hoover
written by himself (Einstein)4 that made me realise that Hoover was very
nearly, and not improbably quite, a great man. I was glad he beat Smith,
though there has been a sort of fad among the New York highbrows
(New Republic, Dewey, Cohen, FF et al.) to blow Smith's horn, on what
seemed to me very inadequate reasons. But in these days The New Re-
public is a partisan like the rest, so far as I can see. My regard for some
of its leading spirits makes me keep up my subscription but I should
almost like to drop it I shouldn't like to tell Frankfurter.
It's queer what an effect necessity and desperation have. This last case
of mine, a little matter of statutes as to pay of some officer in the Navy,
United States v. Lemon, 278 U.S. 60 (Nov. 19, 1928).
* Liggett Co. v. BaUridge, 278 U.S. 105 (Nov. 19, 1928).
8 Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the
United States (1913).
4 Lewis Einstein's "Hoover/* 130 Fort-Nightly Review 577 (November 1928).
1110 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
found me in hopeless confusion at the end of the arguments and at the
conference, but after I was locked up with it and had to write it, every-
thing seemed to clear up (as far as possible upon a matter inherently
doubtful because of obscure language). As I have told you before, I dare
say, when you go right up and grab the lion, the skin comes off and it is
the same old donkey that you know so well.
Did I mention three little Chinamen making their appearance, sent by
Wu? They came and sat silent in my library while I made desperate
efforts to talk with them and to say something that they might care to
hear. They are at the Washington University Law School I believe, and
I feared that they didn't know very definitely what they wanted and
weren't getting it. They vanished and I have heard no more. What the
devil can I do in such a case? If you know, tell me. Little things worry
and bother me I suspect more than when I was younger.
This book of Warren's will take the few hours that I have available,
but I wish at such moments you were at hand to give me a hint. Russell
has spoken so of Watson's Behaviorism that I feel as if I ought to read
it at once, in spite of the prejudices that the title raises in my mind.
Philosophy always has the right of way, the rest is incident, and that I
don't believe, with which summary I bid you adieu.
How mistaken the notion that one ought to be doing something. It
bothers me all the time, and when I take a drive through enchanting
colors I find it hard to say to myself with conviction, this is life, this is
self-justifying as an end. I don't feel quite right till I turn off a decision.
Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 13.XI.28
My dear Justice: I feel a pig for having allowed a fortnight to go by
without a letter; especially as I have had two of real delight from you.
But I have been working hard at that article on 17— 18th century political
thought, and it is only just done.1 Though I say it who shouldn't, I think
it is really interesting, and I only wish that instead of ten thousand words,
it had been double, for I could then have said in detail things worth
saying, e.g. Bossuet's dependence on Hobbes, that I could only hint at.
However, you shall see it one day and, I hope, approvingly.
I can't imagine where your reporter gets any connection of me with
Wilson from. I saw him twice in my life: once in Washington in February,
1918 and once in Boston in March, 1919, in each case for an hour. I
imagine the gent, has either got me mixed up with someone else or
misunderstood some remarks of mine that I don't remember making. I
1 Perhaps "The Age of Reason," supra, p. 1085.
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1111
add that I was (I have no right to be) a little disappointed by your
presidential election. I was glad to see the solid South go at last,2 and
I assume that Hoover is a really able person. But I wish he had said
something, for I like a bonny fighter in politics and there seems an
unpleasant dourness about him which makes me a little uneasy. However,
these things usually work themselves out. I should gather from Felix's
lyric in the New Republic that he expected a very different result.3
Of other things my hermit-like existence this past fortnight has not
given me much chance to know. I had a pleasant dinner with Allyn
Young, the economist, at which I met one T. S. Adams of Yale,4 (a
specialist on taxation) who spoke with great warmth about you; and a
very pleasing dinner with Henderson,5 who represents us on the Repara-
tions Commission at Paris and had many pleasing stories to tell. The best,
I think, was of a Normandy peasant who came to ask whether there was
any chance of the Germans paying in full, as he had a good chance to
pick up some of his neighbour's claims cheap, and he was prepared to
offer the commission a discount for cash. Henderson said he stayed
hours, explaining to everyone that this was the chance of a lifetime. And
I must add a story told me of a Jew who found himself in a town where
he was entirely unknown. This seemed to him a great chance to eat
some ham as he had never before tasted it owing to fear of detection.
He ordered some and was just about to put the first piece in his mouth
when a terrific thunderstorm broke out. The Jew shrugged his shoulders,
put the plate away and said to heaven, "Oh, well! if you object, you
object." And I must, I think, tell you of my colleague Beales6 who had a
Chinaman to interview. The latter's English was poor and it was not
easy to follow just what he wanted. At last Beales made out that it was
a lady secretary he required. So a student was sent along to the hotel
and the next morning her indignant mother arrived. Did we know the
Chinaman? Not personally, said Beales, but he had been sent to the
School under the most unexceptionable auspices. That is as may be,
said the mother, but when my daughter arrived, he explained that what
he wanted was less a secretary than an intimate lady friend. And I must
tell you of our students. We have a governor of the School whose pas-
sion for publicity is incredible. He approached the editor of the students'
2 Largely because of the fact that Smith was a Roman Catholic much of the
Democrat's Southern electorate had voted for Hoover.
s "Why I Am for Smith," 56 New Republic 292 (Oct. 31, 1928).
4 Thomas Sewall Adams (1873-1933), Professor of Political Economy at
Yale, 1916-1933.
5 Not identified.
6 Hugh Lancelot Beales (1889- ), lecturer and reader in Economic
History at London University.
1112 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
magazine and offered his photograph for insertion in the coming number.
The student politely refused whereupon the governor became pressing.
So the editor accepted and in the next number it appeared with the
words "printed by request" underneath. We were asked to interfere but
decided, I think wisely, that the students must be responsible for their
own magazine.
I have read much lately. Graham Wallas's daughter has published a
book on Vauvenargues* — sound and solid but, like her, depressingly
dull. But a student of mine, Belasco, has published a volume on the
political theory of the early Quakers which is admirable in substance and
beautifully written, and another student has written one on the Non-
jurors8 which blows Macaulay's view of them sky-high. Then, in bed, I
have re-read Mommsen with an admiration as great as my dislike.
I loathe his Caesarism, and the whole thing reads, even more than when
I first read it fifteen years ago, like a pamphlet on what Bismarck would
have been like had he lived under the Roman Republic. And for some
lectures on Stoicism, I have been reading Seneca not only with delight but
with the sense that it would be difficult to find a saner working philoso-
phy. And in this context the fourth volume of Gomperz's Greek Thinkers
which is quite A-l. And in the way of lighter reading I thoroughly en-
joyed Louis Bromfleld's Strange Case of Anne [sic] Spragge — the story
of a middle Western lady who lives in Italy and upon whose body are
found, at death, the stigmata — a book with a beautiful irony running
through it. And last but not least, the final volume of Nevinson's
reminiscences9 which, as in the case of the earlier volumes, are not only
thrilling but superbly written, with a thread of irony running through
them which is quite superb. Frida and I dined with him the other day
and he spoke with great affection of you. I hope his book will come
your way.
In bookbuying, there is not much to tell. I have found some nice
French things but the two or three supreme things I have telegraphed
for from catalogues have all been gone before I could get in. One thing
was amusing. I went to a London shop for a book in a catalogue and
went on the way to the university. I arrived there at 9 just before it was
open and found four of my colleagues waiting, all in search of the same
book. So we tossed up who should have it. Tawney won and went in
only to find that it had been sold while the catalogue was printing!
Our love to you both. Here it is as mild as June and roses are still
being sold on the streets. I hope Washington bears that aspect.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
7 May Graham Wallas, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues ( 1928).
8 Lucy Mary Hawkins, Allegiance in Church and State ( 1928).
8 Last Changes, Last Chances ( 1928).
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1113
1720 1 (Eye) Street, November 28, 1928
My dear Laski: Your letter has just been read and I begin my answer
at once — I have been shut up this week with a cold — merely in
obedience to the doctor's caution. He said I could go to Court on Mon-
day. Being rather seedy I haven't done much besides the cases sent home
to me — as it generally is agreed that absent judges having the papers
may take part in the decisions. But after finishing Warren's Making of the
Constitution I did read Bertrand Russell's Sceptical Essays — amusing
— but as I think I have said, never quite seeming to touch bottom
philosophically. He put me on to Dr. Watson's Behaviorism — a very
good book — though so preoccupied with resolving all our conduct into
reflex reactions to stimuli, that he almost denies that consciousness means
anything and that memory is more than a useless and misleading word.
However much one may believe that men are automata one must recog-
nize that what we call consciousness, memory &c. &c. are part of the
phenomena — and we can't say that the phenomena would have been
the same if those supposedly epiphenomena were absent. I now am in
the middle of a Life of Zola by Matthew Josephson printed as No. 1 of
Vol. 1 of the Book League Monthly. It was sent to me I suppose as an
advertisement. It is very interesting — but not for the first time I find
the French literary men unpleasing when seen close to — a sort of
heroism in enduring squalor to be sure — but wilfulness and vanity
getting into it — mean tricks of self-advertisement, and rather ill smelling.
One can't but admire his force and courage in framing a great scheme
and carrying it out — but at the same time one doesn't believe there
was much real science or philosophy in framing it. As to the carrying out
I can't recite as I've read but few of his tales. I used to say dull but
improving — I now say I don't doubt improving but dull. I never
realized before that Cezanne was a friend of Zola's youth. They seem to
have drawn apart. Cezanne I imagine being a much more genuine
idealist than Zola. Alas I have not seen enough of Cezanne's painting
to have an impression of him. I shall try to see Nevinson's book. He
left affectionate memories with us. Is his son still painting and success-
ful? 1 It would be vain for me to try to follow the great procession of
your reading. Even if I were not so much slower the court would take
most of my time. I am eager to see the article on political thought. I
am sure of my interest. I forget now what the article was that spoke
of you and Wilson. It had a series of interviews — one purporting to be
with you and to the effect that I mentioned. I have not worried much
about the election, but, as I told you, have the impression that Hoover is
not impossibly a great man — I never saw him but once. He was not
1 Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889-1946), supra, p. 744.
1114 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
prepossessing — but as the talk went on for a few minutes he showed
a penetrating eye for material facts and left me impressed. This was
when he first appeared here on his return from Europe. When I came to
your lectures on Stoicism and reading Seneca (my first impression was
lectures on Stevenson and reading Samoa) I respect your poly-gluttony.
Well, dear boy, I must go back to work. Your letters are an achievement,
Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 20.XL28
My dear Justice: The weeks slip quickly away; and it is now less than
a month before my yearned for Christmas vacation. I am, at the moment,
rather hard-worked; for my colleague, Lees-Smith, is away ill, and a good
deal of his lecturing falls necessarily on my shoulders. But I am
astonishingly fit, and when I look at the heap of typed mss at my side,
I feel almost pious in the sense of duty performed.
Since I wrote last week, much has happened. I have been up to
Glasgow and back, to give a lecture to the university; very pleasant
academic talk there, and an envious sense that the Scottish professor has
an easy time. The professor of philosophy, for instance, lectures from
8:30 to 10 on four days a week, and has no other duties; were I so
placed, I would move intellectual mountains! Then a joyous dinner with
Sankey last night, one of the best I have ever had even with him. He told
me much of his new work, finding the Court of Appeal far more interest-
ing than nisi prius, and feeling enormously relieved at the absence of
criminal work. Then, too, good talk with a German philosopher who
told me that the main characteristic of the youth there today is the
breakdown of Hegelianism. It is too strait, and too complete for the
new generation. To me that is pleasant news; for I think the test of
creativeness, at least in social questions, is anti-Hegelism. Indeed, I am
sometimes tempted to believe that if one could work out its pedigree
in detail, it would turn out to be a kind of stepchild of Calvinism in
decay, and this isn't half so far-fetched as such a bald statement would
seem to imply. I had also a very moving interview with a young Italian
exile — a professor who had published a protest against being compelled
to laud the "corporate state" of Mussolini. He was first dismissed; then
nearly beaten to death in his own house by a gang of Fascist ruffians;
and escaped by night over the Swiss frontier leaving everything he
possessed to be confiscated. The problem is what to do with such men.
I have got him a few lectures, but that merely keeps a transitory wolf
from the door. I wish I could reproduce his description of that escape —
the horror of sound, the dread of being caught by the beam of a passing
car, the fear of the frontier guards, the sense that every passer-by must
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1115
know who you are and can hear the beating of your heart. I made the
poor fellow divinely happy by getting a friend of mine to make arrange-
ments to take his fiancee out of the place by engaging her as his wife's
lady's maid, and we hope that this will be effected in the next ten
days. Certainly his experience makes you feel that the simplicity of 19th
century liberty has much to commend it. I do not like, being old-
fashioned, etatisme on the new model. Nor must I forget the Japanese
gentleman who visited me, with a list of questions he desired me to
answer. No. 1 was the future of Western Civilisation? No. 2. What did
I think of the population question? No. 3. What would happen to In-
dustrial England in the next ten years? There were 22 of them altogether
and I am afraid that my refusal to answer them on the ground of
ignorance left him sadly disillusioned about me. He kept saying "JaPa-
nese students say you are a great teacher and yet you keep reply you
know not. Have I offended?" and I would try and explain that I was a
teacher and not a prophet, a distinction which seemed entirely beyond
his grasp.
In the way of reading, I have had a happy time. First I do commend
to you and Mrs. Holmes what I believe to be a great novel — I use the
word advisedly. It is by Henry Williamson and is called The Path.
Please set it down as worth your time and patience. Then I read Colonel
House's Papers on which I permit myself the sole reflexion that what
they seem to omit is the fact that during those years I still believe that
Wilson was president of the United States. I have also, for my Glasgow
lecture, had a big dose of Montesquieu. I was as convinced as ever of
the greatness, but perhaps a little more struck than formerly by the
large proportion of trivialities and the desire to evade clarity when it
came to central issues. Still, I think, an infinitely bigger person than
most of his fellows, though the thought grows on me that in 18th
century France the biggest man, who saw the furthest, was Diderot and
that if I could pick out one of them for a day's talk I should choose
him. I also read a book on Vauvenargues by Graham Wallas's daughter
— but it was dull and old-maidish and full of tiny minutiae which it was
not worth while to put into print. Another book I heartily enjoyed was
W. H. Wickwar, an old student of mine, on the Struggle for the Freedom
of the Press in England. That I think was worthy of Hammond or
Trevelyan and they would not, I believe, resent its company on the
shelves with their books.
I have had, also, some pleasant purchases, though of a rather
recondite kind. I mention (for my satisfaction) filie Merlat's Traite
du pouvoir soiwerain (1685) which I believe to be the first book to
show signs of Hobbes's influence in France; and Linguet's Lett res sur
la theorie des lofa civiles (1767) which is the most powerful contemporary
1116 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
criticism of Montesquieu I know. Oh! I must not forget to tell you that
in one of the learned psychoanalytic journals a paper has appeared pur-
porting to show that Rousseau's general will is intimately connected with
his inability to contain his urine. I mentioned this casually to a young
colleague of mine who is writing a book on Rousseau, and found to my
horror that he took it with profound seriousness. I wonder if my horror
means that I am really intelligent, or is simply proof that I am beginning
to be inappreciative of novelty?
Our love, dearly, to you both. I arouse your curiosity by saying that
a really pleasant surprise Is in store for you.
Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 30.XI.28
My dear Justice: Let me begin with the fulfilment of a duty. I went on
Wednesday to a lecture given by Leslie Scott (quite admirable) at the
School of Economics. We had some talk of you and he charged me (a)
to give you his love and (b) to tell you that he has been overwhelmed
with this Indian Commission before which he is counsel, that as soon
as It is over he will write to you.1
I have been fearfully busy — two big cases in the Industrial Court, a
host of committees, some book-reviews, a visit to University College,
Cardiff. But in ten days my term is over and I can sit back comfortably
o'nights for six weeks. At least I've got a good bit of reading done, some
of It most pleasant. The new Lytton Strachey (Elizabeth and Essex)
I enjoyed hugely but with big reservations (I) if Essex were the third
rate Alcibiades he makes out he could never have exerted great influence
with the populace (II) if Bacon were the crafty little attorney he paints
him someone else wrote the essays (III) William Cecil was more than
a sly man weaving webs in a corner. But with all this I think his picture
of Elizabeth does catch a sense both of her mystery and majesty as I
have never before seen it caught in print. My only difficulty with the
method is that it seems to suggest a much greater intimacy with the
motives of people than I believe one gets in real life. He has a habit of
making the person the Instrument of a theme — rather in the logical
precise way of the French. I believe it oversimplifies and my reading of
life is that all over simplification leads necessarily to misjudgment. Then
I read with infinite pleasure Eddington's Nature of the Physical World
which for 24 hours almost persuaded me that I had caught a glimpse
of what the new physics was really about. It wasn't, of course, true;
but the sensation, while it lasted, was charming. I read also Lansor/s
1 The Report of the Indian Statutory Commission, under the chairmanship of
Sir John Simon, was issued in May 1930 (Command Papers #3568, 3569).
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1117
Bossuet — a splendid portrait, to me over-eulogistic but making you feel
that there were solid grounds for calling him the last of the fathers. And
I must, too, fell you of a German short story which moved me greatly
and, since I know of no translation, is worth a few lines here. It is of
a huge porter in Vienna who is hungry and without a job. He is a man
to whom misfortune always comes. When he visits the Labour Exchange
the only place they can send him is to a circus. There he is told that
they have a vacancy for a tiger. The animal has died and if he is willing
to be sewn up in the skin and to be put in the lion's cage for an hour
each day, he can have a job. After much debate he accepts. Then the
writer describes the night of agony spent by the porter as he wonders
what will happen to him in the cage. The hour arrives, he is sewn up,
and is so terrified that he has to be driven into the cage with whips. The
lion growls and in his terror he falls over it to be met with a whisper
of "Don't be so clumsy you fool . . . that's my foot" and he realises
that the lion, like himself, is another poor hungry devil. The thing, down
to the climax, or anti-climax is perfectly done, especially the analysis of
the fear the porter feels and the sudden effect on him of hearing the
whisper from inside the skin. I read too a volume of lectures by T. R.
Glover called Democracy in the Ancient World which I commend to
you — quite the best thing of its kind, I think, since Zimmern's Greek
Commonwealth. It is published by Cambridge.
In the way of entertainments I have not done very much. We had a
pleasant dinner at Winston's but of that semi-official type where you get
no intimate talk. I sat next to a Frenchman who had been in seven
cabinets but had never held office for more than six months at a time.
He amused me by talk of the severity of English morals. "I hear" he said,
"that practically none of your statesmen has a mistress." I said I thought
that was so. "Well," he said, with an inimitable shrug of the shoulders,
"I have seen their wives, and I do not understand it." I went also to
Grand Night at Lincoln's Inn — which I enjoyed greatly though the
talk was rather too much in the realm of (to me) unknown legal incident
I was pleased to discover that to all of them F. Pollock was a land of
hero, held in real awe and reverence. The Prime Minister made a charm-
ing little speech and the Master of the Rolls a reply that would have
been very effective if he had not learned the peroration off by heart. And
in this context I must not forget to tell you of the letter I received from
a Japanese professor asking to see me. I invited him to lunch and
took him to the High Table. There I introduced him to my colleague
Beveridge whom he surprised by saying "Laski great author, damned fine
fellow in Japan" with a grin that obviously displayed his intense pride at
his mastery of colloquial English. He paid for his lunch by presenting me
with two typed sheets of questions of which the first was "what if any
1118 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
is the future of Western Civilisation/' I said, oracularly, "Ah, what, if
any!" and he took it quite happily and passed without demur to the
next question. He said he knew my "brothers" in America and when
I tried to guess what he meant it turned out that he was translating
"confreres" into English. I add to him a German who brought me a
sheaf of detailed enquiries into the law of corporations on its ultra vires
side. I did my best for him and he then asked if he could see my library
here. I said of course yes; and last Sunday he arrived at 3 (having been
asked at 4:30) and with difficulty we persuaded him to leave at 7:30
so that we could go out to dine. I am appalled at my good nature.
I am waiting anxiously for the results of a telegram to a French book-
seller. If, oh, if, it is successful I shall be tempted to believe in Prov-
idence.
Our love, as always, to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
1720 I Street N.W., December 13, 1928
My dear Laski: Another letter today and the last one not answered!
Well, I have been hard driven — and now am rewarded with a hope
of leisure in our adjournment, as my work is done. I haven't looked at
Elizabeth and Essex — but I may — and I feel as if I should find your
criticisms just and delicate — also I am glad you saw Leslie Scott — a
mighty good man. Why don't they make him a judge? In connection with
having finished my work I forgot to mention that Brandeis looked in on
me and said he came to see how the leisure class live. Frankfurter
lunched and spent a good piece of the afternoon with me yesterday. He
seemed in fine condition. He is another who like you and to some extent
\Vu (who has just printed a book of essays) amaze me by the number
of their swift penetrating contacts with such a variety of subjects. I
keenly enjoyed his visits. To put the comble just before my supper this
evening Dorothy Brown and a clever young woman whose name I didn't
get called here and I had a brisk jaw with them. I don't see many
people outside the Court in these days. Another exception was the
British Ambassador a few days ago, an old friend and a very sweet
nature I should think. He surprised me by asking me for my book of
Legal Papers — I guess on account of his son who though with Morgan
has not given up his interest in the law. Frankfurter's wife and another
have just edited the letters of Sacco and Vanzetti. I talked with him a
little on the subject. He is convinced of their innocence — but I was
not convinced that too much talk had not been made on the theme. The
New Republic recurs to it from time to time. But the New Republic
strikes me as having become partisan in tone of late — judging from an
occasional glance. It seemed to nag at Coolidge — and I rather think
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1119
believes a number of things that I don't. I come nearer to reading it
than I do reading any other newspaper — but I can't be said to read that.
I went to the Congressional Library this morning and tried unsuccess-
fully to get the History of Political Thought in the XVI Century, that
you recommended — and so fell back on Legouis and Cazamian's History
of English Literature — passages in which struck me greatly last sum-
mer. But I get little time to read. Each day brings demands that take
time. I was pleased to learn the other day that Harcourt Brace &c. had
sold over 2500 copies of my Legal Papers — which seems to be doing
extraordinarily well — when the contents are considered. Apropos of the
German who looked so long at your library have you no anxieties lest
some such should whip a rare pamphlet into his pocket? I keep my
most thief -worthy volumes out of reach — so far as may be. I wish I
saw more of the illustrious to tell you about and had your power to
tell of the meetings, but if you keep up relations with a recluse you
must take the consequences. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Vandevanter lent me the privately printed letters of Dickens to (Miss
Beadnell) the prototype of Dora in David Copperfield including later
ones when their acquaintance was resumed — and according to the
editor she appeared in her later phase as Flora (I think the name is) in
Little Dorrit — Clennam's early love. I think it a fishy business to print
such things.
Devon Lodge, 16.XII.28
My dear Justice: If I guess aright, this should reach you about Xmas
day. It brings you both our warm affection and every sort of good
wish. I hope the cold has really gone. Brandeis writes me that he has
never known you in better form.
I have been fiendishly busy, but am now in haven with six weeks
vacation ahead. Certainly it is a relief, for the work piled up abominably.
I had three difficult cases in the Industrial Court, one of which took a
whole day of conference before I could get some concessions made to
my views. I have had three Ph.D. examinations in one of which we had
to fail the candidate; and that always wrings my nervous withers. But
when a man has 27 footnotes in the same order as the identical foot-
notes in Doumergue's [sic] Calvin and protests (though a clergyman) that
the order is coincidental, I think one must take a stern view of the laws
of probability. I have had also to examine candidates for a research
fellowship both orally and by paper. So that with lectures et al. I emerge
definitely bloody, but, I think, equally definitely unbowed.
Of other things let us chant. I ask you to welcome with me the advent
to this house of a perfect copy of L'Apologie de Rene Herpin which is
1120 LASKI TO HOLMES
Bodin's defence of his Republique and also the discovery of a copy of the
first edition of Pascal's Pensees for ninepence, which I sold for eight
pounds. I think I let it go too cheap, but I did not desire the reputation
of avarice. I have also found a nice collection of French Utopias circa
1700 — and they Interest me enormously not only because they are very
good reading but also because they confirm a pet hobby of mine about the
influence of the voyages e.g. the Jesuit Relations on political theory. It is
clear that these things were well known to Rousseau and profoundly
affected him, as well they might. I bought also, for a song, a collection
of lawyers' speeches circa 1600-50 (French) which make queer read-
ing. They are useful to me because of their Gallican tone, the expressions
of hostility to the Jesuits, their reliance on the necessary self-sufficiency
of the temporal power etc., but they certainly make one understand the
fleeting character of oratorical success. One or two of them are famous;
and such Jong-winded artificialities, with intolerable classical allusions
strained to bursting point, I rarely came across. I bought, also, for a song
the catalogue of a Frenchman's Libraiy 1715-1772 with his notes upon
his purchases. It Is fascinating. He begins with theology and romances
and little by little emphasis changes, until after 1760 he Is mainly buying
the Encyclopedists and the economists. Voltaire whom he notes in 1730
as "pemfleur" is in 1755 Mfe Ion Voltaire" and after Mirabeau aine he
writes, with obvious pride, "je Tai rencontre a Tarn chez mon libraire."
It was only three dollars and a pleasant plaything of which I hope to
make a pretty article.
In the way of reading there is not much to record. I have had a good,
stiff dose of Burke in preparation for a bicentenary piece I have to
write.1 How unanswerable he is, and how wrongheaded! I re-read, too,
Morley on him, with pleasure, but with less pleasure than I have known.
I thought I detected a certain primness of mind. Then, for work, I read
Puffendorf who seemed to me somewhere between fifth and sixth-rate;
a reputation quite beyond my understanding. Dear little Wu sent me his
volume of essays and" though I could not share all his enthusiasms (e.g.)
I am unmoved by Stammler and (pace you) Dewey s Nature and Ex-
perience. 1 thought they showed a charming spirit and I was glad to be
able to write him a sincere note of congratulation. And I must not forget
to add that I was sent for review a volume of Americana by various
people called The American Caravan — I read a good deal in the train
and gathered from it that most women around the age of twenty in New
York cannot keep out of strange men's bedrooms — an experience I never
met in my day; proof, I suppose, that new economic conditions rapidly
change the mores of a civilisation. Felix sent me the Sacco-Vanzetti
Letters which his wife had edited. I do not think I should have printed
1 See, f n/ra, pp. 1125, 1135.
1928] HOLMES TO LASKI 1121
so large a bulk. But even as they are, one cannot help being deeply moved
by them, and they reinforce one's fear that a grave judicial error was
made by the Massachusetts Courts — I need not say to you that I do not
think your Court had a right to interfere. But if I were a Massachusetts
judge I should not, especially as new facts emerge, feel very happy.
Chafee wrote me at length about Harvard. He was, gratefully to my
ear, lyrical about Felix, and Brandeis writes to me that F. in his judgment
"the most useful lawyer in the United States". ... I was appalled at
the size of the law school catalogue he sent me, but then the thing I hate
most is the illusion of bigness and I do not doubt that I am prejudiced
in this regard. Which reminds me to tell you that a learned German
professor came to my seminar the other day and heard me play devil's
advocate for two hours. At the end he thanked me for an interesting
afternoon and added with real concern "But have you no convictions?
Do you not enforce a doctrine?*7, and was, I fear, gravely concerned to
hear that I did not think that was the teacher's job.
We shall stay here over Xmas and then go abroad for a brief change,
I think to Antwerp as I hear unofficially that I shall be asked to lecture
in Paris — and two cities are better than one.
Love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
1720 Eye Street, December 29, 1928 l
My dear Laski: This will not be too late to wish you a happy New Year
— or to express my happiness in thinking from your letters and what I
hear that all is going successfully with you. I was delighted also at what
you tell me in your letter (received a day or two ago) about Frank-
furter — what Chafee and Brandeis say. I also am unmoved by Stammler
but grieve that you are not hit by Dewey's Nature and Experience. Wu
will be proud of your congratulations. His exaltation of me coupled with
a letter that I received later, and that I considered one of the chief
rewards of my life, make me feel as if I had finished, although I don't
think it wrong in me to keep on at the work non obstant misgivings.
There is no use in talking about that. One must make up one's mind as
best one can. You speak of Morley's primness of mind which expresses
well enough the quality that has limited my pleasure in his writing and
led me to read him but rarely. It was a disappointment years and years
ago after the first delight at meeting a civilized man to feel this limitation
and to realize that he wasn't opening Paradise. I have had time during
the recess to read the first volume of the History of English Literature
that you put me onto — Legouis and 2nd vol. Cazamian. I read part of
volume 2 last summer and was more impressed than I am by volume
1 A brief note from Laski, dated December 26, is omitted.
1122 HOLMES TO LASKI [1928
1 though that is admirable and instructive. I should have liked to read
in the authors referred to, as I went along, but I get too little time.
I shan't attempt to finish volume 2 at present as a sitting begins next
week, and I have lighter stuff, such as Elizabeth and Essex — uncommon
good reading as Strachey always is. My Secretary gave me The South
Wind, Norman Douglas, an extravaganza of which I should think there
was too much, but I have read only a little. Christmas naturally is less
of an event with me than formerly but still, like every other damn thing
it took time. And after this brief bulletin I must be off to a conference of
the JJ. Affectionately yours, 0. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 29.XIL28
My dear Justice: I ought to have written you earlier, but I have had
my annual dose of influenza, and that has meant a week in bed. How-
ever I am about again and rather rested than anything else; and tonight
I go off with Frida to Antwerp for a week's real holiday.
The main experience in bed was the rediscovery of Thackeray. Granted
everything that can be said against him (I) that he sniffles a little too
much (II) that he has a grain of Podsnappery (III) that he lays on too
thick the colours of vice and virtue, I hereby take solemn oath that he
was a very great man. Item, he could by God, tell a story; item, he could
make living creatures of flesh and blood; item, he was a great historian
— where else in the world do Swift and Johnson and Richardson and
Steele stand out so perfectly as they do in Esmond and The Virginians?
No; it may not be fashionable, but I go bail for Thackeray. Second I
desire to affirm that we talk much nonsense about the supreme aphoristic
talent of the French. I conjure you to read Pearsall Smith's exquisite
Treasury of English Aphorisms, and tell me if what you find there is one
whit inferior to La Rochefoucauld or Pascal or Vauvenargues? That's a
book, if you like! I desire further to affirm that I have discovered a great
philosopher — Emile Meyerson whose Explication dans les sciences has
revealed a new world to me. It's a world, if I make myself plain, for
Sundays; but it is extraordinarily revealing, and it gives me the un-
comfortable sense that the recent history of science makes Berkeleian
idealism more satisfactory as an epistemology than any other view. I
mean that admit the existence of a reality "out there," scientific dis-
covery is, at bottom, simply a system of observer's patterns which at most
have statistical validity. I add that Meyerson took me to Hume and I
was more impressed by the sheerly devastating brilliance of his mind
than I can ever remember before. And I wish I knew why the logicians
have made so small an advance in the theory of induction.
You ask why L. Scott has not been made a judge. I imagine the
1928] LASKI TO HOLMES 1123
answer to be that an ex-solicitor-general would not accept anything
less than the headship of a court or membership of the Court of Appeal
There has been no vacancy in the first type since he was in office; and
the recent tradition of the second (a good one, I think) has been the
promotion of the best from within. But I have a half-suspicion that he
may get one of the two new lordships of appeal which are to be created
in the new year. I hope so; for though I don't think him very able, he has
great integrity of character and a fine sincerity. The lecture I listened to
was ordinary in substance but it had an air of real distinction about it.
My influenza has kept me from seeing people until the other day.
But I was vastly amused by two incidents of this week-end. Yesterday
a gentleman asked to see me with a name that I did not know. I sent
out word that I was busy but he said it was highly important. When he
came in, he coughed, put a fine, silk hat carefully on a chair, and spoke
substantially on these lines, I was on the brink of fame. My work and
personality were beginning to be noticed. I might easily become a figure
of mark. What I needed now was judicious advertising, a skilful presen-
tation of my merits to the public. I must be present at the right dinners.
I must be talked about in the right circles. A judicious expenditure of
fifty pounds with him would see me, by say May or June, well on the
road to the distinction I deserved. I tried to get in a word in vain. When
he had exhausted himself I explained that I could not take advantage
of the offer. He opined I might be deterred by the price; he might quote
a special rate of forty pounds. I said I would not, I feared, do it for noth-
ing. He regretted that, in an age when advertising was the road to fame,
I did not perceive its merits. Could I give him the name of any colleagues
less inclined than I to hide their lights under a bushel? Isn't that superb?
The second visitor was an old gentleman from Hastings who had
discovered that the Pyramids contain a revelation of the future. He could
not get a publisher for his book. A grandson of his was a pupil of mine
and had spoken in high terms of my kindness. Being assured that his
facts were sound, he thought it possible that his literary style was
defective. Would I revise his book for him for a suitable fee, say twenty
pounds. I explained that I could not as I was sceptical of the thesis. He
told me I could read the book which contained approximately one
million words. I said that if I were he I would try the Theosophical
Society which was, I believed, deeply interested in the pyramids. I
therefore gave him a letter to Lady de la Wan4 asking her to treat the old
gentleman kindly. There, you would say, the story should end with
an angry letter from Lady de la Warr to me. On the contrary, my dear
Justice, I received today a warm letter of thanks from her, saying that
1 Lady De La Warr, wife of the ninth Earl, was an eager believer in the
theosophical movement.
1124 LASKI TO HOLMES [1928
the book is highly remarkable. Among other things, the gentleman's
calculations show conclusively that the Pyramid (I do not gather which)
predicts the King's illness, the election of Hoover, for this year, and other
equally remarkable things. The proof seems to be that Al Smith multiplied
by the number of his votes and divided by the height of the Pyramid
equals the number of the feast in Revelations. That, assuredly, you did not
know before. To ease your sense of humiliation I will add that I did not
either; but life, after all, is merely a continuous gain of new experience.
You do not mention your cold: I hope that means it has quite gone.
Whatever you and Mrs. Holmes do, please avoid the ghastly influenza
epidemic which seems to have visited you. I count on coming to W'ton
in April, and I hope to find you both fit and well in that time.
Our love to you both, and all good wishes for '29.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
1720 I Street N.W., January 11, 1929
My dear Laski: You have adventures even when in bed with the influenza
— or just out of it. Apropos of your advertising friend I seem to remember
that the sedate Croly in the New Republic years ago spoke of advertising
as a necessary and proper means to success. (It may have been some
understrapper but it rests in my mind as from him.) You and I prefer
the other way. I believe that advertising has become a science, on which
Brandeis could expound, having been counsel in former days, with
psychologic insight which it would be interesting to know. But I settle
more and more into ignorance — and in my brethren's talk at luncheon am
almost painfully impressed by my outsideness from current affairs. We
shall be powdering along for another week and then have an adjourn-
ment. We have had nothing that excited me very much, although one or
two cases stirred up the newspapers.
As to your Berkeleian idealism I suppose you know my short formulas
— I have repeated them often enough in talk and print. I begin by an
act of faith. I assume that I am dreaming, although I can't prove it — that
you exist in the same sense that I do — and that gives me an outside
world of some sort (and I think the ding an sich) — so I assume that
I am in the world not it in me. Next when I say that a thing is true
I only mean that I can't help believing it — but I have no grounds for
assuming that my can't helps are cosmic can't helps — and some reasons
for thinking otherwise. I therefore define the truth as the system of my
intellectual limitations — there being a tacit reference to what I bet is
or will be the prevailing can't help of the majority of that part of the
world that I count. The ultimate — even humanly speaking, is a mystery.
I don't see that it matters whether you call it motion or thought or X —
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1125
all we know of it is that it is capable when tied in a certain knot of
producing you and me and all the rest of the show. Absolute truth is
a mirage. Thus I am indifferent to the Berkeley business. Also as I see no
reasons for attributing cosmic importance to man, other than that at-
taching to whatever is, I regard him as I do the other species (except
that my private interests are with his) having for his main business to
live and propagate, and for his main interest food and sex. A few get
a little further along and get pleasure in it, but are fools if they are
proud.
Have I mentioned South Wind — by Norman Douglas? It is hard to
conceive writing or reading it — but when you do and don't ask im-
provement but are content with a few hours pleasure I'm blowed if
you don't get it. I must turn back to the law,
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 15.1.29
My dear Justice: Your letter was doubly welcome, for it showed that you
were not troubled by the prevalent influenza. I have had a dose of it
(in Antwerp) and though I am back at work, it has left a certain deadness
which is irritating. However, I am well enough content.
Things move in their accustomed routine. I have read a little, written
a little, and lectured on Burke over the wireless to celebrate the 200th
anniversary of his birth — a queer experience for some 200 people wrote
me letters asking questions about him, most of which they could have
answered for themselves from an elementary manual, so that I spent a
pound odd in postage and another pound for a typist to defer to the
illegitimate claims of good manners. Of reading I have had some pleasant
adventures. I emphasise first for your solitaire The Prisoner in the Opal
by A. E. W. Mason — one of the best shockers I have read in many a day.
Then a queer two- volume History of British Civilization by one Wing-
field-Stratford which had points, though full of absurdities like the
endeavour to interpret each age of British history in terms of its
architecture. Literally to me it conveys nothing to say that it was
necessary for the Victorian age to build pseudo-Gothic, but that may be
my ignorance. Then I read and greatly enjoyed the whole of Darwin's
correspondence. I lay my hand on my heart and say that there never was
a more loveable great man — always modest, never aggressive, simple and
kindly, and permanently open to new ideas. When you compare him as a
person to Descartes or Newton or Leibnitz or Goethe he simply overtops
them altogether. Really it is impossible to rate him too highly. I read,
also, Vinefs Etudes sur Pascal which I conjure you to note for Beverly
in the summer, an exquisite book. Probably he makes Pascal a little too
1126 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
Protestant but he is really inside that tortured being and if you do not
know it I am sure it would please you greatly. I'm glad you like the
Cazamian-Legouis — that is, I'm sure, the way literary history ought to
be written; I certainly know nothing in English that even compares with
it. I read, too, in ms Haldane's autobiography. It's a queer book. His
vanity is, in a delicate and refined way, colossal; and his power of intrigue
evidently very great. He illustrates, too, the variety of truth; for he tells
his side of certain episodes in a way that is utterly without relation to
the published accounts of others. But his breadth of view and his essential
kindliness of temper come out strongly. To rne the whole thing gave the
sense of a really first-rate family solicitor trying infinite permutations and
combinations to get the ultimate result somehow. His weakness was
that he mistook himself for a philosopher which au fond he never was;
his strength an amazing power of unhurried concentration on detail which
usually enabled him to arise from the study of any subject twice as
well equipped to tackle it as any opponent.
My influenza has meant that we have been out but little, but of one
dinner party I must tell you. It was to meet a young playwright and a
middle-aged novelist and after dinner about five other writers came in.
Each of them talked like his works. The playwright exploited his emo-
tions; the novelist expounded his theory of the novel; the others each
explained their exact position in the literary firmament with an incisive
vigour that left me gasping. The novelist said that he was going to lead
a back to Rousseau movement but questions revealed the fact that he
read only an English translation of the Confessions. The playwright
commended to us the "simple realism" of Shakespere — as displayed,
I asked, in the Midsummer Night's Dream. One of the others told me
that his essays had been compared by a critic to Hazlitt's, whereupon
another whispered in my ear that the critic was the essayist's cousin.
I enjoyed myself hugely. The total effect was exactly what you see in
a monkey-house as you watch the beasts eagerly picking off the fleas from
one another. One man found out that I was an elector to an annual
lectureship in English literature and explained his claims to give the
lecture at length. Another attacked Dickens, and when I ventured to
remark that Dickens could perhaps tell a story he curtly told me that the
novelist did not exist to satisfy infantile desires. He wanted the novelist
to legislate for mankind by drawing pictures of the age of which the
lesson was unmistakable. I hinted mildly that Dickens had legislated
when he wrote Bleak House but the answer was a snort and the host
buried my remains quietly in the garden. I do wish you could have seen
the show. Each of them had a press-agent and each wanted you to be
quite clear that he was a master of his craft; each too was a real artist in
attitudes. Simplicity was the real crime and we played at elaborateness in/
1929] HOLMES TO LASKI 1127
irony for three hours. I would go weekly if I could. It restores my faith
in the simple, bourgeois virtues. It makes me love Laburnum Villa and
the commuter and P. G. Wodehouse and the solidly substantial dullness
which comes from routineering at a thousand a year. I whisper in your
secretary's ear that I suspect Mr. Norman Douglas would have been
very much at home among them. He likes arranging his complexes in
public.
With the beginning of term, I am hard at it on the usual lines. But
I have a pleasant interlude on Thursday when I go off to Paris for a
week-end to deliver a lecture at the Sorbonne. That, I hope, means a
couple of days pleasant hunting in the bookshops. Did I tell you that
I found a collection of voyages imaginaires of the 17th century in a
French catalogue some of which are quite obviously the pith of Rousseau's
Second Discourse?
Our love to you both. Take care, don't get influenza, don't overwork
and above all, don't let the notion of resignation cross your mind.
Ever affectionately yours., H. J. L.
1720 1 (Eye) Street N.W., January 27, 1929
My dear Laski: A moment of leisure has come, not yet turned to much
account, as it is beginning rather than ending. I have however read a
detective story sent to me by Knopf — Red Harvest — by Dashiell
Hammett — somebody shot on every page — and the narrative hero
coming out unharmed and unhung when by probabilities he ought to
have been finished one way or another — quite absorbing though sug-
gesting doubts. Brandeis put me onto King John — Aeschylian lines as
Swinburne says — curious that Shakespeare can't resist the word-
quibbling which I suppose comes from Euphues. There are some lines
of it in the beautiful tragic talk of Arthur to Hubert, when he is pleading
for his eyes. That led to Richard III — rather amusing, his announcing
himself as a villain at the start and giving you such doses of villainy
straight along. (The editor of the reprint of the First Folio says "Villain"
in the opening soliloquy means churl — I don't see why, quite — as he
goes on to tell his acts and schemes.) The Bard seems lonely in his
greatness. I don't make very much of his contemporaries — except Mar-
lowe— who was the devil of a fellow. Also today I began Redlich's
biography of the Emperor Francis Joseph — and am much interested.
It occasionally is a little obscure because his familiarity with the whole
business leads him at times to take a good deal for granted. It isn't the
kind of thing I like to read — it isn't in the line of my business and as well
Elizabeth and Essex. I rather grudge time to personal histories — even
vhen important. But what does it matter how I pass my time! I should be
1128 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
more sensible if I could loaf unscrupulously. You speak of answering
many letters asking imbecile questions — I hand such letters to my
secretary and tell him to regret that my duties don't leave me time &c.
Autograph letters that don't enclose a stamp I tear up — arguing that if
they don't care to pay two cents for my signature I don't care two
cents to send it I notice that many, I should think most of the stampless
requests, come from intelligent young Hebrews — if I can judge by the
names. I told my secretary to make a note of Vinet on Pascal — but the
title does not draw me greatly. Apropos of what you say of Darwin
(which I readily believe) it may interest you that a connection of mine,
Clark, — has given comfort to the fundamentalists by publishing an
article repudiating evolution as popularly conceived — and disbelieving
in the missing link.1 He is a distinguished man of science — and from
past talks with my wife's nephew Gerrit Miller — another distinguished
man of science — I gather that he shares the disbelief. He wrote an
article some time ago discrediting the Piltdown man2 — I believe
generally accepted outside of England. Of course the chaps don't take
theological views. Clark has published a schematism of development3
which I don't understand and can't talk about but some competent
people think he will stand beside Darwin some day. I think I mentioned
a book on behaviorism once.4 He seems to think that consciousness is
shown to be a futile conception by the fact that no one tells or, he would
say, can tell what it is. That seems to me silly. When I was a small boy
my father taught me a philosophical lesson by asking me to tell him how
salt tasted. You can't — and you can't tell a blind person how colors
look. There are many questions to which you must know the answer at
first hand or you can't know it. You don't disprove an ultimate by showing
that I can't go beyond it. This detached reflection I interject for no
particular reason — except my desire to mark my disrespect for what
the writer thought a sockdolager. Affectionately yours, O, W. H.
Devon Lodge, 5.II.29
My dear Justice: You must forgive my long silence. But the excuse is
the good one that I have had a slight, but painful, attack of pneumonia
which has badly embarrassed my time-table. I am much better, and
back again at college; but I am going slow until I am really on my
1 Austin H. Clark, "Animal Evolution," 3 Quarterly Review of Biology 523
(December 1928).
2 Gerrit S. Miller, Jr., "The Jaw of the Piltdown Man," 65 Smithsonian
Miscellaneous Collection, no. 12, 1-31 (November 1915).
8 "A New Classification of Animals," Bulletin de L'Institut Oceanographique,
No. 400 (1921).
* Supra, p. 1113.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1129
feet again. The nuisance of it is that I shall have to give up my
cherished American plan for Easter — partly money, and partly the need
to make up lost time. I hate doing it, for I had built enormously on the
pleasure of seeing you and Felix, But if the decks are to be clear for
action and I am ever to have leisure for my book I simply must have
that Easter vacation as a locked-up recluse. Damn, and damn! Why are
the days so short?
I haven't, I think, told you of my visit to Paris which, if brief, was
very amusing. I lectured to about 100 people, of varied nationalities; and
the period of questions was the funniest thing imaginable. A Frenchman
doesn't simply ask a question: he buries it amid an avalanche of oratory.
He asks you about liberty, and makes a speech on the principles of 1789,
the glory of 1848, the sufferings of France in the war. An Italian exile
begins a question with Dante, refers passionately to Mazzini and Gari-
baldi and devotes five minutes to the sins of Mussolini. A Bulgarian exile
tells you of what he has suffered and pours execration on ten unknown
names which sound like a cross between a hiss and a spit. I enjoyed it
thoroughly. I had a jolly lunch with some old students of mine who
are working at the Sorbonne, and a pleasing dinner with Meyerson the
philosopher of whom I have a great opinion. He agreed with my dislike
of Leibnitz which gave me joy, and he came nearer to making me
understand what Einstein really is doing than anyone else I have ever met.
Also he spoke with great admiration of Morris Cohen, which went to my
heart. I was amused, too, by tea with about a dozen American exiles,
of whom at least eight had been divorced, one, a lady of about 35, three
times. They were all violently anti- American and horrified by my refusal
to share their views. One gentleman explained that he could not return to
New York as he had two orders for alimony against him and to meet them
would alter too drastically his style of living. They were all suffering from
a real hunger for America and all much too self-conscious to dare to
admit it. I had, too, a brief but fruitful book hunt and acquired some
things like C. Wolff 1 and Thomasius2 which I needed to round off my
continental XVIIIth century collection. I wish I could have had a little
longer, for the shops were fascinating, and I could do no more than
whet my appetite.
1 came back to bed; and it was cheered for me by Thackeray. I started
with Vanity Fair and read the lot and heartily enjoyed them. Sir, I wish
to affirm in the presence of a judge that Ethel Newcombe [sic] is the most
adorable heroine in 19th century fiction. And that fellow can tell a story
'Christian Wolff (1679-1754), German philosopher of small originality who
did much to bring the rationalism of the Enlightenment to Germany.
2 Christian Thomasius (1655-1728), German jurist who was associated with
Wolff at the University of Halle in spreading the gospel of the Enlightenment.
1130 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
and draw a character. Is there a modern living who could do old Major
Pendennis as exactly and as happily as Thackeray? Has any historian
caught the outline of George Washington better than The Virginians?
Sentimental? Well, I prefer sentiment to the lavatory school of fiction
which seems to predominate nowadays. But here I must stop. I am still
trying to get abreast of my correspondence. Please take this as an interim
letter to be improved upon later; and assume that it brings a full cargo
of devotion to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 12.11.29
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you synchronises with my sense
of complete fitness. I feel that I could leap over at any rate moderate
sized hills. I was intensely interested by what you said of your scientists'
attitude to Darwinism. I speak of course with ignorance and humility;
but I have the sense first that the reaction against it is a little exaggerated
and secondly that it remains profoundly unsatisfactory that it should not
be able to explain (I) the origin of variation or (II) how a variation
presented can, often enough, be of any utility for survival in its original
stages. But granted all that, the fact that natural selection takes place
seems to me solidly proved enough, and also that evolution is real, even
though the details of the actual pedigree are much thinner and more
uncertain than the original enthusiasts thought. And at any rate the
supreme result of the seventy years since 1859 has been a body-blow to
the Eternal from which he will find it difficult to recover. That is what
really matters most. I remain permanently and impenitently anti-clerical.
And the settlement of the papal question only makes me feel this the
more strongly.1 I do not know if you have noticed that among the terms
of the treaty Mussolini agrees to hand over all marriage questions out-
side judicial separation to ecclesiastical courts and that there shall be
religious education in all schools. To me these things are a violation of
all that is essential to the tolerant character of modern civilisation, and
it reads to me like a victory for the forces of darkness. I only hope that
the result of restoring the pope to political sovereignty will be the old
result that he will meddle again in secular affairs and ride for a fall. I am
told that this is a Jesuit victory; and it bears on its face their tenets and
tentacles. I agree with Voltaire that there will be really no peace in the
world until the last King has been strangled in the bowels of the last
priest. I hope you warmly agree.
1 On February 1 1 the Lateran Treaty between the Pope and Mussolini had
been signed. The Vatican received recognition of its claim of political
sovereignty and the Italian state accepted the Roman Catholic religion as the
sole religion of the state.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1131
1 must, next, let off my cri de cour [sic] for the temper boils within.
I have had two literary adventures which make one foam at the mouth.
In 1721 Lord Macclesfield was impeached for corruption. He was a great
friend of Mandeville, the author of the Fable of the Bees, and all the
latter's unpublished correspondence is in the Macclesfield archives. He
wrote much to the continental philosophers and their replies are said to
be there by the score. I wrote to Lord M. asking for permission either
to see the papers or to have copies made, or even, if he wishes, to have
them deposited at the British Museum for scrutiny. He wrote back two
lines of refusal to say that a desire to see family papers on the part of
an entire stranger seemed to him simply unnecessary intrusion. Next
I discovered that a gentleman in Sussex possessed mountains of un-
published letters of Burke as also all the replies to Burke's pamphlets
with his annotations thereon. I wrote and made a similar request and got
a refusal on the ground that he did not desire publication. Can you
imagine a more disgusting dog in the manger policy? The second irritates
me more than the first for one of the things he has is Burke's copy of
Tom Paine's Rights of Man which a friend of mine has seen literally
covered with annotations from top to bottom. We ought certainly to
have an Act of Parliament giving a right of entry to the Record Office
to make copies of all historic papers after the lapse of seventy-five years.
As it is, these two fellows could burn every page they possessed and no
one could do anything. Let me add that I did not write out of a blue sky
but obtained introductions in each case from personal friends of the
two curmudgeons and then got those curt refusals. It really does make
one angry.
Majora canamus. I have bought a nice Diderot in 17 volumes and
have been literally revelling in his adorable correspondence with MUe,
Volland.2 Then I have read a remarkable work by L. B. Namier on
English politics at the accession of George III which will make the whole
period from 1760-1783 seem totally different when there has been time
to digest the result in the light of his brilliant analysis of who members
were, upon whom they depended, and how they voted. And I have had a
very good time with an interesting French book by Brunschvicg the
philosopher, narrating the history of the idea of conscience since the
Greeks, a very good book. And in a lesser field I enjoyed a reprinted
Trollope — Orley Farm — immensely. It has a criminal trial in it which
for sheer brilliance I have never seen surpassed in literature except by
his own murder trial in Phineas Redux. At any rate, those old fellows
2 Louise Henrietta Volland (1716-1784); the fullest record of Diderofs devo-
tion to "Sophie*' is in the 1930 edition of his Lettres a Sophie Volland (Babelon,
ed., 3 vols.).
1132 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
did know how to tell a story and with respect I submit that not one in
fifty of the modems who are' praised can touch them in that regard.
We have been out a little and had two pleasant dinner parties here.
One was for Hoernle, whom you may remember at Rockport, a philoso-
pher once at Harvard but now in South Africa. He drew a grim picture
of university education there. But his wife is an anthropologist and of
course supremely happy in the best possible field for her work. On
Sunday Walter Lippmann and his wife came to dinner. I always like him,
even though he lacks the charm of Felix and a certain moral fineness
that Felix excels in. But he has great perceptiveness and sound judgment,
though I think he needs to know a little more history and not to think
that the next five weeks is what really matters. He told me the tragic
news of poor Croly's illness, which he seemed to think would per-
manently incapacitate Croly. I never made much of his writing, but I
always greatly respected his devotion and rectitude. They will find it
difficult to replace him on the New Republic.
I am busy working at lectures I have to give on the nature of the
League of Nations next month at Geneva. I look forward to it, above all,
because it is two years since I had a look at the Geneva bookshops. But
before that, alas, I have to read 40 essays by aspiring young men on
the future of parliamentary government. Sir, the way of the teacher
is hard.
Our love to you both. We are living amid arctic cold.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
17 W Eye Street N.W., February 15, 1929
My dear Laski: Your news is saddening and disquieting — you say you
are better but are you taking all the proper precautions? I believe your
wife can be trusted if you are obedient — but not all husbands are.
I don't think you had mentioned to me your plan of a visit at this time but
1 had heard of it and was looking forward to it.
Your letter comes just at the end of an adjournment, when of course
I am in a scrabble and so must cut this short. I haven't read a great
deal. I think I mentioned looking through the Malleus Maleftcarum1-
and the amazing introduction dated 1927 of the English translator. I
am now just finished a little book of excerpts from Spinoza with some
slight illustrations and an arrangement intended to elucidate.2 It doesn't
1 Malleus Mdeficarum (Rev. Montague Summers, tr., 1928) was a fifteenth-
century treatise on witchcraft written by James Sprenger and Henry Kramer.
The devout translator's belief in witches was no less intense than that of the
original authors.
zThe Philosophy of Spinoza (Ratner, ed., 1927).
1929] HOLMES TO LASKI 1133
do me much good for Spinoza anyhow Is rather tedious and I don't
believe his postulates or accept his reasoning from them. It is his view
of the universe that is the thing. He sees as I see it more nearly than
any of the old that I can think of.
Redlich was here the other night and talked a steady stream for 5 hours
which was rather long for me but full of brilliancy, fire, and amusement.
He put me on to A Tombre de la croix which I have read but a chapter
of — but which won't take long — and I have another novel lent me by
Gerrit Miller — Dieu protege le Tsar — L. Dumur — which he recom-
mended to me to read I forget exactly quo intuitu — and this p.m.
comes a volume from Felix — The Bases of Modem Science by J. W. N.
Sullivan which I long to get at but which must take its turn — for to-
morrow is a conference which so far as I can see must be followed by
either an opinion or a dissent per me as my lord McReynolds may vote
tomorrow. On Monday we begin a four weeks sitting — and there will be
little reading I fear.
Did I ever mention John Browns Body — a poem by Benet? A view
of the Civil War — the last kind of thing that I want to read — but I was
a good deal impressed by it. I am amused by your American exiles whom
you saw in Paris — a strong presumption against them I should think —
and interested by your recurrence to Thackeray. It may be age, or
accident — or the small print but I find the old boys and pretty much
all the new ones too long-winded for my impatience — yet I can read
what sounds to me pretty drooly in Spinoza without discomfort — age I
rather think draws some new lines.
Please remember that you have charge of an unusual and valuable
instrument and take care of it. Tell your wife that I believe in and rely
on her. Your little daughter must be quite grown up by this time — is she
becoming a companion? Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Washington, D. C.9 "February 22, 1929
My dear Laski: Your most interesting letter, received last night, raises a
doubt in my mind. You boil with wrath that Lord Macclesfield would
not let you see the Mandeville correspondence. Is it not a case of literary
curiosity against the feeling of family privacy? I don't suppose that there
is likely to be much philosophical importance in the letters. There may be
matters bearing on the character of an ancestor. While I incline to sym-
pathize with you, I should not dare to say that I thought Lord M. wrong.
The other case seems stronger for you — but even there I doubt if it
warrants more than vexation. I should hesitate to condemn a man who
refused to allow a picture to be photographed, even though personally I
might deem it more public spirited to allow the photograph to be taken.
1134 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
Next as to the views of my connection, Clark, on evolution. He is a
very considerable, very able, and very learned scientific man, and knows
what he is talking about. Of course his discourse was laid hold of by the
Bible men and I am afraid that he may have thought of the publicity that
that would give him — but I don't suppose that he is any more a Bible
man than you are — and speaking ignorantly I take his view to be an out-
crop of a different scheme of development, which I don't pretend to un-
derstand. I suppose that his belief is an extension of what De Vries
showed happens in some plants1 — a sudden inexplicable jump. In an in-
teresting book that Frankfurter sent to me lately, The Bases of Modem
Science, (J. W. N. Sullivan, pub. by Ernest Benn, London) I read that
even among the mathematicians one theory now offered is a theory of
"emergence" by which "the properties of a whole cannot always be de-
duced from the properties of its constituents" and some of the evidences
as to man that have been relied on have been attacked. Some years ago
my wife's nephew Gerrit Miller, a really eminent scientific man published
an elaborate examination of the Piltdown man relics and concluded that
they came from an ape (or some of them — I don't remember the de-
tails). Of course the English stood up for their discovery but my impres-
sion is that the weight of scientific opinion is with him. Clark, (the man
in question) I believe regards other supposed exhibits of the missing link
in the same way. I shouldn't think that anyone except a man in the busi-
ness could form an opinion of any weight. We naturally incline toward
anything that contributes to ease of thought. The postulate of science is
that everything can be explained — but with the view of man that I take,
this perfectly well may not be so. I think it unlikely that we know any-
thing ultimate about the universe or have faculties that fit us to do more
than to adjust ourselves to it and to live. You, I suspect, have more of a
creed and empassioned enthusiasm than I have — though your creed is
not the orthodox one. All the foregoing has nothing to do with clericalism
— I don't believe in it any more than you — I think it childish — and
yesterday just before I received your letter I was hearing of a lady, speak-
ing of Mussolini and the pope, asking who cares about the Pope? At times
I am a little disturbed at exhibitions of ecclesiastical power, but I have
such a conviction that it is doomed that I don't care to hurry its fate. It
helps to keep order ad interim. I ought to add that my conviction is only
faith in the prevalence of reason in the long run (coupled with indica-
tions on the specific points that have struck me) but I am well aware
how long reason may be kept under by what man wants to believe. I do
despise the Will to Believe.
1Hugo de Vries (1848-1935), Dutch botanist whose experimental study of
evolution led to his formulation of the theory of mutation in The Mutation
Theory (Farmer and Darbishire, tr., 1909-10).
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1135
Your faithfulness to the earlier generation — Thackeray — Trollope es-
pecially— always pleases me, while I share it but imperfectly. Since
Phineas Phinn, 50 years ago, I haven't had the courage to tackle Trollope.
In my old age I am more bored by novels than I used to be, while I am
not bored at all by The Bases of Modern Science or even by Spinoza —
who, as I have said before, although tedious and using premises and rea-
soning that I disbelieve, sees the world as I do more nearly than any of
the old. I have just read a little book of selected translations, because it
was sent to me and had a recommendation by John Dewey — another
man who sees the world somewhat as I do. I haven't heard of Croly's ill-
ness — I must inquire. We seem to agree about him. I have a great re-
spect for his intelligence but don't willingly read his writing. I am avail-
ing myself of Washington's birthday. We are sitting and having cases that
I dislike about rates and the Interstate Commerce Commission. I listen
with respect but without envy to questions by Brandeis and Butler using
the words of railroading and rate-making that I imperfectly understand.
To be familiar with business is a great (secondary) advantage. Someone
said of Brandeis, He is not afraid of a Balance Sheet. His experience at
the bar is an infinite advantage in many cases. Butler has had something
of the same, and Vandevanter has land law and Indians at his fingers* end.
McReynolds is the boss in Admiralty because he has carried through a
series of decisions that I don't believe in at all — although I don't [be-
lieve] he had any special knowledge before his victories in that field.
I don't remember whether I have mentioned Redlich's being here the
other evening and discoursing as copiously and amusingly as always. I
read his Francis Joseph with profit to my prejudices. We soon shall have
the inauguration in which I shall endeavour to avoid the death that it is
apt to inflict on the old who sit out of doors for the swearing in and ad-
dress of the President. Four days later I shall be 88 if I live till then. The-
straws gradually accumulate on the camel's back, but only slowly I am
glad to say. You don't say, but I infer that all traces of the pneumonia
have disappeared. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 26.11.29
My dear Justice: Life flows on in the normal way, and I cannot complain
of inertia. I have given a public lecture on Hobbes; I have written a long
article on the danger of uniformity;1 I broadcasted a long talk on Hal-
dane's Autobiography and I am just finishing the notes on the six lectures
I have to give next week at Geneva. And as I feel extraordinarily fit, I
conclude that work is very good for me,
Presumably "The Dangers of Obedience," 159 Harpers Magazine 1 (June
1929); reprinted in The Dangers of Obedience and Other Essays (1930).
1136 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
The most interesting thing I have done since I wrote last was a dinner
at Winston Churchill's. It was good fun in two ways. First, I had a great
scrap with him and an Admiral on the meaning of maritime rights. I
maintaining the simple thesis that the British conception and the Ameri-
can merely derived from their different situations; they, poor souls, ar-
guing with true English 5/?pt£ that the British view was essential to the
safety of the world. May I whisper that Admirals may be great technicians
but as students of logic they have a certain lack of profundity? Winston
told us one glorious story. He reads all the letters sending conscience
money to the exchequer. One enclosed a cheque for 22/6 and ran as fol-
lows. "Dear Sir, I enclose a cheque for the payment of a dog license for
three years. You may say I have no dog: that is true. You may insist that
I have never had a dog: that is also true. But I have a wife who is such
a bitch that I feel morally obliged to accept the responsibilities of my
position. Yours faithfully/* And one brilliant remark was made there. We
were discussing the suppressed novel The Well of Loneliness which deals
with sexual relations between women and defends them. Winston asked
if anyone knew the author and a young civil servant said he did. "What
kind of a person is she?" "I should say," answered the civil servant, "that
she is a self-made man." One thing, by the way, impressed me and that
is the religiosity of naval men. There were three of them there, and they
were all Bibleolaters if there was such a word. One told me quite seriously
that during the war he always tried the bible for a text before issuing
orders for the coming action. I could not think of any comment worthy of
the occasion.
Reading, too, has been very pleasant. Haldane's Autobiography in
which you, Felix and I have honourable mention, is very interesting read-
ing. It brings out his great powers of work and organisation, his essential
kindliness, and a certain sweet vanity he had. It isn't, I think, the book of
a first class mind but certainly of one who knew how to make the utmost
of the ability he had. I hope you will have time to glance at it. Then I
have read Zimmern's new book2 which has much in it of extraordinary
profundity. The essay on "The Prospects of Democracy" is really a mas-
terpiece and deserves, I think, a quite special place in contemporary
political literature. And a Frenchman Fay sent me a book called The
American Experiment which while not always by any means first-class has
again and again some really interesting apergus. And a charming book on
the French novelists from 1500-1 800,3 quite short but crowded with
ideas and doing well what I have long wanted to see done — explaining
the changes in the form of the novel in terms of changes in the social
2 America and Europe, and Other Essays (1929).
s Probably Frederick Charles Green, French Novelists, Manners and Ideas
from the Renaissance to the Revolution (1929).
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1137
milieu of each period. And I add that Compton Mackenzie's The Three
Wayfarers [sic] 4 is a tip-top spy story which I earnestly recommend as
an accompaniment to solitaire.
Of other things I can only sing of minors. But one queer thing is worth
recording. We have an American student at the School who is in some
sort under my care. On Saturday I was called up and informed that he
was dangerously ill with pneumonia at the Italian hospital. I went down
there and was told by the doctors that he was not expected to live. After
much tribulation I sent a warning telegram to his people in New York,
and made arrangements for (I) a specialist (II) a funeral. The specialist
promised to go next morning. On the Sunday morning I called at the hos-
pital and was mysteriously told that the patient had gone; other informa-
tion I could not get anyhow. I dashed round to the lad's rooms in a taxi
and found him with three other intimates calmly playing bridge. My
specialist had gone round on the Saturday night and found that the
diagnosed pneumonia was in fact a violent attack of constipation induced
by overeating. He met the problem by a terrific purgative; and at 10:30
on the Saturday night the patient was dancing on the bed. I wired the
parents that he was all right and got a wire back "Expect constipation, he
always overeats, not alarmed/' Isn't that a superb climax? And I must tell
you the tale of the Japanese professor who came here to tea on Sunday.
There were perhaps a dozen students and young instructors and we were
gossiping gaily over the fire. Suddenly the Jap. said "Haiti" We all
stopped. "Let us," he said, "in the presence of the master" — pointing,
alas, to me — "speak only of the higher things." We had, as you can
observe, no alternative; and so for an hour he discoursed on the higher
things and we sat silent about him like acolytes at a religious festival.
Twice I tried to interrupt but on each occasion he said "I cannot think if
I am subjected to nervous strain" and I had to subside and do my best
not to choke with laughter. One of my lads, who is a wit, told him at the
end that he thought he had not taken sufficient account of recent German
doctrines. Had he read the works of Chemnitz, Dusseldorf and Dreisberg,
The Jap. said he had not, whereupon the lad proceeded to give him a list
of mock-serious titles all of which the Jap took down in a vast notebook
and my hints that he was being teased did not produce a single ripple
on the surface of his complacency. When he left we all literally rolled
on the floor with suppressed emotion.
I have bought little lately, reserving myself for Geneva where I go on
Saturday for a week or so. The bookshops there, especially one in the old
town, do one's heart good; and I have arranged to read Rousseau mss in.
the afternoon in the public library.
'The Three Couriers (1929).
1138 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
I hope all goes well at 1727 [sic]. I am looking forward to Hoover's
cabinet. Felix, I imagine, will be pleased at Stimson's nomination.5
Our love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 16. III. 29
My dear Justice: I got back from Geneva nearly a week ago to find my-
self in the midst of tragedy. My colleague Allyn Young died from pneu-
monia after only two days illness, and the world has lost a great economist
and teacher and I a friend and colleague such as one rarely finds. I can't
easily put on paper what a remarkable man he was. But his great quality
•was humanism — the ability to take difficult technical themes and deal
with them not as a paper problem, but as they emerged into life with all
its problems. His death makes me feel as though I had lost a limb, for ever
since he came over from Harvard eighteen months ago he and I had
fought every issue together on the same side. The tragedy is greater be-
cause his wife is blind and Frida and I have had the very difficult task of
helping her, poor thing, to make arrangements for her return to America.
You know how these things cut deep.
Geneva was extraordinarily interesting. The lectures went well, and I
met every sort and kind of person. One or two you may know by name.
The outstanding one was Eugene Borel,1 the Swiss international lawyer,
brilliant, witty, and altogether devoid of the "professional" attitude one
so often finds in the continentals. I met, too, Struppe2 [sic] the German
lawyer, full of learning and ideas but a much more formal type who never
moved outside the confines of his subject but talked extremely well within
them. And I enjoyed Anzilotti,3 the Italian member of die International
Court, who, though much older, reminded me in his verve and brilliancy,
of Felix. I had breakfast with Stresemann,4 the German statesman, who
struck me as subtle and shrewd, and honourable. I add that I thought him
without exception the ugliest man I have ever seen. I had a brief talk
5 From March 1929, to 1933, Henry L. Stimson was Hoover's Secretary of
State.
1 Eugene Borel (1862™ ), Professor of International Law at the Academic
du Droit International and Swiss member of the Permanent Court of Arbitra-
tion, 1928-1946.
2 Probably Karl Strupp (1886-1940), Professor of International Law at
Frankfurt, 1926-1933.
s Dionisio Anzilotti ( 1869- ) was a member of the Permanent Court of
International Justice from 1922 to 1930 and President of the Tribunal from
1928 to 1930.
4 Gustav Stresemann (1878-1929), as Foreign Minister of Germany from
1923 until his death in October 1929, rendered monumental services to Ger-
many in restoring her to the family of nations.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1139
with Austen Chamberlain5 who said he remembered you at their London
house forty years ago and that his sister never ceased to talk of you and
her pleasure, which I well understood, in your letters. Austen is very
queer. He so obviously means to do right and be kind but he has some
defect of personality which always, even when he is saying the kindest
thing, gives the impression of conscious superiority, so that, as Titulescu,
the Rumanian prime minister [sic] 6 remarked to me, you feel offended
even when he is doing you a favour. Most of the others I saw would not
be names to you. But I must put on record my sense of the high purpose
by which all the officials of the League are informed. It really is impres-
sive to meet a real and coherent zeal for a world-interest above the sepa-
rate interest of the different states there. The Polish delegate to the League
put it to me very well: he said he came there a fervent nationalist and
after three years of routine work he found himself writing home to his
government that certain policies he was asked to recommend were simply
unfair in the light of European needs. One delightful Geneva story I
must not omit. There is only one public lavatory in all Geneva, tended as
these places are, by an old lady. The Rumanian delegate had to stop
there and on giving her the usual tip expressed the hope that business
was good. "No," said the old lady, "what this city needs is a Mussolini."
You observe that political speculation may derive from the most diverse
materials.
I found some nice books there, of which the best was a superb first
edition of Spinoza's Tractatus; but some Rousseau volumes pleased me
too and a very nice set of Saint-Simon who remains for me the prince of
diarists. I also found a copy of Leonhard's translation of your Common
Law which I presented con amore to the University Library. Altogether,
on this head, it was a most successful visit.
The first engagement when I got back may amuse you. There was a
lunch at the School to the Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, and I
was placed between a German lady and a Rumanian. She asked me if I
were related to the author of the Grammar of Politics and I said yes. "Your
father," I suppose said she. "Yes" said I unblushingly. This she told the
Rumanian gent who was very anxious that I should tell my father of the
great influence the book had in Rumanian universities. Very impressively
he urged me to put my father's work before me as an example to emulate.
This, you will be glad to know, I as impressively promised to do. The
whole lunch was very amusing. I had to interpret one or two of the
speeches and the task of softening down certain Gallicisms for general
5 Sir Austen Chamberlain was Foreign Minister in the Baldwin government.
"Nicolas Titulescu (1883-1941) at this time was Minister to Engknd and
Rumanian delegate at the League; the Prime Minister of Rumania was Julius
Manin.
1140 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
consumption was, I can assure you, a task of no small artistic effort. How
e.g. stand next to the Archbishop of York and put into English M.
Luchair ST "nous aimons les chansons Hongrois du tout coeur, surtout les
chanteurs qui les chantent." I said "Hungarian folk-songs are as exquisite
as the race which produced them is attractive" which is, I think, as far as
one should go in the archiepiscopal presence.
I was enormously interested in your accounts of the critical attitude
to Darwinism. I met young Haldane8 the other day and put the substance
of it to him and he said that most of the younger biologists here would
endorse it. He made the interesting point that most Victorian science
suffered from excessive simplicity and that now the balance is being pain-
fully redressed. I imagine there is truth in that; and I incline to think
that the process of redress will in the end be even more fatal to the reli-
gious outlook than was the case with the old frontal attack of sixty-years
ago. Though, obviously, there are dangers of religious revival in terms of
political tactics, as in Italy and in Spain; and it would be very interesting
to measure the strength of religion in England by seeing what happened
to a political party which came out definitely for disestablishment of the
Church. I do not know. Indifference grows by leaps and bounds; but the
modern electorate is very sentimental and I should not like to bet that
the indifference would reflect itself in the polls.
One piece of news will, I hope, please you. Yale University has asked
me to go there next March for three months. In principle I have accepted,
and if the finance turns out satisfactorily I shall certainly go. You can
imagine that the prospect of some week-ends in Washington really attracts
me. I long for some talk.
Our united love to you both. I am writing at a table covered with snow-
drops and daffodils. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
1720 I Street N.W., March 17, 1929
My dear Laski: Pollock finds just fault with this paper — but I haven't
as yet succeeded in getting blocks that suited me as well as the Capitol
where we are furnished. So I allow my comfort to prevail over other con-
siderations. I have been under a pressure that ceased only yesterday since
my birthday — we were sitting for arguments. I had two opinions to write
and certiomris to examine — and I have answered near 70 letters and
telegrams. But we are adjourned and my work is done. Only small items
outside. The only thing that I have read is an odious tale Dleu protege le
7Julien Luchaire (1876— ), man of letters and historian, for many years
was a principal figure in the Institute of Intellectual Cooperation or the
League.
8 J. B. S. Haldane, distinguished biologist; nephew of Lord Haldane.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1141
Tsar — L. Durnur — the first part battles that needed a map and explana-
tions to be more than a whir! o£ names, with too much blood and guts —
the last the doings of Rasputin with the highest ladies in Russia — if true
not well to tell — if, as I guess, the dream of a writer seeking sensation, a
dirty business — but it makes me want to know something authentic
about that seemingly unspeakable person. Like the life of Francis Joseph
it makes one feel that almost anything is better than to have the fate of an
empire and the best it holds depend upon the whim of a single incom-
petent person.
Now I have for two or three hours a little book that Redlich recom-
mended — L'ombre de la croix — ( J. & J. Tharaud) a strikingly impres-
sive account of the life of squalidly poor Jews in Hungary — a life in
which their religion plays an incredibly great part. I think if the promised
leisure keep on I shall read the second edition of Dewey's Experience and
Nature — partly rewritten. The publisher wrote to me that Dewey (whom
I never have seen) was much pleased at something that I wrote about it
to Wu — and that he rather indiscreetly published. You, I think, got
nothing from it — but it impressed me greatly. I must try to get a look
at Haldane's Autobiography — and I note what you say of Zimmern's
last book — and readily believe it. You don't mention the name of the
book on the French novelists — 1600 [sic]-1800.1 I wish I had it just
now — for it sounds about what I want. There are moments when aimless
repose or equally aimless wandering — seem better than to have some
damned end in view — even so vague a one as improvement — but it is
a frame of mind very hard to get into when one is generally kept some-
what tense. Wouldn't it be great if destiny should let me reach, if not 90
at least the 90th year, still working — not that it matters — but age
makes egotists of us all. Ever affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 25111.29
My dear Justice: Term being over, I am free again, and I feel like a
young ram upon the mountains. For next term is an easy one, and I can
really look forward to almost six months of safe work. The last ten days
have been very pleasant A charming lunch with the Swedish Minister,1
at which Ramsay MacDonald and Snowden were guests. It was a good
political gossip which I enjoyed less for the gossip than for the queer
angle it threw on the political mind. I should say tiat no politician lives
more than six or seven months ahead and that at least half his time he is
talking to convince himself. He is curiously grateful when you can give his
1 Supra, p. 1136, note 3.
1 Baron Palmstierna, supra, p. 919.
1142 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
argument philosophic form, and equally curiously eager to give any argu-
ment special weight if it comes from a source he approves. One or two
tit-bits from the talk may amuse you. Both men said that Eustace Percy2
was much the most unpopular member of the Cabinet; too rapid promo-
tion had gone to his head and he made the grave mistake of lecturing
the house from an eminence. They both had an immense regard for
Austen Chamberlain's character but thought his mind was too unelastic
ever to be capable of success in his present sphere. The Swedish Minister
amused me by saying that there had been no Anglo-Swedish diplomatic
trouble since 1830 and that his post here was simply a combination of
social function and leisure for reading. Then I had a dinner party here
for Sankey L.J. to which Scrutton L.J. among others came. The latter was
in superb form. He had been reading some article of Pound's which irri-
tated him. "He is the kind of man/' said Seratton, "who thinks that four
references make a four-square truth/' You will be interested by the fact
that of the old Law School men he rated J. C. Gray easily the highest. He
talked much of Maitland of whom he used a good phrase; "Most his-
torians throw a light on dark places, he threw a searchlight into the
unknown." He said that of the judges he had known he rated Bowen
first, Watson second and Blackburn third; Sankey said that he would put
Davey and MacNaghten in that class. Scrutton told us that as a junior
he had appeared before Jessel with a hopeless proposition to maintain
and that the great man made him feel exactly like a naughty school-boy
who has been detected in an elementary error in Latin prose. He told us,
too, a delightful story of Dicey who said to him once when he, Scrutton,
praised the clarity of Dicey *s mind "No, I have a clean mind; F. Pollock
has a clarifying mind." Sankey told us of a man who asked for help in
obtaining silk: "it is true that I have never made a living at the bar, but
my wife has an income adequate to the status, and I have been a devout
churchman all my life." Altogether, as you can see, a good evening. Then
I was entertained to lunch by the five senior officers of the Army Class at
the School — a delightful set of fellows. One had the V. C. with a bar and
we made him tell the story of their attainment. I wish I could describe
the calm way in which he described crossing no man's land under heavy
fire to put a machine gun which disturbed his wounded out of action. I
said "My God! I couldn't have done that," to which he replied, "You
couldn't have helped it; you'd have felt just like a nurse who stops a noise
that disturbs the children in the night-nursery." They were adorable fel-
lows, and their deference to me, men who had seen service all over the
world, made me feel strangely humble. And I must not omit the queer
gentleman from Arkansas, a Y.M.C.A.er who, on the last day of term,
visited me for light upon the religious feelings of London students. I ex-
2 Lord Eustace Percy was President of the Board of Education.
1929] HOLMES TO LASKI 1143
plained (I) that I had never had the curiosity to enquire (II) that I
hoped sincerely they had none. "Sir," he said, "have not you yourself
experienced Christ"? I explained that, to my knowledge at least, I had
not. He then invited me to pray — an invitation I politely but firmly de-
clined. He then asked if I objected to him praying. I said "not at aE, but
not in my room/* He then asked me if I thought it right as a "shameless
infidel" to seek to guide the mind of youth to the light. I explained that
I sought to do no such thing. My humble mission was to teach them the
criteria by which in political science light might be distinguished from
darkness. He then asked me if I had ever thought of the after-life. I said
I had but it had ceased to interest me. He looked at me with what he
intended to be singular majesty and said, "I do not condemn you, I pity
you." I thanked him and urged him to consult the Professor of Theology
at King's College and felt grateful for a superb experience.
In the way of reading I have not much to record. I read Winston's
final volume with immense interest.3 But he has a viciously rhetorical
mind and you feel that he convinces himself by the sheer eloquence of his
own voice. Still he has a great tale to tell and with all his defects it is
quite impossible not to like him. Then I read a clever French book by
Julien Benda — Mon premier testament — a theory of politics as the
expression of temperaments j beautifully written, very clever, and, like
most French speculation in this realm, pushed much too far. A charming
novel I must not omit, The Six Mrs. Greenes, by L. Rea — an analysis
of the ladies of a family done with most admirable malicious grace. If it
comes your way, pray do not pass it by. Parts of it are of the very stuff
of which England is made. And I thoroughly enjoyed Sinclair Lewis's
new novel 4 — not a great artist, but superb vitality and a most accurate
photographer.
And at that point term ended. The last lecture given, the last student
seen, I hope to recover my humanity. But I do not need to do that to
send you both my love and greetings.
Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
1720 I (Eye} Street N.W., April 2, 1929
My dear Laski: You deserve a better letter than you will get — for though
we have been adjourned for weeks I am tired and haven't had much lei-
sure. I find that I have examined 450 applications for certiorari this term
— which means 30 days work. Apropos of what you say Haldane re-
marked about Victorian science, I thought that its oversimplification was
generally acknowledged. I have seen it brought out so definitely in An-
8 The Aftermath (1929) was the final volume of The World Crisis.
*Dodsworth (1929).
1144 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
thropology and other matters of which I am least ignorant that I thought
it had been a postulate.
The chief event here latterly has been the flowering of the cherry trees
around the Potomac basin and the magnolias everywhere — I should say
second only to the four greatest things I have seen on earth. Next to that
I will put having read John Dewey's Experience and Nature for the third
time. Just one idea running through the whole and I think that now I
could sum it up. If reduced to not more than two pages it would be the
profoundest apergu of the universe that I ever have read, which of course
means a strong tendency to agree with his insight. I was sent the Yale
Review with your article1 which seemed to me very able — but as you
know some of your yearnings I don't sympathize with and almost believe
noxious — but the crowd is with you rather than with me and I dare say
you will smash a good deal that I should like to keep. But I don't feel so
seriously about the human race as I once did. I am in pretty good shape
— but my wife less so — however I think she is slowly improving from
grippe and a succession of misfortunes. I got hold of a book yesterday on
Rasputin which I shall look through, translated from German, by Rene
Fiilop-Miller. It seems to be impartial and I want to know something
about him. Your Yale Review led me to think I should read Le crime et
le chatiment2 — and I have on hand a life of Herman Melville3 and
whether I shall do my duty or not I don't know. I mean now to take a
nap. Affly yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 2. IV. 29
My dear Justice: My days have been spent in the grim business of pack-
ing up poor Mrs. Young to return to America; and in sending off Frida
and Diana for a month's holiday to Weimar, where Diana, who has a gift
for languages, is to learn or begin to learn, German. So I sit here rather
solitarily and read and write until ten when I go off to bed with a novel
unless some kindred solitary drops in for coffee. Though the house is
dismal enough the reading and writing are interesting and as I want
Frida refreshed by a change and feel in myself extraordinarily well I do
not complain.
You will be amused when I say that the most interesting thing I have
done since I wrote to you last week is to go to a funeral. The mother of
1 "England in 1929," 18 Yale Review (N.S.) 417 (March 1929). Laskfs
article vigorously attacked the record of the Baldwin government and of the
liberal opposition and urged that the first necessity was for the transformation
of England into a social democracy.
2 The suggestion perhaps came from Edith Wharton's "Visibility in Fiction,"
18 Yale Review (N.S.) 480 (March 1929).
8 Lewis Mumford, Herman Melville (1929).
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1145
my colleague Beveridge died and I went out of compliment. I was im-
mensely struck by the fervour with which my neighbours (A. an eminent
F.R.S. and B* a distinguished historian) participated in the service. They
prayed, kneeled, sang hymns, etc. in a way that would have done credit to
a revivalist. On the way back I asked them if they were Orthodox Chris-
tians. Each said no with emphasis. I then asked why the service had been
so impressive to them. Each said the same thing that outside a church the
whole thing is obnoxious but that inside some kind of childish memory
takes possession of him, and he cannot resist the impulses it arouses. Our
neighbour happened to hear the conversation and told us he was president
of some secular society and yet found that on the great festivals of the
Church he was uncomfortable if he was not there. To me it was nause-
ating to hear men and women thanking God for something that had hurt
them like hell and taking comfort in the prospect of a future meeting in
which 90 per cent of those present did not believe. Whether it is the aes-
thetic beauty of the tradition (to which, of course, I am a stranger) I
don't know; but it is curious that I should be roused to intellectual indig-
nation by something from which people who share my general intellectual
outlook should derive emotional comfort. I should like to know what
happens inside you in this realm.
Of other things, I have not much to tell. I have been reading happily
in and round Spinoza (Roth's Spinoza, Little, Brown is very good if you
haven't come across it) and in and around Hegel for next term's lectures.
I am overwhelmed by S. and all my prejudices against Hegel are merely
intensified. I cannot see anything in the world of the things he sees in it
— neitiher unity, nor God, nor an unfolding purpose. But from Spinoza I
do derive a sense of meeting a noble soul in a way that elevates the mind
and heart. I read, too, a number of (you will laugh) Maria Edgeworth's
novels and had a glimpse into a stately minuet in which I too, loving the
manner, seemed to pirouette gracefully with the authoress. Also I have
been reading some international law — mainly cases, but with one or two
treatises like Westlake's. I am greatly impressed by S to well and inclined
to put Lord Parker very high indeed. But I am amazed at the intense na-
tionalism of all these people. Natural law for Stowell meant so sweetly
and naturally what an 18th century English gentleman who admired Mr.
Pitt would approve. And, lastly, I have read Beard's big blast on Ameri-
can Civilisation (written with his wife) which I thought showed insight
but was nowhere near so good as Sam Morison's two volumes and more-
over written in an irritating journalese.
From this, you will gather that I have little at the moment to say. But
I go North on Thursday and I hope to gossip amiably when I return. My
love to you both. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
1146 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
Washington, D. C., April 18, 1929
My dear Laski: Your page written from solitude comes on top of an un-
answered longer letter and I begin my reply when about to go to a con-
ference. Your companions at the funeral who took part in prayer they
didn't believe in, merely illustrate what I am eternally repeating: that
man is like all other growing things and when he has grown in a certain
crevice for say twenty years you can't straighten him out without attack-
ing his life. That is what gives the power to churches that no rational man
would deem worthy of thought if he were growing free and had no past.
You know my oft repeated formula that property, friendship and truth
have a common root in time. I am not entirely insensible to the effect of
church ceremonies even now — though neither they nor the patent falla-
cies in what they read from St. Paul interest me very much — but I let
time ran over me till the show is over. But if, as is unusual, the service is
well done, and you are in a crowd moved by emotion there is a contagion
about it.
Now I have returned from the conference pretty well tired with it,
though afterwards Brandeis and I drove over to Georgetown and home
by a circumbendibus around the Cathedral, to see the white and pink dog-
wood and wisteria that lined a part of our road. The sights here are fleet-
ing but they are superlative while they last. What damned fools people
are who believe things. A case has gone over for further consideration, of
a woman wanting to become a citizen, but who, being as she says, more
of a pacifist than Jane Ad^ams,1 has to explain that she would not fight
for the Constitution (or, as her counsel said, wouldn't do what the law
wouldn't let her do) and so opens to the Government a discourse on the
foundation of the Constitution being in readiness to defend itself by force
&c. &c.2 All 'isms seem to me silly — but this hyperaethereal respect for
human life seems perhaps the silliest of all.
But I almost fear that I am impolite — for you are not without your
creed — to my regret. I haven't read much since my dash of philosophy
but I am engaged in Lewis Mumford's Life of Herman Melville — which
interests me much as a careful study of a man whom the writer believes
great — but hardly less from the tone and attitude of the author. He
despises the conventions of my earlier days but seems to me tied up in
*Jane Addams (1860-1935); social reformer, founder of Chicago's famous
Hull House, who was a militant leader of the pacifist movement from 1915
until the time of her death; chairman of the Woman's Peace Party.
2 United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644 (May 27, 1929). A majority of
the Court held that Rosika Schwimmer's pacifism made her ineligible for
citizenship. Holmes delivered a dissenting opinion in which Brandeis, J., con-
curred.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1147
those of a later crowd. He looks down from a height on the America of
the past and on the civil war — his hauteur toward the achievement of
comfort imports a Tolstoy coupled with a Michael Angelo. He walks on
lightning smitten peaks, but all samey — when I see a cove talking about
die malice of the universe I feel pretty sure that I am with an anthropo-
centric who really thinks the world was made for man and has the old
theological turn at bottom — and know that though he may puzzle he can
not interest me. He does, however, with the rather pitiful story of Mel-
ville's life. I must leave Melville unticketed for the moment. I think he is
great — but I think he also is anthropocentric — and therefore more busy
with being gigantic than wise. I hope someone will tell me something
about this chap Mumford. I think he must be one of a class — but as yet
I don't get him exactly sized up. I merely doubt whether he is such a hell
of a feller as he ought to be to carry so much side. The unconscious arro-
gance of your Arkansas student who did not condemn but pitied you is
innocence compared with a full-fledged New Republic aesthete. Your
man reminds me of a phrase — that a good fellow dead long ago used at
times — "I pity and despise but do not hate you/* But I must stop — to
send this off. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 13.IV.29
My dear Justice; A brief but delightful letter from you amazed me with
its record of certioraris; I don't know how you manage it. But I was dis-
tressed at the news that Mrs. Holmes has had grippe, I hope you can send
me better tidings of her, especially now that spring has come. I envy you
a little the sight of the Potomac in full bloom.
I have had a very quiet time. A brief visit to Liverpool to put Allyn
Young's widow on her boat (she is blind, poor thing) a couple of days
with my people in Manchester and then back here to work. I have sat
twice in tlie Industrial Court and had a jolly dinner with my chief Bev-
eridge. But outside of that I have done little except read and even there
it has been almost entirely international law for lecture purposes. And
may I whisper to you that Westlake apart I was not overwhelmed by the
quality of the treatises on international law. They are enormously long-
winded and platitudinous, especially the French and the German. West-
lake I thought full of commonsense, but, equally emphatically, by no
means a distinguished mind. The most impressive single book I read was
a monograph by a young colleague of mine (Lauterpacht) called Private
Law Analogies in International Law which I hope you may turn over if
it ever comes your way. And in another field I read a quite interesting
new book on Rousseau by one Wright of Columbia University which,
1148 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
without being distinguished was very sensible. And a volume of short
stories by Hugh Walpole,1 one of which pleased me much. It is called
"Old Elizabeth" and tells of an old woman who becomes a servant in a
Scottish family. Its members are all hard and grim and her deafness and
clumsiness worries them. But she assumes that they are the essence of
kindness and speaks of each with great warmth. At last she is dismissed
in a fit of temper by the father and each is terrified that the old thing will
starve. The daughter takes a room for her, the son furnishes it, and the
father gives her a little income. Each is out one night a week and at last
mutual discovery is made and they bring back the old woman to live with
them in triumph. There's not much in it, of course, and yet it leaves a
most charming taste in the mouth. And someone sent me a new edition
of Arthur Young's Travels which I have read with far greater admiration
than ever before. That fellow had incomparable eyes and a commonsense
that was damned near to genius. Altogether, though I find being by my-
self intolerably lonely, I have got much work done; I feel my mind has
not yet stopped growing, which is pleasant.
I have also bought one or two nice things. First and foremost the Plai-
doyers of Linguet — rare, but cheap. Then a bundle of Mazarinades one
or two of which fill in special gaps in my theory of the Fronde, and a
beautiful copy of Bodin's Apologle pour Rene Herpin, the defence of his
Republic. There is still my frantic wire about a Cambridge catalogue (oh
so admirable) to be answered but of that I cannot hope to hear until
next Tuesday I fear. Frida writes to me from Germany that she has found
me a treasure, but provokingly, does not say what it is and I have to
possess my soul in patience until the first of May. I must, by the way, tell
you that I had a catalogue the other day in which your Lyndwood's
Provinciate (1505 isn't it) was catalogued at £40 and the Fitzherbert
of 1517 at £60. These things advance by leaps and bounds.
And I must tell you (to my own discomfort) how beautifully I was
"done" the other day. A man of forty arrives and asks for help. I can't
bear just to turn people down in case they turn out genuine and so I asked
for details about him. He said he was McGill ("just after your time, Pro-
fessor Laski") and Yale, talked with fluency about Borchard,2 wished he
had known Felix, spoke warmly of Mack, J. and altogether gave the im-
pression of a good fellow down on his luck who deserved helping back
to America. So I lent him five pounds. He insisted on an I.O.U. and
solemnly gave me an address in Hartford, Connecticut. I meditated on
the luck I had in life on the principle of Richard Baxter.3 About an hour
1 Silver Thorn; A Book of Short Stories (1928).
* Edwin Borchard (1884-1951), Professor of Law at Yale, 1917-1951.
8 Richard Baxter (1615-1691), Presbyterian divine, chiefly known as prolific
author.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1149
after he'd gone my colleague Hobhouse rang me up to ask if I would
care to help an old Corpus man down on his luck etc. after discussion it
turns out to be my man. Hobhouse had given him three pounds. Yester-
day Graham Wallas rang me up to say he was sending X along as I
might care to help him. He had attended Wallas's lectures at Harvard
(class of Walter Lippmann) and Wallas was moved by his story and had
lent him five pounds. Would I etc.? Five minutes talk, and it was clearly
my man. This morning Sankey L.J. called up to ask if I could recom-
mend X, an old Harvard student who had called with a request for help;
seemed to know me very well etc. I warned him, but the gent skipped
out while Sankey was telephoning. I called up Scotland Yard and they
told me he is an old Oxford man who has worked the system for years
and makes an average of forty or fifty pounds a week. He is widely read,
got a first in greats, and just has this kink. I can only say that he is a very
great artist, that I was wholly convinced by him and that I really feel
that he deserves my five pounds.
I have the best of news from Frida and Diana. They have fallen in
love with Weimar and Jena, and everyone is most kind to them. Frida
writes of a performance of ~Lear more overpowering than any she has ever
seen in England and one of Ibsen's Master Builder that left her moved to
her depths. I went to see the Negro play Porgy last night and was stirred
less by the play itself than by the acting (negroes) who were like a
perfectly rhythmic orchestra.
My love to you both, as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J, L.
Devon Lodge, B.V.29
My dear Justice: Consolation I cannot send, for there is no consolation in
these moments of pain and loss.1 But all the love that deep friendship can
bring you I am anxious you should feel is yours. You know how big a
space you both have filled in our hearts. It has altered the world for me
to have known you; and I cannot easily bear the pain of thinking you are
separated. She was always so good to me, and I learned almost the first
time I saw her that she had, with all her reserve and reticence, a genius
for affection. And to see you together was a lesson in the beauty of love.
I know that things can never be the same for you again. But I want you
to remember that your house was made by her for me as for others a
place of loving pilgrimage and that while we live she will be remembered
with deep affection. I can't say more, for I cannot write more. But think
that I am with you in spirit and that my love for you will not grow dim.
Ever yours affectionately, H. J. L.
1 Mrs. Holmes had died on April 30.
1150 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
Devon Lodge, 21.V.29
My dear Justice: I am very anxious to have a word from you. But I do not
want you to bother about writing just now. Would you therefore mind
asking your young man to send me a couple of lines? I shall be on tenter-
hooks until I hear. I do wish more than ever I can remember that I could
be with you these days.
I am, as you can imagine, wrapped up in the general election; and it is
quite fascinating.1 I have amused myself this time by speaking only for
those candidates for wThom I should be glad personally to vote, and cer-
tainly one cannot complain of lack of adventure. At Oundle, for instance,
the whole school turned out in the market place to shout us down; but
because I simply beamed with pleasure at the heckling they behaved like
lambs to me, and for forty minutes I spoke in perfect peace to a thousand
people who had come in the hope of a row. One great problem is to
know what on earth one's questioners really want to know. For instance
at Coventry a man asked me whether I did not think there was a grave
decline of liberty. I said a decline but not grave. What did I propose to
do about it? I said, with such composure as I could muster, that I pro-
posed to do what I could to arrest it. He then thanked me, being obvi-
ously much relieved. Another man asked me if I did not think American
prosperity a menace to the world. I said that on the contrary it was one
of the hopes of the world and rebuked him for an attitude dead in 1789.
The audience cheered wildly and he got up to apologise. Another fellow
asked me if I could give him a guarantee that statesmen in the future
would be of better principles than in the past. Another man wanted to
know why there was a statue of the rebel George Washington in London
while there was none of that great statesman, Lord Roberts! 2 But in gen-
eral the eagerness of one's audience to have facts and explanations, espe-
cially the women, is really very impressive. I believe that Baldwin will
get a straight majority, though small; and all things considered I believe
that this is the best thing that could happen. The great feature of the
election is the fact that everyone has really ceased to be moved by Lloyd-
1 On May 10 the fifth session of the Parliament elected in 1924 came to an
end and it was formally dissolved as from May 24. In the general election on
May 30, Labour secured 287 seats, the Conservatives 261, and the Liberals
59. On June 4 Baldwin resigned as Prime Minister, recommending Ramsay
MacDonald as Ms successor. MacDonald, despite earlier indication that he
would not accept the office without a clear majority, did accept the Premier-
ship.
2 Frederick Sleigh Roberts (1832-1914), first Earl Roberts; field marshal,
whose principal military services to the Empire were rendered in India in
support of the "forward" policy, and in South Africa in bringing the Boer
War to a successful conclusion.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1151
George. That is really a triumph for English commonsense. He plays the
part of charlatan in a way that is quite unforgettable.
And from the angle of a peaceful scholar the election has its merits.
Searching the market-square at Peterborough I found the 16 volumes of
Metra's Correspondance litter air e for 7/6; and rare as they are I should
certainly have had to pay ten pounds or so for them in France. And in
Coventry I found a first edition of Rousseau's Confessions for a shilling.
So does service meet its reward.
Walter Lippmann sent me his Preface to Morals last week. I have been
singularly moved by it. Though it hasn't originality, and doesn't deal with
the big question of how disinterestedness is to grow, I thought it a
superb definition of an attitude wholly sympathetic to me and written
with a severe beauty quite beyond praise. I read too a very interesting
book by the abbe Bremond in the great trial of Fenelon v. Bossuet3
pleading for the former with much passion and as I cannot bring myself
to like Bossuet whose oratory seems to me to conceal a very ordinary
mind I was very delighted with it. And as I bought a two volume edition
of Mme. de Stael I have been reading her, mostly in trains, with very
great pleasure.
One incident I must not forget. I had to give a public lecture the
other day in a series on "Philosophies of History" and Karl Marx was
allotted to me. I spoke the usual commonplaces for an hour and at the
end a dear old lady who might have stepped out of Cranford came to
me and said "That was, I suppose, Karl Marx of whom you were speak-
ing?" And at Helston [sic] in the Peterboro' division when I was speaking
about the land problem I reminded them of how John Clare the poet?
had protested there against the enclosure of commons. An old labourer
applauded very hard and at the end came up to tell me that his grand-
father had been imprisoned by the magistrates for taking round announce-
ments of Clare's meetings. It is amazing to find how the events of a
hundred years ago are still vivid traditions in rural England. They talk
of the Tolpuddle Martyrs in Dorchester as though they were transported
two or three years ago.5 And if you mention them the chances are that
a man will come up to you and say that he married the granddaughter of
one "and the missus will be grateful for your kind words/* If s a very
moving thing.
8 Probably Henri Bremond, Apologie pour Fenelon (1910).
4 John Clare (1793-1834), rustic poet from Helpstone whose poverty was
the result in large measure of enclosure and who wrote frequently of its con-
sequences, nowhere more effectively than in his satirical poem, "The Parish."
5 In 1834 six laborers of Tolpuddle, Dorsetshire, were sentenced to seven
years* transportation for having taken the oaths of membership of the Grand
National Consolidated Trades Union. See Webb, History of Trade Unionism
(1926) IMetseq.
1152 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
But just now I shan't bother you with a long letter. Please take
the greatest care of yourself. Your dissent in the valuation-reproduction
case6 alone shows how essential you are to the Court. But I do not need
to ask you to have courage. That has been the principle round which
you have built your life; and it is one of the roots of our pride in you.
Our deep love, Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
May 23, 1929
Dear Laski: Please keep on writing to me and I shall get on to my pen
before long. I am reconciled to my wife's death as the alternative seemed
inevitably a life of nothing but pain. A companionship of sixty years
is more than one can bargain for — a companionship that has made life
poetry. If I can work on for a year or two more, it is well enough — and
if not, I have lived my life. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Washington, D. C., May BO, 1929
My dear Laski: A dear letter from you has just come — you will have
heard from me before this, but I reiterate: please keep on writing and
I shall do the best I can. I don't lose my interest in my friends or affairs
of the mind or in my job — although it may be, as I wrote to someone
yesterday, like a man's beard growing after he is dead. My wife's death
seems like the beginning of my own — but I am confused and hardly
know what 1 think about anything. It hasn't prevented my writing.
Frankfurter wrote to me highly praising something that I wrote in the
midst of anxieties — and I have just turned off a dissent about the
refusal to admit a pacifist to citizenship that Brandeis liked and joined
in.1 There seems to be a distinct compartment in one's mind that works
away no matter what is going on with the rest of the machinery. I have
been delayed in reading W. Lippmann's book but have it at my elbow,
probably to be finished between here and Beverly — to which I go via
the Touraine on the night of June 5 — arriving Boston 6:50 AM and I
hope Beverly Farms by Saturday. The women behaved like bricks and
gave up their usual holiday at this time — go with me and straight on
to B.F. where things will have been prepared for them and they will
put on the finishing touches, and notify me. I have been reaoling a
curious book called The Confusion of Tongues — by Charles W. Fergu-
son— an account of the best known come-out sects, Spiritualism —
* Brandeis and Stone, JJ., had delivered dissenting opinions on May 20 in
St. Louis and O'Fatton Railway Co, v. United States, 279 U.S. 461, 488, 548,
in both of which Holmes had concurred.
1 United States v. Schiwmmer, supra, p. 1146.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1153
Theosopliy — New Thought, Christian Science — Ku KIux — Mormon-
ism, Mennonites — and other less known by name to me but he says
maintaining great establishments — ending with the Atheists — (not the
quiet scientific unbelievers but people on fire with the same enthusiasm
as the others only with inverted values — or colors).
I don't remember whether I mentioned F. Hackett's Henry VIII which
I agree with Frankfurter in thinking a masterpiece — but I am on the
verge of shutting up and going north and am not available for con-
secutive thought. Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 4.VL29
My dear Justice: Your brave card gave me joy beyond words. Made
antiquae virtutis. You in any case could not want for courage. But you
with memories of her are doubly armed.
I have, as you can imagine, been swept off my feet in these last three
weeks. Thirty speeches, articles innumerable, my school work, and now
the amusement of watching de pres a cabinet in the making — it has
been hard but interesting work. So far as I can see, it looks as though
Sankey will be Lord Chancellor1 and that gives me, as you can imagine,
very special pleasure. It will amuse you to know (this absolutely, please,
between ourselves) that MacDonald wanted me to go to the House of
Lords as a debater for them. But I said (a) I haven't the money (b)
I want my independence and (c) I am a scholar by vocation and not
a politician. It is amazing to sit with MacDonald and watch what
happens. People who hate him like poison send gifts and congratulations.
They write pages to insist on their claims. When the leaders meet each
has a list of his particular pets who think that they ought not to be
overlooked. People who have never been Labour write to offer their help.
It is all the most incredible picture of the lust for power that I have
ever seen. One story I must tell you. I went North to speak for Mac-
Donald. On the way I bought a paper in which Lord Daryngton,2 speak-
ing for Capt. Macmillan3 said he regarded him as the most brilliant young
man in England. In the afternoon I bought another journal in which
Daryngton spoke for Major Ropner4 and said he regarded him as the
1 Sir John Sankey became Lord Chancellor on June 8.
•Herbert Pike Pease (1867-1949), first Baron Daryngton; Liberal-Unionist
M.P. for Darlington, 1898-1923.
8 Captain Harold McMillan, M.P. from Stockton-on-Tees from 1924 to 1929,
was defeated in the June election.
* Major, later Colonel, Leonard Ropner had been Parliamentary Secretary to
the Secretary of State for War, 1924-1928; in the June elections he was de-
feated as candidate for Sedgefield; in 1931 he was a successful Unionist
candidate for Parliament
1154 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
most brilliant young man in England. Being amused, I cut these out. Two
days later I was at Darlington with 2 hours to wait for my train. So I
went into a Tory meeting and found Lord Daryngton speaking for Vis-
count CastlereagL5 He urged the voters to support him because he was
the most brilliant young man in England. When questions were invited
I got up and asked how Lord Daiyngton reconciled his description of
Castlereagh with that given by him of Macmfllan. No answer. I then
asked how he reconciled it with his description of Ropner. No answer.
I then enquired whether some divine concatenation of circumstances had
persuaded the Tory party to put the three most brilliant young men
in England in adjoining constituencies. By this time the audience was
rocking with laughter and the chairman hurriedly brought the meeting
to a close. Nor must I forget to tell you of the lady who asked me in
Dulwich whether a Labour government would base its legislation on
the principles of Jesus Christ. I said that I thought this unlikely in
the first five years, but that afterwards anything might happen. I add
that the one thing that pleases me most in the defeat of Baldwin is
the tolerable certainty of an improvement in Anglo-American relations.
MacDonald is set on a term to this insane naval competition and a new
agreed definition of freedom of the seas.6 I am hopeful that all this may
do immense good to the peace of the world. With England and America
in harmony big things can be done. And I see no reason at all for the
bickering of the last few years, At the same time I do regret the loss
of Baldwin himself, for with many faults, he is a great gentleman and one
of the cleanest fighters I have ever met in politics.
In the way of reading I have had, as you can guess, to depend mostly
on trains. But I read one excellent book on Rousseau by an American
named Wright (The Meaning of Rousseau — Oxford) and one incredible
book by a Frenchman named Schinz who takes five hundred pages to
say that Rousseau desired the happiness of the human race. Then the
translation of Proust which I enjoyed far more than I expected though I
add that I found something irritating in the minute exploration of the
insignificant habits of insignificant snobs. I see now what an immense
influence his method has had on contemporary fiction. He has per-
suaded the second-rate that the mere accumulation of detail is itself
significant and they have not the art to see that accumulation as such is
the enemy of art, that it is selective accumulation plus a story which, as
in the Old Wives' Tale, really makes the great novel. I also read, thanks
5 Viscount Castlereagh (1902- ) was defeated as candidate for Darling-
ton; in 1931 he became Unionist M.P. representing County Devon.
6 In September, MacDonald announced that Great Britain would join the
Five Power Conference on Naval Disarmament to be held in London in
January 1930.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1155
to you, Dewey's Experience and Nature and thought it really important,
perhaps because I so largely agree with it. And I must not omit an
admirable collection of essays by A. N. Whitehead called The Meaning
[sic] of Education which seemed to me full of the scholar's ripe wisdom.
Also a charming volume by Mrs, Graham Wallas — Before the Blue-
stockings— essays on people like Mary Astell7 which I thoroughly
enjoyed.
Now I have turned back to work at my Yale lectures and I hope this
political interlude will be an interesting nightmare not to recur for five
years. But it gives me valuable material for teaching and I cannot com-
plain. At least when I come to write on the technique of cabinet making
I shall know a little of how it is done.
I was made very happy by your dissent in the railway valuation case
and the Rosika Schwimmer case. The former I know only by the
decisions; the latter I thought an iniquitous injustice and I was proud
of your dissent. I do hope the modern state is not going to become a
medieval church.
Our love to you. Take great care please.
Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Devon Lodge, 11.VL29
My dear Justice: I expect you have now settled down to the peace of a
Beverly summer; and I hope you are going to have Felix near at hand
for talk. We have taken a house for August on the very top of the
Surrey Hills — a part you may know as it is not three miles from
Meredith's place at Box Hill, I am very content with it, as it has a good
library and a study for me that looks out over the hills to the sea and
gives one the sense of being completely unconfined. I do wish it were
August now.
The week since I wrote has passed very interestingly in watching
from close at hand the making of the Cabinet. For me, as you can
imagine, the chief joy is Sankey's appointment. He will be a really good
Chancellor, for he has courage and integrity and wisdom. Most of the
posts went by schedule; but I was very surprised by Webb's willingness
to take office.1 Evidently there is no "nolo episcopari" in politics, for
only the day before he had insisted to me that he would not go into
harness again. Two of my own colleagues at the School got office and
one, at least, I was able to elevate from a very minor post to the under-
7 Mary Astell (1668-1731), author of A Serious Proposal to the Ladies,
Wherein a Method is Offered for the Improvement of their Minds ( 1697 )
Sidney Webb, shortly to become Baron Passfield, was Colonial Secretary in
the MacDonald government.
1156 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
secretaryship of Foreign Affairs.2 I had a long talk with MacDonald on
Friday about America; and there I really hope for a settlement of our
quite unnecessary differences in a big and generous way. Henderson,
too, who asked me for a memorandum took my points with admirable
vigour and I think no effort will be wanting to end the present irritabil-
ity.3 I add as a footnote that the panting excitement of the aspirants to
office made me grateful that I had not chosen a political career. To sit
in the Prime Minister's room while he interviews the hopeful is like a
meeting of assassins who have come armed with scriptural texts.
My days have been occupied with the grim business of writing
memoranda for ministers. Of one great thing I am hopeful — that I shall
get Sankey to set up a Royal Commission on Legal Education and see
whether we cannot devote some of the immense funds of the Inns of
Court to building a Harvard Law School in this country.4 At present, as
you know, the whole system of teaching law here is thoroughly bad;
and the lack of any recognition for the barristers who become professors
of law means that outside one or two posts like the Vinerian professorship
the law teachers are a very inferior set of people who mainly teach
because they cannot make a success of the bar. I should like to end
that, and I find Sankey very favourable to an attempt. Whether it would
be successful heaven knows; for in England to attack a vested interest
is always a difficult matter. But if we have a go at it, I think one or two
fellows like Maurice Amos could be persuaded to sit and, if necessary,
to sign a minority report with me.
In the way of reading, I haven't very much to report. I have read an
excellent Life of Godwin by Ford 3L Brown (Button) written just at that
level of irony that the subject demands. A queer fellow, whom it is im-
possible to like or to admire; and yet he must have had a power in him
to move the world as he did. The Life took me to Caleb Williams which
I had not read in years, and despite Mr. Brown who thinks it a minor
classic, I found it intolerable — longueurs unendurable in every chapter.
But some Maria Edgeworth — Belinda and Patronage — were wholly
delightful I enjoyed, too, a book by my former colleague, Kingsley
Martin — The French Liberal Tradition in the XVIlIth Century —
* Mr, Hugh Dalton ( 1887- ) held a readership in Economics at London
University when he was made Parliamentary Undersecretary for Foreign
Affairs.
8 Arthur Henderson was Foreign Secretary in MacDonald's Cabinet.
*It was not until August 1932 that Lord Sankey appointed a committee,
under the chairmanship of Lord Atkin, to consider the possibilities of closer
coordination between the work done by the Universities and the professional
bodies, and further provision for advanced research in legal studies. Laski was
a member of the committee. Its report was presented to Parliament in July
1934. Command Papers #4663.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1157
which, without novelty, still puts old truths in an attractive way. And
a new novel of P. G, Wodehouse dealing with Mr. Mulliner, once more
made me roar out in the tube until my neighbours must have suspected
my sanity.5
I have hardly any history of purchases, though I have sent to Paris
for a cheap set of the complete Diderot and have not yet lost hope. I
went to an auction on Friday in search of some economic pamphlets of
circa 1650 and had priced them — on catalogue values — on some such
scale as 10/- each. To my astonishment they brought an average of
nearly five pounds; I stopping my bids at 15/- I asked the bookseller
who got them why he had bid so high for them. He replied that when
I had begun bidding he assumed there was some special feature about
them that he had missed, and that he better have them for safety's
sake. So, my dear Justice, one pays for knowledge. It will amuse you to
know, as an illustration of human insanity, that at this sale a long letter
from Bernard Shaw explaining that he did not claim to be better than
Shakespere brought two hundred odd pounds; and an incredibly stupid
one from J. M. Barrie in which he drew a map of fairyland for a child
brought nearly one hundred. One bookseller paid thirty pounds for a
first edition of Galsworthy published in 1922. As you can imagine I am
vowed not to visit auction-rooms any more for the present. They are
a snare and a delusion.
Term, thank heaven, begins to look like ending, and though I have
a fairly busy July, still the cessation of academic routine will be a comfort
and then two months real freedom will be like water on parched grass.
I have, too, some doctoral examinations to go through. I did one last
week where the candidate had written on Montesquieu and I asked him
what his book was intended to show. He replied with quiet simplicity
that he considered his book the best general survey of M. in any
language. One of his points was that M. owed a great debt to Gordon's
Independent Whig; but when I asked him if he had read the latter it
turned out that he had not. He made a great fuss about the separation
of powers so I read him an extract from your dissent in the Jensen case®
and asked him what he thought of it. His reply, I think, ought to be
classical "It is the business of judges to preserve and not to betray the
principles of the American constitution,"
Our love to you. Keep well, and see plenty of friends.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
*Meet Mr. Mullmer (1928).
' Supra, p. 643.
1158 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
Beverly Farms, June 15, 1929
My dear Laski: Here I am — settled quietly — it is now a week since
I arrived. Everything is pleasant and I drive, see my friends, and read
a little and sleep in the process. Frankfurter and his wife made a very
satisfying call. He relieved my mind by telling me that there was no
danger of his leaving the Law School for Chicago — which I had heard
rumored. I have a faithful follower, James Doherty, who thinks it his
special duty to look after me. Some of my wife's relatives thought it well
that he should come on to the funeral and he somehow established him-
self in charge of a good deal and managed things admirably. He drove
down here with me last Saturday and didn't leave till Monday, after he
had taken me to walk and satisfied himself that I was safe — solemnly
exhorting me not to come to Boston without notifying him. He seems to
think that I oughtn't to be trusted in the streets alone. I must tell you
too that the moment he heard of my wife's death the Chief Justice at
once communicated with Arlington and made sure that everything was
ready. How can one help loving a man with such a kind heart? I have
a lovely spot in Arlington toward the bottom of the hill where the house
is, with pine trees, oak, and tulip all about, and where one looks to
see a deer trot out (although of course there are no deer). I have
ordered a stone of the form conventional for officers which will bear
my name, Bvt. Col. and Capt. 20th Mass. Vol. Inf. Civil War — Justice
Supreme Court, U.S. — March, 1841 — His wife Fanny B. Holmes and
the dates. It seemed queer to be putting up my own tombstone — but
these things are under military direction and I suppose it was necessary
to show a soldier's name to account for my wife.
Your last letter received yesterday — ("4.VI.29") gave me the usual
pleasure. I think you were entirely right in your answer to MacDonald,
but not quite right as to Mrs. Schwimmer — I don't think the majority
meant any more than that a person couldn't be attached to the principles
of the Constitution if he didn't recognize that in case of need it must be
supported by force, coupled with a recollection of the anti-draft talk
during the late war. I couldn't help suspecting that their view was made
easier by her somewhat flamboyant declaration that she was an atheist.
I alluded to it discreetly without mentioning it, in what I said. (I was
reading a book about the queer sects in the U.S., the last chapter of
which was devoted to the Atheists, a society with a name, and pointed out
that they were of the same timber as the others although inverted. The
real solid unbelievers sit back with a smile — and are not 'asts for an 'ism.)
After interruptions I have finished W. Lippmann's book. I was as much
impressed as you were — and think it will hit a great many people
where they live. I was delighted to hear from Frankfurter that it was
1929] HOLMES TO LASKI 1159
having a great sale. I wrote to him — but I fear mainly repeated things
that I have said many times before. My only criticism, which is not one
really, would be to quote Twisden, C.J. in Saunders' Reports — "Twisden
C.J. said to Mr. Saunders, 'Why do you labour so? for the Court is
clearly with you/ **
By and by the certioraris will begin to come in — but I may keep
them until my secretary arrives late in July — he is a great help. I am
reading Isadora Duncan's life of herself which is worth reading — [three
words illegible] and I have begun a Life of Erasmus by Preserved Smith
— I am told that he believed nothing.
Ever affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, June 21, 1929
My dear Lasld: Your letter, delightful as usual, stirs thoughts and recol-
lections. As to the Commission on Legal Education I have no opinion,
but I note that somehow you make good lawyers under the present
system. I can't help remembering what I said as to the President's
Commission for enforcing the law1 — on that also I am ignorant — but
I said long ago in a speech that for most of the evil in the present state
of the law I think the remedy is for us to grow more civilized.2 Your
lawyers are educated in a more civilized milieu and whatever the system
of teaching, they show it — judging by the decisions that from time to
time I read. The atmosphere is more important than the specific con-
tacts. Caleb Williams calls up my boyhood. I think my father thought it
the most interesting novel in the world. I read it and have pretty well
forgotten it — but I remember a criticism of De Quincey, that the mystery
was left unsolved because it had to be — no possible denouement would
be adequate to the row that had been made about it. I dare say I should
agree with you if I read it now.
I hardly got the point of your doctor's candidate — as to die duty not
to betray the principles of the Constitution. I thought, if I remember
rightly, that I was standing in the ancient ways. I haven't read much
since Isadora Duncan — lent to me, by the by, by that dear creature,
Mrs. Beveridge. She seems to incline to all the modernists — in art as in
literature, which adds a spice to our talk. I am just finishing another
book that she lent me — a life of Erasmus by Preserved Smith — inter-
esting but not interestingly written — and now I have the Tom Barbour's
(E. M. Remarque) All Quiet on the Western Front — unexpurgated. I
1 In May 1929, President Hoover had appointed a National Commission on
Law Observance and Enforcement, of which George W. Wickersharn was
Chairman. Holmes's comment on the Commission has not been identified.
2 **Tne Use of Law Schools," Speeches, 38, 39-40.
1160 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
understand that only an expurgated edition is commonly accessible here.
You know perhaps how refined we are in Massachusetts in the matter
of morals in books! I haven't looked at it yet. I also have a reprint of
Folkways — by the later Sumner — a well known professor of Yale. This
Mrs. Curtis told me was more or less expurgated — but interesting —
as yet also unexplored by me. I get letters from time to time that leave
me silent and abashed — perhaps I told you that I answered one, that
if the devil came round the corner and said: "You and I know that
that isn't true," I should believe him, but while he didn't appear in person
it fostered a hope that I had lived my dream. I am too much of a
skeptic to believe it fully — and I don't think it very important, any-
how. I am conscious of the approach of the end — but I mildly hope it
may wait for a year and % to take me into 90. My love to you.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 25.VI.29
My dear Justice: I hope all goes well with you; I read of heat waves in
the Eastern States and almost perspire with you. Here there are golden
days — bright and cool so that it is really a pleasure to work. Certainly
I seem destined to work — a huge mass of exam papers, a number of
doctoral examinations all clustered together, and perpetual memoranda
for one or other friends in government. But it is all interesting and I do
not complain, especially as the term ends on Friday and I am having a
really good time working a day in each week with Sankey and seeing
at first hand how the machine goes. My general impression is definite
that a real 18th century atmosphere still lingers over the legal profession.
Item a vacancy for a county court judgeship — over 400 people write
in to the L.C. to press their claims, decayed silks, university professors,
juniors who want a rest from turmoil and so forth. A vicarage to be
filled produced 300 letters. Add to all this the people who send presents
to the L.C. with a view to prospective favours, the men who write asking
that he introduce them to the Attorney-General, others who want "silk"
and were passed over on a previous occasion, and one is really startled
at the extent to which, in this side of the work, patronage lingers on.
Then I read certain cabinet papers for him and I should like to write
an essay on what they imply. I reckon that he would have to form a
judgment on sixteen different subjects which range from the recognition
of Russia to the question of whether the Trades Disputes Act of 1927
should be completely repealed or merely amended. Sankey, thank heaven,
is a real glutton for work and I have only either to write a memorandum
or to indicate desirable sources of study and he is on to them like a
hawk. I have also had some pleasure in drawing up a memorandum for
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1161
the Foreign Office on the successor to Esme Howard. I mustn't speak
about it, but you can imagine that it was amusing to put into writing
the qualities one feels that our man at Washington ought to possess.1
Felix, by the way, amused me (between ourselves) enormously by
writing to me urgently to argue that the ideal Ambassador to appoint
was A. N. Whitehead, the philosopher — who, to my knowledge, has
never even glimpsed that kind of experience and is one of the most
practically disorganised men alive! I would about as soon think of ap-
pointing Morris Cohen your Ambassador in London.
All kinds of queer people have come along lately. A Chinaman wanted
me to become the professor of politics in a new university just where
the brigands have lately trapped and executed three missionaries and
explained that the professor would always have an army division at
hand until things were stabilised. A Hungarian gentleman wanted me
to write a book on the peace treaties in which it would emerge that
Hungary had been badly treated and hinted just how much the govern-
ment would be glad to pay for such a service. A, large and ample lady
arrived from a club in Sussex — "of the first families of the county" —
wanting me to give three lectures in the winter on Parliament "with
lantern slides"; she could promise me a guinea and expenses but the
great attraction she had to offer would be that I could spend the night
on each occasion in a famous baronial hall. Her way of putting it was
that I could "spend the night with the Countess of — **, but I assume
that my gloss more accurately represents the facts, especially as the
Countess is over seventy and, I hope, a little aloof from that sort of
thing. Then I must not omit the young lady from Columbia who wants
to study bail. She wanted an introduction to every magistrate in London;
the Home Office; the Record Office "through all of whose records" she
proposed to go. I suggested, perhaps wickedly, that she start with the
last and sent her to a friend of mine there. He explained that she could
begin with the 13th century and work forwards or the 20th and work
backwards. Horrified she tried to insist that she must get everything done
by August 1 when she was to join a party to see the sights of Stamboul.
He explained that Miss Putnam2 had been hard at one part of the
theme for ten years and had only reached 1500. So the poor young thing
came back- to me and said that she had decided instead to write a
piece on "A Day in a London Police Court." Finally I must put in the
soft-voiced Anglican clergyman who wanted me to hold forth to the
1 On December 31 Sir Ronald Lindsay (1877-1945) was appointed Am-
bassador to the United States.
"Presumably Bertha Haven Putnam (1872- ), Professor of History at
Mount Holyoke College and student of English medieval courts, particularly
the Justices of the Peace.
1162 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
"Community of the Resurrection" in July on the rights of the Christian
Church. I explained that I never spoke to religious societies and that
I was by belief an agnostic who disliked all churches. He looked at me
in simple horror, told me that my mortal soul was in danger, and begged
me to pray. I thanked him as courteously as I could and bowed him out.
But he sent me a form of prayer and three or four little pamphlets
obviously intended to help me out towards the light from the darkness
in which I dwell.
Of other things there is not much to tell. I got my Diderot and my
eyes dwell lovingly upon it as I write. I also got a beautiful copy of
Rousseau's Social Contract in the first edition as clean and fresh as the
day when it was printed, and an even more beautiful Bodin — edition
of 1591 — bound by Derome in brown morocco.3
My love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, July 9, 1929
My dear Laski: You have events and prominent people to write about.
I have only the quiet doings of an old would-be recluse. But there
hasn't been much recluse about it so far. People, all friends, turn up
nearly every day, oftener than I want, and are apt to stay longer than
I can well endure. An hour and a half — two hours at the outside, is as
much as I can carry off without being tired — but last night one was
here from 6 to after 10 — with no intermission except food. Well — I
got a good night's sleep and didn't get up till a quarter to 9. I think it
will stop now. The only fatigue for today is the dentist. But who does
not tremble before the dentist?
Reading has been less than I wished. I have just finished a good book
by the late Surnner of Yale, Folkways, the anthropological facts generally
familiar but the conclusions and comments showing his fierce incisors.
He does despise and explode phrases that serve as an excuse for not
thinking. He speaks of the "jingle" "government of the people, for the
people, and by the people" — which of course did not start from
A. Lincoln. Also I read part of a book and the summaries at the head
of the remaining chapters by General Smuts — Holism and Evolution —
in which I failed to discover a new idea or anything to • justify the
General's evident belief that he is making a great contribution to
philosophy. Do you know by inspection or hearsay whether I am all
wrong? Barlow who was here Saturday-Sunday unearthed from my books
some short stories by "Sakf — that are very good and amusing — and
8 The Derome family, a French dynasty of binders, produced its greatest
figure in the eighteenth century when Nicolas Denis Derome, known as the
younger Derome, was master of the bindery.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1163
there has been other light stuff. The only interesting works are the
dull books. I am slow to take up a novel nowadays — and I must look
out for a piece de resistance. I am like Dr, Johnson's dull boy who hesi-
tates between two books while the clever Laski reads both. My routine
you know. Mrs. Beveridge was here for luncheon the other day and I
took her over to Newburyport to see the old house that perhaps you
remember. We had a flattened tire that made it rather long for me —
but it was a success. One day a delightful visit from Felix and his Mrs.
I have not been able yet to go through Rockport and wish that you
were there — but expect to soon.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
I hope you took to heart my remarks about civilization apropos of your
desired Commission on Legal Education.
Devon Lodge, 9.VII.29
My dear Justice: I have been buried in the grim melodrama of examina-
tion papers; indeed I have hardly emerged. I hope that by next week
university work will really be over and that I can begin to think of
the humanities. But I have really hardly known where to turn this last
fortnight.
Yet some pleasant adventures. A couple of private dinners with tie
Lord Chancellor have been illuminating. He really is a fine fellow — not
a distinguished mind, by any means, but with balance, and a sense of
what the French call justesse. I sit bewildered at the number of de-
mands for posts that he receives, many of them from eminent "silks"
who really ought to know better. One coolly wrote to ask for a forth-
coming vacancy in the Lords as you might ask for a book in a shop.
Then I had a good day in Oxford, where I had tea with my old tutor
Herbert Fisher and heard some charming memories of you in the days
when you frequented Leslie Stephen. I was interested by the effect of
Oxford on Fisher after his years in politics. He obviously feels it a
place of "small talk,'* intellectually constricting, and void of a big ethos
of any kind. He made a strong plea for universities in great centres of
population to make academic folk have contact with the big world. I am
doubtful; but certainly some of the dons I saw were pathetically narrow
in their outlook and did not seem to look beyond their own walled town.
Then I went to a dinner of American professors in London and was
interested by the contrast. The Oxford don is uninterested in the big
world; the American professor is uninterested in the impractical. It was
a curious experience to sit among men who spoke of men with money
as the people who made universities great and to find a craving among
them for the study of the immediate. Also I felt that they much too little
1164 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
realised what I may call the significance of the impalpable and were
reaching out after a quite illusory quantitative exactitude which in the
social sciences at least has hardly a title to serious consideration. And
for my sins I had a pathetic lunch with Graham Wallas who outlined to
me his new book with the sense that he was announcing epoch-making
discoveries.1 He seemed to me to say (I) leaders in politics should lead
(II) knowledge is important (III) Bentham was a great man (IV) be
careful in your use of the deductive methods. Unless I am wildly astray
these things were not unknown; yet he put to me these and kindred truths
with an air of sweet complacency that would be grimly laughable were
it not tragic. I must not forget the German Geheimrat who called with
the most tremendous introductions, top-hatted, white-waistcoat, frock-
coat. He wanted a bibliography of proportional prepresentation and
amused me profoundly by entering each title I gave him on a large violet
card which he solemnly punctured with 1, 2, or 3 holes, according to
whether I thought the particular book bad, indifferent or good. And the
Indian gentleman who asked me for a brief opinion of the caste-system.
I expressed my entire incompetence. "Sir," he said, "I will leave you
two brochures of my own which amply illustrate my theme. In two weeks
I will call again to glean your views after instruction." My protest that
I could not form my views in that way went quite unheeded; and I
believe he will be here again shortly with the confident expectation that
his incredible pamphlets will have settled my views. One of them
advertises on the back a mystic luck-bringer which enables the wearer,
among other things, to make a fortune on the stock-exchange, beget a
male child, and pass any examination. The other is full of the charms
of "Kali-Perfume" which is guaranteed to make the person who uses it
quite irresistible to men. Used, I gather, as a medicine it is a sovereign
cure for female ailments. From all of which I conclude that my visitor was
no ordinaiy man. Why he came to me I have not the remotest idea in
the world; I do desire a modest competence, heaven knowns; but neither
a male child nor irresistibility to women has any special attraction for
me.
I have got some nice books from Paris — mainly in the way of 17th
century Utopias like Vairasse's Histoire des Sevarambes. But I am wait-
ing with that anxiety you can appreciate for some ancient law books in
a French catalogue some of which, e.g. Lambert's Jurisprudence uni-
versette, 1776, (an attack on natural law) I have been looking for over
years. But they were so rare and so very cheap that I do not dare to
hope. In the way of reading, one or two attractive things deserve record.
I don't know if you ever read Alexander's Moral Order and Progress
1 Social Judgment (1935), published posthumously, was evidently the
uncompleted result of Wallas's intention.
1929] HOLMES TO LASK1 1165
(1889)? I never had. I bought it cheap the other day and thought it
in every way a most impressive performance — especially in its emphasis
upon my pet theme that morality is necessarily social in character. Then
Spedding's Life of Bacon which I found in a convenient two-volume
edition and thought more interesting than any biography I had read in
years — the perfect book for the long journey. And P. P. Howe's Life
of Hazlitt which was both attractive and competent. I read, too, my young
colleague Martin's The French Liberal Tradition in the 18th Century
which I think you would like; it is particularly good on Diderot, Rous-
seau and Condorcet and is supremely well-written.
I have now made all the arrangements for coming to America next
year. I shall get to Yale the first week in March and stay until June. They
give me only 3 hours work a week so I hope to invite myself to Washing-
ton with decent frequency. You can imagine how I look forward to talk.
Our united love to you. I hope all goes well. I read with dread of
your heat-wave. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Beverly Farms, July 19, 1929
My dear Laski: You never write an uninteresting letter and the one just
received (9.VII.29) is no exception. But you speak of your pet theme
that morality is social in character as if you were an exception. I thought
that people who count generally held that opinion. I believe I have
mentioned that recently I read Sumner's (late of Yale) Folkways —
one of the main theses of which is that given certain mores, established
by convenience, superstition, and what not else, the philosophers, ac-
customed to them, proceed to demonstrate that the principles of conduct
invoked are a priori necessities of human nature although in fact only
the outcome of particular habits of their community. I wish I had you
as near as Rockport (I drove round there the other day) to give me a
good piece de resistance or two. The only one I have now is Hermann
M. Roth, Der Trust in seinem Entwicklungsgang vom Feoffee to Uses etc.,
which I read with a dictionary. It is only about 300 pages but I have
little time and read slowly. The author sent it to me last term, asking
me to criticise it. I had to tell him that I was 88, very busy, and read
with some difficulty, but I have got far enough to have written to him
that I was getting pleasure and profit from it. Naturally pleasure, as
he gives me full credit. It seems to me well done, though one or two
suggestions of his seem doubtful. I told him that for nearly 50 years I
had been thinking on other themes. I have read some light stuff, e.g.
Magie noire by P. Morand and some short stories by Said which were
in file shelves here but which seemed mostly new to me when Bob
Barlow unearthed them the other day. Said is often funny, but other
1166 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
tales have a streak of cruelty in them, as does the French book. In
my old age I prefer kindly pleasant things. And some little poems by
women, Elinor Wylie et al I preferred the al to E.W. Little whiffs ^of
semi-mystic emotions over happenings of the earth, sea and sky with
a touch of sex, of course, in these days. I have heard women say that
women were coarser than men, possibly true. A dame occasionally comes
to luncheon with me, Mrs. Beveridge, (a dear, sad creature), Mrs.
Curtis, Mrs. Codman, and men have come pretty frequently to call. I get
tired after 2 hours. When Bob Barlow was here for Sunday (a prescriptive
right of his, I don't generally want people for the night), W. Lippmann
came in in the morning and was very pleasant. He seems like a real
friend though I see him very rarely. I received a communication in
abstraction the other day saying in part, "When mental strabismus causes
a jurist of supreme position and attainments and of illustrious family
to be under the hypnotic control of a shrewder fellow-jurist whose eveiy
underlying line of action is to the end of world-control by his race of
atheism, free-love and anarchy the future is indeed black for civilization."
This is strictly between ourselves. I should hate to have it come before
the eyes of a shrewder fellow-jurist. I thought it best not to answer.
Indeed it was in the form of an ejaculation not addressed to me except
on the envelope. You see how little I have to tell, I rejoice in the hope
that I shall live to my next birthday, March 8, and see you in
Washington. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 22.VIL29
My dear Justice; I emerge from a heat wave, a little wan and pale, to
tell you that your letter gave me deep delight. I take your warning to
heart about our enquiry into legal education. I don't think we shall do
much harm, and there is a chance of effecting good. Sankey, moreover,
is a cautious person, and people like Winfield, Scrutton L.J. are not
likely to go far wrong.1
The days have passed happily, and are very full. I lunched with the
P.M. the other day to discuss Anglo-American relations. He was very
sensible, and, I think, clearly on the right lines; and as he has a great
regard for Hoover I think their minds will keep in step. Then a charm-
ing dinner with Sankey to which I took Maxton,2 the leader of the
extreme Labour people. M. is a very delightful fellow, one of the most
popular people in the Commons; the two took a great liking to each
1 Neither Mr. Justice Scrutton nor Professor Winfield was on the Committee
which was appointed in 1932. See, supra, note 4, p. 1156.
2 James Maxton (1885-1946), Chairman of the Independent Labour Party,
1926-1931, 1934-1939.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1167
other and I think I did a good job over a point that interests me — the
definition of "capable of work" in the Workmen's Compensation Act, on
which I want the law altered in the sense of Shaw's dissent in Bevan
v. Nixon in 1929 A.C. which perhaps you know;3 and 1 am fortified by
the opinion of Leslie Scott that it is a necessary change unless the whole
purpose of the Act is to be nullified. Then a jolly dinner at the House
with ten young Tory members and Baldwin pere who wanted to cross-
examine me about Labour policy. They were charming people and, as
always, I got on superbly with Baldwin who is a dear. (I wish our own
chief were as attractive.) I add a party here to which about 70 people
came. The most amusing moment, I think, a fight between Arnold Ben-
nett and H. G. Wells over the merits of Aldous Huxley. H.G. insisted
that he committed the first great sin in being unable to tell a story and
that he was pretentious. Bennett said he was a great stylist in quest of
material. They fought like cats. I must tell you too of the young Jap
who was introduced by Frida to the Foreign Secretary and said with great
gravity that he hoped Mr. Henderson was not "bursted by the explosion of
responsibilities" — a new form of the time-honoured phrase.
But it has not all been play. The Ministry of Labour sent me down to
Oxford to settle a builder's strike and later to Cardiff to settle a threatened
strike over an alleged wrongful dismissal. The first was easy; but in the
second I had to sit as a court for two days, and to listen to excitable
Welsh witnesses with the thermometer at 90° is not an easy task. I had
great difficulty too when I ruled out evidence as inadmissible. The dis-
missal was for alleged insubordination; and witnesses wanted to tell me
everything about the man from the way he treated his wife to the moral
reputation of a sister who was a chorus girl; and bitterly angry they
were when I said I could not receive evidence on any question except
alleged insubordination. However, I got my way and at least 1000 men
are still at work which is the main thing. I have also examined three
candidates for the Ph.D. one of whom I had to fail. I thought he would
be angry or disappointed, but to my surprise he seemed delighted. I made
enquiries and found that he was a fervent Indian nationalist who wanted
one more excuse for hostility to the British and found it in my decision
that a thesis on Currency in China was not worth a doctorate. You must
8 In Bevan v. Nixon's Navigation Co., [1929] A.C. 44, a majority of the
House of Lords held that the phrase "able to earn** in the Compensation Act
was to be interpreted to apply to the worker's physical capacity to work. A
collier, incapacitated from doing underground work which was available, and
who, because of existing labor conditions, was unable to secure surface em-
ployment, was therefore held not to be entitled to compensation as an
injured underground worker. Lord Shaw of Dunfermline and Lord Blanesburgh
dissented. The statute was amended in favor of such workers in 1981 (21 & 22
Geo. V, c.18).
1168 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
admit that the way of the professor is very hard. Here am I destroying
the British empire for the sake of the intellectual standards of the Uni-
versity of London. O temporal O mores!
In the way of reading, there is not much of special significance to
report. I read a not uninteresting book on your constitution by H. L.
McBain, and, in the way of work, an extraordinarily able book on the
medieval papacy by Gosselin. And, also for work, a good book if dull
on Spinoza by one McKeon which gave me some useful leads. But, to
be truthful, the main discovery of the week has been the new novel of
P. G, Wodehouse which is perfect joy,4 and a good story which Diana
found of Mrs. Gaskell I had not read before, called "Sylvia's Lovers."
I add, for your benefit, that the Oxford Press has just reprinted one of
the most charming tales Anthony Trollope ever wrote, and one much
too little known called Ayah's Angel, which I commend to you as
pure delight.
I have also had some book-luck from French catalogues. I got some
nice contemporary criticisms of Montesquieu — one of which, Abrege
de Bodin by Lavie is extraordinarily interesting as working out in detail
the relationship between Bodin and M. and so far as I know hardly
noticed in the literature. Then a number of 17th century imaginary
voyages, one of which, by Denis Vairasse, has clearly a real connection
with Rousseau that I have still to work out in detail. Also I found the
Adam and Tannery Descartes — a noble edition — and read or dipped
into the correspondence for the first time and concluded that Descartes
was an insufferable prig for whom affection must have been very diffi-
cult indeed. And out of sheer extravagance I bought a first edition of
Hume's essays, though it was cheap and found that my copy had be-
longed to Jeremy Bentham and was carefully and wisely underlined by
him. I bought also a first edition of the Communist Manifesto with two
pounds and sold it to an enthusiast in these matters for ten, with a
great feeling of virtuous satisfaction.
We stay in town another week, until Diana ends school. Then, at
length, the country. I long for it and the situation is so perfect that
I feel special joys await us.
Our united love to you. Keep well and don't do too much. Please give
my salutations to Mrs. Beveridge. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Beverly Farms, August 4, 1929
My dear Laski: Your last letter is full of events and interesting facts.
You don't name the new novel by Wodehouse, but seeing that in con-
sideration of you, F.P. and Mrs. and Charley Curtis, I have just taken
4 Fish Preferred (1929).
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1169
Emma from the local library, I won't bother for the moment. You see
I don't have much time to read. The occupations of idleness take time
(driving, sleeping, solitaire, etc.) and now just as my secretary and I had
finished 79 certioraris another bag full of them comes, the heap looks
to me 30 or 20. Also for my odd minutes I have Eddington, The Nature
of the Physical World which reminds of the little bock Eos just read
as it also provides for the end of the universe. I think the scientific men
weak when they get into the realm of philosophy and in speculation as
to beginning and end I think they are perilously near forbidden ground.
I don't believe that we have any warrant for believing that we know
cosmic ultimates and think therefore we had much better content our-
selves with recognizing in good faith that we are finite creatures and
can't formulate the infinite. Eddington thinks that blue and red are
subjective facts but wave lengths objective, i.e. that by translating our
visual image into another he has reached a different sphere of being.
I don't see it but I won't stop to criticize details. The book is very
interesting, but I feel the omnipresent domination of what he is more
accustomed to over his thought. (I am not quite sure that this hits what
I have felt but it seems so at the moment). I have read some more Saki
stories. He is an amusing and witty bird, but seems to live in the world
of repartee and of fashion. It limits the interests of one to whom London
society is not sacred, but it is entertaining. To how many Britons, "We
don't do that in England," is the last word. I probably have told you
of my wife's answer to this remark on one occasion, "That's why we
came to this country/' I would fain continue but a little cousin soon is
coming to luncheon with a boy — and after them a dame, and I get
very little repose though I long for it. My love to you all. I think of myself
now as under the sword of Damocles and try to feel so, but I am afraid
that daily interests interfere. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
As from Devon Lodge, 2,VIIL29
My dear Justice: We arrived down in the country yesterday; and the
first thing that greeted me was a delightful letter from you. I was
particularly impressed by your remark about Walter Lippmann. I don't,
I suppose, see him more than once in two years; but I always find that
we can take up the threads and plunge in medias res without any
difficulty. He hasn't, I think, the sheer genius for friendship that Felix
has. But short of that be is one of the people on whom I can build with
absolute assurance.
Life has flowed as rapidly as ever since I wrote last. Mainly — I need
not say that this is between ourselves — I have been engaged in working
with the Prime Minister on his American problem. It has been very
1170 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
interesting and I have great hopes of a successful issue. My main job
has been twofold. First I have been trying to explain that the discussion
of maritime law ought to follow and not either accompany or precede
discussion on naval strength; this I think is now common ground. Second,
I have been arguing that naval parity is a phrase which is elastic and not
rigid. Our needs and yours being different, it is the technician's business
to find formulae of transference in gun-power and torpedo power. The
politicians must then agree on a total and leave each party free to work
out what that total means in terms of its own view of its needs, the
main safeguard lying in an agreement to communicate frankly the
grounds of interpretation taken and the actual details . of construction.
The P.M. has agreed to this and sent it on with approval to Hoover.
The latter is being quite admirable, intelligent, perceptive, and properly
urgent. So granted the will to succeed, I think the negotiations cannot
easily fail and that wh<m MacDonald goes over in October, he should
find things very smooth.1 I wish I could accompany him then. He was
land enough to suggest it, but I told him (I think wisely) that my one
wish was to avoid anything which suggested an official connection with
the government. As it was, I remain available whenever advice is
offered, and, as he himself said, it is useful to have someone who is
kept informed by him and can criticise without responsibility or
subordination.
My part ended yesterday and it has been a hectic job. The one other
thing of interest was a dinner party with Wells and Bennett. Some of
their judgments may amuse you. They agreed that the post-war Gals-
worthy was definitely uninteresting, that he mistook the sentimental for
the humanitarian and, accordingly, thought that any soft-hearted person
was fulfilling the Gospel ideal. They thought that American fiction curi-
ously reflected the ideal of mechanical standardisation. Many people
wrote good fiction efficiently, but apart from two or three, Lewis and
Willa Gather, no one so wrote it as to strike a definite note of outstand-
ing individuality. Wells said that he was convinced that few Americans
had ever equalled Hawthorne in style, and that as the years went on,
he put him ever higher, though he thought Moby Dick the greatest
single work an American had done. Bennett told us a good story of a
visit to Paris where he found himself in a company of American and
English literary exiles. They explained to him that he was quite devoid
of literary significance because (a) he had invented no new forms (b)
he had no power of introspection (c) he did not realise the insignificance
of insignificant people. One genial Chelsea-ite explained that he Mm-
*In October, MacDonald went to Washington for conferences with Presi-
dent Hoover concerning naval disarmament and other international matters of
common interest.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1171
self had been compelled to leave England because ordinary people were
regarded as important and he found, accordingly, that he was treated
without appreciation. An American literary gent then went on to com-
plain that the reviews would not print his bitter descriptions of sex and
that American women did not want to live with him without marriage.
Bennett suggested Constantinople and concubines; whereupon the liter-
ary gent, said that he found the idea of any union of more than a month
oppressive: "I must," he said, "preserve my free soul." So Bennett told
him that what he really wanted was a month of hard labour without
any fixed income and the man left saying that he could not endure the
blasphemy of the successful bourgeois. I hazard the guess that the
unsuccessful man of letters is about the worst type of egoist in the world.
In the way of reading, I have not very much to report. An admirable
Life of Byron by Ethel Mayne, which struck me as the most sane portrait
of a person very difficult to be sane about that I know; a queer book by
a French professor, Julien Bonnecase, Science du droit et romantisme,
an attempt to show that Duguit and his school are the legal expression
of all that is worst in romanticism, with Duguit especially figuring as
its Rousseau; and a very good book by Jean Cruet, La vie de [sic] droit —
a book which reminded me a good deal of Ehrlich's work done with the
verve and precision of a really good French mind. And in the way of
fiction, a really good detective story by J. J. Connington called The Case
with Nine Solutions, which I earnestly commend to you, and an amusing
comedy of Wodehouse's — previously unknown to me, but not new,
called The Little Nugget — that fellow is really pure gold and ought to
be compelled to immortality.
We are going to be very happy here. The house is adorable, with
a view of indescribable loveliness. It has a garden of thirteen acres full
of flowers with a great mass of lupins and hollyhocks under my study
windows. We are so high that from where I write, on a clear day like
today, I can just see the sea, like a silver band on the horizon, though
it is nearly 30 miles away. I am writing each morning and after dinner
and playing in the afternoons and early evenings. With luck, and the
vein, I hope to write my three Colver lectures for Brown (which I have
to print)2 and to get started on my Dodge Lectures for Yale. But the
main thing is the sense of perfect peace here. Even the nearest house
is over four miles away.
My love to you as always. I do wish you lived next door.
Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
2 Laski was forced to abandon his intention of delivering the Colver lectures
at Brown and the Dodge lectures at Yale. His Liberty in the Modern State
( 1930 ) , however, was made up of the undelivered Colver lectures.
1172 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
Beverly Farms, August II, 1929
My dear Laski: Your conversation between Wells and Bennett is interest-
ing, though I don't value such wholesale judgments as the one you quote
about Moby Dick, great though I think it, 1 am pleased at the
"blasphemy of the successful bourgeois'' and think you very well may
be right about the unsuccessful men of letters, except that when I use
the word in a derogatory sense, I say Egofist not Egoist. I shall try to
get La vie du droit and I should send for Wodehouse's latest stories if
I remembered their name, but Bob Benjamin, a former secretary, was
here today and said he would send them on. I shall write for The Case
with Nine Solutions by this mail.
I am drawing a free breath having sent back the last bag of cases
(certiomris] all — 123 in number — done up to date. Also I finished
Eddington's 'Nature of the Physical World, interesting and instructive,
but which I should criticize much as I did Jeans's Eos the other day.
F. Pollock walked into Sumner's Folkways in reviewer's fashion,
taking it as an attempt at anthropology and pointing out omissions
which I thought all wrong.1 1 take it merely as an illustration of how much
depends on mores and how propositions become obvious and universal
by people being accustomed to their premises. I think I told you of
laboring with a dictionary over Dr. H. Roth, Der Trust, in which he
grovels and is polite to me, and of amusing leisure moments with Sakf s
tales which I still do. Also, ne fallor, I told you of taking Emma from
the library out of deference to my friends who love Miss Austen. I have
been too busy with law to read more than the first five chapters. If I
spoke the truth I am afraid that I should say (mind, I do not yet say
it) that I found it tedious twaddle. I want another serious book. I don't
know what. I wish I had the Vie du droit on hand this minute for I
suppose another bag full of cases will soon be here. Rockport charms
me as much as ever, and I don't think it noticeably changed, except that
you are not there. FF was here and gave me more facts I didn't know
about Brandeis that made him more than ever a great and good man.
Affly yours, O. W. H,
Hurtwood House
Albany near Guildford, 12.VIIL29
My dear Justice: I cannot even begin to describe the indescribable peace
of this place. Except for an occasional aeroplane, one hears nothing of
the outside world except by going to find it; and you awaken in the
1 2 Holmes-Pollock Letters 246 et seq.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1173
morning to the thrush and the quiet plash of a stream at the end of
the garden. The result is that I work marvellously here. I write all
morning, usually getting five pages done in three hours. In the afternoon
we drive around, walk in the early evening and read after dark. It is a
great existence to which I think I could devote myself quite easily for
six months in the year.
We have seen no one since we came here, except yesterday when we
motored over to the Webbs for tea. They were in good form, and I was
both amused and instructed. Amused, above all, at their tales of diffi-
culties among the wives of cabinet ministers over the nice questions of
precedence at court and over the eager rivalry to arrange that their
daughters shall be presented in due form. Instructed by Webb's tales
of cabinet technique I find myself amazed and disturbed by the im-
mense discretion left to a Minister in his department. Henderson for
instance has just concluded an epoch-making negotiation with the
Egyptian Prime Minister only one detail of which, and that by no
means the most important, was ever before the Cabinet;1 and one begins
to wonder, a little dizzily, what exactly collective cabinet responsibility
means. I was interested in another thing. I told Webb of several young
men in his department whose ability I knew at first-hand, and suggested
that he take the pains to meet them. Webb explained that he could not
do that except by the mediation of the permanent secretary. So I asked
him what percentage of his officials he had met, and it appeared to be
something like ten. Haldane used to take the most special pains to
know everyone who did important work for him. Webb seems quite
content to know only those selected out for him to meet. He agreed that
it was a wrong state of affairs, but seemed unwilling to take steps to
alter it.
In the way of reading I have wandered mostly over the books in this
house. A good chunk of Dickens, always pleasant and often delightful;
some Scott, but usually found unendurable after fifty pages, especially
in its descriptive passages; two books of Thucydides, which are beyond
praise, especially the account of Athens and the Melians which makes
one see how entirely unapproachable he is; and the Confessions of
Rousseau in a new French edition by Seilliere with a greatly improved
text which I submit to you as quite unexceptionably the greatest auto-
biography in the World. I also read a queer book on the American
^he negotiations between Henderson and the Egyptian Premier, Mahmud
Pasha, had resulted in specific proposals, to be submitted to both govern-
ments, under which British authority in Egypt would be greatly curtailed. The
hopes for settlement of outstanding differences were disappointed in May 1930,
when negotiations were abandoned as a result of disagreement concerning the
status of the Sudan.
1174 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
University, sent to me by the publisher, called Undergraduates and done
by some Y.M.C.A. gents. It made me want to be sick quietly in a
corner. Their tests of goodness seem to be complete religious faith and
no kissing. If this is the condition all is well. But they are horrified by
the prevalence of religious doubt and the youth who can t resist kissing
a pretty girl. They find Satan peeping round the most inconceivable
corners. I wish I could write somewhere about the state of mind it
reveals. They want a world of people like the Mother and children in
the Fairchild family;2 and they attack the wicked men of science who
disturb undergraduate faith. X is called splendid because he always
explains to the students that they must never allow their reading to
disturb their religious faith. The assumption seems to be that knowledge
is always a threat to the soul and that the best kind of college professor
is the one who remains faithful to what he learned at his mother's knee.
It is also interesting that most of the pious replies3 indicate students
quite unable to write decent English and that many of the religious
professors are in the same case. But the book is quite interesting for its
revelation of a university world in which obviously the university ideal
as you and I would understand it is simply nonexistent.
Other news I have none; but I want to tell you that I am alive and
to send our love. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
As from Devon Lodge, 20.VIII.29
My dear Justice: Life flows on more peacefully than I have ever known
it; certainly this is the most tranquil holiday I have ever known. My
book goes on like a house on fire; and, at least occasionally, I get a sense
that what I have been saying it is really worth while to say. I find my-
self defending the good old-fashioned thesis that I really may not know
what is best for me, but that if I am not allowed the chance to find
out, there will be no T left at all to make decisions. And so I am
thoroughly enjoying myself by attacking all bureaucrats and moral re-
formers on the ground, for which I crave your agreement, that the
supreme blasphemy is the endeavour of the creedmonger with a principle
to enforce to make man in his own image. It is, as I say, old fashioned.
But I think too that most modern psychology gives it ample support
by showing the frustration of impulse always leads to repression; and
2 Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood's The History of the Fairchild Family; The
Child's Manual (3 parts, 1818-47) was laden with precepts of high morality.
8 Much of the volume was made up of interviews with undergraduates and
[nernbers of faculties In American colleges.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1175
what they call "sublimation" is only possible in a controlled society for
the people, like your late lamented Antony Comstock, who luxuriate in
prohibitions.1
I am glad you have had a go at Emma; I shall await your comments
with great interest. I don't for a moment claim that Jane Austen was
more than the supreme miniature painter. But I do say that within the
little world she chose to paint no one ever surpassed her. She gets
colour, variety and even profundity in a quite amazing degree. Take
Emma and ask yourself whether the little old voluble spinster has ever
been better done than in Miss Bates; or the complacent clerical snob than
in Mr. Elton; or the dull hypochondriac than in Mr. Wodehouse [sic].
Emma herself I found intolerable. I would rather commit suicide than
marry her. But she is a real creature of flesh and blood. The only failure
in the book, and it is a partial failure only, is Jane Fairfax, who is
always, I think, faintly seen and never quite realised. But everyone else
one would know at once in a village inn. Mind you, I find Jane Austen
at her best in Pride and Prejudice where Elizabeth, Mr. Collins, and
Lady Catherine seem to me hor$ concours; and I am human enough to
admit longueurs in Mansfield Park where I always wanted Fanny Price
to marry Henry Crawford and be deserted, or, better still, be seduced
by him and taught to live less of the life of a Christian saint for one
day. But these things apart I do think it genius of the first order to be
able to take a set of perfectly ordinary people leading dull ordinary
lives and make you feel that the uneventful events in those lives not only
happened but were vastly important And for that view I should go bail
to an unlimited amount.
Of reading I have done a-plenty. One or two queer things invite
comment. I found a "complete works" of Lytton here in the proper
marble-calf and so read two of him. One, "What will he do with it?" was
like Hollywood's conception of a social drama and quite too awful for
words. The other "The Coming Race" — a Utopia, was really interesting,
not least because of its assumption that the ideal world is necessarily
static. Then I read a reprint just published here of Ex parte Milligan
with a long introduction by one S. Klaus (not very good) and a full
report of the trial before the military commission.2 What moved me most
1 Anthony Comstock (1844-1915); officious foe of all vices but his own, he
was the Secretary of New York's Society for the Suppression of Vice and the
spiritual father of Boston's Watch and Ward Society.
2 In Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wallace 2 (1866), the Supreme Court held that
beyond the actual theater of war a military commission has no jurisdiction over
civilians and that the petitioner, convicted by a military commission of con-
spiring against the United States, should be released in "habeas corpus pro-
ceedings.
1176 LASKI TO HOLMES 11929
was the appendix with the report of Taney, C.J.'s decision in the Merry-
man case3 which I thought a very moving and pathetic piece. I was led
to compare the whole with Halsbury in the Marais case and sent up to
London for the L.Q.R. with the articles of Dicey and Pollock et al anent
it.4 I must say, with great respect, that I thought Halsbury dangerously
and hopelessly wrong, and Dicey absolutely right as against Pollock. I
don't know what the standing of the decision in Milligan is with you
nowadays; after your need to dissent in that wire-tapping case5 I could
believe almost anything. But I hope it stands as high as it really deserves.
I read too a volume by Geny on modem legal philosophy — a very good
analysis from the angle of neo-Catholicism and especially good in its
criticism of Duguit. And as there was a Sheridan here I read three or
four of the plays in bed and enjoyed them much, finding one or two
known only by name like The Duenna and A Trip to Scarborough quite
amusing. Also I must mention a venj good detective story which I en-
joyed heartily by Agatha Christie — The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I
thought it a real tour de force of ingenuity, but that may have been be-
cause I was completely deceived.
We have seen very few people. But the Lord Chancellor came over
for a night and we had good talk. He's a fine fellow, high-minded with-
out obtrusive moral principle and full of shrewd judgments. He has a
judge to appoint in the autumn and we had a jolly time compiling the
"points" for and against possible candidates. At least I spiked the guns
of one fellow who is always devoting his leisure to attacking prostitutes
and calling for their official regulation — the type to whom Candide is
really a sin against the light. The Webbs also came over for an after-
noon and we gossiped very happily for a couple of hours. His open-
mindedness and freedom from vanity are quite remarkable. She is, of
course, extraordinary in her way, but not intellectually in his class; and
she has a bundle of idees-fixes which prevent discussion as soon as you
corne up against them. If I say that one of them is the universal efficacy
of prayer, you will sympathise with me. As I told her, I refuse to pray
o'nights to an unknowable and dubious somewhat because she derives
satisfaction from genuflexion. I must, I think, also record the visit of a
gipsy (a colony is scattered hereabouts) who in return for a shilling and
some tea told me that an American would leave me ten thousand pounds
and that my name would be famous in Court; whether the latter meant
sln Ex parts Merryman, Fed. Gas. #9487 (1861), Mr. Chief Justice Taney
had held, on circuit, that Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus was
unconstitutional.
* See, supra, pp. 553, 764.
8 Supra, p. 1067.
1929] HOLMES TO LASKI 1177
St. James' or the Police Court she did not specify. Frida is painfully
sceptical about that ten thousand pounds, so we are not buying a new
car at present.
Our love to you. A note from Felix seems to suggest he saw you
recently; and one from Cohen means that he is moving towards you, So
I know you are not dull. Ever affectionately yours, H. }. L.
Beverly Farms, August 23, 1929
My dear Laski: In answer to your letter of laborious peace in the
country I have little to tell. Again I have finished the certs, sent to me
and now am 153 to the good. At odd minutes I am reading Allen, Politi-
cal Thought in the Sixteenth Century, sent to me by F.F., originally I
think recommended by you, which seems to me A-l, altogether admirable.
In the crevices of the odd minute Fish Preferred — which makes me
smile but not guffaw. Perhaps, as my secretary suggests, because I steal
a quarter of an hour from solitaire for Saki, whose 7 volumes I haven't
quite finished. Saki aliquando [illegible] but he bites. From time to time
I see Mrs. Codman, Mrs. Curtis and Mrs. Beveridge, and once in a while
others. But getting up comfortably and driving every afternoon and
answering letters cut the day to pieces and time flies. This month is
always trying for me to keep well in, but I have done it so far. I still
get letters from lonely enthusiasts who shout over my dissent in the case
of a dame who was not allowed to become a citizen because she was a
pacifist. I had one this morning (also my D.C. tax bill, bigger than I
hoped). I told one of them that it was moral sympathy not legal
judgment that led to his encomiums. I have been interested in some
modernist paintings. It seems to me that they have tried to think and
thought inefficiently. They say we don't compete with the photograph
but they admit in their practise some reference to the visible world, and
yet they put in houses and bowls that plainly won't stand up, and in that
way, when seeking, as every work of art must, for an emotional response,
begin by presenting an absurdity that strikes us quicker than the remote
harmony we are intended to feel, and interferes with their effect. They
also say they are trying to express themselves, but they exhibit, and no
one cares a damn about the personality of the painter, and it would
be a pure impertinence to offer it for inspection. In fact, if they have
any talent, they are trying to express something in nature that most of
us fail to see, which is laudable and it is a pity to hamper the effort
with absurdities.
Only a few days more than a month here and then, if I live, Washing-
ton. Affectionately yours, 0. W. H.
1178 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
As from Devon Lodge, 28.VIII.29
My dear Justice: I picture you as emerging painfully from an ocean of
certioraris to find humanity in Rockport — dear city of unforgettable
delights — and, sniffing a little audibly, in Emma. I don't deny — let
me emphasise it — that Emma is small beer, but what a taste the beer
has. It is champagne in petto.
Things here move peacefully to their appointed end. We go back to
town on Saturday; a week there and then a week in Manchester — my
annual offering on the parental altar. Then I go to Cardiff for, I expect,
two or three days to arbitrate on a new wage-schedule for the shipyards;
I hope to prevent a strike of five thousand men. But I am sony to leave
here, for its perfect tranquility has been quite exquisite.
We have not been entirely alone. Nevinson came over on Saturday
for the day, and, as always with him, we had good talk. We agreed
in disliking all the art for art's sake school on the twofold ground (a)
that they don't know how to tell a story and (b) that they seem to view
happiness as an indefinite extension of the genital impulse. We agreed
also that Felix is the most remarkable person under fifty in America and
that Hackett's Henry VIII is mostly brilliant eyewash, wholly lacking in
the power to discriminate in the quality of the evidence he uses. N. by
the way is probably going to Washington with MacDonald in October
and looks forward, lucky fellow, to seeing you then. As soon as I am
back in London I will send you a copy of his little pamphlet — The
English — which is, I think, a charming piece of delicate irony. I had also
to see me an Australian gent, whom you would have adored. He
primarily wanted me to go out there for an enormous fee to give lectures
at his pet university. But he also wanted to talk — I beg his pardon, he
did talk — about the ineffable and unlimited glories of the incredible
Benjamin Kidd. Do you remember that third-class charlatan? My
Australian began each other sentence with "As Kidd says," or "As Kidd
has admirably remarked." At length I genially hinted that Kidd could
not count me among his disciples. He remarked that he placed Kidd next
to Darwin. I bowed. He asked me where I place Kidd. I replied that
in my judgment he would have been an eminent ornament of Mrs. Leo
Hunter's salon, and upon my word of honour he took it as a compliment
and went away treasuring it up for future quotation.
I have been writing a good deal at my book, and it really looks like
a book. There is a section on the sphere of conduct to which problems
like prohibition belong which I think will appeal to you; and an attack
on the fussy righteousness of those who like to rule other people's morals
for which, in due time, I shall claim your sympathy. The whole atmos-
phere of the book is a plea for liberty in terms of scepticism i.e. we
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1179
never know enough to suppress, and Jones' experience builds principles
for him which can only be disproved for him by rational proof that
other experience has superior validity. I think there is something in it;
at least the fact that I enjoy writing it means that it is less bad than I
feared when I started. And I have really got new ideas and new lights
on the relation between liberty and equality.
In the way of reading I want especially to emphasize two things (I)
Robertson's Histonj of Free Thought in the 19th Century. I have an
advance copy of this (it is published by Watts) and I conjure you to
get it. To have a clear and vigorous summary of one hundred years of
critical attack on the positions of organised religion is quite thrilling.
He has a conspectus of all Europe and the U.S., though naturally the
bulk is England, France, Germany. I am interested to see how well
Emerson and your father come out. Of course there are judgments I
dissent from; e.g. I could not praise Bob Ingersoll whose writings, to
me, have always indicated a windy rhetorician, even if he was on the
right side. He has a brilliant attack on Lotze and an interesting swipe
at the intellectual fatuity of Whitman's metaphysics. And on the vulgar
tactics of Rome and Canterbury in trying to patch up the legend he is
superb. I like, too, his expose of Morley's lady-like feelings about free-
thought — his queer effort to be at once sincere and undamaged socially
by honest thinking. Do get the book; it will give you, as it gave me, some
very pleasant hours. I have had, too, an interesting volume of unpublished
letters of Galiani and Mme. d'fipinay — sidelights on the decline of
the Ancien regime which repay the price of admission.1 Eighteenth
century Italy must have been a cesspool. Unbelievers avoiding discovery
and fanatics gloomily searching for them. By way of novels IVe read
Anne of Gierstein and thought it third-rate, and Old Mortality, which I
thought first-rate. I wish I could understand the process by which those
novels made a man like Newman receptive to Rome.2 I suppose age
withers the flavour of context hopelessly; but certainly I am not at-
tracted by the picture and Chateaubriand, whom Newman adored,
seems to me an ignorant sob-orator for whom nothing is to be said except
as a somnolent.
Our warm love to you. As I write, the horizon is so clear that I can
just see the sun on the Channel nearly forty miles away.
Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
1 Probably L9abb6 F. Galiani correspondence auec Madame d'Epinay, etc.
(2vols., 1881-82).
2 Cardinal Newman had said of Sir Walter Scott that he had "contributed
by his works, in prose and verse, to prepare men for some closer and more
practical approximation to Catholic truth." 1 Essays Critical and Historical 268.
1180 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
Beverly Farms, September 9, 1929
My dear Lash: A dear letter from you just received. I rejoice at the
thought that I may see Nevinson and agree with you and his con-
clusions as to many of the modern painters and writers. I sometimes fear
that my own evil nature suggests unfounded modernities. The new
generation has discovered the act by which it came into being and is
happy in the discovery. I am much interested in your criticism of
Hackett's Henry VIII. I could not have made it, but I dare say you are
right, though I don't know what, exactly, you have in mind. I shall try
to remember what you say about Robertson's History of Free Thought
in the 19th Century, as I understand not yet out, or I should send for it
now*
After finishing my certioraris for the present (I wrote to the clerk
today to send me what more he has not later than the 18th, for the end
approaches) and having read Political Thought in the 16th Century I
begin to reread the French translation of Anna Karenina. (By the by
I suppose the accent over the e merely indicates the pronounciation of
the vowel, not the accent of the syllable?) I hate it; I dare say it is
one of the greatest of novels, but I resent having my time taken up by
the woes of a woman of society ideals and a man who has nothing but
social and physical attraction. Vronsky seems to have been less of a
person than Anna's husband, although the latter did have big ears. Then
the little jealousies of Levine after his marriage annoy rather than amuse
me. Altogether, now that I am I through the book I wish it were
in hell.
I don't know whether it is the extra pressure of the atmosphere on
some of these damp days or the knowledge that I am near the end that
makes me rather gloomy. I was going to say indiSerent when I re-
membered that half an hour ago I was fidgeting over a question of invest-
ment and that I still want to write and read (solid books, not novels) if
it is worth thinking about. One would like to have a glimpse of the
meaning or I know not what transcending meaning of the universe be-
fore one dies, but one who thinks as I do perceives that he has no right
to make the demand, but should shut up and go under quietly like a
good soldier, I am happy to get Swift's Journal to Stella, which I never
read. Frankfurter and his Mrs. are expected here Thursday and occa-
sionally a dame comes to luncheon. Otherwise all quiet on the Western
Front Afectionately yours, 0. W. H.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1181
Devon Lodge, 4.IX.29
My dear Justice: This hot and noisy London is not pleasant after the
cool and tranquillity of the country. But it has its compensations. I went
this morning to an exhibition of a dozen Vermeers my delight in which
I do not know how to express. The exquisite serenity and precision of
line are perfect. I was literally overwhelmed with them — especially
"The Little Street" and the "Music Lesson/' I wish you could have been
there to share them with me. Then I have had a jolly dinner with
Tomlinson the writer. He is just back from Italy where he stayed in
Rapallo. Inter alios he encountered some of our best sellers, like Michael
Arlen, who were trying to convince themselves that they were great
artists. He said that their poses in public were beyond words. Arlen al-
ways explained, on the very slightest provocation, the pains of compo-
sition. He could only write in one room; sometimes he had taken a
'plane from Paris to London to put in a paragraph which had moved
him. Another gent, explained that he could only write his poems while
an electric piano played Beethoven sonatas. There was also an Italian
painter who could only paint in a mauve room. Tomlinson said he never
felt so normal in his life. And Arlen told him that what his (Ts) work
lacked was the power to put his hand on "the great pulse of London."
He explained how at night he slept with open windows near Piccadilly
as the taxi-cabs made him feel nearer to London's soul. You can see
that people like you and I who write in ordinary rooms on ordinary paper
are really much too commonplace ever to have anything real to say.
Then I went to the wedding of a friend who married the daughter of
Forbes-Robertson, the actor.1 I never saw the theatre in excelsis as here.
If you are a famous actress your technique consists (a) in kissing your
rival profusely and calling her darling at every other word, (b) explaining
that her dress or hat is "quite too marvellous." (c) regretting that you
did not see her in her last show but everyone said she was "quite too mar-
vellous/' (d) What a pity that X ("I suppose he's quite our first critic")
hated the play; "did you choose it yourself, darling"? I must add, so that
you can the better appreciate my innocence, that the lady next to whom
I sat in the Church seemed to me about 28-30; but such is the modern
cosmetic art that I discovered she was in fact just on sixty. I had one
amusing moment at the reception with Bernard Shaw. He was explaining
to an adoring audience that Ibsen did what had never been done before
by exploding the folly of obsolete pseudo-idealism. He asked me to agree
and I explained that I couldn't. He then explained to the audience (suit-
ably impressed) that I had the typical imperceptiveness of the academic.
1 On August 31 Mr. James Hamilton and Miss Jean Forbes-Robertson, daugh-
ter of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, were married at St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
1182 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
So I thought the time for veneration had passed and told the worshippers
that even Shaw might have been expected to know Cervantes. But as I
think most of them did not, probably the victory remained with him.
I am so glad you like Alien's book, which I thought really admirable.
I am enclosing the notice I wrote of it in the English Historical Review
in the thought that it may interest for a moment.2 Your "Sakf I do not
know except by repute. I have been in very different literary company —
the classical international lawyers of the 18th century. Sir, I beg to state
with my hand on my heart that I cannot for the life of me see why Vattel
or Wolff ever got a reputation. I think there is real mental power in
Bynershock; but the other two seem to me to have been just like what
Nicholas Murray Butler is today — pompous, oily, and snobbish. Have
you ever been driven to give them first-hand attention? I am not, God
knows, proposing it; but I would like confirmation of my guess that they
are nonsense in court dress. I have read a good book by E. Cannan —
A Review of Economic Theory — a combination of historic analysis and
argument you would like. Also a book by Jacques Rueff published by the
new Johns Hopkins Law School called From the Physical to the Social
Sciences. I can't say I was greatly impressed. It doesn't seem to me novel
to say that the logic of the natural sciences is the only satisfactory method
of analysis. It does seem to me futile to expect from the material of the
social science principles like the laws say of physics; and even a science
of politics like a Euclidean geometry would not tell me the "oughts" of
desire. I mean that physics doesn't need a system of values; the social
sciences do; and the attempt to build up analogies simply breaks down
after the business of statement has been completed. But I must be wrong
for I note as I write this that the book is enormously praised in the cur-
rent New Republic? Of other things I read a very good general book on
Aristotle by W. D. Ross — an expert in these matters, and a pleasant novel
somewhat in the Dickens manner by J. B. Priestley called The Good Com-
panions — a little too hearty perhaps, but still not to be underestimated.
Book-buying, alas, has not yet begun; there is nothing in the shops.
When I get back from Manchester I hope very much to run over for two
or three days to Paris and have a real hunt — a thing I have not done
since I was in Geneva in March.
1 was delighted to read that you have come through August so well;
and I pay humble tribute to Mrs. B. et al who have helped to make
things pleasant. If only I could retire and come and live in Washington
near you and write.
My love to you deeply. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
2 44 English Historical Review 469 (July 1929).
8 Reviewed by C. J. Keyser, 60 New Republic 23 (Aug. 21, 1929).
1929] HOLMES TO LASKI 1183
Beverly Farms, September 15, 1929
My dear Laski; Such a nice letter from you on your return to London.
You amuse me about the best sellers and their ways. I used to call them
the unknown illustrious — peopk that the upper educated class never
had heard of but that sold a million copies. I once devoted a little time
to reading some of their books to try to discover the secret. My conclu-
sion was: no style — no knowledge of life — no picture of character —
but something doing all the time. And they were right, except to the
sophisticated. I, the reader, am the hero and don't need to have him
described — &c. &c, In my old age I somewhat sympathize with the bar-
barian and am amazed and bored by the hitches and troubles necessary to
spin the story to a book's length. Your book From the Physical to the
Social Sciences reminds me of early days at the dentists when I was re-
covering from chloroform, and found the secret of the universe in certain
sounds, such as I got from striking saws of different sizes in my father's
workshop. I said to the dentist, "I have effected the transition from the
physical to the metaphysical." I have trouble in reading who the painter
was who pleased you — Veronese? Your remark about the "oughts" and
system of values in political science leaves me rather cold. If, as I think,
the values are simply generalizations emotionally expressed, the generali-
zations are matters for the same science as other observations of fact. If,
as I sometimes suspect, you believe in some transcendental sanction, I
don't. Of course different people, and "especially different races, differ in
their values — but those differences are matters of fact, and I have no
respect for them except my general respect for what exists. Man is an
idealizing animal — and expresses his ideals (values) in the conventions
of his time. I have very little respect for the conventions in themselves,
but respect and generally try to observe those of my own environment as
the transitory expression of an eternal fact. I readily believe what you say
about Vattel — and shall feel exonerated from the duty of reading him
as I was by Morris Cohen from Thomas Aquinas. In your excellent notice
of Allen you enhance my feeling that I ought to read Suarez — given me
by Canon Sheehan and pronounced by him an original thinker (but I
didn't quite trust his judgment). Well — the last two weeks of vacation
promise to be busy, I have received our last bag of certioraris — and the
Law School wanted me to be painted by Hopkinson — full length — to
hang by the side of Marshall in a new reading room. I am much flattered
and the work begins tomorrow — and there goes the leisure I had prom-
ised myself for the end. I have just received The Tragic Era by Claude G.
Bowers — an account of Johnson and the times after Lincoln's death. The
writer is a bitter partisan (democrat) but he tells the story in an absorb-
1184 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
ingly interesting way. 1 believe he is going to write a life of Beveridge —
safe to be good reading. He seems to know all the dodges to keep the
reader intent. I shall go elsewhere for philosophic views — and for gen-
eral statements of fact that I believed. But the burning problem now is
shall I attempt to stand long enough to be painted standing — and what
will he do about my hair, which I have not had cut for a good while —
and there are many'bothering doubts on varied themes which I omit. The
morning paper has a picture of Wu described [as] one of the foremost
interpreters of oriental law to this world. So he is getting on.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 16.IX.29
My dear Justice: If I calculate aright, this should just arrive in time to
greet you on your arrival in Washington. It brings you my warm greeting
for the new term. Please keep fit and well until I come in March. I count
on that enormously.
What have I not done since I wrote last? A week in Manchester with
my people, I made a speech there, settled a strike and read some ten or
twelve bad novels. I was enormously interested by the psychology of the
business men I met. Their intuitive grasp of their job was amazing. They
seemed to feel the market with an extra sense that anyone in my line
simply doesn't possess. But ask them to explain their operations and they
flounder about quite helplessly with no power whatever of ordered
thought. I looked through all the Manchester bookshops in vain. Theology,
sets of the mighty dead in full morocco, and the lesser pornography. But
I dug out a tiny pamphlet of Buckle's which moved me greatly. You will
remember Mill's discussion of the Pooley case in the essay on Liberty.
Seeming [sic] Buckle reviewed this in Fraser and Coleridge's son replied
in a mean letter. Buckle replied in this little pamphlet and I must say that
I think it is a really first-rate piece of polemical writing.1 It led me back
to his History and I was amazed again at his learning, without feeling
that he is quite first-rate. J. M. Robertson tells me that I am wrong and
that Buckle really was a supreme innovator. But I feel that he merely
states eloquently a body of great platitudes none of which he can be said
to have seen afresh. I like his anti-clericalism and his zeal for science; I
like the body of incidental knowledge he accumulates; but I can't see
'In 1857 Sir John Coleridge (1790-1876), with his son John Duke Cole-
ridge, later Lord Chief Justice, acting as counsel for the prosecution, had
sentenced Thomas Pooley to fifteen months' imprisonment for publishing a
blasphemous libel. Buckle's first comment on the case was in Fraser s for
May 1859 and is reprfnted in 1 The Miscellaneous Works of Henry Thomas
Buckle (Grant, ed,, 1885) 75, 115 et seq.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1185
greatness as a historian in the sense that Gibbon was great or, in the line
he chose himself, the German scholar Burckhardt.2 Have you any views?
1 came back on Saturday to a jolly dinner with Nevinson who sails for
Washington with MacDonald. He will only be there a week, but he is
proposing to call on you one afternoon, so I am sure of direct news of
you. He had a woman to dinner ... an eminent pianist whom I wish
you could have seen. Like all public performers who are women she is a
professional languisher. She feels that life is a series of halts on the verge
of elopements and I wish you could have watched her set her cap at me,
S. K. Ratclifle, et al. who were the guests. She started superbly with me
by saying that when she read my Communism she felt I loved music
from the movement of my sentences — pretty good. She told Nevinson
that she is always reminded by him of a Bach fugue — really better.
Shaw, she said, was like a Scarlatti prelude — Frida was nearly over-
whelmed; I was really very good and told her that I felt musicians the
natural judges of political science. She took it like a bird. Then on Sun-
day Frida had a party here for some continental members of the Inter-
national Sexual Reform Congress which has been meeting here. I can't
put on paper all the things that were said. A heavy German gentleman
asked me who were the leading perverts among Labour politicians. A
French lady asked me how long I had been married; I told her and she
enquired whether I did not find sexual intercourse monotonous, I, poor
thing, crept quietly away. Frida, poor child, who had given this party at
B. Russell's request had even more difficult questions to answer. A Rus-
sian gent, told her that their auras corresponded and that they must meet
alone. An American lady hoped that Diana was being brought up to ap-
preciate the philosophy of nudity. Two hours of this were enough to make
us glad that the next meeting in London will be five years hence. And
then this morning I was called upon by a Chinese gentleman who wished
me to leave on Monday next for Pekin. He was founding a school of
wisdom and I was to be one of the elect. I explained that I could not and
he waved it aside. I must feel a call. He was going to have the twelve
sages of the West, all in one house, and the life of China would be differ-
ent. I explained again that family commitments in England made my de-
parture impossible. He waved this aside as quite irrelevant. My wife could
visit me; and in any case I was needed by China. He left smiling and
happy. But I could not tell whether he was just mad or one of those
people to whom the practical details of life are quite irrelevant.
Of other things there is not much to tell. My little book nears its end;
and I hope to have it really done before term begins three weeks from
2 Jacob Christopher Burckhardt (1818-1897); Swiss cultural historian; author
of Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860) and Die Zeit Konstantins des
Grossen (1852).
1186 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
now. Tomorrow I go off to Cardiff for a few days to arbitrate in a big
industrial dispute and I suppose I shall have nothing but wage-statistics
for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But led by you I have laid in two vol-
umes of "Said" for nourishment there, together with a complete Jane
Austen in one volume.
My love to you. Keep really well and go on dissenting.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 28.IX.29
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you. And I have tried to reply
to it in the best way by giving my friend Lord Arnold 1 an introduction to
you. He is accompanying the P.M. on the great tour and I think you will
find him an interesting example of the new type who has joined the
Labour Party. He was a great friend of Haldane's and is a thoroughly
good fellow.
I have been very busy since I wrote last. Three grim days in Cardiff
arbitrating a strike took all the patience I have and was a very difficult
and delicate business. The two sides were so unpleasant to each other
that at times I was in despair, and the effect of being unable to have any
private talk is a curious sense of isolation. However, at the end they dis-
agreed and accepted my independent decision which I previously had
worked out in great detail. I came back on the train with three of the
union's leaders and had extraordinarily interesting talk. One of them was
a passionate lover of Dickens and one responsive answer set him off until
he sounded almost like a lover with his mistress. Another was a local J.P.
and was so impressed by his own unfitness for the work that he had actu-
ally got himself called to the Bar in order to know what the law was
about and not to feel that he was merely the voice of his clerk. The third
was an amateur astronomer and to hear the reverence with which he
mentioned people like Leverrier and Adams2 was really a pleasure. I had
three very revealing hours for they convinced me that the number of men
who can be made to feel that leisure should be creative is much larger
than our educational technique recognises. All these men had gone to
work at ten and eleven and all of them had taken up intellectual pursuits
out of a sense of want through unsatisfied curiosity. I think it was sig-
nificant that none of them possessed a motor car, and that when they
'Sidney Arnold (1878-1945), first Baron Arnold, had joined the Labour
JParty in 1922; in 1938 he resigned from the Party because of disagreement
with foreign policy.
2Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier (1811-1877) and John Couch Adams (1819-
1892) almost simultaneously but quite independently determined the existence
of an unknown planet, Neptune.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1187
spoke of certain colleagues who did not share their tastes they said, "Oh
yes! Of course X devotes his evenings to his car" in a way that suggested
definite incompatibility between the one and the other.
In the way of reading one 01 two things are worth mention. I have
worked my way through the official life of Disraeli, which has just ap-
peared in a remarkable cheap edition.3 It is a curious experience. He is
false, artificial, the actor to his fingertips, and yet you cannot help a real
affection for him. The ability to manage people is quite extraordinary;
and though I can't rate him among the ultimately significant Englishmen,
he certainly suggests that the parliamentary system enables great talents to
tell in an unrivalled way. I read, also, the two volumes of unpublished
letters he wrote in his old age to the ladies Chesterfield and Bradford.
They are a pathetic document. The old man was lonely and these two
aristocratic butterflies seem so to have won his heart that his whole life
centres about them. To him they are the reason for existence, and, to
them, he is clearly a flattering incident in the world of dancing, racing,
hunting, and week-end country house-parties which make up "society."
Then in a very different realm I read Kelsen's Hauptprobleme der Staats-
lehre which I believe to be the most remarkable juristic work I have read
since I first encountered Gierke fifteen years ago. Probably I overestimate
it somewhat; but it certainly thrilled me as the map of a country I had
not otherwise seen surveyed with anything like the same precision and
delicacy. I reread Phineas Finn also with the old delight and the old sense
that the murder trial is the very best criminal trial in all fiction and Mr.
Chaffenbrass quite unquestionably the most brilliant picture of the old-
time English lawyer that has been put in a printed book.
We have been out a little. We went to see the new Shaw play — The
Apple-Cart — and I thought it both mediocre and vulgar. It is the argu-
ment of Bolingbroke's Patriot King against democracy and no better than
when it was first made. The dialogue, which critics like St. John Ervine,
have praised seemed to me the smart back-chat you get from vaudeville
comedians in a music hall; and it was, to my mind, full of the strangest
lapses of taste. We went also to a farewell dinner of the P.M., heard some
secrets, and watched with enormous interest the effort of under-secretaries
to establish their future claim to cabinet position. MacDonald is charming
in this kind of atmosphere. The vanity of the prima donna disappears, and
he becomes a simple and interesting human being. I had also to lunch Sir
John Shea,4 a fine soldier who commands our troops on the North West
frontier of India. He told great tales of the Afghan tribes there and the
8 W. F. Monypenny and G. E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of
Beaconsfield (2 vol. ed., 1929).
* General Sir John Shea (1869- ) from 1928 until his retirement in 1932
held the Eastern Command in India.
1188 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
queer combination of courage, honour, and treachery which shape their
lives. I gave, too, a dinner to a young colleague who has got himself
engaged, and watched with acute pleasure his happy confidence that he
was the centre of the universe. MacDonald, hy the way, told a good story
of a visitor to Frogmore, the royal mausoleum, who saw the tomb of the
Prince Consort. "Who was he?"" "The husband of Queen Victoria." "Yes,
but what did he do?" "He was the father of King Edward, the Duke of
Connaught, the Princess Royal, the Empress Frederick, etc " "Yes, but I
mean what did he do in the daytime?" , . .
My love to you. Here we have a perfect Indian summer and I have not
a want to complain of except the desire for a thousand pounds for a year's
freedom from teaching. In other words life is at least an ode.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, September 29, 1929, Sunday
My dear Laski: You miscalculated a little, for your letter that expected
to meet me in Washington was forwarded to me here and reached me
yesterday. But tomorrow morning I do leave for Boston — and hope to
be in Washington Thursday morning. I believe that I have told you that
my expected last two weeks of idleness have been cut up by standing for
a full length portrait by Hopldnson for the Harvard Law School. Hopkin-
son has a gift for catching a likeness and for vividness I think — and I
am quite proud of his results. As to Buckle — it must be over 60 years ago
that I read him — and I only have referred to him once, when writing
about Montesquieu, to make sure of his having dwelt on climate. My
general impression is like yours. I think on reopening him I found him
abler than I had anticipated but I hardly had regarded him as a path-
finder although he more or less indicated the direction of future paths.
Your musical dame and sexual reformers give me great pleasure — why
am I denied these glimpses of a higher aether? To have a woman asking
about your medias res is more amusing than ten certioraris. Your German
historian Burckhardt I know not — ought I to before I die? As a result
of the portrait I have read nothing since rereading Anna Karenina except
part of Swift's Diary to Stella — not so good reading as Pepys and even
perhaps a trifle squalid, but still interesting. I shall take it with me. Books
like that and Pepys and Walpole's letters fill a niche in life very pleas-
antly.
I think that my wife's death, although I cannot regret it, because life
would have meant suffering and pain, keeps the thought of my own be-
fore me, so that I want to add; if I am alive, when I say that I go to
Washington Wednesday night. It makes me think of the time when all
life shall have perished from the earth, and tests the strength of the only
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1189
comfort I know — the belief that the I know not what, if it swamps all
our human ultimates, does so because it is in some unimaginable way
greater than they, which are only a part of it. But I also think that our
demands for satisfaction are intensified by exaggeration of the belief in
the unity of ourselves and a failure to see how they change in content
and contour — as is natural if consciousness is only an electric illumination
of cosmic currents when they make white light. Lord, Lord, I have said
all this so many times before that I ought to be ashamed. But the thought
must needs repeat itself daily and so the expression may be pardoned if
not more than once a month. Also every litany has its repetitions.
I envy you your acquaintance with Birrell. I was just referring to a
page in Obiter Dicta and found it hard to lay the enchanting volume
down. Happy the man who can take books leisurely, like a soaking rain,
and not inquire too curiously for the amount of fertilizer they contain. It
takes robust and staying power to get adequate pleasure out of even the
greatness of the past. It takes other and richer gifts to find all the good
there is in the second rate. But I fear that I drool — farewell.
Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 12.X.29
My dear Justice: I ought to have written to you last week; but I have been
so driven and even pestered by students that I have just tumbled into bed
o'nights. I have classes so large that they are almost nightmares, and
graduates from half Europe have chosen to come and do research with
me to say nothing of Indians and Chinese and Japs. It is only now that I
have got things straight and can have a word with you.
I am intensely anxious to hear how you liked my political leader and
also Arnold.1 What they thought of you a cable from J.R.M. has told me;
and I will not repeat it because it would make you vain. But at least I
have won his gratitude by telling him what was the best sight in America
today. I wish I could have been with you; and I dislike having to wait
another fortnight before I can hear his tale of how you are and what you
said.
Your dear letter from Beverly — written just before you left for Wash-
ington — moved me much. Please think all the time that though she is
gone, there are one or two like myself to whom the fact of having you is a
great part of the joy of life; I know that the day fourteen [sic] years ago
when Felix took me to Beverly Farms is one of the three biggest events in
1 MacDonald and his staff had arrived in the United States on October 4.
His conversations with President Hoover concerning naval disarmament took
place from October 6 to 10, ending in satisfactory statements of accord. Mac-
Donald did not in fact see Holmes; infra, p. 1192.
1190 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
my life. And I literally count the days until March when I can talk things
over with you again.
1 have, as term necessitates, been hard at it indeed. Mostly it has been
the grim business of political philosophy. I've been doing the Spanish
theological jurists of the 16th century for my seminar — Soto, Suarez,
Victoria et aL revelling in them and making an anthology of passages for
the lads to read — great fellows they are, a little long-winded but subtle
and noble-hearted. I put Suarez first, and I think that between Aquinas
and Descartes he could claim to have about the best mind of all the
people we know in these matters. Then, too, I have been slowly working
through the classics of international law for my Yale lectures in April.
Sir, may I say to you that Puffendorf is third-rate, Wolff fourth-rate,
Thornasius seventh-rate, and Vattel elegant in a tenth-rate way. Why ever
they became classics God only knows. And for amusement one or two
things I must comment on. (a) Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance —
an exquisite piece of gossamer. I don't know why I had never come across
it before; its style is pure magic, (b) J. M. Robertson, A Short History of
Morals — simply admirable, with a brilliantly devastating analysis of the
Christian ethic and some very good attacks on Plato. If this tempts you I
wish you would say the word and I will send it. For my virtues I have
been elected an Honorary Member of the Rationalist Press Association,
with Arnold Bennett and Wells, and this gives me the right to purchase
their publications at 50% off the published price. But I don't want to load
you up with books you don't want to read, (c) I read with enormous
pleasure Mme. de Stael by Lady Blennerhassett2 — I gather one of Lord
Acton's learned ladies — a first-rate job and a thoroughly interesting pic-
ture of a great epoch. I wish, by the way, that I could understand why
literature went dead in France between 1780 and Chateaubriand; and I
rather think the same is true in Russia since about 1910. With all her
vanity and affection, she was a great woman. It's a good job that her
mother didn't marry Gibbon after all. (e) I have read for review the
official life of Halsbury3 — a brave old second-rater, a kind of fellow who
would, I think, have got on very well with Andrew Jackson. He also
writes of Cairns with simply bated breath; and in the new Disraeli letters,
which I have just read, Dizzy, who certainly thought most men fools,
just wilts in admiration before Cairns. I wish I could penetrate the secret.
2 Charlotte de Leyden (1843-1917), German-born historian of French
letters; her Irish husband, Sir Richard Blennerhassett, was a friend of Lord
Acton's. Before her marriage to Necker, Madame de StaeTs mother, Susanne
Curchod, had been engaged to Gibbon, a commitment which Gibbon pere could
not approve. The son dutifully accepted the father's decision: "I sighed as a
lover, I obeyed as a son."
8Laskfs review of A. Wilson Fox, The Earl of Halsbury (1929), has not
been identified.
1929] HOLMES TO LASKI 1191
The decisions don't show it; neither do the printed speeches in Hansard.
I spoke of this to Birrell the other day and he said that the judgment of
the Bar was that only Blackburn, Jessel and Bowen touched the heights
Cairns did. There must be a faculty of legal appreciation which I simply
lack altogether; for I cannot see it at all.
Of other things, there isn't very much to tell. I went to a book-auction
and found the thing I wanted soaring to fantastic heights as I got it;
stayed a half hour and heard a post-card from Bernard Shaw bid up to
thirty pounds! and an autographed first edition of Galsworthy's Man of
Devon [sic] 4 was sold for £ 150. I felt this was madness and reflected
upon the curiosities of taste. Ten years from now I don't believe any first
edition of Galsworthy will be worth that many pence. I went, also, to the
opening of an exhibition of modern art in which a friend had a picture.
Of the seventy pieces, I could relate eleven to their titles; one I began
to understand when the artist arrived in great indignation to point out
that it was hung upside down; and one was painted so that it looked
identical, (a cubist thing) from whatever angle it was regarded. Yet peo-
ple bought the things like hot cakes at thirty to fifty pounds apiece. I
assume that I cannot understand these matters.
People have drifted in a good deal lately. A friend of Brandeis; Felix's
younger sister — a nice girl full of proper reverence for him; a weird
Englishman who is Prime Minister to the Rajah of Pahala and has ac-
quired there habits of oriental magnificence; a delectable Chinaman with
whom I have to speak German which he seems to understand now and
again; but whenever I mention a book his head nods with instant com-
prehension; and a Sinhalese who arrived with an interpreter, a wife, and
a little Sinhalese princeling and wanted me to put on paper in two pages
the secret of good government; I fear I sent him away sad, But you will
see that my days do not lack colour.
My love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., October 16, 1929
My dear Laski: It seems a thousand years since I last wrote to you — but
I have been immersed in the manifold tasks that beset one on arrival here
at the beginning of the Term. I think I told you of the portrait I stood for
before leaving — but not of my flying visit to the new Langdell Hall 1
while in Boston. I was tremendously impressed by it, I will not describe
it for you will see it — but I doubt if there is anywhere so noble a recipi-
ent for teachers and students of the law. . . .
* Presumably The Man of Property (1906).
1 At the Harvard Law School.
1192 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
I didn't see the Prime Minister. The Ambassador wrote to me and I
made an appointment for him to call but at the last minute he had to go
to the White House and so I missed him. I was sorry, especially because
my wife had a great fancy for him because of his book, what she read
about him, his looks, &c. However, I had a good call from the Ambassador
(a dear good fellow) and your friend Lord Arnold who was very pleasant
and afterwards sent me a charming book: Home by Alan Mulgan, a New
Zealander— poetically rapturous about England. Of course one smiles a
little at his emotional responses more or less mistaking themselves for
critical estimates, but so far as I have read I am charmed. But I have
had no chance to read more than a few inches of print other than legal
records and arguments. I wish 1 had had your letter before I saw Lord
Arnold. It came just after he had left.
I am interested by your labor leaders on the train — your reflections
on leisure— and their reference to the others who devote their evenings
to their cars. I imagine that here at least there would be a hundred after
their cars to one after a book — a larger proportion than that. Your
Kelsen's Hauptprobleme worries me— I fear that I ought to read it, and
German does not come very easy — supposing the work to be accessible,
as it should be.
The last two days have been spoiled by the dentist, but I am glad that
1 went to him. I told him I felt as I did when, after the night in which I
thought I was dying, the hospital man said that I should recover and
everything snapped back into life again. I was rather in despair about my
teeth — but though one has perished under the cutting and scraping —
the rest seem to be coming out better than I feared, and I shall bet on
them against my body — i.e. I don t think that I shall die toothless — but
there are two or three days more when I must give an hour to him.
Brandeis, who seems in good shape, reminded me of a case argued
last term in which he said I should have to write a dissent. I looked at
it and sure enough it is one rather specially in my line on which I had and
have decided views — one of those cases in which it seems to one that
most judges show limited subtlety.2 There are cases from time to time
that strike bottom notions and bottom notions often are very hazily held.
I won't go into it now, as I have only had time to jot down a few sen-
tences at odd moments. I am keeping well and it looks now as I should be
alive when you come over — and if I am, no one will welcome you more
heartily than I shall.
1 went over to Arlington a second time on Sunday (it is Wednesday
now). The stone is up for my wife, and being in a military place had to
justify itself by my name — so I see what the passerby will read — Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Captain & Bvt. Colonel — 20th Mass. Vol. IniYy. Civil
2 The case has not been identified.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1193
War — March, 1841- .1 wish you could see it for I think it is in as
romantic a spot as almost anywhere on the grounds. It looks as if a deer
might trip out and stop — but I don't want to exaggerate. At least the
place might have been much worse. It is time for me to stop. I feel an
affectionate thrill at the thought that perhaps I shall see you again.
Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Washington, D. C., October 28, 1929
October 21 was Ball's Bluff 68 years ago.
My dear Laski: Your letter came this evening — it is solitaire time in 10
minutes but I must write a line. You put heart into me by what you say
— for though I can't quite believe such things I believe it enough to get
happiness from it.
As to Robertson's Short History of Morals I wonder that you ask me.
It is the kind of book that I am keen to read — though I should approach
one written by an apostle or propagandist with suspicion. Of course I
should like it.
I looked at your Kelsen's Hauptprobleme der Staatslehre — but it was
too solid a lump of raw German for me — and it looked to me as if he
was somewhat like the German comic papers that take you by both ears
and shove your nose into a joke. I didn't read half a page but it smelt as
if he brought the German touch to impalpables.
I revere your attack on Suarez et al. Canon Sheehan gave me Suarez
but I never have done more than peek into him. You have infinitely more
patience than I in reading books that tell you nothing for the sake of the
thoughts that you will contribute. Yet I have done a fair share. If you
make a volume of elegant extracts I will read it if still alive and in pos-
session of my wits. There's lots more to say but I must go downstairs to
my cards. I have read nothing (bar records of cases) except The Amaz-
ing Chance (Patricia Weritworth) which kept me interested though it
reminded me of Tom Appleton's remark about the statue of Horace Mann
in front of the State House — done by a sculptress — "Man by Woman".
I am beginning to look forward to March for you.
Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, S.XI.29
My dear Justice: I am ashamed of myself for three weeks' silence. But I
have hardly had a moment to spare even for Frida. In addition to my
ordinary work, the government set me to arbitrate a dispute over allow-
ances between the Admiralty and its officers abroad and I was hard at it
every other day for a fortnight. Then I had to lecture to the Fabian So-
1194 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
ciety with Lord Sankey In the chair; and to examine for a fellowship at
Cambridge. These things eat away time.
My most important news has a good side and a bad one. The Lord
Chancellor has put me on to a committee to enquire into the development
of administrative law in England and to suggest safeguards.1 It is a great
committee, and a great subject; inter alias, Leslie Scott is a member and
Holdswortib, the legal historian. We haven t yet met to decide procedure,
but I have fears that it may prevent me from coming over next spring,
as I can't very well absent myself in the middle. I tried to get out of it,
but Sankey was so insistent that I couldn't but give way. Of course, if it
shows signs of lasting over a year I shall certainly think myself entitled to
three months' leave of absence. But, otherwise, my duty, alas, is obviously
here. It is a terrible shame as I had built enormously on that American
visit.
I am sorry indeed that you didn't see Ramsay after all; I think you
would have liked him. I had dinner with him last night and heard his
impressions. He was very taken with Hoover and Stimson, but inter
Americanos, Brandeis struck him more than anyone. I wish you would
whisper to Esme Howard when you see him that the P.M. is perfectly
lyrical about the admirable arrangements H. made from start to finish.
One or two amusing tid-bits I must tell you. On Friday, Frida and I
went to lunch with the Shaws. G.B.S. asked me for ten minutes' private
talk and I wondered what could be coming. What he wanted was that I
should suggest to the P.M. the desirability of making Lord Astor2 our
ambassador to Washington. I explained that it was impossible to send a
native-born American as ambassador to his own country . . . But to my
surprise Shaw's heart was set on it and he argued about it like a child
pleading for a piece of sugar-cake. Then I must recount the visit of the
Chinese gentleman who came to ask me to accept an invitation to lecture
in China. I explained I could not; he then, with references to Confucius,
Lao Tse, and Bertrand Russell, showed me that China was my spiritual
home; and when I persisted, ended by asking me if I would, at least,
give him a testimonial I explained that I could not and he left saying
that his invariable experience with Western scholars was disappointment.
Another gentleman came from France and was writing a book on Burke.
He had a list of questions most of which were quite unanswerable. One
was where there was inedited material about Burke. I told him of what
1 The Committee, under the chairmanship of the Earl of Donoughmore, was
to consider the powers exercised by Ministers by way of delegated legislation
and judicial or quasi-judicial decision. See "Report of the Committee on
Ministers' Powers (1932); Command Papers #4060.
2 Waldorf Astor (1879-1952), second Viscount; lover of horses, Astor was
the American-born husband of Lady Astor, Nancy Langliorne of Virginia
(1879- ).
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1195
I knew. He asked me for an introduction to the man who had certain
letters — a country squire in Sussex. I explained that I didn't know the
Squire and so could do nothing. He left, and four days later I had an
angry letter from the squire to ask why I had, a stranger, given X the
advice to visit him. I wrote back detailing the facts. The squire looked
me up and drew a quite marvellous picture of an angry Frenchman
shaking his fist at an English red-faced hunting turkey-cock and calling
upon him in the name of civilisation to let him have the letters. Re-
fusal of the squire. The Frenchman gets choleric and denounces him.
He gets so excited that the squire's wife comes in to see if her husband
is being murdered. She calms the man down and he suggests as a com-
promise that he be invited to stay in the house until he has copied the
letters. A polite refusal. "Sir" says the Frenchman as a parting shot, "I
shall ask Professor Laski to denounce you in every journal in England."
Then, kissing the lady's hand, he departs. Can't you imagine the mag-
nificent scene?
In the way of reading, I have not done much outside the sphere of
work. But I have enjoyed greatly re-reading Mark Patrison's Life of
Casaubon and Diderot's Life by Scherer — both of them, I think, tip-top
in their way. Diderot, I think, is quite the finest type of 18th century
man of letters. There is nothing of the monkey-tricks you get in Voltaire,
and not a trace of Rousseau's pathological egotism (you notice that I am
obedient and put in the t). He is always human and honest, and full of
suggestiveness. I read, too, with delight Ehrlich's Sodologie des Rechts
for the first time in ten years: in a way I think it is really incomparable.
And I read Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, at Diana's instigation, and found it
wholly delightful. It is a very pleasant experience to have a daughter
who begins to insist that you should know the things she is reading as an
intellectual obligation from parent to child!
I have bought very little — the catalogues as yet are pretty meagre
and what I have sent for has usually been sold. But I wish you could
see the Medici print of Vermeer's "Little House at Delft" which Frida
gave me — as exquisite a thing in the way of reproductions I have seen;
and she has had it framed in a copy of the original so that it is like a
jewel on my wall. I was pleased too by a letter from the Prof. Allen who
wrote that Sixteenth Century Political Thought saying that my review had
heartened him to go on at 70 with his book on the next age; and a Prof.
Wright of Columbia whose book on Rousseau I had reviewed wrote to
me to say that my praise meant more to him than anything he had re-
ceived. These things tickle my vanity as a scholar and make me feel that
I may not be wasting all my time. Also I have just had an order from my
publisher to prepare a fourth edition of my Grammar of Politics, which
is not bad for so vast a book in five years.
1196 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
I must not forget to tell you that I received £10 from Harcourt for
your Collected Papers. It has just paid the fees of a young man in an
evening school; and after a month bless me if he doesn't win its scholar-
ship to London University. Isn't that fine?
Our love to you in heaps. No day passes without our thinking and
talking of you. ^ours ever affectionately, H. ]. L.
Washington, D. C., November 22, 1929
My dear Laski: May this catch the mail, an inadequate answer to two,
as usual, unusual letters from you, against which I can set only a hasty
scrawl and the volume of dissenting opinions.1 Yet I have been nearer to
leisure than I often am — and yet again leisure is busier than business —
Endless bores by mail — people not bores but who took time calling. I
haven't improved my mind as I should — unless by writing a short dis-
sent from an opinion by McReynolds in which I am alone — Brandeis and
Stone concurring in result of majority on grounds that I think not fairly
open.2 I began Whitehead's Process and Reality, but apart from the fact
that I believe the line of thought would be one that I don't much value if
I understood it, I find W's vocabulary and mode of expression so difficult
that I doubt if I understand anything I have read. Yet he (W.) is an
extraordinary man — talks and can write with admirable clearness. I
guess it is carrying over mathematical habits into philosophical writing.
It is a great humbug to say that mathematics teaches accuracy or clear-
ness of thought. That is secured for you without effort because a is always
a and x = x — without any chance for an undistributed middle. So I
have interrupted one whom by faith I believe to be a great and good
man to descend to easier levels — like Huneker's Promenades of an Im-
pressionist — which gives me pleasure after the ineffability of the mod-
erns. Also I was pleased by a side slash at T. S. Eliot (poet and critic —
did you ever hear of him — I am told regarded by youth as its prophet)
in a periodical Life and Letters* which has good reading in it, and is sent
to me by Richard Hale. I have given up all subscriptions to periodicals
and take no newspaper — except by prescription, the New Republic, by
curiosity, Art — a modernist American quarto publication, oh yes and for
merit, The Geographical Magazine — though I haven't ever done much
more than look at the pictures — but I am not quite sure that that hasn't
stopped.
I was interrupted by a luncheon and a discourse to my secretary4 on
1 The Dissenting Opinions of Mr. Justice Holmes (Lief, ed.7 1929).
*Safe Deposit and Trust Co. v. Virginia, 280 U.S. 83 (Nov. 25, 1929).
SF. L. Lucas, "Criticism," 3 Life and Letters 433 (November 1929).
* Alger Hiss, who had graduated from the Harvard Law School in June 1929,
was Holmes's law clerk in 1929-30.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1197
our wish for local color and the old notion that poetical experience should
always be in general terms — the notion of France and England a hun-
dred and fifty years ago — illustrated by a passage from Dr. Johnson's
Life of Dnjden where he says that every reader would wish every phrase
of Dryden speaking of Oakum Tarpaulins &c. apropos of the English
ships after a battle, stmck out — or Legouve in his Memoirs (60 years)
when he says that when his father in a play made someone answer a ques-
tion as to the hour: "minuit" — they feared a riot in the theatre — (i.e.
he should have talked tall) contrasting this with BrowneFs "Bay Fight"
in which he uses oakum and boiling pitch with thrilling effect. But prob-
ably I have said the same things to you.5 It is an old lecture.
I think in these days often of the grace of an old man sitting in unpro-
ductive elegance awaiting death — but I can't do it. I should feel that I
was wasting time. I am glad that I can't wrap myself in self -satisfaction as
I have seen some do — but still people do and say pretty things to the
old man — and they are not all damned fools. It eases the passage. My
love to you all. Aff. yrs., O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 10.XL29
My dear Justice: A busy week and a quiet week-end spent in working off
the accumulation of book reviews I ought to have done long ago. I have
been to lunch to Sankey, settled a strike, dined and speechified to the
students of 15 universities, and written two articles. I feel extraordinarily
virtuous, especially as I have persuaded the P.M. to make a purely judi-
cial appointment in place of Carson who has just resigned from the
Lords.1 I am pleased about that, as I am very anxious that this govern-
ment should consider only legal eminence in making judges, and once the
tradition begins, it is difficult to depart from it. I was staggered by the
flood of letters the P.M. had from applicants, some even humiliating in
their tone of supplication. However, Sankey backed me like a Trojan and
I think we have got our way.
In the way of general news, I haven't much to tell, I went on Thursday
to the Commons to hear the great debate on India:2 one good moment
when Lloyd-George referred to the S. of State as this "pocket Moses,"
whereupon the latter got up and said with extraordinary effect "At any
5 See, supra, p. 785,
1 On November 11 Mr. Justice Russell, a Lord Justice of Appeal, was named
Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. Shortly thereafter he became Baron Russell of
Killowen.
2 The Debate concerned the possibility of conferring Dominion status on
India, a proposal which the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, had recently supported.
Mr. Wedgwood Benn was Secretary of State for India at this time.
1198 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
rate I never worshipped the golden calf." I thought L-G would faint.
After the intervention he simply petered out and had nothing to say. I
went also on a curious errand with Graham Wallas — to ask the Home
Secretary to bring in a Bill for the repeal of the Blasphemy Laws. We
could not get a Bill out of him on the plea of time, but at least we got
a pledge that while he was in office he would not allow any proceedings
under the Act to be taken. If, by the way, a book by one Nokes, The
History of the Law of Blasphemy should come your way, I think it would
really interest you for the curious light it casts on the history of opinion.
It also shows how little you can trust a judge who is arrogant in these
matters. In 1908 Phillimore, J. who was a churchman tried a working
man named Boulter for some remarks about the Virgin Mary. B. was
found guilty and the judge offered to bind him over if he would become
a Christian.3 B. accepted and went to church faithfully for three months.
Then, seemingly, the virgin proved too strong for him and he was again
guilty of verbal rape. So Phillimore gave him six months under the old
sentence and expressed his surprise that the man had been guilty of in-
sincerity. What queer people these Christians are. Phillimore would have
applauded a man who refused to turn Mahomedan to save his skin; and
with all his sophistication he cannot see the offence of which he is guilty
is really identical. Quantula Sapiential I quoted this case to the Home
Secretary, and after our talk was over his legal adviser asked me if I did
not think that Phillimore had really done the decent thing on the first
occasion.
I have read one or two things this week worth noting. One, a quite
charming book on Burke and the reaction against the 18th century by one
Cobban. He makes the good point that Burke was the first thinker to see
the significance of the nation; though, quite wrongly, I think, he blames
Locke and Hume for lacking that insight; it being quite clear that what
awakened Burke was the partition of Poland and the French wars. Then a
book evidently loudly trumpeted among you called The Tragic Era by
Claude Bowers. I thought it good reading, in the same way that Drury
Lane Melodrama is good melodrama; but I did not think he said anything
new or really explained the swiftness of the reconciliation between North
and South which is after all a very remarkable thing. I read also an ad-
mirable book on the sovereignity of the British dominions by A. B. Keith
— much the sanest pronouncement on the empire and its legal problems
I have read. That is probably because he agrees with some of my pet
theories thereon e.g. that there is no right of secession in law, and that
in a matter of foreign policy since the Dominion must consult the crown
through the S. of S. for the Dominions the King will clearly act on the
latter's advice and the predominance of England in the empire is there-
*Rex v. Boulter, 72 J.P. 188 (1908).
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1199
fore pivotal. But all this is small beer, though pleasant, and I must not
bore you with it. I read, too, a treatise by a Michigan professor named
Dickinson on The Equality of States in International Law which struck
me as good though too long and abominably over-annotated.
I have also bought some pretty things. First a nice folio of Suarez De
Legibus, which has given me very great pleasure. Then some 18th cen-
tury French tracts on toleration, called forth by a defence of S, Bartholo-
mew by an Abbe Caveyrac4 — one of them extraordinarily modern, pre-
dicting ( 1776 ) great discoveries in biblical criticism and urging that the
Church will only stultify itself by trying to preserve theories of the N.T.
which criticism will overthrow. Also a copy of Jourdain's History of the
University of Paris, a quite fascinating book full of curious learning and,
to my delight, a wonderful pendant to Haureau's "scholasticism"; but
even this man throws no light on my pet mystery of how Marsilius of
Padua suddenly emerges from nowhere in 1312 as Rector of the Uni-
versity of Paris. And I have a lovely copy bound in three volumes of
Savigny's Roman Law in the Middle Ages which pleases me specially
because it belonged to Jean Brissaud for whose work I have an admira-
tion little less than I have for Pollock and Maitland.
At the moment Frida and Diana are down by the sea for a week-end
of breezes. So today I got in for tea all the colleagues who bore Frida by
a too-great devotion to ors and the enclitic. In a way it was really very
funny. X cared only for the Tudor period and Y only for private interna-
tional law; Z was a statistician. Each was completely bored by the others
and it ended by my describing Sean O'Casey's new play5 to them all,
each terrified lest I should stop and one of the three get hold of the con-
versation. And I really suspect that each tried to outstay the others to
lament that they were terribly narrow specialists!
My love to you. I begin sittings on administrative law on Tuesday.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 17.XL29
My dear Justice: Let me begin with my bad news first. I shall not be able
to get to America in the Spring. My committee on delegated legislation is
to begin taking evidence in February and will be hard at it until August,
so of course I have to stay here and work at it. It is terrible luck; for I
had counted more than I can say on seeing you and Felix and having real
talk. It's also a serious financial loss to me, for I had reckoned on making
about four hundred pounds which would have corne very gratefully. But
4 The Abbe Jean Novi de Cavezrac (1713-1782) wrote several works defend-
ing Louis XIV for his revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
5 The Silver Tassie had opened at the Apollo Theatre in October.
1200 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
I saw the Lord Chancellor and the P.M. and they both insisted that I
must stay as it is a good deal my special theme and they seem to build
enormously on a good report from the committee. So there you are! I have
written a pathetic apology to Yale, but I don't see that I have any al-
ternative.
Felidora canamtts. I have been about a good deal this week. A jolly
dinner at the Webbs to meet General Smuts. He is a fine fellow in most
things, quick, vivid, shrewd. On the negro question he is very bad, talks
like a Southerner of the 'fifties and seems not at all to realize that segre-
gation is an impossible policy. But I should say that he is extraordinarily
wide-minded on other things, possibly also a little "slim"; he struck me as
curiously anxious to please. Also a very interesting lunch at the Admiralty
with the First Lord.1 Sailors are really interesting. They are, as I meet
them, all simple-minded, religious, semi-literate, and amazingly unadapt-
able. They are also as charming as they make 'em, but they never see
beyond their noses. No doubt they are technically superb; but they are
not statesmen in any sense; and the commonplaces of politics are tremen-
dous novelties to them. Then a jolly party at Sankey's where I met Arnold
and heard at first-hand all about you, He pleased me by saying that
Howard (the Ambassador) told the P.M/s party that 1720 I Street had
been his greatest pleasure in Washington. I think you ought to know
that. I went also to a lunch at Bernard Shaw's, chiefly amusing because
G.B.S. was exactly like a third-rate realtor at a Rotary Club engaged in
boosting real estate. I thought his antics quite incredibly vulgar; but the
rest of them seemed to think it a wonderful performance so that I am
probably excessively sensitive. It was amusing also to see how irritated
he was when anyone else had the lead in talk; he just forced his way
back, like a prima donna who frowns when the tenor holds the centre of
the stage. Of course he says remarkable things; but he does not know
how to stop talking., and he gets off his "prefaces" in talk — a bad thing
on principle I think, J. M. Barrie was there — like a little cock-sparrow
and about as intelligent. He lives in a world of completely arrested mental
development and lives by the human passion for fairies and syrup; but
why he should be taken seriously God only knows. He is just a public
schoolboy whose ideal is Sherlock Holmes and Philip Sidney and D'Arta-
gnan; and I imagine that he is just at the mental stage of feeling how the
nation depends for its salvation on resuming prayers at its mother's
knee. . . .
In the way of reading, I have one or two, special things to report. (I)
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms* one of the most remarkable war
1 Albert V. Alexander (1885- ), later Viscount Alexander of Hills-
borough; First Lord of the Admiralty, 1929-1931; Minister of Defence, 1947-
1950.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1201
books I have read. You will remember you read (and liked) Fiesta2 —
this has a stark brilliance which is really on the very threshold of great-
ness. (II) What the Negro Thinks, by R. R. Moton — the head of Tuske-
gee. This is a simple and beautiful book, quite devoid of bitterness, over-
optimistic I should guess in its estimate of the changing Southern temper,
but very moving. I was very struck by the fact that he emphasises his
sense that the Supreme Court is the one American institution in which
negroes have confidence as just (III) Verdross, Die Einheit des Vdlker-
recht — a really remarkable piece of work — legal scholasticism if you
will, much as Morris Cohen is scholastic, but quite brilliantly done. (IV)
a charming novel called Christopher [and] Columbus by "Elizabeth" —
it isn't new; it is sentimental; but it really is simple and effective and
charming.
I haven't bought very much, but I am waiting with anxiety for a
Suarez De Le gibus which I saw in a catalogue in Italy and still hope for.
I bought a very interesting book by one Vanderpol, a Belgian, called
La doctrine scholastique de la guerre which is tremendously suggestive
about all those XVI century Spaniards — an amazing body of people
whose superiority in power of analysis to Grotius is incontestable. And
then, out of piety for a great name, I bought for seven shillings the pub-
lished writings of Wyclif in 20 volumes. I am lecturing on him this term
and so I read, as a moral duty, the Trialogues. It is very able, but harsh
and crabbed and intolerably scholastic. Yet the sense of power and mo-
dernity that one gets are undeniably impressive. I think it could be shown
easily and truly that Wyclif was definitely utilitarian, and that he took
much the same view of the state as Hobbes did. But he must have been
a hopeless person to live with — a Philistine of Philistines. Did you ever
read the Life of him by H. B. Workman — a very good book.
We are all as fit as fiddles and there is no lack of work. I expect we
shall steal away to Antwerp after Xrnas for a few days. But, otherwise,
I shall be grimly here trying to stop bureaucracy in England. I do wish
I could have somehow slipped over to you. Perhaps Yale will be kind and
let me come a little later.
Our love to you — and forgive me.
Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 24JCI.29
My dear Justice: You have warmed my heart with that volume of dissents;
for though it is not very well done, and ought not to be dissents alone,
short of having the Supreme Court Reports (an unattainable ideal on a
professional salary) it has texts like Abrams and Lochner and Northern
8 The English edition of The Sun Also Rises (1926) was entitled Fiesta.
1202 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
Securities which I have long been eager to have. So I am really grateful
and pleased. Thank you.
A swift week has gone by full of work. The most interesting thing in it,
I think, was a jolly dinner with the Army Staff CoUege. (I had given
them a lecture on martial law.) They were a charming set of fellows, and
the talk was very good. The most interesting things were their affirmation
(I) that Haldane was quite unquestionably the greatest secretary of war
this country has ever had and (II) that a trade union official at the War
Office was invaluable because he understood, as no Tory ever did, the
esprit de corps of the Army. Then I went to Grand Night at Lincoln's Inn,
a little pompous and far too much food, but one priceless story which was
new to me and may be new to you. It appears that Phillimore, J.1 was so
ardent a Christian that he refused to sit in divorce cases on the ground
that divorce was wrong by Divine appointment. This was reported to
Bigham, J.2 who growled "what would Phillimore say if a Unitarian
Judge refused to sit in Admiralty cases on the ground that he could not
conscientiously associate with Elder Bretheren of Trinity House?" 3 Then
I had a sitting of my Committee on Delegated Legislation. Hard work;
but quite thrilling. I'm impressed by the fact that the barristers on the
Commission are ten times as quick as the solicitors in taking points.
Whether that is the result of court-work I do not know; but the solicitor
seems to waken to the point about seven minutes after it has been made
and buried while the barrister is on it like a terrier on a rat. Another
thing of sheer beauty is the way in which the civil servants on the com-
mittee play together as a perfect team. It is like watching a pair at lawn
tennis each of whom knows exactly what the other is likely to do. Last
night we had Judge Thacher of the New York District Court4 to dinner
— a charming fellow with all the right views (I mean my views) on
American legal matters. He told me some charming things about Cardozo
who is evidently quite hors concours among state judges — the best, I
1 Sir Walter Phillimore, Bart. (1845-1929), first Baron Phillimore; ecclesiasti-
cal and admiralty lawyer whose surprising advancement to the Queen's Bench
in 1897 was followed in 1913 by three years on the Court of Appeal, and by
distinguished service in the House of Lords and on the Privy Council.
3 John Charles Bigham (1840-1929), first Viscount Mersey, was named
judge of the Queen's Bench at the same time as Phillimore; in 1908 he be-
came President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High
Court, where his distinguished work was done in Admiralty matters.
aThe Elder Brethren of Trinity House are the Governors of the "Guild,
Fraternity, or Brotherhood of the Most Glorious and Undividable Trinity of
Stillement," an ancient corporation charged with licensing pilots and main-
taining buoys. The Brethren sit as assessors in admiralty.
* Thomas Day Thacher (1881-1950), judge of the U. S. District Court,
Southern District of New York, 1925-1930; Solicitor General of the United
States, 1930-1933; judge of the New York Court of Appeal, 1943-1948.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1203
should guess, since you were on the Massachusetts Court. I went also to
a lunch at the House of Commons to meet the Vice-President of the
Conseil d'Etat in France.5 I wish you could have seen him. He was exactly
like a turkey-cock, and, quite logically, when he spoke he goggled. I had
to interpret his speech and while I was doing so he sat back with closed
eyes as if in an attitude of prayer. But in sheer beauty of style and
diction I must say I have rarely heard a better speech. There was a
necessary character about each word that he used that left one in help-
less admiration. In that, I think, the French are unsurpassed. Then I had
a long afternoon with Sir Harrison Moore, the Australian judge,6 who
struck me as both pleasant and able. He came to consult me about the
Imperial Conference now sitting and whether a statute on the Colonial
Laws Validity Act was more desirable or no than a declaration or
constitutional convention. I told him to plump for a statute on the ground
that convention is always twenty per cent misunderstanding and that
this twenty per cent is always the really important part in a crisis. He
told me some weird and wonderful things about Australian Universities
which must be on about the level of Montana and Nebraska.
In the way of reading one or two things worthy of note. A very fine
war book by Robert Graves, An End to AH That7 with a brilliant satirical
picture of the English public school. Certainly the longer I live the more
hostile I become to it; and the last defence of it by the Headmaster of
Harrow who urges that it knows so well how to bring religion into the
lives of the best class of English youth.8 Then another novel by Ernest
Hemingway — Fiesta — a study of the rich American semi-intellectual
abroad. It is cruel satire, but it bears the stamp of a certain stark truth
about it, and its power is quite unmistakable. And the life of Rathenau
by his friend, Harry Kessler — an amazingly interesting record of an
amazingly interesting man. I knew Rathenau quite well for about six
months before his assassination, and it is extraordinary how well Kessler
brings the sense one had of power and spirituality combined. Lastly I
read with absorption F. L. Paxson — A History of the American Frontier.
It is badly written; but I must say it is simply thrilling, an epic in the
sense that the Odyssey is an epic. If you can forgive its aesthetic sins,
which are many, pray send for it to the Library of Congress. I won't say
that it gave me a new vision of America; but it made me put in light
and shade in many parts of American habits and institutions which I
had hitherto seen in quite uniform colours. A really good book.
5 Theodore Tissier (1866- ).
• See, supra, p. 1053, Sir William played an important part in the drafting of
the Statute of Westminster, which resulted from the deliberations of the Im-
perial Conference.
7 Good-Bye to All That; an Autobiography (1929).
8 Cyril Norwood, The English Tradition of Education (1929).
1204 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
I have only bought one thing — a copy of Bede's very rare answer to
Bellarmin on' the power of Kings in 161 1.9 It is a thing of real beauty —
first an exquisite piece of printing, and next adorably bound in a 17th
century morocco binding with the most delicate gold tracery in the
form of interwoven fleurs-de-lys. And all this enchantment for one pound.
Glory be!
I still chafe resentfully at being deprived of America — the more so
as I have had a mass of invitations this week — Columbia, Cornell,
California, which would have given me for very little effort about four
hundred pounds. Not to see one's best friends for the sake of duty — is
there anything more bitter in the second rank of loss?
My love to you. It is good to have you alive.
Always yours affectionately, Harold J. Laski
Washington, D. C., November 30, 1929
My dear Laski: It is a disappointment; but an earlier letter than this
(17.XL) had warned me that probably you would not come. I believe
that I have remarked to you before that at my age 6 months is like
an inch on a man's nose. But I will not bid you an eternal adieu, but
simply turn rny thoughts in another direction. I still may see you again,
somehow, after all.
Work has begun again — I mean work-work, not leisure-work, which
sometimes is the harder of the two. The first week, just finished, was
mitigated by Thanksgiving and the fact that four cases running turned
on a single point.1 I am afraid I haven't made the most of my time —
but I have read one book that I recommend: Geoffrey Scott — The
Architecture of Humanism — a short, well-written exposition of various
fallacies on the theme and a defense of the Roman as against the Gothic
product. Some years ago Spengler on the downfall of the Western world
cracked up the Baroque, as a transition to music — and Scott does the
same thing on solid architectural reasoning. It is a pleasure to my
ungenerous soul to see Ruskin's pontifical dogmatizing kicked in the
stomach. I once believed all that Ruskin said and like a little revenge
before I die. Apropos of your Smuts I told you last summer that his
effort to philosophize seemed to me rather empty.
Your letter praising Hemingway came just two days after his book
had come to me from Owen Wister — an aftermath of a Sunday spent
9 Presumably Jean Bed6 de la Gormadiere, Le droit des roys contre le cardinal
Bellarmin et autres Jesuites (1611).
1 This may refer to the issues involved in Safe Deposit and Trust Co. v.
Virginia, supra, p. 1196, and Farmers Loan and Trust Co. v. Minnesota, 280
U.S. 204 (1930).
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1205
here — (to our mutual pleasure — I hope). I doubt if I shall go as far
as you do — but Hemingway must be a clever writer for he interests
me when I can't see any reason for it (in The Sun Also Rises). Heming-
way, I believe, is something of an athlete and Wister writes to me has
been hurt lately in a bull fight — which seems good. I am told that he
is one of the heroes of the young — as T. S. Eliot has been. I don't yet
see the need to get very excited about him — but it is well to keep
one's mind open to the fashions of the day. Every fashion is beautiful
while it is the fashion. My assignment has come from the Chief Justice
and the next words I put on paper must be the beginning of an opinion
— I hope to finish it on the Sabbath. My love to you.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 9.XIL29
My dear Justice: I sent off to you today Robertson, History of Free-
thought as a Xmas present. I hope it will arrive in decent condition. I
know you will enjoy it, for a good vigorous rationalist treatise is a rarity
in these days of the new irrationalism.
Your letter was a delight; and I was particularly gratified by your
remarks on Whitehead's new book. It was sent me for review and after
going through it once I returned it. I can't say exactly that I could not
make head or tail of it. But I thought the price of admission excessive,
and certain parts, like the treatment of God, seemed to me as near
intellectual dishonesty as be damned. For Whitehead doesn't mean by
God anything that any theologian has ever meant, with the result that
he quite unjustifiably leaves an impression of a harmony between science
and religion which is only reached by making words, a la Humpty-
Dumpty, mean whatever he wants them to mean just by paying them
more. And the style seems to me excessively difficult. No! I prefer
ignorance if that is the cost of entrance to the philosophic fair. I wonder
whether even such an admirer of his as Felix would really justify this
book.
I have been pretty busy this last fortnight. A speech to the dining-
club of the Civil servants on "A certain condescension in civil servants";
a dinner with Snowden; a lunch with Webbs; and a dinner at the
Political Economy Club. Snowden was very interesting. He has a purely
Victorian mind. The simple virtues, economy, chastity, etc. are absolutes
for him and I don't believe his mind has ever wandered outside that
realm. A certain absence of reading apart, talk with him is very like what
it must have been with Mr. Gladstone. He spoke, for instance, of "the
moral obliquity of George Eliot," and was insistent that the best social
type is the contented workman who saves a few shillings a week. The
1206 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
Political Economy Club was also interesting. They discussed the coal
crisis, and they were exactly like a body of people reading Darwin for
the first time and being shocked at the abandonment of special creation.
It was striking to observe how very much better the economists were
than the business men. The latter were clearly unaware that they acted
on assumptions, and as each of these was brought to light in discussion,
its proponent promptly repudiated it with horror. What struck me very
forcibly was that the business man does not seek any conscious body of
principles. He clearly has a "flair" built on unconscious experience; and
the attempt to make those "flairs" into a reasoned argument, (which may
result in their destruction) simply makes him irritated. At the School
one feature was amusing. Our guests were my two colleagues who have
become ministers. The younger was so proud of it that he began by
saying "how difficult it is to return to the smallness of academic life after
participating in maintaining the peace of Europe" and proceeded quite
solemnly in that vein for twenty minutes. I had to reply to a toast of
the school and said that we professors, of course, knew that we were
worms in the presence of eagles, but we felt that, occasionally, ex-
crescences upon the social fabric were perceived by the humble worm
which were unseen by the eagle's soaring glance; that it was even possible
that in the long run people like Spinoza and Hegel, with no pretence
to statesmanship, might be remembered as not unworthy of a place in
the bead-roll of fame. Another amusing thing I have been doing was a
debate on the radio with a biologist on the respective power of heredity
and environment in relation to social policy. It was thoroughly enjoyable,
especially as the biologist was an extreme Nordic and enabled me to
ask him whether he really thought the race which had produced Dante
and Petrarch and Machiavelli was intellectually inferior to the English;
and when he argued that judicial ability ran in families and had little
or nothing to do with exposure to a similar environment, I really felt
that the Lord had delivered him into my hands.
In the way of reading, there are one or two things worth noting. First
of all Our Present Philosophy of Life by M. Belgion — a quite brilliant
attack on Shaw, Russell, Freud, and Andre Gide, done with a verve and
a gaiety that I think you would thoroughly enjoy. Then an excellent
French book Standards by Dubreuil,1 a study of the effect of American
mass-production on the psychology of a sensitive French craftsman who
had spent a year in Detroit. It is a masterly thing, and it suggests once
more the truth of my old hobby that if we want to avoid social cleavage
we must discover either (a) means of happiness in work or (b) means
of making the leisure-period creative. Otherwise the personality of the
worker is seriously frustrated and the result is an individual disharmony
1 Published in an English translation under the title Robots or Men? ( 1930 ) .
1929] HOLMES TO LASKI 1207
which will sooner or later find social expression. Third, Dibelius* England,
a translation from the German, a most interesting book, full of un-
expected and illuminating apergus.2 I believe it is shortly to be published
in America, and I hope greatly that it will come your way. Finally, let
me note a really beautiful little book by Lascelles Abercrombie, the poet,
called Romanticism., without exception, I think, the most subtle analysis
of the romantic element in poetry I have ever read. It thrilled me, and if
I can find another copy (it is out of print) be sure that it shall very
certainly wend its way to you.
I have also bought some pretty things. A nice copy of the Abbe"
Coyer's Bagatelles morales (1746) which conceals under that harmless
title a most excoriating attack on the moral and political standards of
the ancien regime. Two answers to Mariana's De Institutione Regis — one
a beautiful copy in red morocco bound by the author for presentation
to Richer, the Syndic of the Sorbonne. And an Apologie pour Jesus Christ
(1756) a brilliantly ironical defence of toleration in answer to the
general attitude of the Church circa 1750, done with a charming nastiness
that reminds one of Voltaire.
This is the last week of term. I have a really nice prospect ahead. A
month's vacation, for part of which we shall go to Antwerp, then a term
with less than an hour's work a day at the School, and the Sankey
Committee from February onwards. So, even though America has become
a dream, I shall have leisure to think and write for the first time since
September. But I hate giving up America. There were you and Felix
to see; I should have come back with £ 800. in my pocket; and I should
have been refreshed and beyond the reach of my political friends. Eheu!
Our love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C.f December 18, 1929
My dear Laski: This will not arrive in time to repeat my wishes for a
Merry Christmas but will I hope do so for a happy New Year. Yours
marked 9.XII.29 came today and mentions themes for speech. Evidently
you understand more than I do what Whitehead means to convey. I
simply don't know what the words as he uses them mean. However, I
think I am beginning to establish relations with him and I mean to read
to the end, at rather rare and interrupted moments. If as I take it he
conceives possible and probable another cosmic epoch with different
ultimates, that falls in with my ways of thinking (as to the possibility at
least). But I have got very little articulate from him so far, beyond
a belief that perhaps it is important. Felix wrote that he gave it up.
It is interesting to think of your dining at the Political Economy Club. I
Reviewed by Laski, 6 Sat. Rev. of Lit. 795 (March 8, 1930).
1208 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
went there with J. S. Mill and there were present Bramwell,1 Cairnes,2
Fitzjames Stephen, the blind Postmaster General (who wrote on political
economy or his wife did), Fawcett3 — I couldn't think of his name —
and curiously enough the talk then also was on Coal — whether the
financial policy of England should be governed by the prospective ex-
haustion of coal in H years as predicted by Jevons (not, I believe, the
political economist of that name).4 I ventured a whisper to my neighbor
that 90 years was too far ahead to take into account for such purposes —
so many things might happen. I remember that Stephen went to sleep at
the table.
As to the thinking of business men I used a phrase that has been a
good deal repeated — the inarticulate major premise.5
1 have encountered men like your colleague who having had a little
to do with public affairs found it hard to take up the smaller interests of
the law, etc. I want to say to them that everything in the universe is
as interesting as anything else if you are able to see it as a coherent part
of a possibly coherent whole — and if you don't see the universal in
your particular, you are a manual laborer and it doesn't matter.
On your (a) and (b) for workmen if we would avoid social cleavage
I feel some sympathy and some doubt — I am not well informed — but
I think more men live an essentially animal Me than you seem to think
— and I know no a priori reason or necessity for their not doing so.
My secretary has been reading to me Tom Perry's letter's6 — he was
a member of a dining club with H. Adams, Howells, W. James, and
various others and a very amusing talker but you realize the slightness
George William Wilshire Bramwell (1808-1892), Baron Bramwell; judge
of the Court of Exchequer, 1856-1876, and of the Court of Appeal, 1876-1881.
2 John Elliot Cairnes (1823-1875); economist and effective advocate of the
Northern cause in the Civil War, he was an intimate friend of Mill and Fawcett
and author of Some Leading Principles of Political Economy (1874).
3 Henry Fawcett (1833-1884); blinded in a shooting accident in 1858, he
became Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge in 1863, a member of
Parliament from 1865 to 1874, and Postmaster Ceneral in Gladstone's govern-
ment in 1880.
4 It seems likely that Holmes's recollection was wrong; in 1865, a year before
Holmes attended the dinner of the Political Economy Club, William Stanley
Jevons (1835-1882), economist, published his book The Coal Question: An
Enquiry concerning the Progress of the Nation and the Probable Exhaustion of
Our Coal Mines.
5 "The Theory of Legal Interpretation/' Collected Legal Papers, 203, 209:
"But although practical men generally prefer to leave their major premises
inarticulate, yet even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most
important thing in the end."
6 Selections from the Letters of Thomas Sergeant Perry ( E. A. Robinson, ed.,
1929).
1929] HOLMES TO LASKI 1209
of his intellectual frame as he talks on — to John Morse7 — Moorfield
Storey8 — W. J., S. Reinach9 et al. — at the same time very pleasant for
an idle hour. You mentioned sometime back, Farewell to Arms — bv
Hemingway. I couldn't quite use the superlatives that you and some
others have used about it — but it has some thrilling power. The author
interested me by the wonder that he raised in my mind, especially by
another book, The Sun Also Rises — as to why and how he interests
me — extremely ordinary people and extremely ordinary talk (noted with
great intensity, I admit) and yet I read on. He certainly is something of
a writer — whether a very great one I still doubt — as I, with due and
sincere modesty, doubt about the great lights among the modernist
painters — hastening to add that I have seen but little of Cezanne —
their goddest God. There is one of his things here that an expounding
admirer told me he had come to see more atmosphere and everything
else in than in any other painting. I know how dwelling with a great
master is necessary to get hold of him — and so bow my head — but
I haven't seen it yet — and the dwelling may distort. Perhaps the ad-
miration has a touch of what Tom Perry talks about — the hatred of the
20th century for the 19th just as the 19th despised the 18th. The reactions
amuse and interest me. I think I told you how pleased I was to read Scott
— Architecture — cracking up Palladian and the Baroque and putting a
spear into the side of Ruskin.
I have just today circulated a dissent from an opinion by McReynolds
— on the taxing power of the States under the 14th Amendment.10
McReynolds has the popular side — but to my mind it is another case
of treating the XIV Amendment as prohibiting what 5 out of 9 old
gentlemen don't think about right. This is a sequel to one that I fired
off at our last day of sitting before the present recess.
I think that perhaps I am more scrupulous than you in answering bores
that bother me with letters, or more likely, am slower in my work. I think
that I feel the constant gnawing of time — my secretary and servants
treat me as if I were porcelain and should chip if anything touched me
— whereas I inwardly believe that I can tumble (as I did last summer)
without breaking. I could say more on the theme but it isn't polite and
I may have said it before. The clock strikes 9. I must descend to solitaire
— as an old couple sitting near us at the Hague said as they left an
evening concert in the wood, "Goodnight pleasant people" — and I add,
dear friend. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
7 John Torrey Morse, Jr., supra, p. 972.
8 Supra, p. 758.
0 Solomon Reinach (1 858-1932 ); French archaeologist; author of Orpheus
(1909) and Apollo (1904).
10 'Farmers Loan and Trust Co. v. Minnesota, supra, p. 1204.
1210 HOLMES TO LASKI [1929
A theatre manager in Boston said to Salviiii:11 "I say old man — do you
want to be billed as Mons, or Sig." — pronounce as written. Do you
prefer to be addressed as Prof. H.J.L.?
Devon Lodge, 2S.XIL29
My dear Justice: You will forgive the intermission of a week. Quite
suddenly ten days ago the P.M. produced a huge document that Webb
had circulated to the Cabinet and asked me to produce a critical analysis
of it. The document turned out to be a proposed constitution for E. Africa
in general and Kenya in particular; he gave me until this morning to get
it done and if ever I have worked, I have done this last ten days. How-
ever I have enjoyed it; for I have slaughtered Webb out of his own
mouth and produced an alternative which is, I think, fairly respectable.
My one complaint is that Webb had 7 months for his job, and I only
had ten days for mine; he, moreover, will defend himself in person in the
Cabinet and I, poor soul, must depend on others to answer him back.
Still, it was great fun and I do not think the Lord will hold my draft
up against me at the judgment day. I observe that what Webb got
into 74 folio pages I got effortlessly into eleven.1
You can understand that, this apart, I have not done much. We had
a good dinner at Sanke/s, where Russell, the new Lord of Appeal (son
of R. of Killowen) was present. I liked him greatly, a thorough, down-
right kind of person, with just a faint trace of Irish tongue. Then a
lunch with Arthur Henderson, the Foreign Secretary, and much talk of
the Naval Conference.2 Evidently your people and ours are in pretty
general agreement; but the French, as at Washington nine years ago,
are proving very obstructive and Mussolini is terrified of any proposal
which may touch his prestige. Henderson told me a glorious story of a
priest who came to him in the Lobby of the House and said that the
B.V.M. had appeared to him in a dream to tell him (the priest) that
he should see Henderson and order him to resign. Henderson said he
would do so at once if the priest would bring him the orders in writing
as he thought such a document ought to be in the archives of the Foreign
Office. He told me also of a diplomat who asked permission to wear the
Order of the White Elephant from Siam and asked in what proximity it
should stand to the Bath. The F.O. official replied that questions of that
nature should be addressed to the Keeper of the Zoological Gardens.
uTommaso Salvini (1829-1915), Italian tragedian.
1 The government's plan for the administration of East Africa was published
in a White Paper in June 1930; Command Papers #3573, 3574 (1930).
2 The Four-Power Naval Conference was scheduled to convene in London
in January.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1211
Since I wrote last, as you will imagine, I have read but little. 1
ambled through Andre Gide's new book on Montaigne which I thought
good, but not so good as one had a right to expect, though the mere
beauty of the prose is beyond praise. I read, too, a pamphlet of T. S.
Eliot on Dante which had points but rather read like an indication that
no one had ever appreciated Dante before Eliot kindly gave his atten-
tion to Dante's reputation. And I read for the first time Shaw's Perfect
Wagnerite which I thought quite fiendishly clever and calculated to make
romantic Wagnerians burst with bad temper.
I have also bought some pretty things. The most interesting, I think,
is a collection in three volumes of contemporary criticisms of Montesquieu,
one or two really able, the rest the bad temper of the clerics and the
excessive royalists. Another is a book by the Abbe Coyer (fl. 1750) on
a plan for national education which has wisdom of a high type and is,
I think, not improbably the main origin of Condorcet's famous report
to the National Assembly and a third is a charming trifle by Ginguene
(1789) on the influence of Rabelais on the French Revolution, a plea that
R's temper is the kind of way in which Frenchmen can best hope to get
their quarrels settled. I had also sent to me a weird book on Nature in
the Age of Louis XTV which, so far as I can make out, is an argument
that because La Fontaine and others mention gardens and flowers and
rocks the classical period must be regarded as definitely romantic. And
a business man of the type who, alas, insists on philosophising sends me
400 pages, beautifully printed to say that the important social forces are
organisation, stimulation, modification, reputation, radiation, idealisation,
and a lot of other words like this. I believe he thinks it dreadfully
important for he encloses a registered envelope to acknowledge its
receipt and a questionnaire about it which the hapless recipient is
supposed to answer. And in the index I observe "Lester Ward — errors
of," "Darwin (Charles — no longer highly regarded)," "Garcke (Emile)
(the author)3 — importance of the discoveries of." Do you have this type
of amiable idiot in America?
We are off on Saturday for ten days in Belgium. I am looking forward
hugely to it, as we hope to steal two days in the Hague and Amsterdam
and see the pictures there. I have fallen so completely in love with
Vermeer that I feel as though I would go almost anywhere to look at
them. Frida, too, is captivated and as I cannot enjoy things unless
she shares in them, I am full of excitement about it.
Private: I had got so far when the telephone went and I was summoned
to see Sankey at his house. I find that I have got to write a memorandum
8 Presumably Emile Garcke, coauthor of Factory Accounts, Their Principles
and Practice (1902).
1212 LASKI TO HOLMES [1929
on the place of an economic general staff in the structure of government.
As I believe there is no place for it, and have so written at length in my
Grammar of Politics, and as S. tells me that the P.M. thinks it one of
the great ideas of all time, it looks as though I have a difficult task
ahead. However, I have stipulated that it is not to interfere with Xmas,
and my holiday, and perhaps in the excitement of the Naval Conference
I can be supremely critical without causing undue pain. I do wish
politicians were not so surrounded with a chorus of adulation. Any fool
could show that MacDonald's idea is administratively unworkable; but
he invited a dozen economists and business men to discuss it, and as he
indicated that he thought there was something in it, they seem to have
persuaded him that it was to politics what relativity is to physics. And
I, poor soul, have to provide the cold douche. It's a hard life.
I had a golden account of you from Nevinson who dropped in to
tea this afternoon; and he gave me good news of Felix. It only made me
resent the more this postponement of my visit. But Yale writes very
charmingly that it may want me next year.
Our love to you in a quite special way for 1930.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
\ Devon Lodge, 28.XII.29
My dear Justice: We are off tonight to Antwerp; but I must send a word
of thanks for that card1 It is my favourite Meryon of all Meryons, one
that I should have been born thirty years earlier in order to purchase.
Now, as I expect you know, it has a supreme collector's value.
Xmas passed very happily here, and it was at least sufficiently peace-
ful to enable me to get a good deal of quiet work done, book reviews,
brief articles, and so on, that had hung on my hands for weeks and
called out in reproof. Also I have been working at a public lecture I
have to give next March on Babeuf, a thrilling subject, for there is the
real origin of Bolshevist strategy. It's an incredible thing to watch the
daily movement of a man quite incapable of first-rate thought, who is
yet a real pioneer in action. Of course he was hopelessly wrong in all his
theoretic ideas, Rousseau and gunpowder for the most part. But he had
learned the tactical errors of 1789-1794 with something like the insight
of genius and he had seen, what no one else saw until Blanqui and
Marx, the supreme importance of the idea of a dictatorial law-giver in
The Social Contract. I can, I think, make a pretty piece about him. At
any rate you shall see one day.
Of other things but little that it is worth while to record. A young
French professor of law came to see me who pleased me by talking with
1 The card referred to is missing.
1929] LASKI TO HOLMES 1213
enthusiasm of you and Morris Cohen and Felix's articles on the injunc-
tion,2 and by being severely critical of Pound. He was a pupil of Brissaud
and talked of him much as I should tallc of Maitland. I was pleased, too,
with a young Cambridge man who was at work on Elizabethan political
thought and had done what I think the best book I have ever seen on
Erastus.3 He was so excited by his theme that he could not keep still
and marched up and down my study like a caged tiger. He was full of
the muddle caused by the Protestant theory of natural law, and when
I showed him your paper thereon, he gave a whoop of joy. I found that
he read Spanish and hope to grab him for a book on my pet hobby —
the Jesuit jurists of the 16th century who seem to me, especially Suarez,
about the biggest product of that time. And I had an amusing Xmas
call from the Prime Minister who came, I think, to tell me that he was
a very great man, that all his critics misjudge the quality of his thinking,
and that nothing interests him save the public good. I suggested that
such knowledge must give him immense satisfaction and felt that he
was rather like the Indian sage who spent his declining years in the
solemn contemplation of his own navel.
Of reading apart from Babeuf not very much. The Autobiography of
President Coolidge which was sent me for review, but I thought it better
to return it lest my affection for America led me to say things the law
of libel does not permit; but to you I can perhaps whisper that the more
I think of Coolidge the more I like Hoover. I read, too, for, I think,
the seventh time, the Life and Letters of Darwin, perfectly monumental
and quite the noblest record of a man's life that I know in print. His
inexhaustible patience and his modesty are really beyond words; and
his attitude to Wallace,4 compared to the Newton-Leibniz row (the
only comparable thing) makes one humble in his presence. Above all
the reverence for fact is amazing, and the power to concentrate, and
the pride in other men's achievement. I wish I could feel that the
abridgement in one volume were always read in the schools in the last
year. It would do infinitely more good than most attempts at the
improvement of youth.
Well — here for the moment I must end. Once again my love, as
always, and a New Year as bright and peaceful as ever I can wish you.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
8 Frankfurter and Greene, "Labor Injunctions and Federal Legislation," 42
Harv, L. Rev. 766 (April 1929); reprinted as concluding chapter of Frank-
furter and Greene, The Labor Injunction (1930).
8 Not identified.
* Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), British naturalist whose coincidental
suggestion of the principle of natural selection was based on independent
study in Brazil and the East Indies.
VII
9 3 °~ J 9 3
Devon Lodge, 18.1.30
My dear Justice: I ought to have written to you earlier. But when I got
back from the Continent a week ago, I was caught up in a whirl of
work from which I have only just emerged. I think I told you that I had
at the zero hour to do a draft constitution for Kenya. I came back to find
that Webb (who is Secretary for the Colonies) was bitterly hostile, that
Sankey was all for my draft, and that there was a grand fight in the
Cabinet. I had to prepare a vast memorandum to answer Webb's points,
and, what with the inevitable labours of a new term, it has taken all my
time. You will forgive.
We had a great ten days abroad. First we came back with some etch-
ings that would thrill you. One of boats at Nieuport; they lie at anchor in
the harbour, great massive things which seem straining at their cables to
get away. Oleffe, the artist, whom we had not seen for six years, had it
waiting for us as a gift when we called upon him. . . . We went to the
Hague, Amsterdam, and Brussels, and I was, at the end, almost drunk
with Dutch and Flemish pictures. I like them beyond all others. They
are so warm and intimate and tender. The Vermeers especially seem to
me the top of artistic creation — exquisite simplicity and yet the experi-
ence of all the ages made manifest. It was curious to come back and see
the Italian exhibition.1 I liked enormously the primitives, and one or two
Moronis. But taken as a whole, alongside the Flemish, it seemed to me
cloying as art, too sweet, and too consciously elegant. Great things of
course; but they were lost in and dwarfed by the myriads of second-rate
things. The Dutch have them beaten to a frazzle. Perhaps I think thus
because I like art that clutches at your innards by its power to show that
simple and obvious beauties, the average bit of daily experience, lies at
the centre of ultimate aesthetic principle, that rightly seen, the peasant
in the field, the maid in a room, the merchant at his desk, are part of the
infinite glory of whatever God there be.
Of other things, too, we drank deep. Talk with painters into the small
hours; music; and bookhunting. Could one ask more? I add that I hereby
declare, being in full possession of my faculties, that the opera is an im-
possible form of art. It is stilted, it cannot create the necessary illusions
(Brunhilde at 50 and sixteen stone!) and it perishes of its own absurdity.
The artists are great fun. Rabelaisian talk, but coming back always to big
themes, and caring deeply about ultimate principle. Old Ensor, the big-
gest fellow in Belgium today (do look at the book on him by Gregoire
Leroy, I expect in the Library of Congress) made one point to me that
I had not seen before. The Dutch, in the arts, have done everything
supremely except sculpture. There they have not even produced the
second-rate. Yet, as today, they are head and shoulders above normality
1In December an exhibition of Italian paintings had opened at Burlington
House.
1218 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
in architecture. Why? I must add that you would have been intoxicated
with me by Walter Vaes* collection of old ship models — a Spanish
schooner of 1610, perfect in condition, a Salem frigate of 1770, an Eng-
lish seventy-two of 1692, with a beauty of line and colouring quite be-
yond words. It was a feast for the eyes, and I came home as from an
enchanted land. And ten whole days free of politics, in which they were
really reduced to the perspective they ought to have, was refreshing
beyond words.
I got back on Thursday week and spent two days with my people in
Manchester. I met Alexander the philosopher there and was delighted to
find him wrestling grimly with Whitehead's new book. He says he is at
the fifth reading and that light begins dimly to dawn for him. I have tried
it twice; but I find it complicated beyond endurance and I am afraid
that I am cowardly enough to take it for granted henceforth. Alexander
says it is infinitely worth while whence I infer that I am mistaken. But
Hume upset the world with a book I can understand as I move, and I
don't see why Whitehead should not take the trouble to do the same. Of
other things I have read one or two worth telling. I liked Edith Wharton's
new novel, Hudson River Bracketed, a good picture of a perennial prob-
lem. I liked also Tomlinson's All Our Yesterdays which I beg you to
read. It seems to me quite unquestionably a classic, and I should enor-
mously like to hear just what you think of it. I read, too, a clever book
by a Belgian professor. La pMosophie du droit positif — one Dabin —
an able defence of a modified Austmianism such as you would like. But
he is also a Catholic, and it was amusing to note how medieval natural
law would creep in every so often with the shy gait of a lady who knows
that her virtue is suspect but who cannot avoid the temptation of a pro-
fessional smile. For the rest, I have been bound grimly to work in the
way of books, though as I am lecturing on the 18th century this term it
is all pleasure. Never have I had the same sense of Burke's greatness;
never also of the queer combination of greatness and muddleheadedness
in Rousseau. I wonder if the misfit in the latter is the effort to be Mon-
tesquieu and Plato in the same book. There are things that otherwise, I
find quite inexplicable; for relativity in institutions and an absolute pat-
tern of the ideal do not lie easily in the same truckle-bed.
I have not brought much in the way of books save modern things. I
had one big disappointment in Antwerp — a marvellous Suarez which I
would have leaped at were it not that one volume was lacking. I bought
a queer answer to Mariana which I had not previously seen and one or
two pretty imaginary voyages of the 17th century, and, in its small way
a prize, a first edition of Smith's De Republica Anglorum for five Belgian
francs. But in general the Belgo-Dutch shops are cursed with the new
mania for modern first editions got up on marvellous paper. Imagine
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1219
paying £25. for Maurois's Shelley or £30. for a decorated poem of
Valery's. Yet that kind of thing seems the rage just now. Let the printer
give you immortality if you cannot win it for yourself.
Our love to you. Brandeis writes us that he has never known you in
such good form. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 251.30
My dear Justice: A week of pleasant work, varied by a visit to Norwich
where I had to make a speech. I went, too, to hear the inauguration of
the Naval Conference, but though the eloquence was terrific I did not
hear anything definite said. I went also to the House of Commons to hear
the second reading of the debate on the private members Bill for the
repeal of the Blasphemy Laws.1 Though decent liberty won, the debate
was really appalling. Not one person who spoke knew the actual law;
and the arguments against the Bill sounded Kke an excerpt from one of
Calvin's sermons. And the fiercest opposition of all came from Eustace
Percy who showed quite peculiar ignorance and obstinacy. His main
argument was that this Bill would render religion inaccessible to children;
why, God knows. Other members suggested that Tom Paine and Renan
were obscene. Another was fearful of the danger of reprints from Renan
and Voltaire. Another still suggested that no one had the right to publish
anything offensive to Christians. The idea that Christians are not estopped
from publications offensive to other people did not seem to enter his
head. I came away feeling that people who really care for tolerance must
be a special species of the human genus. We also have had a very pleas-
ant dinner-party with much talk about you from a clever young lawyer
(Haldane's nephew) who has been reading your dissenting opinions. He
was immensely taken with Adair and Lochner and Abrams, and amazed
that you were not speaking for the Court in the last case. I explained that
you were speaking for the Court of the next decade.
In the way of reading, one or two things are worth remark. Norwich
sent me to Thomas Browne whom I had not looked at since I was a
schoolboy. Much the same feeling as being in a ducal house and using a
napkin made of gold brocade. Very beautiful in spots, but not, I think,
for daily consumption. I read also the Macaulay history again. It is great
narrative. Except for the artless charm of Herodotus, and certain high
moments of Thucydides (e.g. the Melian expedition) no one has ever
touched his continuous level of narrative power. But I think he has two
great defects. He isn't interested in ideas. I don't mind his bias, probably
because I share it. But I think a page of Thucydides or Polybius gives you
ten times the amount of insight that Macaulay supplies. Mentally he was
1 The proposed repeal did not occur. See, supra, p. 1198.
1220 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
the man in the street with a genius for telling a tale. But I don't think he
explains. I guess that if he had lived to get from 1702 to 1789 he would
not have given one any sense why men thought differently in 1789 from
what they thought in 1702. He would have had a chapter on the State of
England in 1789 and have rested quite content in the belief that a state-
ment of difference is an explanation of difference. Then a volume on
Franklin by a Frenchman named Fay, first edition of 75,000 copies which
made my mouth water, for I could almost pay off the mortgage on this
•house with royalties like that. And yet I thought it poor stuff, and infinite
accumulation of detail, not all of it illuminating, and much of it quite
unnecessary to leave a complete portrait. Queer thing that fureur de
I'inedit, and that belief that ten quotations from contemporary news-
papers make a statement ten times more true than the one artistically
right quotation. I read also G. Chinard's Jeferson which I thought quite
good, but with the same faults as the other book. When I think of what
Sainte-Beuve would have done with that material! And I read a work
on the Reconstruction period called The Tragic Era by one Claude
Bowers which did not make me content. He seems to think that the duty
of the North in 1865 was to apologise to the South for the war; and he
suffers from that Democrat-complex of the distressed Southern gentle-
man whose one dream had always been the noble treatment of the negro.
A queer type of history that. From what he says, a war was an unneces-
sary luxury in which the North indulged because it was jealous of South-
ern intellect. I had not known that view could still exist in an average
intelligent man. I have not, alas, found anything to buy, and I think I
shall reserve myself for Easter when I think of having a week in Paris
with a colleague. I have been hard at work writing — a lecture on Babeuf
which I have got to print, and two brief papers for a German book which
I promised to a very nice young privat-docent in Berlin. Did I tell you
of the visit I had from a Russian jurist with a quite unpronounceable
name who spoke no language I know and with whom I had to converse
in dog-Latin in this fashion: "Sententiam aevi Justinianis ut jus sit quod
jussum est non mihi credere potest." Silence. Then he, after tremendous
mental effort: "Cur?" Then I: "Jussum nudum nihil est: relato inter con-
sensum populi et voluntatem rei publicae substantiam juris gubernat."
It was a great game ending "0 Collega, gr alias ago tibi" etc., and a
mutual wonder whether either of us had had the remotest idea of what
the other had been talking about. He came from the University of Tash-
kent — of which I had, alas, never heard, in the Caucasus and spoke of
"quinque centum liberi" which I think he would translate as five hun-
dred students. I add that when he left, my nerve gave way and I laughed
until I cried.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1221
I have had a jolly call this week from Sprague the Harvard economist2
who is joining the Bank of England as American adviser. He told me that
Sam Morison is now widely spoken of as Lowell's successor — an appoint-
ment which would be really admirable, though he had no news of
Lowell's will to retire. And he drew a very pleasing picture of Felix's
influence in the Law School as easily pre-eminent. He spoke warmly too
of Mcllwain who is, it appears, writing a history of political philosophy,
which is great news.3 He left me with a volume on symbolism by White-
head which I read without being very impressed.4 The part on politics
was neither original nor convincing. I gave him in return a manuscript of
John Stuart Mill and told him that I was returning good for evil.
Our love to you as always. I am very anxious for news of you. By the
way, I must not omit to tell you that my brother is taking silk in the next
batch of K.C.'s — not bad, I think, at 39.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 2 .11.30
My dear Justice: I like the bust a great deal.1 It is a little severe, and the
curl over the forehead is somewhat exaggerated; those things apart, it has
vividness and life in it. But you do not say who did it. Years ago, I re-
member that there was a Russian 'girl, Paeff, or some such name, a friend
of Felix's, who wanted to do you. Is it by her?
I have been fairly leisurely at work, with some real time for reading,
though next week my government committee begins in real earnest and I
fear that leisure will fade away. We have had one or two jolly evenings.
Alexander the philosopher spent a night here, full of the greatness of
Whitehead's book, and insistent that it is the biggest thing in English
philosophy in modern times. I asked him his views of the Americans, and
was glad to hear him say that inter vivos he reckoned Morris Cohen easily
the first. Then we had a dinner for Sankey and much legal gossip. I asked
him why Sumner had resigned so suddenly at 71 — comparatively young
a Oliver M. W. Sprague (1873- ), Professor of Banking and Finance at
Harvard from 1913 to 1931, was Economic and Statistical Adviser to the
Bank of England from 1930 to 1933.
8 C. H. Mcllwain, The Growth of Political Thought in the West from the
Greeks to the End of the Middle Ages (1932).
* Alfred North Whitehead, Symbolism, its Meaning and Effect (1927).
1 A letter from Holmes in which he enclosed a photograph of a bust, prob-
ably done by Serge Konenkov, is missing. For a photograph of the bust see 31
Col L. Heu. opposite 349 (March 1931).
1222 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
for a law lord.2 It appears that S. has been bitten by the desire to make
political speeches, as he thinks the country is going to the dogs; I don't
know why. Years ago he was a sound radical, very hostile to the excessive
influence of the aristocracy; but this seems to be replaced by an almost
gnawing fear of taxation and the sense that he must go out on crusade.
His successor, Hugh Macmillan, is the big man at the Bar since Simon
retired from practice and has a great reputation. I asked Sankey if he
would consider L. Scott when another vacancy occurred; but it appears
that the bench thinks him, though an excellent fellow, too long-winded
and slow. I'm sorry for I think he has deserved much more recognition
than he has received. I also had a good time at the Prime Minister's to
meet the Frenchmen, Tardieu and Briand.3 The first — did you ever meet
him in Washington in the war — I thought brilliant. He is a little "slick,"
and nothing is really quite so clear-cut as he sees it. But for power of
statement and incisive response I should rate him very high. Briand is,
of course, incredibly subtle, Balfour with twice the charm, thrice the
wickedness, and N-times the gentle malice. He seems to me rather exactly
what Renan must have been like — delighting in nuances and the deli-
cate art of putting pins into flesh too obstinate to creep. He said of Daudet
the scallywag son of Alphonse (the great Monarchist Anti-Semite) that
they let him return as the number of Jews in Brussels was not enough to
cause him pain,4 Of Paul-Boncour,5 the socialist lawyer (who has the
largest practice in France) he said that he was so eloquent that he was
twice in danger of convincing himself; 'luckily his wife is a practical
woman." Of Lloyd-George he said that he makes one realise how much
one must lose to be sincere. I am afraid that MacDonald lost most of this
as he speaks no French, and to watch the genial irony in Briand's eyes
when MacDonald uttered some idealistic banaltte was a joy beyond
words. ... A malicious old devil, but extraordinarily fascinating.
In the way of reading one book above all which I recommend most
earnestly to you. It is England by W. Dibelius, published in New York
sjohn Andrew Hamilton (1859-1934), Viscount Sumner, had been a Lord
of Appeal in Ordinary since 1913; the Dictionary of National Biography indi-
cates that his resignation in 1930 was caused by ill health.
3 At this time Andre Tardieu (1876-1945) was Premier, and Briand Foreign
Minister. They were attending the Naval Conference in London.
4 Leon Daudet (1867-1942), Koyalist editor of Action francaise, following
his escape from prison had lived as a refugee in Belgium until January 1930,
when the President of France, Doumergue, had pardoned him.
5 Joseph Paul-Boncour (1873- ), lawyer and statesman, later was Premier
and Foreign Minister; author of Entre deux guerres; Souvenirs sur la troisieme
Rtpublique (1945),
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1223
by Harper, I think it is superb, really the best thing as a portrait that I
have seen. It is quite admirably translated, and unlike most of its kind,
goes along as easily as a novel. Please don't omit at least to look at it, for
you will, I am sure, be really entranced if you once begin, I have also
read an excellent book on Bayle by a young Frenchman, Lacoste. I must
say he attracts me more and more. I do think he wrote the Avis au
refugies and that his concealment was unjustifiable, but, that apart, I
think him big in everything except his timidity in saying outright that
Spinoza was, with Hobbes, the biggest man of that generation. I also
reread the Fable of the Bees for a lecture in an edition by an American
scholar, Kaye. I don't know a better piece of scholarship of its kind. Liter-
ally everything one wants between the covers, and yet nothing of the
pedantry which so often disfigures an apparatus criticus, I also read a
very interesting treatise on French constitutional law by Hauriou. Curious
in the complete mental difference from Dicey. You would not think they
were discussing the same fonds at all And his own comments show that
he himself, having read Dicey, was completely bewildered by "L'empiri-
cisme anglais." He can't understand a constitution which lays down no
general principles and is not, so to say, out there to be philosophised
about. He wants metaphysics and can't find them in Dicey and is clearly
genuinely upset. But he certainly made some very shrewd points against
Dicey's view of droit administratif, and, I think, altogether destroyed the
old man's complacency about our rule of law, I wish Dicey could have
seen the five hundred pages of evidence on delegated legislation and
administrative jurisdiction the departments have sent in to our Commit-
tee. I should like to have heard his comments, especially the complete
absence of rules of procedure in administrative tribunals except at the
discretion of the minister. All this kind of thing is worked out in detail by
Hauriou and I think the general line he takes quite fair.
In the way of purchases I have not much to tell. A pretty copy of
Bynerstoeck to complete my set of the supreme people in international
law, and a nice Viollet which I wanted badly as I had not the first volume,
for some reason very rare. But, as I think I have told you, I save up for
Paris next month.
Our love, as always, to you. Don't, please, overdo it while the Chief is
away. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., February 14, 1930
My dear Laski: To write to you I rise from a bed of pain — no — not
exactly that, but from a reclining chair where I have intended to divide
the afternoon between slumber and listening to Walpole's Letters — a
1224 HOLMES TO LASKI [1930
most delightful occupation for the moments between vacuity and thinking.
For I am resting after a slight bellyache and its concomitants last night,
that I am inclined to attribute to overwrought intensity of work earlier in
the week. I had to write a letter of farewell to the late Chief Justice on
behalf of us all,1 and at the same time felt bound to assign to myself a
patent case that I thought no one wanted.2 That doesn't sound much —
but it was on my nerves until I got them both done. The answer came to
me from the Chief today, this morning being the first time that he was
well enough to sign since the day our letter was left at his house, and I
have my opinion back from a majority agreeing to it. I guess the others
will — and that the defeated side will apply for a rehearing hinting that
we don't understand the patents and that the application will be denied
in the belief that we damned well do. But I am just emerging to sunlight
so to speak — and haven't done much. I have spent an hour or two on
a French translation from German of Arthur Drews: Le mythe de Jesus.
Within the last year or two I have read one or two other books on that
subject which I am surprised to find that I have to take seriously. It is
very interesting, although of course I don't care personally whether J. C.
really lived or is the product of a Cnostic Myth. I have several things on
hand when I can get at them — inter alia a volume of Henri de Regnier's
poems — to see if I find in him what I generally miss in the poetry of the
musoos.3 But I shall not accomplish anything serious in my few free
moments — even when I am relieved from presiding by Hughes who to
my great satisfaction I learn today is confirmed by the Senate as C.J.
Extraordinary what people will say. Is it politics and dishonesty from a
man who knows better — or credulous prejudice? A senator said to be
able, &c., talked about Taft's resignation as compelled and part of a politi-
cal job! Yet — by an unspeakable brutality there was in one or more of
the leading papers a photograph of him caught between the train and
his house — with every spark of intelligence gone from his face. He has
recurrences when he is more or less himself, but I imagine has no pros-
pect of life, or reason to desire it. Hardening of the arteries and other
troubles, I understand. We shall miss him much — but I shall welcome
Hughes as an old friend. I was too old to be thought of and I should not
have wanted the place for the same reason. I have got beyond the time
when anything that anybody can give me will satisfy or even gratify my
ambition. The only thing that could be given at an earlier stage was
*On February 3 Mr. Chief Justice Taft had resigned from the Supreme
Court. He died on March 8, 1930. For Holmes's letter see 2 Pringle, The Life
and Times of William Howard Taft (1939) 1079.
2 Minerals Separation Corp. v. Magma Copper Co., 280 U.S. 400 (Feb. 24,
1930). No petition for rehearing was filed.
8 The volume of verse by Henri de Regnier (1864-1936), symbolist poet,
has not been identified.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1225
opportunity and that I have had. I haven't yet heard whether you have
received and like the photograph of my bust. I think it flatters and it
certainly pleases me.
I read Bowers* Tragic Era last summer and probably mentioned it.
Your comment is just, and all the villains are republican, and the south
and democrats saints. I believe he is to write the life of Beveridge — and
I am somewhat doubtful whether Bowers will help Beveridge's fame. I
have not yet seen Wu — who has been in Chicago and is now I suppose
at the Harvard Law School. I gather that he has been warmly received
and made a very good impression. I hope this will catch tomorrow's mail
— but fear. Ever affectionately yours, 0. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 17.11.30
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you warmed my heart. But no
colds, if you please! At this time of the year they are terrifying. Let me
put right at the top of this letter my really good news. Yale has asked me
to go there next year and I have definitely accepted. No government
committee on earth is going to interfere with this plan, so please expect
me in Washington for your birthday dinner on March 8, 1931. And I am
already excited about it.
I am full of work, but always pleasant and attractive. The committee
on administrative law is now hard at it, and we meet for three hours each
week. Curious how men define themselves on a committee with the job
of analysing a problem. There are, I think, two main divisions, the slow
and the quick, the people capable of ordered questioning, and those in-
capable of it. The classes aren't identical. Leslie Scott, for instance, is
very slow, but his questioning is very good, while the M.Ps question
very quickly but jump from place to place. I have been to a number of
dinners. One, which Sankey gave to all the Labour peers (15) was most
amusing. I had never dined before with a whole party. Taken as a whole
they were intellectually good second-class, and about as conservative as
a scattered handful of the Harvard faculty. The talk got on to Robes-
pierre and I wish you could have heard the glorious and adorable igno-
rance of the French Revolution put forward with a solemnity only
equalled by the solemnity with which it was received. The collective
wisdom of the fifteen had never heard of a single historian since Taine
and even Tocqueville was a person who meant nothing except to Webb.
We had a jolly dinner here for Nevinson, to celebrate his return from
America. He is in good form just now and told some adorable anecdotes
of his early days. Particularly good was a tale of Ruskin to whom he took
a child's drawings. Ruskin looked at them with grave solemnity and said
that they were above all remarkable for spiritual profundity! I had to
1226 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
lunch the counsellor of the Russian embassy,1 a clever young lawyer who
told us amazing adventures during the Revolution. One tale is worth
repeating. A peasant bought a horse and found that to work his farm
properly he needed another. So he sold his son o£ 18 and got another
peasant's horse in exchange. But this died within a week, so he sold his
wife to the same peasant for a horse and cart. She died of influenza and
the peasant who had taken the wife then sued her husband (the first
peasant) for the return of the horse and cart. The Soviet Court decided
that the cart must be returned but that public policy demanded the re-
tention of the horse as its new owner was using it to good advantage!
In the way of reading, there are one or two things I want warmly to
commend. I do urge you to read Humanity Uprooted by Maurice Hindus,
a very remarkable study of the psychology of the new Russia which I
thoroughly enjoyed. Then Felix's book on the injunction which I thought
most illuminating, though rather long and a little over-equipped with the
scaffolding of research. I read Maurois's Byron, very pleasant and charm-
ing, not the Byron I know, but a really clever picture. An excellent book
by C. D. Broad called Five Ethical Philosophers, a study of Spinoza,
Hume, Kant, etc., extraordinarily vivid and subtle and honest. If it comes
your way I am sure you will like it, if only for the wit with which it is
spiced throughout. I also read a vast book by one Catlin of Cornell which
in nearly 600 pages tells one that politics is the science of power and that
men are most anxious to get power if they possibly can — a not very
illuminating result after 600 pp. of enquiry.2 I add an attractive French
book on Bayle by Lacoste which brings out the scholar's personality in a
very attractive way. There ought to be a good English book on Bayle
and undergraduates ought to be taught to regard him as a landmark.
I shall be interested to know what you felt about Hughes's reappoint-
ment I did not share the objections I saw voiced by the New Republic*
as I believe him to be an honest and able man, and I don't find myself
bound to dislike an appointment because I dislike a man's views. But
I am sorry for the precedent which allows a man to get off the bench,
try for the presidency, and then on failure, get put back again as a reward
for political services. Also I think the C.J. should be chosen from among
the men on the bench; it ought to be a recognition of quality of work
done there. I hope there is better news of Taft. I always had a real
affection for him in the days when I saw something of him.
In the way of purchases I have one or two pleasant things. A very nice
Vattel which I rather cherish because it belonged to Stowell and was
given to him by Eldon, and I thought that really rather a good bargain for
1 Dimitri Bogomoloff.
2 George Edward Gordon Catlin, A Study of the Principles of Politics ( 1930).
8 61 New Republic 310 (Feb. 12, 1930).
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1227
fifteen shillings. Then I got a pretty volume Les plagiats de /. /. Rousseau
in which the critic, a Jesuit, shows not without real skiD how much of
Rousseau is stolen from Locke without due acknowledgement.4 And I
bought at auction, with very great pleasure, and for £ 5, a complete set
of the Harvard Law Review down to 1920, so that with a very small
outlay I shall be able to bring it down to date. And a very nice copy of
Mirabeau's Ami des hommes which I bought for ten shillings and found
to my complete and astonishing joy to be worth about twenty pounds.
Blessed are the searchers for they shall be rewarded for their industry.
You will be amused to know that I have brought down on my head
the angry temper of all the free thinkers in America. I reviewed Robert-
son's Free Thought and said that he praised Ingersoll excessively, that
Ingersoll was a "clever rhetorician but hardly either an original or a pro-
found thinker." 5 So letters pour in telling me that Ingersoll was a kind
of rationalist Jesus who changed the face of the world. One angry gent,
told me that Ingersoll was one of the four greatest men who ever lived
— the others being Washington, Lincoln and Edison! O God, O Mont-
real.
Our love to you both now and always.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. G., February 27, 1930
My dear Laski: As usual your letter (17.11.30) suggests many themes for
discourse. As to Hughes I was more pleased by his appointment than
I could have been by any other. I took luncheon with the President and
Mrs. Hoover last Sunday and she told me that the President would have
liked to appoint me &c. &c. but thought that I ought not to be burdened
&c. &c. It is true that I did not want to be, and no longer care for any-
thing that anyone can give me. I never did very much. I would rather,
I say in all seriousness, have your article in Harper's than the Chief
Justiceship.1 That and a few other things like it are the only rewards except
the work. I don't so much mind Hughes having left the Bench and coming
back. Lots of our judges have had the presidential bee and as to appoint-
ments by way of promotion I should adopt no formula. I thought when
White was appointed that every judge except McKenna and me with or
without his concurrence had a claque that was urging his merits. If
4 Les plagiats de m. /.-/. K. de Gendve sur Teducation by D.J.C.B. [Joseph
Cajot, 1726-79] (1766).
5 The review has not been identified.
*"Mr. Justice Holmes: For his Eighty-Ninth Birthday," 160 Harpers
Magazine 415 (March 1930); reprinted in Mr. Justice Holmes (Frankfurter,
ed., 1931).
1228 HOLMES TO LASKI [1930
Hughes could have been appointed then as was expected (but it was said
that the opposition was too great) I think the history of the Court's doings
would have been better than it is.
Later — Coming home this p.m. Brandeis spoke of the beauty of your
article — and others have done so. As I wrote to you before I shrink from
speaking yet and almost from reading it — for fear that it should some-
how vanish — or you take it back.
Wu is in Cambridge and has sent me his photograph and a bit of auto-
biography, compiled he says at the request of Wigmore, I felt bound to
write to him a letter that may destroy his regard for me, noticing the good
opinion he seems to have of himself and cautioning him not to take too
seriously compliments paid more readily to a visiting foreigner than they
would be to a chap working his way up from the bottom here. More
especially did I end on that while philosophic generalization was the last
reward of serious work it also was the escape of people who weren't
willing to tackle the details &c. &c. I may be all wrong — but I have
felt as if he was dodging the grind of life and as if I shouldn't do the
square thing unless I said a word. But I hated to — perhaps he will ab-
solve me from all further responsibility and repudiate me, my ways, works
and machinery. I don't believe he will — but if he does, then I owe him
no more. Poor little cuss — there is a naivete in the way in which he
repeats the not too many compliments that he has received, that rather
goes to my heart. I think I may have mentioned IfHomme blanc —
Souvenirs dun Pierrot — par Le mime Severin. That is the last illustra-
tion of the lesson I should like Wu to learn — the very severe training
that Severin went through and believed necessary to become what he was
— and clever young men and women in Paris that said, "Oh, no — feel-
ing is the thing, and if you have talent you can do the trick." I did delight
in Severin's scorn of such. Probably I have quoted to you the artist Bill
Hunt's remark to a pupil: "Oh I see, you want to do something damned
smart, right off."
We are sitting — and I have been busy from 9:30 to 6 which it now
is. I propose now to extend myself in a reclining chair and let my secre-
tary read Horace Walpole's Letters — from now till I sleep or go to
dinner whichever first happens. Afectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 22.11.30
My dear Justice: If my reckoning is just, this ought to reach you in Wash-
ington on or about your birthday. So it brings you all sorts of affectionate
good wishes from us both. If you will look in Harpers Magazine for
March you will find my birthday present. I hope it will give you half an
hour's pleasure. It was difficult to put the joys of fifteen years friendship
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1229
into words; but I hope some faint emanation of my pride in you is there.
The week has gone abominably quickly. Monday night, a gloriously
funny dinner at Sankey's to meet all the Labour peers; the S.G.1 and I
the only commoners present. Feelings on my part (I) that they are
a damned poor lot as a whole (II) very conscious of their dignity (III)
terrified that the Lords may one day be reformed and they disappear.
The one really bright moment was when Earl Russel 2 said to me that
Bertie (his brother) was not yet up to the family average in wives. He,
I gather, has had three; and the last ("Elizabeth") refused to divorce
him on the ground that it would be unfair to other women. I went also
to a jolly lunch given to young Broglie,3 the French physicist who got
the Nobel prize. About a dozen were there, and I had the sense of being
in quite a new world from our own. Immense ambitions freely expressed,
but always selfless ambition; passionate reverence for a good piece of
work; enormous pride in clarity; and utter lack of anything like worldli-
ness. It was a great moral lesson to sit and take note of the types one saw
there. They were all great men in that ultimate sense of having surveyed
some fragment of the unknown horizon; and yet not one of them cared for
the kind of glory by which the politician lives. A good essay lies buried in
this theme.
Of reading some pleasant things and some unpleasant. The Mauritius
Case by Jacob Wassermann, an immense and powerful German novel,
hardly inferior, I think, to Dostoieffski Catlin's, Principles of Politics, a
gift, and bad beyond words — the kind of book which makes 30 pages
of real stuff into five hundred and decks it out with innumerable quota-
tions in a dozen languages to convey the appearance of profound erudi-
tion. Maurois's Byron, which is quite charming and for the likes of us
who don't want innumerable details about the way he cut his nails, amply
sufficient A good law book by C. K. Allen of Oxford — Law in the
Making — which would, I think, give you pleasure if you have time to
glance over it; it isn't original, but is a real cut above books like Holland
and Salmond which in England have so long done duty for jurisprudence
And it marks the fact that the reign of Austin in English circles is over,
that people actually are beginning to realise that Gierke was an important
person. Then Vinef s Pascal which I had never read before — an exqui-
site book, I should say the best ever written on him, tender, delicate, with
a genius for the right phrase and a subtlety of insight I should not have
expected outside Sainte-Beuve. And there is a certain stark beauty in
1 Sir James Melville ( 1885-1931 ).
2 The third wife of Earl Russell (1865-1931) was the Countess Russell
whose novels were published under the pseudonym "Elizabeth."
8 Louis Victor, Prince de Broglie (1892- ), in 1929 had received the
Nobel Prize in Physics for his formulation of the theory of the wave character
of electrons.
1230 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
Vinet's style which, perhaps fancifully, seems to me to mark the differ-
ence between the pliancy of the Catholic and the sterner demand for
principle of the Protestant. It turned me back to Pascal himself. I could
write a book about him which would begin by recounting how mathe-
matics was to take a great step forward, ethics to have another Spinoza,
when the damned Church came along, and, as always, ruined a great
mind by sacrificing balanced happiness to the morbid pleasure of medi-
tating on damnation. If the Russians are persecuting the Churches (which
I doubt) it is a poor little tit-for-tat for fifteen hundred years* misshaping
of human character.
I have bought some pretty things. A nice first edition of Rousseau's
Letter to D'Akmbert which pleased me because some advertisements of
Rey the publisher enabled me to send a half-column note to prove that
Dufour's account of what he took to be the first issue is wrong4 and that
mine is earlier than the one he described by three weeks. I don't know
why on earth this should give one pleasure but it does. Then a nice first
edition of Harrington s Oceana was given to me by an old student and I
therefore sold my own copy and bought a superb Savigny which would
make you green with envy at its appearance. Frida says that anyone who
dresses so well as its seven volumes must be of doubtful virtue, but it
really is superb. And an unexpected cheque arriving I bought the bibli-
ography of Mamrinades done by Moreau seventy years ago and have by
careful annotation found out who wrote most of the originals I possess
or the part of France in which they were written — an amusing occupa-
tion. I had a great triumph in a bookshop by knowing the real first of the
Leviathan — and the bookseller was so grateful that he gave me — I
repeat gave — a copy of Winstanley's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire
on which see Gooch, Democratic Ideas in the 17th Century.
That, I think, is my tale for the moment. But the main thing is your
birthday. We shall drink your health here in the one bottle of Clicquot
1911 we possess.
My love as always, Jours ever affectionately, E. ]. L,
Devon Lodge, 2.IIL30
My dear Justice: Harpers were really wicked to send you an advance
copy; I intended it to reach you on your birthday. Let me say only that
if the article gave you half an hour's pleasure, I am happy indeed. It was
a joy to write it, for I had long wanted to proclaim some such feeling from
the house-tops.
4 See Correspondance generate de J.-J. Rousseau (Theophile Dufour, ed.)>
vol. IV (1925), pp. 25-28. Marc-Michel Rey (1721-1780) was a Swiss printer
in Amsterdam who was a friend of Rousseau and published the first editions of
many of Rousseau's works.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1231
The days have simply flown this last week. A visit to Oxford, a lunch
with Dwight Morrow1 (a good fellow), a dinner with Miss Haldane, and
a reception at the Foreign Office, beside the usual round of work and
committees have taken up time. Oxford was very pleasant. It was amus-
ing to be treated as an "authority" by undergraduates and so to realise
that my vanity was tickled; and I had some pleasant talk with Holds-
worth who, if dull, is full of knowledge. I learned from him one tale
which is a pearl of price. Jenks, whom you know, applied to Birkenhead
when the latter was Lord Chancellor to be made a K.C. In reply, he got
the following letter: "My dear Jenks, In 1897 you gave the present L.
Chancellor a second in the B.C.L. In 1898 you gave a second also to the
present Vinerian professor.2 These are, I think, sufficient honours for a
single lifetime. Yours faithfully, B". A superb letter, I think, which only
Birkenhead would have the intolerable audacity to write. I saw also
Herbert Fisher who told me (and it pleased me) that almost the last time
he saw Leslie Stephen the latter told him that his happiest memories
of America were some talks with you. Dwight Morrow I liked greatly,
and he told me the secret history of his Mexican negotiations which were
genuinely medieval in character. At the Foreign Office I saw a multitude,
but the outstanding person was a young Spanish lawyer who shared all
my interest in, and enthusiasm for Suarez and Co. and we talked in a
corner for an hour. I was amused by an American there who told me that
if ever I went to Washington he would be glad to give me an introduction
to James Brown Scott 3 who had great influence and might do something
for me; and by a Japanese who told me, in their gloriously flowery way,
that my books had been "the revered companions of his weeks and
months/' Miss Haldane showed me some interesting letters from Asquith
to her brother written in the early 'eighties and suggesting the Woolsack
as the one thing he coveted. As you know, he could have had it twice in
after years and refused it, a queer thing, for he would almost certainly,
with his lucidity, his conciseness, and his gift of phrase, made a great
Chancellor; and I remain convinced that he was not a good P.M. a fact
which, I think, Haldane brings out very well in his Autobiography.
In the way of reading, there is not much to tell. At Arnold Bennett's
request I tried H. James's Golden Bowl and found it quite intolerable,
long-winded, precious, and absurd. I stuck about p. 50 and gave it up.
1 Dwight Whitney Morrow ( 1873-1931 ), lawyer, banker, and diplomat, had
been made American ambassador to Mexico in 1927, where he had skillfully
settled hostilities between the Mexican government and the Roman Catholic
Church. At the time when Laski saw him in London he was attending the
Naval Conference.
2 Sir William Holdsworth.
8 James Brown Scott (1866-1943); diplomat and prolific author on problems
on international law.
1232
LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
But I read for the first time Peregrine Pickle, and thought it adorable,
especiaUy the interleaved Memoirs of a Lady of Quality. Amusing to
note how pure beauty in distress is a kind of standing exhibit in English
fiction and does not appear in the literature of any other country. Then
an interesting book by one Proal on the medical history of Rousseau. It
is pretty clear that today a fairly simple operation on the prostate gland
would have cured most of his problems. And a very good book on Des-
cartes by Gilson of the Sorbonne — the clearest explanation I have seen
of exactly how Descartes is differentiated from the medieval people with
a careful account of the way in which the new approach was gradually
victorious. I have kept the best to the last — a novel by P. G. Woodhouse
called Jill the Reckless which you must have read to you over solitaire.
I picked it up on the station at Oxford and laughed until I cried in the
train. It isn't new, but of its particularly English type of nonsense-humour
I can only describe it as supremely excellent.
I have bought one or two books which have pleased me. A nice Mme.
de Stael on a bookstall in Caledonian Market for two shillings in 7
morocco bound volumes, and a very pretty Turgot. But in one respect
my heart is broken. There turned up at an auction a fine set of the Year
Books on which I bid twenty pounds; it brought £75 as two American
libraries fought one another for its possession. I daresay their need was
greater than mine, but they have permanently ruined the market by run-
ning up the price like that.
I have one literary tale to tell you which you will like. You know that
recently all BoswelFs mss turned up, to everyone's amazement as Malone
said quite specifically that B. told him "they were all burned in their box."
Now a young lecturer after reams of discussion whether Boswell deceived
Malone, or Malone made a mistake, and half a dozen such things, comes
along and suggests (I) that Malone wrote not burned but buried.^ (II)
that he did not dot the L (III) that the printer read it as "burned" and
as Malone was dead no one could alter it.4 As the mss did turn up in a
box, the lad is, I imagine, obviously right, and I think it the best emenda-
tion since Theobald got the "babbled" into the description of Falstaff's
death. Don't you think so?
I am sending you separately a little book on the Age of Reason in
which you will find a lecture of mine.5 Most of them, I fear, are pretty
obvious; but I think you will find some novelties in the lecture on Hoi-
bach and Helvetius.
4 See Private Papers of James Boswell from the Malahide Castle ( Scott and
Pottle, eds., 18 vok, 1928-1934).
5 The Social and Political Ideas of Some Great French Thinkers of the Age
of Reason (HearnsLaw, ed., 1930). The introductory lecture, "The Age of
Reason," was by Laski. The lecture on Helvetius and Holbach was by W. H.
Wickwar. .
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1233
Our love to you. Keep well and let Hughes relearn the habit of work.
Ever yours affectionately, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 16111,80
My dear Justice: I have had a busy time since I wrote last, including three
days in Newcastle, arbitrating eight industrial disputes. I don't know
anything quite so difficult as to sit for eight or nine hours without making
any observation which indicates your point of view. But I got through
them with the help of some novels, and came back feeling like a tired
God. I have also spent some time helping a little at the Naval Conference.
That led to a pleasant dinner with George Rublee1 and D wight Morrow
who both gave me some pleasant personal news of you; and I went to
see Briand for the P.M. and came away feeling that I had been talking
to an incarnation of the whole eighteenth century. Briand is diabolically
clever, utterly cynical, and with all that hideous French logic which so
often and so utterly misses the point of life. He said many clever things,
and he seized my own points with remarkable quickness. But he never
sought once to relate his view to mine. We were always driven back to
his premise which was a sacred cow not to be milked. I got, moreover,
the impression that he was too old and tired to care very deeply what
might happen. George Rublee, by the way, said one thing that interested
me, that Stimson would have been much more valuable as a delegate here
if they had brought along Felix as his aide; for Felix was the one person
who could make Stimson a first class man by his own perceptiveness. Of
other things, I have had two or three meetings of the Donoughmore
Committee,2 always interesting, and a discussion of the future of the
Spanish monarchy with a group of exiles which was like nothing so much
as a page out of a Dumas novel. I had Manley Hudson and Borchard
(of Yale)3 to lunch; the former I thought rather pompous and absurd,
though he passed some strictures on Pound which interested me; Bor-
chard I thought both learned and charming, and capable of passionate
feeling on the remoter issues as when he launched into a fierce denuncia-
tion of Brandeis for his attitude to the declaratory judgment.4 And, by
the way, Brandeis sent along a charming St. Louis journalist to see
1 Supra, p. 111.
2 The Earl of Donoughmore was Chairman of the Committee OB Ministers'
Powers.
8 Supra, pp. 897, 964.
4 In a number of cases Mr. Justice Brandeis had indicated that the judicial
power of the United States did not extend to the issuance of so-called declara-
tory judgments; see, e.g., Willing v. Chicago Auditorium Association, 277 U.S.
274 (1928). Professor Borchard was crusader for the declaratory form of
judicial relief; see his book, Declaratory Judgments ( 1934 ) .
1234 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
us (name, alas, forgotten)5 who was a specialist in Holmesian lore and
would, I believe, have passed a joint examination from Felix and me —
perhaps the supreme test. I must add the visit of a Spanish professor who
was researching into Tudor England, felt it his duty to vindicate the
character of Bloody-Mary. I explained that I had not the least objection
to his vindication of her or anyone else. He then said that it was under-
stood in Spain that Englishmen felt very hostile to her and he did not
want to accept my hospitality under false pretences. Could anything be
more charming? Imagine my explaining to an American host that I
intensely desire to vindicate the memory of Chester Arthur and must be
received only on that understanding. It is at least a fine gesture as an
exordium.
In the way of reading, there are one or two things I must mention.
First, Maurois's Byron is both charming and competent and I hope you
will trifle with it. For me at least it explains one side of B. I have never
understood, namely his persistence in cruelty. Its weakness is that it does
not make you see why the kind of man he draws should have swept over
Europe like an event. Then a book Ne Obliviscaris by Lady Frances Bal-
four which amused me beyond words. She is the daughter of the Duke
of Argyll who wrote that Reign of Law which might compete for a place
in the list of the hundred worst books, and a sister-in-law of Arthur
Balfour. What is thrilling in the book is its tone. She always refers to her
father as his grace, to the Queen et al. in terms of Majesty. She describes
the people outside her cenacle of aristocracy as "George Meredith, later
well-known as a novelist/' or "Rodin, who obtained fame as a sculptor."
She talks quite seriously of "Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland who has a
secure place in history as a hostess" and of "one Richard Jebb who was
admitted to society on account of his eminence as a scholar." When an
English aristocrat is an unconscious snob, she can, I think, make the art
reach a level to which no other people can even hope to attain. I spoke
of her to Mrs. Asquith the other day, and she told me that Lady F. never
forgave her husband for admitting a "workman" to the cabinet. The
"workman'* was Lloyd-George who at the time was a solicitor. Evidently
below the bar one ceased to be a gentleman. Is it not as I say, superb?
She remembers what she wore at dinners and how she dealt with recal-
citrant servants. If I could have forty pages in the Quarterly Review
about her and string some quotations together, I verily believe I could
make her immortal. I also read a book Sam Morison has edited on Har-
vard in the last half-century6 which brought back some very pleasant
5 Charles G. Ross ( 1885-1950 ) was chief Washington correspondent for the
St. Louis Post Dispatch, 1918-1934. In 1945 he became Secretary to President
Truman in charge of press relations.
8 The Development of Harvard University, 1869-1929 (S. E. Morison, ed.,
1930).
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1235
memories. I note with interest that whereas Eliot seems to have found
Harvard men to build with, Lowell's Harvard choices have been people
like Harlow Shapley7 and Haskins whom he has brought from outside.
I must add one thing upon which you are not to comment. Brandeis
and Cardozo, JJ. have written to me letters about that Harper piece of
mine which could not be more kind had I written about them. And, Miss
Haldane wrote to me to say that her brother would have endorsed every
word of it.
My love to you, as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., March 27, 1930
My dear Laski: You do write such delightful letters that I blush to think
what a poor return I have made. Especially in these later days. But I am
and have been pretty constantly driven. I have had (entre nous) a most
important case on the withdrawal of water from the Great Lakes to
write1 — more certioraris than you could shake a stick at — answers
to birthday letters — more than 200 have been despatched — and every
morning an hour's work imposed on me mostly by bores. This morning
just after I had sent round my opinion the C.J. came in for me to write
two little fellows — as it seemed necessary from the division of the Court.
But I must at least begin an answer to one received this morning with
several matters that I can't keep quiet about — (1.) your admirable
statement of "that hideous French logic which so often and so utterly
misses the point of life." I often have made the same reflection less hap-
pily expressed. (2.) But before I go on let me tell you with what delight
I read your Introductory Chapter on the Age of Reason. It is admirable,
(2.) [sic] I was going to express my joy over your Spaniard and his
scruples about accepting your hospitality until he had explained his atti-
tude to Bloody Mary. That and the enchanting account of Ly. Frances
Balfour tend slightly to illustrate my axiom that a gentleman can't be a
philosopher (or a philosopher a gentleman). But (3.) I didn't suppose
that it still was possible for anyone to write in the tone of the lady as you
quote her. The world changes very slowly — you optimists must remem-
ber it.
Just here Gerrit Miller and his wife came in and cut this short for I
want it to go in the morning. I feel as if I had not written for a thousand
years. I read to Miller the passage about Ly. F. Balfour — saying as
above that I shouldn't have thought it possible — whereat he reminded
f Harlow Shapley (1885- ), the distinguished astronomer, had been
called to Harvard in 1921 from the Mount wSson Observatory in California.
~* Wisconsin v. Illinois, 281 U.S. 179 (April 14, 1930).
1236 HOLMES TO LASKI (1930
me of an English translator of the Malleus Maleficarum writing well after
1900 exactly as he might have written when the original work came out.
That also was incredible but there it was. I must add that your article in
Harper seems to have made a stir among people who are impressed
by the beauty of the writing. The other day on motion of Mr. La Follette
it was printed among the Congressional documents.2 I remember feeling
very proud when a speech of mine was printed there — but that was on
Cabot Lodge's suggestion — whereas I suppose La Follette is a stranger
to you as he is to me. Owen Wister was here on Sunday and has sent me a
life of Lafayette — 2 vols. by Brand Whitlock — which he found inter-
esting. The 'Parker House sends a history of itself with some old Boston
in it that really drew me from duty for a few minutes & Miller wanted
to leave a book about Casanova in London which I declined being too
balled up — I fear that you don't care for Casanova — one of the best of
books. Miller also showed me a lot of modernist etching and lithographs
which didn't hit me hard — He said they were trying to do something
new — ancj that to repeat what had been done was a bore. I told him I
thought it better to keep on the old paths unless one really had something
new to say — which reminds me of Joyce's Ulysses — of which I have
read a few pages. I read in the New Republic that Joyce was a great poet
— or at least a poet. He may be, but he has such an abnormal hankering
for nasty words and disgusting thoughts that I don't expect to read more
than a specimen. I should think there was something wrong in his nut.
But I must go to bed. Good night
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 6.IV.SO
My dear Justice: A delightful and welcome letter from you reminds me
that I have not written to you since I returned from Paris. I had ten
ecstatic days of sunshine there. Each day I hunted books; each night I
dined and talked until the small hours. Except the politicians, whom
I studiously avoided, I saw nearly everyone I wanted to see — finrile
Meyerson, the philosopher, Lapradelle, the international lawyer, Andre
Gide the novelist, Halevy the historian, and critics galore. The best night,
I think, was one where I dined with half a dozen of the critics, and we
fought the battle of romanticism all over again. You cannot even imagine
the passion it engendered. That Racine and Bossuet and Boileau were the
2 On March 8, following a birthday tribute to Holmes by Senator Walsh of
Massachusetts, Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., of Wisconsin moved that
Laskfs article in Harpers Magazine^ "Mr. Justice Holmes: For his Eighty-
Ninth Birthday," should be printed in the Congressional "Record. See 72
Congress. Rec. (71st Congress, 2nd Session), part V, p. 5008.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1237
essential France; that Rousseau and Mme. de Stael and Hugo perverted
the French genius; that only a return to the qualities of the 17th century
can restore the greatness of France — these they maintained with a vehe-
mence I cannot produce in it. I caused what I can only call consternation
by arguing that classic and romantic are false antitheses — that each is
a requisite of intellectual health, that romantic sensibility made men see
beauties worth seeing and never before seen, that an affirmation of per-
sonal experience as valid against the tradition is one of the ways of adjust-
ing that tradition to new wants which must find response. One excited
soul got up and said I was a traitor to the Hellenic spirit — that I had
been willing to conspuer the sacred beauties of France. Another argued
that only by fidelity to the classic tradition could we distinguish between
true and false, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness. For another still
classicism was reverence, self-restraint, discipline; for another still, the
monarchy and the church, parents of French glory. I asked if between
1830 and 1930 I could be given one Frenchman of genius who had dwelt
in the classical tradition — answer in the negative. I said that if a century
could not create in a tradition that meant its exhaustion as a vehicle of
expression. Answer, let us be exhausted, but let us at least expel from our
literature alien elements which corrupt the purity of our spirit. I wish you
could have seen it all. Life being sacrificed to logic with a glorious dis-
regard of everything significant in our time that made me feel as though
I was dwelling with the last of the Mohicans. I was interested to find that
Meyerson had a tremendous respect for Morris Cohen and an equal con-
tempt for Bergson. And Gide tried to explain to me that James Joyce's
Ulysses was a European portent; to which I replied that the willingness
to write the vocabulary of the latrine in a book did not seem to me epoch-
making. I was impressed by the universal commendation of Ernest Hem-
ingway, whom all the critics I saw regard as the promise of America, with
dos Passes a very close second. But what is striking, and, I think, a little
painful, is that the American writers they know are chiefly what I may
compendiously term the anti- Americans. People fifteen years dead they
do not know at all; and people I regard as important, like WiUa Gather,
they do not know because she only depicts America and does not criticise
it. Much the same is true of their attitude to ourselves. They translate the
precious and the esoteric; they hardly know what is central and explana-
tory. Indeed I should be tempted to say that they read foreign literature
in order to thank God they are not as other peoples are. But they retain
a marvellous power of discussion for the glory of discussion. They have
their sects and chapels, but they feel that intellectual differences really
matter. That makes them nearly as delightful as they are insular and
wrongheaded.
My book hunts were adorable. I bought a good deal, mostly the essen-
1238 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
tial contemporary criticism of Montesquieu, which has, I think, an un-
explored import in the light of 1789. ... 1 got, too, some nice law
books, and a pretty collection of first editions of the Physiocrats. So, alto-
gether, I came back really exhilarated and ready to cope with life.
Since then, I have been at committees and doing a good bit of writing
— all in a leisurely way. I dined the other night with Dwight Morrow
and we condoled over the fizzle of the Conference. I had here a good
fellow named Ross, of the St. Louis Post, a friend of Brandeis's who was
able and attractive. A friend's wedding, at which I saw Blunden, the best
of our young poets, who told me that he would die happy if only he could
be certain that he would have a chance of telling God his frank opinion
of him, and an amusing tea-party at a musician's in which people cursed
each other in ten or eleven languages and confided in me about the de-
merits of one another as musicians. I found that all went well so long as
I said Bach at stated intervals. Frida fared less well, for she speaks
Swedish like a native and found a lonely Swedish pianist who confided
to her the intimate history of his three marriages and the difficulty of dis-
covering a petite amie in England who could talk English to him. He
even hinted that if she were available * * * . Frida, I thought, got out
of it well by saying that he ought to consult her husband on the point.
I was pleased — vain creatures that we are — by Senator La Follette's
action about my article. But even more I have been touched by the
number of Americans quite unknown to me who have written me notes of
thanks about it. Clearly to be your friend is to be the friend of people who
care for what is best in American life.
Our love warmly to you. From now on I venture to resume weekly
discourse. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
April 18, 1930
My dear Laski: A wonderfully interesting account of your jaw with the
mussoos about classicism and romanticism, etc. Of course they seem to
me as to you ridiculous. But that we must discount, for it means that you
and I tacitly assume our aesthetic ultimates to be valid against theirs.
I think they are because I think them founded on a wider view — but if
the Frenchmen think not, we can't patronize them before a dispassionate
tribunal, although of course we do between ourselves. I often think of
the way our side shrieked during the late war at various things done by
the Germans such as the use of gas. We said gentlemen don't do such
things — to which the Germans: "Who the hell are you? We do them/*
There was no superior tribunal to decide — so logically the Germans
stood as well as we did. That case reminded me of a cause celebre in a
yearly collection that used to be put out by Albert Bataille from the
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1239
Figaro.1 A duellist was tried on the ground that he had done a forbidden
thing — grasped his adversary's weapon — and a lot of experts testified
that that couldn't be done. Then a lot of duellists went on the stand and
said that is a fencing school rule — when you go on the ground you go
there to kill the other man and may do what you can. Probably I have
told you of this a dozen times before, as it is a stock illustration of mine.
But to use another stock phrase inverted — you must deal with friends
as you do with great men and let them bore you if you want to get the
themness of them. I agree with your French philosopher whose name I
can't read as to Cohen — and in a less certain degree as to Bergson. As
to Ernest Hemingway, perhaps — Dos Passos I know only by name.
Willa Gather I know only a little — by one book — name forgotten —
that didn't impress me greatly.
As to the French critics feeling their intellectual diSerences — I re-
member a French book of interviews with the then young litterateurs —
it must have been 20 years ago, for Zola was in it as an older man saying
that these young sharks when they couldn't find anything else to bite
devoured each other — well they all talked with ferocity as if they were
divided by gulfs — and to me they seemed like smoked herrings in a box.
They all tasted alike.
I am going on much as usual. Occasionally a dame feeds with me —
preferably at luncheon as I am tired at night. Some time ago as perhaps I
told you Mrs. Hoover came — per quod I had to break my rules and
lunch with her and the President (no one else) and found it very pleas-
ant. I have almost no time to read. I am much bothered by many letters
that call for an answer to which they are not entitled* Just now I have
a collection of essays called Human Biology and Racial Welfare that
seems worth reading — though intolerably heavy to my hands, as cheap
American books are. It seems to promise a good general view — begin-
ning with Life in Space and Time — (the guess as to life on other bodies
than the earth) — then Evolution traced biochemically — then the ani-
mal ancestry of man — the Evolution of the brain &c. &c. I think it wiE
pay me. My sec'y has nearly finished reading aloud to me at the end of
the day — The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe. He is a real man
I am told — and his tower of San Michele is very like a place that an
Englishwoman whom I have met at intervals has told me about. I should
think it might be truth in a haze. But I shall be glad to get back to my last
volume of Horace Walpole. H. W. seems to have been a pretty good fel-
low and, in flashes, ahead of his time. But I must away from you — and
turn to less intimate things. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
1 Albert Bataille (1856-1899), journalist and reporter of criminal cases tried
in the French courts; his accounts of cases were republished in book form.
1240 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
Devon Lodge, 12.IV.SO
My dear Justice: The week has passed very quickly in a shower of com-
mittees and similar distractions. I had a Jolly talk yesterday with Stim-
son, your secretary of state, who spoke most warmly of you; and I lunched
today with Lewis Einstein and we exchanged memories of you very hap-
pily for two hours. He is really a civilised creature, and I am sorry he has
decided to leave the Diplomatic Service. I went also to lunch to Sankey
to do some confidential cabinet work. What in it is worth reporting is the
fact that it turned on some proposals of Webb which he had adumbrated
in a memoir to his colleagues of eighty pages. Sankey was disturbed and
said they would be impressed by its weight. Not at all, said I, they won't
read it because it is so long. Let us set out its conclusions on one page,
and smash it in three. They will read our summary and leave Webb
severely alone. And so they did. Webb, I gather, was the only person
at the Cabinet who dissented from our memorandum, and Sankey was
triumphant. So am I, since the lives and fortunes of about three million
African natives were involved. Then I was shipped off by the Ministry
of Labour to Manchester to settle a docker's lighting strike. It was very
amusing. Any fool could have settled it in an hour by letting the men talk
themselves out. The harbour master was one of those retired naval cap-
tains who glory in being truculent and calling it the maintenance of dis-
cipline; In a month he had everyone foaming at the mouth. So I got the
trade union leaders in a room with beer and tea and made them tell me
their life-histories. This enchanted them; and when I was calling the
secretary by his first name, which took 1 and & hours, I asked as an inci-
dent what the strike was about. He explained that the men would not
be sworn at. So I went into the harbour master and told him I was going
to lecture him in the presence of the men; the alternative was his dis-
missal. He took it very well; I spoke to him with great severity for five
minutes; told the men that they must be back at work in an hour; got a
written pledge of no victimisation; was presented with an electric torch
by the men; and was on the way home within three hours of arriving in
Manchester. So life flows on. Another amusing thing was a Ph.D. exam
of an Indian student who had written the worst thesis I have ever seen.
One sentence in it ran "Great lawyers, Ulpian, Grotius, Wigmore have
contended"; I asked him if he thought that Wigmore was quite on the
level of the others and he said "yes" without hesitation. He quoted Althu-
sius in German and did not know he had written in Latin; and at one
place he had translated eight pages straight, without acknowledgement,
from Viollet. When I suggested to him that this was not exactly fair, he
said glibly that he thought that his translation carried with it a nuance
that made it his ownl O God! O Montreal!
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1241
In the way of books, I have read one or two things worth recording.
A quite charming biography of Wilkes, the 18th century radical, by R. W,
Postgate;1 a short book on romanticism by P. Mansell Jones2 which was
attractive and learned, a rare combination; and an introduction to the
theory of criticism by Charles Maurras, which I thought the most brilliant
defence of classicism I have ever read; I add that I disagreed with almost
all of it. I want, too, very eagerly to recommend to you a pamphlet by
Logan Pearsall Smith (Oxford Press) called Four Words. It is a history
of the words romantic, creative, original, genius, and I found it more than
exciting. There's nothing like watching a man with really flawless taste
exhibiting his wares. A propos, Einstein brought up James Joyce; I gath-
ered that he thought him more important than I am prepared to do. I do
not, as I think I have said to you, see why the full account of latrine func-
tions makes a writer important; after all that is not an index to an aspect
of life which confers fundamental insight. In the way of reading, I must
not omit to add that I re-read Evelina and found it quite enchanting; and
a volume of Emerson's essays containing "The American Scholar." I say
frankly that I do not think there are five men living today who could
WTite its equal in vigour and persuasive rncisiveness. It really is one of the
most moving things I have read in many a day.
I have also bought one or two nice things. The best was a set of the
Archives curieuses of Cimber which contains hundreds of otherwise in-
accessible French pamphlets 1600-1789. It is in 16 volumes and I paid
a shilling a volume for it. Then S. Mercier's Tableau de Paris which I am
reading in bed and finding quite thrilling. The nearest equivalent I can
think of is that book Middletown which you may have seen. And I was
fortunate enough to pick up a volume of tracts containing half a dozen
of the treatises on Law Reform. I have always meant to do a paper on
that and this volume would make it a pleasant task for some occasion
when I am on holiday in the country.
Other news, I think, there is none. I have finished all the work on my
little book about liberty3 even down to choosing the binding and I hope
it will go off to you in a fortnight. You know what affectionate greetings
it will bring.
My love to you. Ever devotedly yours, E, J, L.
'Laski reviewed Raymond Postgate's That Devil Wilkes (1929) in 9 The
Labour Magazine 42 (May 1930).
2 Presumably Percy Mansell Jones, Tradition and Barbarism: a Survey of Anti-
romanticism in France (1930).
8 Liberty in the Modern State ( 1930 ).
1242 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
Devon Lodge, 19.IV.SO
My dear Justice: A gloriously quiet week to record in which only one ex-
ternal event has happened. I went on Monday to hear Snowden introduce
the Budget of which the essential feature was a small but (I think)
inevitable increase in the income-tax. I wish you could have seen the
House. It was packed like a sardine-tin, with a hum of eager expectancy
the like of which one rarely sees as possible. The rich members sat as
tho* they were going to hear sentence of death. The Labour people were
like hounds In leash ready to dash into cheers at the slightest provocation.
And the production of anger, sorrow, temper at a change which I can
best express by saying that I shall pay about one hundred dollars more a
year was, to me, quite amazing. I put the reflexion that I cannot under-
stand why men are so anxious to die for the State and so angry if they
are asked to give money to it, even for objects they know to be essential.
Churchill, for instance, spoke to me in the lobby like a man who has heard
that London has fallen. A young Tory said to me that four years more of
this would ruin the empire. And all I heard was a rather dull and careful
speech, with nothing dramatic in it, which made a difference of perhaps
three per cent to the expenditure of anyone there with a thousand a year.
Truly Madison was right when he said that the only durable source of
faction is property. I asked Churchill, if he thought of taxation as a vol-
untary offering by the citizen to objects he felt inclined individually to
support; certainly that was his attitude. Lady Astor, who is said to have
a million dollars a year, was acting like a woman who has just heard that
a defaulting solicitor has ran off with all her money.
One other thing may amuse you. I had a visit from a clever German
professor, Palyi of Berlin,1 who has just returned from six months in
American universities. He put Chicago easily first, then Columbia, then
Harvard; the last disappointed him as he thought the humanities in the
college at a low ebb. But of people he met he put Morris Cohen and Felix
easily first, then an economist named Knight of Chicago,2 then Dewey,
then Mcllwain; pretty good taste, I think. He was very critical of Pound,
whose plans for the law-school were, he said, like Ford explaining the
programme of a new factory, and whose ideas had not changed since the
papers he wrote before the war. Of Wigmore he spoke with contempt.
He had learning, but no commonsense. But by America as a whole, with
much he disliked, he was thrilled. Every day he said, you felt the pulse
of life in its veins. Every day, you felt that men were prepared to experi-
1 Supra, p. 877.
2 Frank Hyneman Knight ( 1885- ) had been Professor of Economics at
Chicago since 1928.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1243
ment and discover. I wish you could have heard him insist that Babbitt
was true, and Main Street and all the critics of the new schools and that
yet above it all no one could fail to feel that great events were being pre-
pared, that one was in the midst of a potential Renaissance. I sat thrilled,
and about seventy per cent convinced. But I would have made my
shadows a little darker than his, and been a little more dubious than
he as to whether the mere expectation of genius will, of itself, provoke its
arrival. But he was right about Felix and Morris Cohen — obviously a
man of discernment.
I have read much these last days, but mostly the 17th century. At the
moment, I am in the midst of an amusing and revealing literature, the
imaginary voyages of the 17th century where people sought to criticise
existing institutions by pretending to explain what they had seen else-
where. It isn't exciting, except that it shows pretty obviously one of the
vital sources of political romanticism, how profoundly the discoveries
affected human imagination and how diseased was die society which
issued inevitably in 1789. And I would like to write a little paper on the
psychical effects of America before 1700, there is much to be said on that;
how the reaction of what Europe thought America was sent out the im-
migrant with ideals which moulded American institutions themselves and
made 1776 ultimately essential to the satisfaction of the human spirit.
Then I have read the manifesto of that new humanism of which I gather
Irving Babbitt is the high priest.3 I have asked Harper's to let me write
about it, and I hope they will, for it seemed to me even sillier than most
religions. Why that type of cold, aesthetic renunciation, (at a level of
$5000 and up) should have any meaning for a factory civilisation I can-
not imagine. And its humourless complacency, its plea for a self-chosen
aristocracy, its sense of a high mission not open to ordinary men, its belief
that it has rewon classic beauty, all this makes me a little sick. Inciden-
tally, I am amused at its enthusiasm for French 17th century classicism.
Apart from Corneille, La Fontaine and Racine, I doubt whether there
was a single French poet of importance until the Romantic movement of
the nineteenth century. There is not one great piece of political thinking,
and the one great philosophic effort, Descartes, is, in a sense, the fount
of romanticism by its insistence upon the validity of my experience as the
sole source of my knowledge. These pale little prigs of professors in
Princeton and Harvard and Virginia need a douche of cold water to make
them use their minds seriously.
8 Presumably Humanism and America (Norman Foerster, e<3., 1930). The
volume included "Humanism: an Essay at Definition/* by Professor Irving
Babbitt (1865-1933) of Harvard. Harper's published no essay on this subject
bv Laski.
1244 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
I have bought nothing since I got back from Paris, except a rather nice
Spinoza in four volumes; and the letters are fascinating. I never, fool that
I am, read them before.
Our united love to you. Keep well and take my new little book as
evidence that you are never out of my thoughts.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 26.IV.SO
My dear Justice: I have felt almost on the way to you this week, for I
have been busy arranging with Yale the courses I am to teach there next
year, and I have got a real thrill out of it. Otherwise the time has been
quiet and very pleasant: a little writing, much reading, and a jolly dinner.
By the way, there will go off to you next Thursday a copy of my little
book on Liberty. About Chapters I and III I expect only interstitial agree-
ment from you; but on Chapter II I hope you will be my full compur-
gator.1 What is really important is that you should feel that the book is,
above all, the expression of an affection that only grows more full with
the years.
First my dinner party. It was at Downing Street to meet some literary
gents, and it so happened that it occurred on the day of the poet laure-
ate's death.2 Now three of them might well have thought themselves not
ineligible for the post, and they did what you once described Henry Van
Dyke as doing — they strutted sitting. When one of them observed that
the P.M. called me by my first name, he changed from complete ignora-
tion of my presence to an almost pathetic agreement with every word I
said. Ramsay spoke warmly of an article of mine; the poet spoke of it with
ecstasy. Ramsay asked the source of a quotation which I supplied (some
famous lines from Blake); the poet praised my marvellous memory. So it
went on. Then, bashfully, another of them raised the question of who
ought to succeed Bridges. Names were suggested and the P.M. asked my
view. I spoke strongly in favour of abolishing the post as a stupid one and
J.R.M. was obviously moved by what I said. I wish you could have seen
the poet's face. He made a savage little oration to the effect that to de-
stroy a tradition was like the ruin of a beautiful old building, that he was
sure the P.M. did not share my vandalism and so on. I have never seen
a man so embody hate. In fact Snowden said to me as we left, "Laski,
1In the first chapter of Liberty in the Modern State (1930) Laski empha-
sized his familiar pluralistic thesis, acknowledging frankly that his was a
doctrine of "contingent anarchy/1' The second chapter was a broad defense of
libertarianism in matters of belief and the expression of belief. The third and
final chapter, "Liberty and Social Power," urged that liberty can thrive only
in a society in which there is equality.
8 Robert Bridges (1844-1930) had been appointed Poet Laureate in 1913.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1245
if I were you, I would ask for police protection from that fellow until
MacDonald has found his poet/' The whole show was one of the very
funniest things I have ever witnessed.
In the way of reading, there is not much to record. A very charming
book on Montaigne by Lanson, and a quite incredible book on Richelieu
by Belloc. The latter makes vast statements which are only equalled by
the complete absence of evidence in their support. It is brilliantly written;
but what can one make of a fellow who says with all seriousness that
Oliver Cromwell's work was, of course, facilitated by his family connec-
tions! Then a very interesting book on the origins of the Romantic move-
ment by Seilliere — a good deal of which he traces back to Mme. Guyon
and the Molinist Mystics of the 17th century.3 I think his way of approach
exaggerated; but there is much of real value in the idea and in the things
for which it can be used. Then the autobiography of Wilamowitz-
Moellendorf, the great Grecian, a most charming book. If this translation
is available in Washington, I do pray you to read it. You will enjoy every
word of it, for the inside of the scholar has rarely been better described,
and the old man has a sweetness and light which are very moving indeed.
I read, also, a volume sent to me of statements of their faith by contempo-
rary American philosophers — all very solemn and portentous, but lit up
by a superb piece of eloquence by Morris Cohen — one of the very best
tilings he has ever done.4 Then a great deal of Blake, some of it quite
unintellible to me, but now and again a flash of supreme insight with the
power to light up as the lightning shows up the inner beauties of a dark
cave. And a volume called The Sacred Wood by T. S. Eliot, very clever,
but parts of which made me want to shriek. The sentence e.g. "of all
modern critics, perhaps Remy de Gourmont most had the intelligence
of Aristotle'* either displays a complete inability to make judgments, or
else a complete ignorance of Aristotle. R. de G. had doubtless a great
amount of scattered and esoteric information, but Aristotle had an ability
to drive facts into a system which people like de Gourmont do not even
know can exist. If that is Eliot at his best, I think he lacks real balance
of mind and I should guess him to be the high-priest of a coterie really
outside the main stream that matters.
I have bought one or two pretty things — the nicest, I think, a fine
copy of Molesworth's Hobbes in nobly bound volumes such as the old
gentleman deserved. Did I, by the way, tell you that my set of Bentham
8 To which of the many works of Ernest Seilliere on the history of roman-
ticism Laski referred is not certain; most probably it was to Mme. Guyon et
Fenelon, precurseurs de Rousseau (1918).
* Contemporary American Philosophy ( Adams and Montague, eds., 2 vols.,
1930). Morris Cohen's essay was "The Faith of a Logician/* Santayana con-
tributed an essay, "A Brief History of My Opinions" (voL 2, p. 239).
1246 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
belonged to old Kohler the Hegelian jurist. His card tumbled out of the
volumes the other day. Then I got a very nice Suarez De Legibus which
I had long coveted and an admirable Vasquez. One day I hope a sensible
university will ask me to give some really well-paid lectures on the 16th
century Spanish jurist-theologians for they were great men and deserve
commemoration.
Rummaging in my desk today I found this and send it along.5 Evi-
dently Diana had put it there a month ago for me to enclose and I had
failed to notice it. My neglect is inexcusable but I send it now. I think
she meant it for a birthday letter.
Our love to you as always. Keep well and strong.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
May 12, 1930
My dear Laski: You write books faster than I can read them. The Dangers
of Obedience, I suppose, is ancient history to you by this time. I finished
it a few days ago. I readmired the Rousseau and Machiavelli and be-
lieved without adequate knowledge what you say about foundations etc.1
I always have viewed them with suspicion and many years ago when
Dillon2 sent me a speech accepting one of Carnegie's gifts wrote to him
that prima facie a man who used his power to divert a considerable fund
from the competition of the market was an enemy of his land. You op-
timists tacitly postulate a dictator embodying your conception of what
is best for the world. My only criterion is the de facto equilibrium of
social desires. The first half of this is intended only for insult — in the
hope of giving pain. What I put as an assertion is hardly more than a
surmise. Of course as you know I have but partial sympathy with your
equality business. This morning comes The Socialist Tradition in the
French Revolution3' — which I shall gobble before I sleep. It looks
thrilling — to use your word. Yesterday I was notified of the sending of
Liberty in the Modern State — not yet received. You keep me busy
in my spare moments.
Also some ripping letters from you — the last enclosing one from my
5 The enclosure, evidently a note from Laskf s daughter, is missing.
1 In his essay "Foundations, Universities, and Research," Laski expressed
much skepticism concerning the wisdom and fruitfulness of such enterprises in
research as those fostered and directed by the large foundations and councils of
social scientists.
* Supra, p. 301.
8 The lecture, originally delivered at King's College, London, was first pub-
lished as a pamphlet by the Fabian Society and was later republished in The
Social and Political Ideas of Some Representative Thinkers of the Revolutionary
Era (Hearnshaw, ed., 1931).
^
Ut
Holmes to Laski, May 12, 1930
At
- AW
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1247
foster granddaughter. Please give ber my love. If I could write as well
as she does I should answer her directly — but I arn instructed that
adult education is needed for my chirograpby. My brethren habitually
profess inability to read my script. I am delighted with your poets and
the Laureateship. I rather incline to agree with you, that the institution
might be dropped. I hardly believe that it will be. Your reflections on the
income tax in another letter have my heartiest concurrence. I always say
that I pay my tax bills more readily than any others — for whether the
money is well or ill spent I get civilized society for it. I have wondered
similarly as to readiness of otherwise honest people to dodge or indeed
to swindle the government out of duties when they come into port. I re-
member a classmate of mine, a comeouter, who probably thought himself
a good example of the upward and onward, telling us with glee how he
had defrauded the revenue coming into Boston. (We were on the same
boat. ) It made me gasp. Then I was more than interested by the German
professor who had been sizing up America.
Apropos of the new humanism there was an article by Edmund Wilson
in the New Republic4 that I should think embodied your views. I do not
know these seeming prigs — but I read the chaff and abuse of them with
pleasure. Your "pale little prigs of professors" is A-l. I am ignorant as
I say, but I propel them from my inner consciousness. I stop my com-
ments to say that since the last sentence my secretary and I (with the
faithful Charley who has driven me for more than a quarter of a century)
have motored through the Soldier's Home and back by a circumbendibus
through Rock Creek Park. The locusts are in bloom and the peonies are
masses of perfumed purple — now turning a little with age. The weather
is a little trying to me. But everything is most beautiful — per quod, re-
flecting that I had done nothing except take air, I said to my lad the last
achievement is to enjoy without accomplishment. I find it hard.
My secretary has just telephoned to the Congressional Library to see
if we can [have] L. Pearsall Smith's Four Words — that you mentioned.
My opinions — only two rather trifling ones, but I suppose the last for
this term5 — have been written and approved — and I am for the mo-
ment up with the certioraris.
Berths to Boston for the night of June 4 bespoke the whole crowd —
the servants going up under my wing. It looks like the approach of
breathing time — though there will be big mailbags of certioraris during
the summer if I am there to receive them, as looks likely at this writing.
Now I turn to some of the chores that are always on hand to be done.
Ever affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
4 "Notes on Babbitt and More," 62 New Republic 115 (March 19, 1930).
5 Eliason v. Wilborn, 281 U.S. 457; Barker Painting Co. v. Local No. 734, id.
462 (May 19, 1930).
1248 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
Devon Lodge, 10.V.30
My dear Justice: It is, I think, a fortnight since I wrote last; and it has
been a very busy time. First, all the agonies connected with a new term;
then a long and difficult hearing in the Industrial Court; then a most
difficult job for Sankey which I thought might take an evening and, in
fact, took four days of worried drafting; and a meeting in Oxford of the
Political Science Club. This last was very funny. Barker ought to have
come to read a paper on the "Inherent Rights of Churches." At the last
moment he was detained, and A. J. Carlyle the historian performed in-
stead. He began at about 9:15 and at 10:30 when he stopped for dis-
cussion he was almost on the verge of the Council of Nicaea. Then
Graham Wallas spoke, and no one had the remotest idea of what he was
saying though he was very decisive and even passionate. Then a law don
from Cambridge propounded the theory that a church is a club and to be
regarded in the same way. This provoked a mild little clerical don to say
that the head of his Church was Christ Jesus our Lord and he would not
have it insulted by comparison with so low a thing as a club. Finally
I suggested that the inherent rights of a church are just those claims it
makes for which at any given moment its members are prepared to die.
This pleased Wallas who could not believe that any churchmen would die
for any belief, and it thrilled the mild clerical don (he had a face just
like a moon) who believed that all churchmen will die for all beliefs.
Each took me aside and thanked me for exposing the other's nonsense.
I thought silence the better part, and did not insist upon my implications.
For your private ear, I must tell you about the poet laureate. The P.M.
had decided on Masefield from the outset; but he had to let a decent
interval elapse. The most incredible people wrote to him to emphasise
their claims. A lady poet wrote to exhort him to appoint her in the name
of woman's rights. John Drinkwater wrote to say that the P.M. might like
to know that he had just joined (the day after Bridges' death) the Labour
Party. Another gent sent him three specimen odes: 1. funeral; 2. nuptial;
3. successful royal confinement to show him how he would do the thing
if appointed. Another poet wrote offering, if given the post, to do a
philosophic-poetic account of the Labour programme. And a well-known
man of letters who is about the best Tory-snob in London wrote to say
that his advice was at the P.M.'s disposal as he supposed that this was
a realm in which the P.M. had no experience. This gent., I may add, when
he saw the appointment wrote to congratulate MacDonald and added
that it was the name he himself would have suggested. As MacD. said to
me he probably wrote to Masefield claiming credit for the appointment.
It is a funny world, about which one really cannot find one's way with-
out a sense of humour.
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1249
I have not had time to do much reading. But I have enioved sfoino1
J/oo
through two volumes of contemporary American philosophers, in which
I thought the essays of Cohen and Santayana quite superlative — espe-
cially the former. And I liked an American novel by Edna Ferber called
Cimarron which seemed to my ignorance to have caught the spirit of the
South- West in the 'seventies and the 'eighties. Also I read an introduction
to philosophy by J. Maritain, the leader of the neo-Thomists in France.
I frankly did not recognise poor S. Thomas. He was mild and reasonable
and Aristotelian, concerned, above all, to make a great unified system of
knowledge. This gent, declares that the beginning of wisdom is to realise
that philosophy and theology have no connection with each other, that
the truths of theology are not capable of analysis in philosophic terms.
I cannot imagine what poor old Aquinas would have felt about this. I
think he might have said that if theology is reduced to these straights, it
is much better to leave the Church.
I have picked up one treasure from the S. of France, a little book
by F. Davenne called Politique dn temps (1650) which is the one effec-
tive plea against monarchy produced in the Fronde. Only two other
copies are known and none in England. Mine is in superb condition,
bound in contemporary red morocco and quite exquisitely tooled. I feel
as happy as a sandboy over it and I paid only three hundred francs for
it. I feared I might have to go to Lyons, where the nearest copy is,
merely to read the book. Now I have it by the bedside and gloat over its
beauty.
You must hear of Lord Birkenhead's dilemma. He has just published
a Utopia which has had vast publicity. I read it and found two passages
taken verbatim from Haldane's Daedalus. I wrote to the latter who, on
careful comparison, has found forty-four passages of this kind and round
this curious resemblance has written a charming article suggesting that
his book and B's are probably based on a "Q" like Mark and Luke since
it is impossible to suppose that Lord B. would plagiarise from a humble
professor of bio-chemistry.1 We are waiting eagerly for Lord B's reply.
It is a warning to great men not, like him, to rely on ghosts but to write
their own books if they must write books.
Our love to you as always. Yours ever affectionately, H. J. L.
Sunday evening, May IS, 1980
My dear Laski: In the great steeple chase after your pen I now have read
the latest — Liberty in the Modern State — and as it did not bear your
1 The comments of J. B. S. Haldane on Lord Birkenhead's The World in 2030
A.D. (1980) are found in his essay "Lord Birkenhead Improves his Mind," in
A Banned Broadcast and Other Essays (1946), 13.
1250 HOLMES TO LASKI [1930
inscription I have written my name "from H.J.L." with the date, that
I might claim all the honor to which I am entitled. You rightly divined
that chapter 2 (I think it is) as to Freedom of Thought commanded not
only my sympathy but my admiration. I may remark in passing that I
think the argument for free speech, devoutly as I believe in it, is not
entirely easy. In other cases, e.g. vaccination, when we know that we
have the power, want the end, and are convinced of the efficacy of the
means we don t hesitate very much over even conscientious scruples. Or
at least I shouldn't. But as you leave worship free, when you become God,
and dispose of large futures on formulas that I think fishy, I will hold
my obeisance — can it be that I am in an unreasonably rebarbative
condition? F. Pollock the other day, and again recurring to it, thinks that
The Testament of Beauty by the late Laureate is a great philosophical
poem. I admit that I read it under unfavorable conditions, but it seems
to me the cosmos arranged to suit polite English taste, and by no means
to be mentioned with Lucretius as it is by F. P. Inter alia I have read
The New Evolution-Zoogenesis by Austin H. Clark, who married a dear
little cousin of mine and in whom I therefore am interested. He like
my (wife's) nephew Gerrit Miller is a very distinguished scientific man,
rejects all missing links. He thinks there is not a particle of evidence that
the great types of animal life did not start as distinct as they are now,
and believes that the differentiation started with the primordial cell. I am
curious to see how the book will be taken by the scientific world. The
English I believe are pretty well committed to their Piltdown bones &c
but I guess that Miller had a preponderant opinion on his side.
Also I read the little pamphlet on Four Words with pleasure — and
have gone through a work by many authors dealing with man and the
universe,1 from the chance of other inhabited spheres to the details of the
human body and the outlook for the future, at every point coming on
mystery at the crucial point — incidentally one of those odiously heavy
American books that contrast so unfavorably with the run of English
ones. I suppose the paper is loaded with clay or chalk or God knows
what.
This is all for the moment. We deliver some opinions tomorrow — but
argument is over &c, I have bought tickets for the family for Boston the
night of June 4. I wish I were going to see you. I shall drive through
Rockport and glow and sigh. Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
1 Presumably Human Biology and Racial Welfare (Cowdry, ed., 1930),
supra, p. 1239.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1251
Devon Lodge, 18.V.8Q
My dear Justice; A busy week, made pleasant by a hurried visit to Edin-
burgh. I went there to talk to a vast concourse of business men, and after
the talk walked round the old bookshops (they are very good) in happy
ecstasy. I bought a number of nice things, including a pretty Suarez and
an excellent copy of Mercier's Tableau de Paris. Also I went over Holy-
rood which has a kind of dismal magnificence about it not without its
sense of awe. I was amused by meeting one of those local antiquarians
who are obsessed by one small point. This was a thick-burred Scotsman
to whom the world was the problems of Mar}7 Stuart, and in that world
the fact (to which he had devoted years of effort) that the murder of
Rizzio1 can only be accounted for by the supposition that he was the
real father of James I. He was quite indescribably funny about it. He
seized upon my chance remark that no one could disprove it, as evidence
of sympathy and offered (1) to lend me his dossier of proof (2) to have
me for a week-end to show me his evidence. I did not like to say that so
far as I was concerned it would not move me even if the Holy Ghost was
the father. He also warned me against X, a local professor of history as
a man full of prejudice and quite insensible to evidence. At dinner I met
X, a robust fellow of bluff commonsense who asked me if I knew the
antiquary and his mad theories about Rizzio. He then proceeded to ex-
plain that the antiquary has given some forty lectures on his hobby
to local archaelogical societies, and that Scottish historians live in terror
of his appearance at a meeting, for if the subject of discussion is, say, the
Romans and the Picts, he will have it round to Mary and Rizzio within
an hour of his appearance. He told me that about thirty years' ago the
antiquary went to Cambridge to see Acton and persuade him to get a
committee appointed to enquire into the legitimacy of James I. Acton,
with a gentle smile, said that after two hundred years, he thought that
a statute of limitations ought to protect frail beauty.
Of other things, there is less to tell. I went to lunch to the P.M. and
met there a remarkable Rumanian who was an ex-minister and a spe-
cialist in omniscience. He listened to MacDonald politely for ten minutes
and then launched out. J.R.M. said a word about peace. He spoke for
ten minutes with wild eye and fervid gesture, Snowden muttered some-
thing about hopes of Rumanian prosperity: the gent, proceeded to an
analysis of Rumanian resources which was doubtless admirable, but a
little confusing in a jargon of French, German and crypto-English. I then
asked him (I admit incautiously) if he knew Jorga the Rumanian histo-
1 David Rizzio ( 1533? -1566 ) , musician who, turning statesman, became pri-
vate foreign secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, and was ultimately murdered
by the Earls of Morton and Lindsay.
1252 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
rian,2 and that let hell loose. He explained not merely that Jorga was
incompetent and stupid; he was under grave suspicion as a forger of
documents, a low careerist, a moneymaker, in the pay of evil politicians,
of unpleasant manners, greedy and guilty of crimes he would not say in
so eminent a company. MacDonald was nearly ill with suppressed laugh-
ter, Snowden had to leave the room, and I, who had, now and again, to
try and find words to express his meaning to himself, was in a state
of collapse. When we left, he detained me on the doorstep of Downing
Street for twenty minutes with a wild harangue of how Jorga had been
given a professorship which he, (the ex-minister) should have had. He
was so passionate that the police gathered round for fear he meant mis-
chief. Now comes the climax of my story. One of my students is a Ruma-
nian; and on Friday he brought me a message to say that the ex-minister,
when I spoke of Jorga, had misunderstood the name; he thought I had
said someone else to whom only his observations applied. I could regard
Jorga as a light of Rumania. Now is not this a really superb story?
Felix has worried me a little by sending me on a letter from Wu asking
to be invited to give six lectures on legal philosophy to the university
here. I have had to write and ask Felix to explain that the lawyers here,
who have never heard of him, might ask him to lecture on China, but
can hardly risk the other. I hope Wigmore & Co. are not spoiling him out
there. His letter to Felix was almost like a royal command. He used al-
ways to sound so charming and modest that I was a little distressed by the
peremptory character of his requirements. Have you seen him since he
got to America? And, between ourselves, do you think that what he has
to say on legal philosophy is really important? I thought his book of essays
the expression of a rare spirit, but no more. I do not want to disappoint
him. But, also, I do not want to recommend him to the lawyers and leave
them feeling they have wasted time and money in getting him here.
In the way of reading, I have not very much to report. I do strongly
recommend a novel, Cecile, by F. L. Lucas, a story of the France of Tur-
got which has a delicate and restrained beauty you will, I think, relish.
And I have read an old book of Santayana's Character and Opinion in
the U.S. which seemed to me superb, even in its omissions and exaggera-
tions, and as a portrait of James and Royce, quite unsurpassed. Also a
volume of pamphlets of [two words illegible] called the Elizabethan
Underworld, edited by a young colleague of mine named Judges, which
is just like a picture of Chicago in miniature.
Our love to you and the very best of good wishes. You are, I suppose,
within a fortnight of Beverly? Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
2 Nicola Jorga (1871-1940), historian, statesman, and critic; professor at
Bucharest; author, inter alia, of The Byzantine Empire (Powles, tr., 1907), and
A History of Roumania (McCabe, tr.,
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1253
May 28, 1930
My dear Laski: A letter has Just come from you after another not an-
swered that arrived on the heels of one that I had sent to you. I have been
and am so busy that I still should wait but for the inquiry about \Vu,
which needs immediate attention. I am disturbed, almost distressed
by what you say. While he was with Wigmore he sent me some sort of
autobiographical sketch, I think, written in a tone that made me uneasv
and I wrote to him about it. But he is so ready to be humble that he dis-
armed me at once. I have done what I could to impress him with the
belief that philosophizing about the law does not amount to much until
one has soaked in the details — and have not disguised my fear that he
has chosen the primrose path in coming here at this time. He has an in-
stinct for philosophy and has read a good deal — but I wish that he could
wait until he had seen more of life. I doubt if he yet distinguishes be-
tween what real contribution he may have to make and the obvious,
possibly expressed in a somewhat new form. I hate to throw cold water
on anything that he wants — but I should not dare to say confidently
that he could make any fundamental revelation. Let me emphasize that
I don't believe that the swelling tone that you noted is serious. I guess
that Wu is as ready to despair as to assume a throne. I have seen him
for a short time only and then mainly in company and I think that he is
the same dear chap as always.
I have only had half an hour after supper (I don't call it dinner any
longer as the only scrap of meat that I eat comes at 1:30) to read. I have
been reading unwillingly but with a good deal of interest 2 volumes sent
to me by Owen Wister — a life of LaFayette by Brand Whitlock — my
notion of LaFayette, derived I suppose from Carlyle, had not been rever-
ential. But the old boy did stick to his convictions so magnificently, never
yielding an inch for royalty, mob, prison, or Bonaparte, that I feel a deep
respect — and that although he when young at least had incredible van-
ity and cared more for the applause of the crowd than I should think
possible for a wise man. He may not have been wise, but he was a gallant
gentleman. As I read again about the time of the Terror I was reinforced
in my feeling that the first of the primates was a good deal like the rest
of them and as subject today as ever to herd movements. There is a good
deal of sadness in old age7 even if one has gaiety on top and an interest
in the day. I was feeling finished when I got a letter from the ever en-
couraging Felix cracking up a dissent from an opinion of the majority
by McReynolds, that put heart into me.1 I was amused by McR/s open-
ing remark that all "with unclouded minds" could see &c. But to my
regret I believe the phrase does not appear in the print. He readily lapses
1 Baldwin v. Missouri, 281 U.S. 586, 595 (May 26, 1930).
1254 HOLMES TO LASKI [1930
into a certain arrogance of tone — yet I believe him to be a man of feel-
ing with a disguised tender side.
I want to ran on but I must stop leaving many things untouched but
always, Yours affectionatety, O. W, Holmes
Devon Lodge, 30.V.30
My dear Justice: A delight of a letter from you has lightened up a heavy
fortnight. I have had a journey to Newcastle to do an arbitration there;
a big case in the Industrial Court; two difficult meetings of the Donough-
more Committee; and a mass of university business such as the election
of new professors. And on Saturday I must give a presidential address
to a vast concourse and on Monday give evidence before a government
committee. It is all very exhilarating, even useful; but it takes time.
I have seen some of our friends. Redlich came to dinner, with good
news of you and Felix, and so won my heart. He is a brilliant fellow,
a little bit the intellectual flaneur, like so many Viennese, wide, perhaps,
rather than profound, but extraordinarily stimulating. He tickled me im-
mensely with his picture of Pound exhausting 3 acting deans during the
year at the Law School so that in the end, as always, they fell back on
Beale; and his picture of Felix as the counsellor of all the best students
was one in which I rejoiced mightily. Then I met Lewis Einstein, as
charming as can be. But I do hope he can find a definite piece of work
to do. He is a little out at ends, too rich to need to find anything, and too
strange, without a routine, to want to pin himself down. But I think he is
rather lonely, and not too interested in the environment of Mayfair.
He ought to be persuaded into embarking on a big book; and (I whisper
to you) he ought not to be allowed to lose touch with America. If you
meet one of the mighty princes who have lectureships to bestow I think
it would do him a world of good to be asked to give half a dozen lectures
at Princeton or Harvard or Chicago. I also have had a good dinner with
the Foreign Secretary.1 He has a mighty opinion of Dwight Morrow.
Stimson he found of the highest moral quality, but almost painfully slow
in negotiation. He spoke most warmly of George Rublee whom our
lawyers thought the best legal mind of all those you sent over. He told
me one story that will amuse you. The minister of one of the tiny powers
(S. America) over here was so encumbered by the failure of his govern-
ment to send a remittance that he could not get the grocer and the
butcher to send in new supplies; so the Foreign Office had to help him
with a personal loan. This so moved him that he presented the Foreign
Secretary with his signed photograph; and then, thinking that the per-
1 Arthur Henderson.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1255
manent secretary should have something, but, of course, a lesser gift,
gave the latter a photograph of his legation. Isn't that exquisite punctilio?
The F.S. gave me a very interesting little job to do, the writing of an
estimate of the candidates next September for the International Court.
Inter olios, I have very strongly urged the govt. here to vote for Redlich
who will, I believe, be nominated by Czecho-Slovakia.2 It would be an
enormous advantage to have a man on the Court who is intimately ac-
quainted with both the Common Law and Continental systems. Did I,
by the way, say how much I liked the admirable piece he wrote about
you in the Neiie Freie Presse?^ And did I tell you that Leslie Scott wrote
me a most charming letter about that little article of mine in Harpers?
I wish I had thought of sending it on to you.
In the way of books, some nice things and a misfortune. The nice
things are ( 1 ) a beautiful copy, "with wide margins" as Ingram Bywater
used to say, of Davenne's important attack on despotism, a book of real
value to me as being the first critical attempt in France to answer Hobbes.
(2) A nice, modern edition of Suarez De Legibus which I have been re-
reading and really enjoying. When I write that introduction to the
philosophy of law which is one of my dreams those Spaniards of the 16th
century, especially Suarez and Soto, will, for the first time, have real
justice done to them by a writer of the English tradition. (3) A most
amusing book of Holbach's Le tableau des saints, a Voltairian examina-
tion of the saints* claim to sainthood done with amazing verve and gusto.
He has a delightful story of what decided the Canon at the Council of
Nicaea. All the books were placed on the altar and the assembled fathers
prayed to God to make a choice. There was a clap of thunder and the un-
canonical books rolled off the altar. Isn't that really adorable? (4) My
tragedy is that the first copy in years of Maidand's Bractons Note Book
came up at auction in the library of the late Joyce, J. I bid up to fifteen
pounds, but it brought twenty-six, going to a Western American law
school which I hope will use it well! Funny that it should be so rare and
that the Cambridge Press should refuse to print it! At the same sale a
first edition of Blackstone sold for £75; the old gentleman must be in
high fettle in heaven. I can see him thumbing his nose at Coke the first
edition of whose Institutes only brought twenty pounds. At the same sale,
also, five pages of the ms of Pickwick brought over a thousand pounds!
Of reading, there isn't much to tell. I must mention a quite charming
life of Leigh Hunt, beautifully written, by the poet Edmund Blunden,
*At the League's second general election of Judges, on September 25, 1930,
Josef Redlich was elected a Deputy Judge of the World Court.
8 "Oliver Wendell Holmes, der grosse Richter Amerikas," Neue Freie Presse
(Vienna), April 20, 1930.
1256 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
which, I think, finally disposes of the Harold Skimpole legend,4 and an
attractive little book, though elementary, on the British Constitution
by Maurice Amos whom you know. Also a discursive essay by Walter de
la Mare called Desert Islands which I urge you to read for its mass
of curious knowledge in the notes. I bought in the train (one should
always share good things) a to me previously unknown P. G. Woodhouse
called Jill the Reckless which I beg and pray you to get at once. I
laughed over it in the carriage until the other people really suspected me
of lunacy. There is one scene in the theatre when Jill's uncle thinks
of proposing to the lady millionaire to achieve Jill's fortunes which I can
only describe as a supreme achievement.
Well This will come to you amid granite rocks and barberry bushes
and the house built of newspapers. Please salute Rockport for me; it has
not lost its place In my heart. But, above all, be assured that there is no
day when 1 do not think of you with love.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 7. VI. 30
My dear Justice: 1 hope you are well settled at Beverly Farms, and that
the weather is propitious. I wish I could drop in for talk.
The week has been a busy one. Dinner of the Rationalists of whom,
for the moment, I am president. Jack Haldane made a brilliant speech
there on the futility of believing that religion and science have compat-
ible interests.1 Then a long jaw with Redlich just before he left. He was
in great form and embarked on generalisations which left me dizzy. Did
I tell you that he has been nominated as a candidate for the International
Court? It would be a joy to see him elected. Then a dinner with Sir
Harold Morris, the president of the Industrial Court 2 — - mostly lawyers,
and very good company. I call one story from the anthology which
amused rne. A solicitor hurrying off for the week-end tells his young clerk
to write a stiff letter to X and get the costs that have been unpaid for a
year. On the Monday, to his surprise, the money appears. He asks to see
the letter which produces the miracle, and is shown the following: "Dear
Sir, Unless we receive our costs by Monday morning next, we shall at
once take such proceedings as will truly astonish you." I don't know
where that lad is today, but I should like to bet that he is a millionaire.
* Dickens had given to Harold Skimpole in Bleak House some of the char-
acteristics of Leigh Hunt. Blunden dealt with the matter in the twenty-first
chapter of his Leigh Hunt (1930).
1 The address has not been identified.
2 Sir Harold Morris ( 1876- ) was President of the Industrial Court from
1926 to 1945.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1257
Yesterday A. Flexner came to tea and we went through the ms of the
book he is writing on American universities. He produced some marvel-
lous things — especially the lady in Nebraska who produced a thesis for
the Ph.D. in Home Economics on Bacteria in Men's Underclothes, and
the course of lectures in Columbia on "catering in small country restau-
rants." What, after all, is a university for, if it cannot shed the light of
science on contemporary problems. He told me one tale which I must
repeat. He took a taxi in New York. In the block at 42nd St. the driver
opened the door and said to him "Don't think much of this fellow Hughes
whom they've made Chief Justice — good corporation lawyer, but no
more." At 59th, he opened the door again "Now Brandeis, he's a fine man,
wise as well as learned." Then silence until 110th Street when the final
block produced "But I like old Holmes the best — a gentleman and a
scholar with a nip in his words." Now what better testimonial than that
could you wish — it beats my Harpers article simply hollow.
In the way of reading there are some things you must read. Item One,
a novel called April Fools by Compton Mackenzie, one of the funniest
things I have read in years. The clergyman in it is worthy of P. G.
Wodehouse at his most ludicrous. When I say that he proposed to write
a play called Thomas and that as the curtain rises a cock is to crow thrice,
you will see that it is a side-splitter. Item two, a Short History of France
by Charles Guignebert which is the best short and critical survey —
rather like George Trevelyan on England — I have ever read. The dis-
cussion on early French civilisation is peculiarly attractive. Item three —
Trotsky's Autobiography. This I beg you to read. Nothing even ap-
proaches it either as explanation of Russia, its strength and weakness, or
as a great and dramatic narrative. The book pulsates with excitement
and I know nothing of the kind in years that has moved me so much. I
challenge anyone to read his account of the capture of Petrograd by the
Bolsheviks without a thrill, or his description of the negotiations at Brest-
Litovsk without a desire to cheer. And apart from certain correspondence
I know nothing which makes one see so clearly what a great man Lenin
was or how small are the epigoni who have usurped his position. Do, do,
read it and feel that the grandeur of romance on the heroic scale has not
yet gone out of the world. Lastly, I must mention Mencken's Treatise
on the Gods, which, with some faults of taste and temper, seemed to
me to express incisively and sensibly the case against organised super-
naturalism of any kind.
I have bought nothing in the way of books except a dozen anti-Burke
pamphlets of 1790. And the things I yearn for are getting incredibly
expensive. There is a book of Edmond [sic] Villey on the sources of
Montaigne which is hors concours.3 It is only 1906 — but a copy in the
8 See supra, p. 998.
1258 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
latest catalogue from Paris was priced at fifty dollars; and a nice, but not
too nice, folio of Molina in no special edition was the same price. I was
amused, in the auction-room, to see first editions of Nat. Hawthorne
go for forty and five pounds each, and a little notebook which G. Eliot
used as a commonplace book brought over £200. On the other hand the
general wisdom of popular judgment was, I think, shown by the fact that
the ms. beautifully bound of one of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's novels,
brought only fifteen shillings. Wouldn't Matthew Arnold have been
delighted?
I arn busy just now with a little booklet that is intended as a gift for
the free-thinkers — a short history of religious toleration in England.4
It is great fun, and amusing to note how few people who have the repu-
tation for reasonableness survive the test when you begin carefully to
analyse what they said. I can find one person only in the Tudor period
who thought that an atheist might be sincere. And I get convinced as I
make notes that religion has been more harmful to civilisation than any
other single factor in history. Even yet, merely on the legal side, it is
astonishing how far toleration is from being complete.
Well — my love to you as always. Don't let either visitors or certi-
oraris stand in the way of Trotsky and Compton Mackenzie.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, June 8, 1930
My dear Laski: It is a continual marvel to me how you find time to write
to me such uniformly admirable and delightful letters when you have so
much work to do. Two bodies perhaps can occupy the same place, but
can you attend an arbitration, write a book and send off a letter all at
once? Your letter met me here on my arrival yesterday evening — the
best of welcomes — and I am wallowing in comfort, though the weather
is somewhat chilly and misty and I am staying indoors hoping to dodge
a cold. The journey on is somewhat upsetting. Actually I have had a day
of almost leisure and my secretary has read to me (1) The Show Girl
and her Friends and (2) Conversations of a Chorus Girl — by Roy Mc-
Cardell — an author of whom I never heard outside of this house but
whose two booklets I read every time that I come here. I prefer them to
the works of more famous authors. Before I left I let off a dissent on what
seems to me the abuse of the "due process of law" clause in the 14th
Amendment, as to which I have just come on some notice in the New
Republic which I enclose as they copy what I say.1 I regret being called
4 If completed, the booklet has not been identified.
*63 New Republic 82-83 (June 11, 1930). The comment was on Holmes's
dissent in Baldwin v. Missouri, supra, p. 1253.
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1259
the dissenting Judge in the papers for I don't like to dissent. But if one
does one can talk more freely than when he speaks for others as well as
for himself. Resolutions by a committee are always flat unless they put
themselves into the hands of one man. I suspect that McReynolds may
regard me as a bird that befouls its own nest, although nothing could
be farther from my wishes or intent. We are on excellent terms together,
but our notions are different. So that's that.
Later — My secretary this evening has been reading to me what you
will more approve, some of Birrell's Obiter Dicta — mighty good reading
they are — but I haven't passed so idle a day since I can't remember
when. One of the pleasures of age is that occasionally some old lady that
one hasn't seen for fifty or it may be more years, up and writes to one.
I have had several such letters — and the day before yesterday in Boston
called on one of them. I should not have known her but had a mighty
pleasant talk with a civilized woman who has seen the world from China
to Venice (if not Peru) and just before I left had a note proposing a call
from one with whom I walked when she was a charming little girl to
whom I told stories and who sent me a book mark that I was able to tell
her was still in Burke's Works. She is a grandmother and the mother of a
Senator.2 This drool that I am writing is better to go to sleep on than
discourse on high themes — so I will go to bed now.
Ever your Affectionate O. W, H.
Beverly Farms, [Saturday] June 21, 1930
My dear Laski: Forgive this paper — it is so much more comfortable for
writing than note paper and is the best that I can get here in a block.
Obedient to your order I sent for and last night received Trotsky's Auto-
biography (off my beat, but I am reasonably obedient!). The Old Corner
Bookstore did not have Compton Mackenzie's book and as somehow I
doubted if I should find it as funny as you do I didn't press the order.
At the same time I received Owen Wister's book about Roosevelt with
some discourse on the people who used to get to the White House in Ms
time including myself. I shall read that first, but it is easy doing. Ad
interim, in my & lazy and languid days my secretary has been reading
aloud to me — some of the Restoration plays — Congreve and Van
Brugh — rather rudimentary in their emotion, interest, and wit, with an
absence of confidence between husband and wife that is surprising in our
day, and I suppose stage rather than life. The Duke of Buckingham's
Rehearsal seemed to me on a higher grade distinctly. He must have been
2 Mrs. William Bayard Cutting, mother of Bronson Cutting (1888-1935),
Senator from New Mexico.
1260 HOLMES TO LASKI [1930
a lively lad — to write that and run Lord Shrewsbury through.1 As by-
products — a book by Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson — wit and good
writing — but longer than the matter justified. Oscar Wilde's plays —
mostly drool — but 2 or 3 good. One first class saying — a cynic — one
who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And lat-
terly Aug. Birreirs Res Judicatae — Men Women and Books — and now
Obiter Dicta. They stand rereading well — but I had forgotten them.
Why do you never mention him in these days? Have you cause to see
him? He is a mighty pleasant embodiment of English discernment and
prejudice — missing as I think the last word. It seems to me that there
is a last spiritual touch that he cannot give, but a stout old Briton whom
one respects. I spent some time on my friend Felix [sic] Warburg's ac-
count of the Federal Reserve System,2 but it came hard to me because
I do not understand the words or know the postulates. Yesterday Felix,
Walter Lippmann and Judge Learned Hand came here to luncheon and
gave me great pleasure. I said to them that the best thing I could do was
to die. Everything has been so smiling to me this last year that I tremble,
and fear that I shall do some damned thing that will put a fly into the
ointment, but Hand replied, "All We is taking a risk. Go ahead and take
it" — and I thought he was right. But still I tremble. I am writing hur-
riedly hoping to catch the presumed boat. I am a fool. I have been
thinking that today was Friday and that if I posted this about 3 p.m.
it could go on the morrow. Still as I go out in a few minutes to the
p.o. I will send this off. I hate to have things waiting to be finished.
Yesterday I had also a visit from Wu and another Chinaman — who
proposed to name a prospective building in Shanghai for me and to use
my name to invite subscriptions. I dissuaded the former and denied the
latter, and at once was impressed by the good breeding of the East. They
didn't tease or look sad. They accepted my veto, remained pleasant and
didn't stay too long. I am easily tired in these days. At odd minutes I have
reread some chapters of Einstein's Tudor Ideals. They seemed to me very
good. They also had passed from my memory. It will be a shame if he
doesn't settle down to some solid work. I have exhorted him to. I must
go forth. My blessings on you — wonderful youth.
Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
My love to your family also — s.v.p.
George Villiers (1628-1687), second Duke of Buckingham, stormy states-
man and sportsman of the Restoration, in 1667 killed the Earl of Shrewsbury in
a duel and gave the widowed Countess, his mistress, shelter under his
hospitable roof.
2 Paul M. Warburg, The Federal Reserve System, Its Origin and Growth
(1930).
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1261
Devon Lodge, 15.VI.SO
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you; and some advice about Wu
for which I was very grateful. I have written to Felix suggesting that
Wu should think not of lecturing about jurisprudence, but about judicial
reorganisation in China, which I imagine he really knows intimately. If
he accepts, I will try and arrange that with the University.
The week has simply flown. I have been busy writing some memo-
randa for the P.M. about India — a ghastly problem of which the real
essence is that we can't govern it and it really is not fit to govern itself.
Then a jolly dinner here for Flexner who is a wise and able person. And
much energy expended in preventing Felix from coming here to dip his
fingers in the Zionist pie and create immense embarrassment. It seems to
be one of Brandeis's blind spots not to see that when the British govern-
ment has a commission of enquiry in Palestine not even Felix can get
guarantees about policy until the commission has reported, and that to
send him here just now, instead of when there is a document to discuss,
would injure his prestige and waste his time.1 And for either my sins or
my virtues, which I don't know, I have had to accept the Deanship
of the Faculty for the next three years.2 Luckily it means little work and
it gives me some pleasant patronage in advanced lectures which I hope
to use by getting people like Geny and Kelsen and Kantorowicz to
London. Then I could really say "nunc dimittis" Also I went to Hull
to speak at the inauguration there of the new chair of politics. ... I
add that Hull, as a place, seemed to me nearer hell than any other town
I have visited. Not a bookshop to be seen; and a public library with five
times more fiction than all its other books put together.
In the way of reading, one or two amusing trifles first, (a) Arnold
Bennett's diary. This is worth turning over if only to see what a first-rate
man of letters observes. Food, hotels, the manner of the idle rich, the
Shaw Commission which had been sent to Palestine to investigate
outbreaks which had occurred in 1929 had issued its report in March 1930,
recommending curtailment of Jewish immigration and new restrictions on the
acquisition of lands by Jews. Immediate protest by Zionist leaders was a factor
leading to the appointment of Sir John Hope Simpson as a Government Commis-
sioner to investigate and report upon immigration and land problems. His
Report (Command Papers #3686) was published in October 1930, simul-
taneously with the issuance of the Passfield White Paper (Command Papers
#3692), a document which was bitterly criticized by the Zionists and others
and which was substantially repudiated by MacDonald in a letter to Dr.
Chaim Weizmann in February 1931.
2 Evidently Laski did not assume the post. The Calendars of the University of
London indicate that for the following three academic years Professor Eileen
Power was Dean of tlie Faculty of Economics.
1262 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
quality of transportation, the manners of cinema directors. He seems to
want to produce an atmosphere of extreme sophistication. He hardly
mentions reading a book. He refrains from any political comment, what-
soever. Now and again he gets rightly lyrical over a Brueghel or a
Donatello. But he is to himself above all a man of the world who can
show the rich clubman of Pall Mall that Arnold Bennett knows the
dialect of Belgravia just as well as anyone else. It's a queer ambition!
(b) An admirable detective story called The Rope by Philip Mac-
Donald.3 One reader, at least, hopelessly baffled and full of admiration
for the detective, (c) The Jewish Religion by Oesterley — the best
analysis I have ever read of the stages of theological development in the
Old Testament written with full knowledge of both the archaeological
and the textual evidence. I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt that I had
really learned a great deal, (d) Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical
Jesus, a brilliant history of New Testament criticism written from the
standpoint of an eschatologist. It was full of interest, and though too
pious in temper for a Voltairian like me it did make one feel acquainted
with the debate. I add that I was struck by the great work done by
amateurs in developing some of the big critical advances, (e) Finally I
make a passionate complaint against you. Someone sent me from New
York two volumes by Milt Gross — short sketches of East Side Jews.
Why have you never told me of him? He is the biggest person since
Mr. Dooley, and obviously of classical quality. I thought the insight and
the humour really superb; and I have rarely enjoyed anyone so much.
I assume you know him; if not then I pray you send for anything he has
written by the next post. There is the best living American writer. We
are very excited about our summer holidays. We have found a tiny place
called Cochem on the Moselle, four hours from Berlin and eight from
Munich. So I shall be able to have a month of rural peace coupled with
visits to bookshops I have not seen for years. And I hope to get down
to Vienna with luck and spend a few days there with Redlich. The hotel
is built on the river, and the views seem to be a holiday in themselves.
Our love to you. If you do not know Gross — I bet you do — throw
the certioraris in the fire and begin him at once. All judges should be
made to read him, especially McReynolds!
Ever affectionately yours, Harold J. Laski
Beverly 'Farms, June 26, 1930
My dear Laski: Your letters are an education to poor old me — but if
I tried to read all the books you exhort me to I should do nothing else —
and already the first pile of certioraris looks at me from under the win-
presumably Philip MacDonald, The Noose (1930).
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1263
dow. Why did you make me take up that damned Trotsky? I have not
got through his education yet. If I sought only entertainment I should not
complain — but biography is off my beat because of time. If I studied
affairs as every one ought you would be right, but I now limit myself to a
fraction of life. You speak of two books by Milt Gross. I know only Nize
Baby — I read and reread that to my wife and we roared over it. Prob-
ably it was accident that I didn't mention it though 1 should not have
been sure that it would amuse you. I must enquire about the second work
— but I think he should be read aloud to be fully enjoyed. Frankfurter
and Mrs. are coming here in an hour or two to luncheon. Your letter opens
several themes for converse. I have been seeing rather more of people
than I quite like. Over an hour and a half of talk tires me — and although
every call has been pleasant I sometimes have to pay for them by a fit of
coughing at night. Evidently when I was young I didn't learn to use
my voice in the right way, and I am paying for it now. Wister's Roosevelt
took only the leisure of a couple of days and naturally was very interest-
ing to me. Incidentally he is more flattering to me than I could have
dreamed that he would be. I hear a rumor that the book has been with-
drawn from sale on some apprehension of libel, I don't know whether the
the story is true. Also Frankfurter sent me Edith Hamilton, The Greek
Way — some discernment — more rhetoric, it seemed to me. Generali-
zations based on the distinction between spirit and mind seem to me
nebulous. As you see I have not read a great deal, even for me. For you
it all would be a bagatelle. But I have slept more than I have for many
a year — and am apt to interrupt the improving in that way. My heart
is heavy at the thought that the certioraris must begin again. I am so glad
to think of you in your vacation in the quiet little town with bookcounters
within reach. My love to you all. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 28.VI.SO
My dear Justice: Since I wrote last, I have lived in a whirl of examina-
tion papers, and if there is a more dismal occupation, I certainly do not
know it. Now I have emerged, bloody but unbowed. And there have been
examinations for Ph.D/s, testimonials for students in search of a job*
boards to appoint new professors, and all the intolerable accompaniments
of a dying academic year. At least, it is now over; the captains and kings
have departed. But one or two items will amuse you. The Commemora-
tion ceremony, with Earl Beauchamp,1 the university chancellor, as the
set piece. He arrives in great state, with a train-bearer, and begins the
proceedings by getting mixed up with his garments and falling over
1 William Lydon (1872-1938), seventh Earl Beauchamp, liberal politician
and leader in London society; Chancellor of London University, 1929-1931.
1264 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
the trainbearer. Then he makes an hour's speech to the effect that if
business men and universities get on well together, they are likely to get
on well together. He himself is sure that they can get on well together
if they do not fail to get on well together. He himself is a director of a
public company and would like to say (with great impressiveness ) that
the business men he has liked, he has really liked. Some of them, of
course, lack tradition. That is unfortunate; but a university can sometimes
supply the absence of tradition in a self-made man's son, the kind of
graceful charm he is glad to think the ancient families of England possess
as their historic birthright. Can you beat it?
Then I have been busy writing memoranda for the P.M. about India.
This is, I think, the biggest crisis in our colonial affairs since 1776, and
likely to prove as difficult for the same lack of imagination. Simon has
produced a very able report which has everything in it except an under-
standing of the psychology of the situation.2 It is no use treating a great
nationalist movement as though it consisted of men who have only to be
told of the complexity of their situation to agree at once that Great
Britain must go on governing them. It is queer how all Simon's defects
come out in the document — it is brilliantly written, clear, logical, con-
cise, but lacking in generosity, cold, even, in places, callous, and wanting
in that power to make the reader feel he ought to go along with the
writer which is half the art of writing documents for government. I don't
know what will happen to my effort. MacDonald is not a courageous man,
he is vain, and he wants to stay in office. My fear is that India will become
the Ireland of the next generation — a prospect to me of unmitigated
horror.
Then I have been working hard with the secretary of the Delegated
Legislation Commission, getting out a kind of "heads of proposals" report
for discussion. It looks as though we might hope for a large measure of
agreement, and the conversion of Warren Fisher,3 the head of the Per-
manent Civil Service to my pet hypothesis that under all circumstances
all questions of vires must be decided by the Courts, a simplified proce-
dure being invented for the purpose, may even mean unanimity. I almost
feel as though things I have written to defend for years may come into
the body of a government document and even hope to get to the statute-
book. That will be worth all the labour these months have cost.
Of other things, there is not very much to tell. I have balanced work
by novels, mostly light, save for one powerful Russian novel which I
aOn June 10 and 24 the report of the Statutory Commission, under the
Chairmanship of Sir John Simon, had been published. Command Papers #3568,
3569.
8 Sir Warren Fisher (1879-1948); official Head of the Civil Service, 1919-
1939, and member of the Committee on Ministers' Powers.
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1265
deliberately did not dare to finish because it rent me in pieces. A good
detective story and a P. G. Wodehouse I had not read called Mr. Ukridge
make up the sum total of that side. And I have bought nothing except
a vast folio attacking the primacy of Rome which I could not resist as it
was (a) Jeremy Taylor's copy and (b) was only one pound. If you sug-
gest I shall not read it, you are right, but may I not say to you as the
man in Harrod's said to Frida when he saw my study "I always tell our
clients that books give tone to a room/*
Here, for the moment, I end. Life, I hope, is now to be peaceful and
I shall have more to say. But my love as always.
Ever yours affectionately, H. /. L.
Beverly Farms, July 10, 1930
My dear Laski: A letter from you brings the usual delight and the usual
regret that I have no incidents to match yours. The time flies by as it
does in a routine — at least if the routine is pleasant. The accursed
Trotsky still rides on my back — my secretary reads him aloud to me —
we are in sight of the end but over 100 pages remain. I am interested
enough not to be willing to throw the book aside but I shall be glad when
I am done with it. I don't like him and the book seems to have a dominant
purpose to blow his own horn at the expense of Stalin. I feel the tone that
I became familiar with in my youth among the abolitionists. He to be
sure takes his principles for granted. I should like to see them stated.
If he still believes in Marx I thought that Capital showed chasms of un-
conscious eiTor and sophistries that might be conscious. I think that the
wisest men from Confucius and Aristotle to Lincoln (if he is entitled to
the superlative) have believed in the via media. Of course that is un-
popular in times of excitement and once in a thousand times it is the
extremists who get there. But I have not had a very high opinion of the
intellectual powers of such extremists as I have known or known about.
All of which is painfully near rudimentary twaddle — but I say it be-
cause little things once in a while make me wonder if your sympathies
are taking a more extreme turn as time goes on. I always am uncertain
how far Frankfurter goes. But I notice that he and you are a good deal
more stirred by Sacco and Vanzetti, who were turned into a text by the
reds, than by a thousand worse things among the blacks. Indeed, so far
as I can judge without having read the trial I doubt if those two suffered
anything more from the conduct of the judge than would be a matter of
course in England. It was their misfortune to be tried in a community
that was stirred up, if not frightened by manifestations the import of
which was exaggerated, and, without knowing anything about it, I pre-
1266 HOLMES TO LASKI [1930
sume that tihe jury felt like the community. I read an odious play by
Strindberg the other day — Countess Julie — a countess who gives herself
to a valet, and at the end goes out with a razor that he has handed to her,
as the only solution. It made me think of modernist pictures — and seems
like them to disregard the time rate of emotions. The most obvious come
to you first and obstruct that which the author or painter wishes to excite.
If you see that the clock in the picture will rumble over you feel that,
before you notice the elegance of the pattern of lines or the harmony of
the color. In the play the hatefulness of the situation and the emergence
of touches of brutal boorishness in the valet hit you quicker than the
subtleties, and obstruct your appreciation of them — or at least mine.
But I read nothing else until Trotsky is finished, except a few pages of
Mrs. Piozzfs Anecdotes of Johnson if I get into bed a quarter before 12.
The secretary read a lot of Birrell earlier, as probably I told you. You
haven't answered whether you ever see him now.
My reading propensities have, if not changed, intensified in the direc-
tion of subjects akin to my own and away from novels except funny or
pleasant ones. I wouldn't touch the unnamed Russian one that you laid
aside as too painful.
I am pleased at your prospect of prevalence in the Delegated Legisla-
tion Commission.
People believe what they want to — but the relative imminence of
death brings me no dogma that might be pleasant. I see in myself a wave
of the cosmos that is a little more phosphorescent — that carries con-
sciousness — whatever may be the cosmic worth of consciousness — to
a little higher than the average point before it disappears — but I see
nothing else except the fact that the cosmos has that and presumably a
good deal more among its possibilities.
Without much admiring Bergson I think his Elan vital was a good
phrase — and so farewell for the moment
Ever affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 14.V1I.30
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you tells me of certioraris
interrupted by lunches with Felix. That I envy you; for I wish I could
talk to the lad. I have been fiendishly busy — examinations, committees,
and a big piece of drafting for this blessed government. And we have
had some Belgian friends here who have had to be shown London and
Oxford. It all takes time.
But there have been compensations. We spent a delightful day in the
country with H. G» Wells. He was at the top of his form and discoursed
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1267
de omnibus rebus in great style. A description of Henry James's style —
an elephant of genius trying to pick up a pin; a memory of Oscar Wilde,
shocked because his remarks at dinner had failed to shock his hostess;
a wild attack on Roman Catholics in the Voltairean manner; a beautiful
eulogy of Lincoln as one in whose presence even the elect feel humble.
He has without exception the most active and stimulating mind I know.
He isn't profound; but he knows that thought is important and he does
passionately respect it. Moreover he has not only a really creative curi-
osity, but also something of the prophetic quality in him. And he is so
receptive to ideas that he makes you feel that you are talking just about
twice as well as you would ordinarily do. Then the French writer Andre
Siegfried came to spend a day here. I liked him greatly. Like all French-
men, he sees things far too clearly in terms of predefined categories. But,
he has great insight into big things. I liked, for instance, his argument
that the English ideal of a gentleman has prevented us from doing much
of the thinking we ought to have done. His description of Oxford as a
place where there is more brilliant small talk and more jealousy of adult
mind struck me as true and intimately connected with the first. He drew
for me a quite extraordinary picture of the recapture of the French bour-
geoisie by the Roman Church; and he said that even today your Catholic
democrat, Hke the politique of the 16th century, accepts the lay state and
protestantism de facto and not de jure. I don't know whether he has ever
come your way; if not, I hope when he next visits America, you will
experiment with him for half an hour. Another person I have seen, though
not lengthily, was the Spanish liberal Unamuno. He was very attractive
as a person and, to me, quite unintelligible as a mind. What, for instance,
does a man mean who says that Shakespere could think in four dimen-
sions? Or that Goethe was the square root of the Enlightenment? Why
not cube root? Rut he has a manner, and in this age, in which manner
counts for so much, evidently matter must be judged in its terms.
Next I must retail an incredible experience. You will have heard of
Conan Doyle's death. The spiritualists organised a great service for their
leader in the Albert Hall, so I went last night with Frida to listen. Imag-
ine ten thousand people packed like sardines, a medium on a platform
seated next to Lady Conan Doyle, with a black curtain with white stars
behind. First a hymn or two beautifully sung by a hidden choir. Then
a journalist explains what a great man C.D. was because he had faith.
Then a request for complete silence while the medium gets into touch
with the spirit world. For an hour she gave messages to members of the
audience, "There is a widow here whose husband passed over on July 11.
He sends his love and hopes the children are well." Then the grand climax
of a message to Lady Doyle. All the people seemed convinced. There
1268 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
were no tests of any kind, no attempt at control, and the attitude of
the audience I can only describe as reverent excitement. To me, more
incredible twaddle had never been talked even in the Albert Hall.
England, my dear Justice; 1930; seemingly sane people, most of them
well-fed and prosperous. In the admirable dialect of your native land, can
you beat it?
In the way of reading, one or two good things. Wells's new novel —
The Autocracy of Mr. Parham — a brilliant performance full of acute
insight into the most varied types of mind — Burckhardf s Civilisation of
the Italian Renaissance, which to my shame I had never read. It is su-
perb; and you feel as though it opened new windows onto the world.
If I can make my book on French political ideas one half as good I will
say mine dimitfis quite happily. Then Benn's History of Rationalism in
the 19th Century; a really remarkable account of intellectual movements.
It makes it clear, if one needs to have it made clear, that the clerical mind
is at bottom really incapable of thinking honestly in any ultimate way.
Once again I think one is almost overwhelmed by Darwin's massive
simplicity — there's the pith of greatness in everything that man did.
And for a bet I read Clarissa again and (whisper it low) was bored nearly
to tears by it. I was lured into it by Birrell to whom I went to tea the
other day. At eighty, he is as splendid as ever. He told me that he had
just read for the first time the Deontology of Bentham. "I felt," he said,
"as though I had been asked to masticate an icthyosaurus." He told me
that he had been to hear an eminent pastor preach on drink and that
he had to prevent himself crying out that Mr. Stiggins was a living por-
trait. He had also visited the National Portrait Gallery and saw with dis-
may that all the villains had the handsomest faces. He also concluded that
had he been Nelson he would not have bothered with Trafalgar while he
could have stayed with Lady Hamilton. He insisted that Bryce had more
learning and less wisdom than any man who has been in a cabinet these
hundred years! He spoke of a talk with Roosevelt in which the latter
"used adjectives like hammers"; and his last word was that he liked a
particular review of mine as I had learned the art "of using eulogy as
invective."
Our love to you. In a fortnight we are off to the Moselle.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, July 27, 1930
My dear Laski: Your last letter looks me in the face — as always it gives
me the keenest pleasure — and it shall not wait for an answer though I
have received a sack of 74 certioraru. (I began on them at once yester-
day, and have devoted a good part of this Sabbath to them — 24 done
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1269
— I hope to give my secretary pain on the morrow.) I was very glad to
hear about Birrell. I have reread all his works that I have here — Men
Women and Books — Res Judicatae — and 2 volumes, Obiter dicta —
a typical and delightful Briton. I believe I had some particular remark
that I wanted to make but I have forgotten it. Also I have read through
o o
Whitehead — Process and Reality. % I didn't understand definitely —
I didn't know the words, and he thinks and writes like a mathematician.
I got the drift, and felt somewhat remote because I cannot believe that
human speculation about the cosmos is likely to amount to much. He
seems to feel that he is in on the ground floor with God — which I can-
not, either for myself or him. But I like very much that he, like Dewey,
does not begin with the self-conscious ego. I was more impressed by
Dewey in that way — and really much impressed. However, I can't
recite on either — though for a few fierce days I could have on Dewey.
My secretary read aloud Mencken's Treatise on the Gods — which, as
I like M. in some other of his writing, I regretted to think 25 or 50 years
behind the times. By the by he, as I should have done a year or two ago,
treats with summary scorn the notion that Jesus is a myth — but two
or three books French and English have made me more respectful to the
belief. I have also listened to what seems to be a really great novel,
My Antonia — by Willa Gather — turning the life of early settlers on the
prairie (in our time) so hard, so squalid, into a noble poem. I do like an
author who doesn't have to go to London or Paris or Vienna to find his
genius — but realizes that any part of the universe can be seen poetically
and takes what he finds at hand and makes it blossom. I won't mention
everything that I have read but I got much pleasure from Owen Wister's
Roosevelt — which I got before it was called in, to change a few pages
that raised a question of libel. If I get into bed 10 or 15 minutes before 12
I allow myself to read until midnight and in that way have reread Mrs.
Piozzi's Anecdotes of Johnson, which again I found well worth reading.
I flatter myself that our times wouldn't stand his boorish bullying, how-
ever great it might think him — and so often wrong — in our view.
There was something beautiful in the old man, of course. I wonder if
Eckerman's Conversations with Goethe still would interest. I think
of getting hold of them for my secretary to read aloud. He sits in the
next room and when there is silence here for a few minutes he appears
and asks How about Culture? (Of course with a smile.) I have taken no
part in and have seen next to nothing of our Tercentenary1 — at Salem
there is rather a striFng reproduction of the poor little houses that John
*The Commonwealth was currently celebrating the three hundredth anni-
versary of the founding of Massachusetts Bav Colony. H. A. L. Fisher, on July
15, had delivered at exercises on Boston Common an address published as
The Bay Colony, A Tercentenary Address (1930).
1270 HOLMES TO LASKI [1930
Winthrop found on landing or his company had. They got some pretty
good ones quite early. At Ipswich there is one with beams that it would
be hard to beat in England — if memory does not deceive me.
Your H. A. L. Fisher made an address on The Bay Colony that reads
very well indeed. That was in Boston. I didn't hear it. Which was your
review that "used eulogy as invective"? It takes time and a magnifying
glass to get all the goodness out of your writing. At first I thought it was
"analogy" not eulogy and spoken of Roosevelt — and was reminded of
his remark that Brewer (who had criticised him) had a sweetbread for
a brain.
I can't read the name of your Frenchman Andre Siegf ? My ex-
perience (little and long ago) — with mediums is like your "incredible
twaddle" — or as I say drool.
It is time for me to descend to solitaire. Habits are not unpleasant
things for the old if not tyrannical. The day is apt to tire me a little and I
like the change — if I have a few minutes before 11 — too short for
a game I pull a book from the shelf on my right — often the life of Miss
Austen. I like to read about her even if I don't adore.
Ever affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 26.V1L30
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you has lain ten days unan-
swered. But I have lived in a whirlwind of examiner's meetings, visits on
business to Oxford, innumerable callers, some political jobs, and all the
innumerable things that accumulate round the end of term. It's been
hard work. On Thursday, however, we leave for Germany, and then for
four blessed weeks I shall know (I think) real freedom for no one I can
conceivably know can penetrate to the place — Cochem — where we
are going. O blessed day!
I have had all sorts of oddities visiting me. The most amusing, I think,
was a Hungarian educated at a Christian college in China. I have heard
of men with great purposes in life; this man certainly had the queerest.
He wanted my help — mine — to raise a fund for translating the works
of Confucius into Hungarian. I said that I could not see any reason for
the adventure. He said that Confucius was so wise that its perusal would
change the face of Hungarian politics, now, alas, in a degraded condition.
I pointed out that fifty per cent of the population in Hungary was illit-
erate and that of those who could read it was improbable that many
would be interested in Confucius. Then, said he, with a superb gesture,
let us double the translation fund and distribute copies free. But I insisted
on being absolved from any obligation to help. Another gent, also curi-
ously enough an Hungarian, wanted to translate my Grammar into his
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1271
native tongue. I explained that he must make all arrangements with my
publishers. He then told me (I) I was the greatest living political thinker
(II) that Hungary was aching for an edition of my works (III) that in
person I was more charming than he had ever dreamed, even from my
books (IV) that if I could advance him five pounds from our future
profits on the Hungarian translation I should be his eternal and illustrious
creditor. I protested my unwillingness, whereon with equal charm, he
retired telling me that the tragedy of success was its power to breed the
love of money. I must add the Spaniard who came to tell rne that Pro-
fessor Garcia of the University of Seville1 lectured on my books and that
if I would only come to Spain I should be greeted as a deliverer. I said
that in my modesty I felt I had no knowledge of what I was delivering
my Spanish friends from. He replied (what a poor figure Don Quixote
cuts beside him) that I was the highest type of liberator for I freed men
from I knew not what bonds. I add that I do not think you, my dear
Justice, had any conception of the distinguished part your humble cor-
respondent plays in affairs. One who insists on being St. George irrele-
vantly to the existence of dragons is, I think, clearly an eminent person.
We had a jolly lunch on Thursday with Lewis Einstein, who is as
charming as ever. My one fear for him is dilettantism. I wish he had
something definite and continuous to do. I am trying to arrange that the
University should make him an honorary lecturer in the hope that a
course of lectures may pin him down to the writing of a real book. But
he is amid the distractions of great luxury and social eminence, and I
fear that he may be sucked into that amusing but futile vortex. (Can
a vortex be amusing? I don't know!) Then a long dinner with Fleuriau,
the French Ambassador.2 He amused me much by saying that after six
years he understood the English less than ever. "You are," he said, "more
momentous about trifles than any people in the world.** He told us how
he went to see the Foreign Secretary at the House. On the way through
the lobby he heard Baldwin say to a neighbour that "England was in
real danger," and was distressed at Baldwin's tragic face. He mentioned
this to the Foreign Secretary and asked what particularly was the cause
of gloom. The Foreign Secretary electrified him by explaining that it was
the position in the Test Match against Australia to which Baldwin re-
ferred. I also had a very pleasant lunch with old Scrutton, L.J. who spoke
of the law with the pride of one of its prophets. But he puzzled me, as I
am always puzzled, by insisting that Cairns L.C. was the greatest lawyer
he had ever known, and after him Bo wen. He told me a pleasant story
1 Perhaps Carlos Garcia Oviedo, Professor of Administrative Law at the
University of Seville.
2 Aime Joseph de Fleuriau ( 1870-1938 ) was French Ambassador in London
from 1924 to 1933.
1272 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
of an old man in the Exchequer Court who had some little job he feared
might be abolished in the reconstruction of 1873. "Don't be afraid," said
Fitzjames Stephen to the old man, "you are a vested interest, and thus
certain to be protected by the House of Lords."
Of reading, not very much to record. A pleasant volume of essays by
Ernest Barker, (Church, State and Study) one of which on the Roman
conception of empire pleased me greatly. A volume of short stories, some-
what in the Wodehouse manner by Denis MacKail called The Joung
Livingstones, and a work on American political ideals by W. S. Carpenter
which struck me as solemn without being profound. But I reread Trol-
lope's The Eustace Diamonds and thought it a first-rate story grandly
told. I also read the special supplement to the New Republic on Croly;3
but for me it was a little too much in the de mortuis manner — rather
like what the Times would have said.
Our love to you both. I read with horror of your heat wave. I hope it
did not disturb you. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, August 9, 1930
My dear Laski: You are the best correspondent I ever had. Each letter
is interesting and is pretty sure to be a charming work of art. The only
criticism I could make would be that you sometimes don't answer matters
that hoped for an answer — but I have nothing of that sort in mind now.
I don't always so fully agree with what you print, much as I admire
some of it. That you know as to the equality business. I don't see any
ground for your aspirations in the prospect of improved economic con-
ditions for the many. That is I see no ground for the prospect. What I
can see more clearly is the desire to get rid of a disagreeable contrast in
position and public esteem — a desire for which I have little respect.
What you say of sovereignty in the pamphlet received today1 needs
further reflection on my part. Off hand it seems an obsession grafted by
Figgis and hardly a necessary part of your thinking. The other day
Frankfurter brought over Cardozo (C.J. New York) — to my great de-
light. His face is sensitive, tender and strong — and such he is, unless
I greatly err. He is one of the few who have said in print and private
the things that make my life seem worth having been lived — and that
naturally made me the more rejoiced at the first chance I have had for
a real talk with him. Felix seemed in first rate shape but kept in the back-
ground for the sake of his guest. My secretary is reading to me James
Truslow Adams (no relation) on The Adams Family — which I find
*63 New Republic 243 (July 16, 1930).
Perhaps "Law and the State," originally published in 9 Economica 267
(November 1929); reprinted in Studies in Law and Politics (1932), 237.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1273
interesting — and at odd minutes I am rereading Maine's Ancient Law
in Pollock's new edition. At times nowadays it seems a little thin — as an
original effort. I am wondering whether I shall put rny secretary to read-
ing aloud Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity. I never have read it and think
it may be a required subject of examination at the Day of Judgment.
There is a second breathing space after the second batch of certioraris
(75) has been returned — but I live like the wild animals in continual
terror for my life. It seems futile to write to you now, for I suppose you
are perdu in Germany — but this may reach you in time. You will come
back enriched no doubt as always — if not with 17th century pamphlets
at least with some new experience. May it be joyful.
Affectionately yours, O, W. Holmes
Union-Hotel, Cochem, Germany, 2.VIILSO
My dear Justice: The address will tell its own tale. I write looking out
onto a small range of hills completely covered with vineyards, and the
swift-flowing Moselle crowned with old houses at my feet. To my right
is a vast fifteenth century castle, so fortified, that it is difficult to see how
Turenne could ever have taken it under Louis XIV if the inhabitants had
food on the premises. There seems to be one winding path to it with
gun-mounted walls at every turn. It is a marvellous sight, and I must try
to get a photograph that will convey to you some idea of its beauty. The
people are fascinating — solid German bourgeoisie, who eat and drink
enormously, and look as though it is the unvariable rule at sixty never
to gaze upon one's feet again. Certainly when I stand by some of them
I feel as though I was a wan illusion of nature, a pure spirit seen darkly
through a glass. But it is marvellous how they enjoy life. You see a stout
grandfather holding up his wine to the light, and gazing upon it with a
reverent ecstasy that can hardly be described in other than religious
terms. Another thing struck me forcibly en route: if you look at the book-
stalls on the stations, it is astonishing to see how much solid literature is
sold. There are, of course, the inevitable Edgar Wallace, and the usual
dubious magazines, but you see also in quite small towns, Goethe and
Schiller, Ranke and Thomas Mann, to take names at random. I wonder
whether I could buy say a Shakespere or a Bernard Shaw at the average
London station. I was impressed, too, especially at Trier, by the experi-
mental character of the architecture one sees. It is clear that the Germans
(I am told under Dutch and Swedish inspiration) are trying to do some-
thing new. It isn't massive, like American architecture. For instance the
railway station here (a country market town of some three thousand
people) is clearly an effort to express something that combines the fact
that a railway is science with the fact that Cochem is old; and the result
1274 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
is something with an unexpected charm of its own. What one feels, even
in the 24 hours since we arrived, is the power of this people, their energy,
and drive and determination. They almost seem to play because they have
measured the object which play can be made to serve. One other reflec-
tion. I have never before been in Catholic Germany. It is curious to see
how Catholicism assumes a Germanic form. There is a dull heaviness in
the crosses and Christs by the wayside which seems to ask you to believe
that Christ was a good German burgher intent on his glass of lager after
supper. When you see at the tenth century bridge here, a Christ with
glowing red cheeks, it is difficult to remember that it advertises a religion
and not somebody's beer. But I grow profane.
For the moment, no other news. But I want to send this word of greet-
ing so that its very absence may assure you of our tranquil environment.
Our love to you. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Beverly Farms, August 18, 19SO
My dear Laski: Your address, even if I were sure that I read it right,
seems too uncertain in duration for me to risk a change from the one that
you so admirably put at the head of your London letters. I cannot too
highly praise your habit. It saves trouble invariably at this end. I mean-
time keep on in my routine. Latterly I have allowed myself the pleasures
of irresponsibility — not bothered about improving my mind, but gone
in for a good time. I did, to be sure, make my secretary read me one book
of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, which to my satisfaction had the passage
that always is quoted1 and that the Puritanical Austin calls Hooker's
fustian. But having got his flavor I thought it would be a waste of time
to read the rest. The appreciation of such an idle life in the Essays of
Elia — just reread, goes far to justify me and I rather think that a little
play with unstrenuous thought is civilizing in its way. I think I have
mentioned the new edition of Maine's Ancient Law — almost as easy as,
and akin to belles lettres — but perhaps not God's Trombones — poems
by a negro sent to me by Cardozo, that wonderfully impress me.2
Just now my lad is reading to me from two, I believe out of many,
volumes of Grant Duff's Diary, 1886-8 — a light-weight, but with a lot
of that agreeable cultivated English gossip that gives one entertainment
if nothing much else. He says the true form of the saying of Oxenstierna
is "an nescis, mi fli, quantilla prudentia regitur orbis" — citing as the
1 "Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom
of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth
do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest are not
exempted from her power/' Ecclesiastical Polity., Book I, Sec. XVI.
2 James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones (1927).
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1275
original authority Svensk Plutarch, 11, Stockholm 1826, p. 95. 3 I always
have seen it in some different words — but I think it has an older origin.
Do you know?
I had a letter from Leslie Scott today saying how much he liked you
and enclosing the first day's proceedings in an arbitration between Lena
Goldfields, Ltd., and the Russian Soviet Govt. — to which, it seems, the
Soviet Govt. has refused to send its arbitrators alleging that L.G. had
cancelled the whole agreement — but it is said that the agreement pro-
vides that in such cases the arbitration shall proceed.4 The charges of
L.G. sound not improbable to an outsider. I observe that the counsel
for L.G. said that Stalin of whom Trotsky has so much to say, was the
dictator of the U.S.S.R. I shall be interested to see the outcome. Ladies
come here to luncheon and are always pleasant, though at times I am
reminded of a line of one of the Darwins. "Next week looks very black
— a pleasure for every day." Enough of gossip. I wish I could boast of
some achievement, but I am having a good time.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Union-Hotel, Cochem, Germany, 9.VIII.SO
My dear Justice: Certainly this is very nearly a perfect place for a holi-
day. There is hardly any traffic, and the sheer silence, after London, is
in itself most refreshing. And the surroundings are quite magnificent.
At every bend of the river, the scenery is different, and there is a com-
fortable serenity about it which is most impressive. One or two things
strike me which seem worth putting on record. If I had to put down the
reasons for the success of Germany as a people, I should say, in this
order, that they were first industry, second simplicity, and third organisa-
tion. Each of them in its way is astonishing. The ordinary man one meets
is impressive neither in conversation nor knowledge. But he does his job
with astonishing devotion; he is really proud of it as a job. He hasn't the
Anglo-Saxon habit of knocking-off as soon as the clock strikes. Then he
takes his pleasures very simply. They walk a little, drink a little, take
obvious and obviously whole-hearted joy in music and the theatre; but
there are no signs of the complicated pursuit of complex pleasure such as
you see so widely nowadays. This, for instance, is the most important
place between Coblentz and Treves. There is no movie, two public-
8 Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1886-1888
(2 vols., 1900), vol. II, p. 106.
*Sir Leslie Scott was the arbitrator named by Lena Goldfields Limited.
After the refusal of the Soviet representative to participate in the arbitration, Sir
Leslie, with Professor Stutzer as the neutral member of the Board, heard the
case and entered an award in favor of the company in a sum exceeding £,12,-
000,000. See 74 Solicitors Journal 648 (Oct. 4, 1930).
1276 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
houses, a village orchestra (quite admirable), endless fishing, and a
Saturday market which patently is an event in the lives of its participants.
There is quite a good book-shop, and an even better music-shop; and the
17th century Town Hall is kept about as admirably as one could wish.
The only disappointing feature is the Church. This is Catholic, and a
quite charming 18th century building is ruined by the most vulgar collec-
tion of cheap statues I have ever seen in a public building. I spoke to the
priest about it, and he clearly did not even understand that one could
object to 14 plaster-casts (coloured) of Christ obviously turned out by
mass-production and garish to the last degree. Then their organisation
is remarkable. Whether it's the little steamer, or the ferry, or the village
threshing machine, the people seem to fit into one another's needs re-
markably. There are, of course, faults. There is a certain drab sameness
about the talk you get. You don't find the individuality you always tumble
upon in an English or American village. The people, like good Germans,
are a little too respectful, and a little too neat and orderly. But they are
full of common-sense. There is little or no bitterness about the war. The
Republic is clearly firmly established; the only man who mentioned the
Kaiser to me spoke of him as a figure of comic opera, and thought it a
relief to be done with his theatrical gestures. They don't, indeed, like
the French; but everyone to whom I speak takes the sensible view that
one must either fight them or Hve with them, and that there is everything
to be said for living with them. Let me add that the most impressive
building in the town is the School, and that each morning at 7:30 two
buses arrive to take the children to the nearest secondary school, and you
will see why I am impressed by the communal virtues of these people.
They know how to make defeat into victory by those solid virtues of
patience, soberness, and hard work, which are, I think, about the best
general qualities in the world.
I have done little since we came except write and read and walk.
Mostly I have read law, with a view to my lectures at Yale next spring.
And the more I have read, the more respect I have for one or two French-
men like Geny and Saleilles, and one or two Germans like Ehrlich and
Kantorowicz. (Incidentally the likeness of the latte/s type of mind to
Morris Cohen's is astonishing.) I brought some of Pound's books with
me, but I don't find that they grow more profound on closer acquaint-
ance. First of all, they all repeat one another, and second they are much
more schematic than his material justifies. I think he has immense learn-
ing, often full of insight; but he is too oppressed by his material to have
the flash which makes the supreme person. Of other things I have enjoyed
hugely some Hazlitt and am more than ever convinced that "My First
Acquaintance with Poets" is the best light essay in the world. Then I have
read a volume of essays on 18th century French literature by one Albert
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1277
which was well worth the price of admission, and an amusing life of
Diderot by one Ducros which I enjoyed because the author, as a keen
Catholic, does not approve of Diderot, and yet cannot help falling in love
with him all over again at the end of each chapter.
By all of which presents, I hope you recognise how well and refreshed
I feel. Indeed even Frida admits that I have never looked better and de-
clares her satisfaction with me. She, as always, convinced me that mar-
riage is the natural state of man. I am a convinced monogamist to whom
the new morals are without attraction or meaning.
Our love to you. I hope the heat-wave has not caused you trouble.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, August 22, 1930
My dear Laski: A letter from you admirably describing what you find
your town to be came just after I had sent an answer to the one announc-
ing your arrival. I have not much to tell of the interval. Mrs. Beveridge
who generally accompanies her luncheon here, or shortly follows it, with
a book, sent me The Religious Background of American Culture by
Thomas Cuming Hall about three days ago and I have found it very
interesting. His general thesis is that far the most efficient cause of our
development in the way of religion is not Puritanism properly so called
but Wickliffe and the Lollards. The Puritans were in the Church and
thought Church and State indivisible. The Lollards — the great mass of
the poor in towns — were outside of the Church and hated its splendors
as it hated the luxuries of the upper class in which they had no share.
They had no central authority but independent conventicles which were
a law unto themselves. They didn't care much for the sacraments but
laid their emphasis on conduct. Being townspeople and having no share
in the land they were no great hands at agriculture but found their
chance in trade, ship-building, &c. He has to rely somewhat on the
probability and conservatism of tradition (the same that is seen in chil-
dren's games) — and in this point leads me to wish to see what authori-
ties he finds to rely upon — and he repeats himself like a jury lawyer.
But he quite stirs me up just as I was beginning to wallow in easy litera-
ture — Essays of Elia — Grant Duff Notes from a Diary — short stories
by E. M. Forster.1 Essays, And Even Now, by Max Beerbohm — none
but the first hitting me very hard. Of course I have only given a hint at
Hall. Mrs. B. says he was ordained a minister, and married her to her
husband in Germany, and that he is rather a splendid fellow. He seems
to have become a sceptic — I suppose too intelligent not to. He is de-
scribed on the Title Page as Professor of English and American History
1 The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories (1911).
1278 HOLMES TO LASKI [1930
and Culture — University of Goettingen — and writes with every ap-
pearance of very accurate knowledge and acute thoughts. Today I called
on Mrs. Curtis to whom contrary to my practise I have read some pas-
sages (not confidential) from two or three of your letters — she appreci-
ates them — then Mrs. Beveridge at luncheon — then a young lawyer
who wanted to get some relief from me in a case on which his ideas were
nebulous — and also, he more than implied, to see me. I sent him oS
seemingly convinced that he had no standing as yet for help from us —
then a drive inland, as it is rather cold — then some reading of Hall by
my secretary — then supper and now you. I think I quoted to you, but
I quote again a gem from one of the Darwins — "Next week looks very
black; a pleasure every day." I don't like to be hurried or crowded —
but I need a piece de resistance as well as light stuff in order to feel that
I am accomplishing something. Why not be content with pleasure? I
can't answer, except that by my experience in life and more by the tem-
perament I get from my mother, without some feeling of accomplishment
I feel as if it were time for me to die.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Apropos of children's games, my father interpreted some of their ways of
counting — that carry their conservatism on their face — One-er zol —
Zua zol. Zigazol — Zau — &c. i.e. — Un sol, deux sol, sex sol. Zehn. Or
cushy cow bonny let down your milk cushy cow let down your milk
to me and I will give you a silver dee — c.c. couchez de' — [illegible].
Union-Hotel, Cochem, Germany, 22.VI1L30
My dear Justice: The main event since I wrote you last has been a little
tour with Frida. We went first to Cologne, then to Frankfurt, then to
Heidelberg. Each had its own interest, though for sheer beauty, I think
Heidelberg deserves the palm. Its castle, and the views one has from
there, are quite unforgettable, I saw one or two people, and gained some-
thing of an insight into German university conditions; and I had a jolly
time hunting books. The German book-shops are remarkable, and the
beauty of their book-production even more so, though I think they are
more expensive even than with you. I bought a good deal, though, for
the most part, old books. Some nice editions of the early German Camer-
alists1 which I have long wanted to possess, and some things whose
1 Cameralism was the Germanic version of eighteenth-century mercantilism,
involving in political, juristic, and economic theory acceptance of a paternalistic
state and emphasizing the supremacy of the general will of the state over the
freedom of the individual
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1279
writers will revive memories for you — Heusler, Jhering, Branner, and
Dernburg.2 The booksellers are learned men, and in Frankfurt, particu-
larly, I thoroughly enjoyed a long gossip with them. Everywhere in the
law bookshops I saw Leonhard's translation of The Common Law and a
very common book was the German edition of F. Pollock's Short History
of Politics which I have always thought the most remarkable thing even
he has ever done. The talk with the professors was good fun. Mostly they
took themselves (I must add me also) with enormous seriousness, and
I think I really understood Pound's mind for the first time. For instance
Radbruch of Heidelberg, a constitutional lawyer is the author of a doc-
trine about the nature of a federal state of which the essence is that
sovereignty rests in the constituent organ. I suggested that this was not
very helpful in interpreting the U.S. Constitution, to which his reply was
that in the true sense of the word America was not a federal system at all.
It was very amusing to hear them develop categories and force facts
willy-nilly into them; still more amusing to hear them dismiss their rivals
as men unacquainted with the true scientific habit of mind. I learned also
the evil effect of the foundations — Carnegie et al. — as you know, a sore
subject with me. Everyone wanted to know how to get money from
Nicholas Butler and James Brown Scott for some pet scheme; everyone,
equally, had nothing but contempt for men. But they were willing to
found almost any sort of institute, if they could only get endowment. One
man in Frankfurt complained to me bitterly that he was Just going to
start an institute for the study of foreign law when Berlin stepped in first
and got the money from Rockefeller. But, I said, you can study foreign
law without an Institute. He did not think his university would consider
he had prestige if he was in competition in that field with Berlin without
the backing of Rockefeller. One delightful old man I met was von Below,
the medievalist,3 whose talk was an enchantment. He pleased me espe-
cially by his passion for Maitland. The great difference, he said, between
the average German and the average English scholar is that the latter
is still not ashamed of writing literature; Mommsen he thought was the
last great German who had both gifts. In his own field, he said, he read
2 Heinrich Dernburg (1829-1907), German jurist, whose major achievement
was in relating the development of .Prussian law to the social and economic life
of Prussia; author of Lehrbuch des Preussichen Privatrechts (3 vols.» 1871-80).
3 The distinguished economic and constitutional historian, Georg von Below
(1858-1927) had died three years before Laskfs letter was written. Although
while at Berlin Below studied under Brunner, there is no indication in Below's
autobiographical sketch that he was a student of Ranke's. See I Die Geschichts-
wissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen (S. Steinberg, ed., 1925),
pp. 1-49. If Laskfs reference was to another historian of the same name the
editor has not been able to identify him.
1280 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
Dopsch4 in duty bound, but in Maitland he had both interest and instruc-
tion. He told me some charming tales of von Ranke whose lectures he
attended at Berlin. The old man, he said, was more proud of his pupils
than of any of his achievements; and when he, von Below, got his first
post he found on his desk on arrival a letter from von Ranke bidding him
serve truth first, and Germany afterwards. At Cologne, I had tea with
Oncken the historian,5 and we talked about Adam Smith on whom he
has written admirably. He put him first among all economists because
he was statesman as well as technician; then Ricardo; then J. S. Mill; then
the American Carey,6 upon whom my ignorance is, alas, great. He la-
mented the passion in Germany (a) for the inedit, (which he thought
came from France) and (b) for learning as such. When he was young,
he said, people went back over and over again to the ultimate questions;
now the young privat-docent was only too anxious to write about some-
thing no one had dealt with before and then spend his life about the
theme. I tried to cheer him up saying that one found one's way to
the universe only by meditating on the significance of a fact; "no, no," the
old man said vigorously, "the young men stay by the facts, they don't
care about the connections." He spoke, too, magnificently about the
charlatans with whom Germany is infested just now — Keyserling, Lud-
wig, Friedell 7 and so forth. He spoke angrily about their vogue in Eng-
land and America. "Have you no humbugs of your own, that you must
import ours?" And then he won my heart completely by telling me that
fifty years ago he discovered Hazlitt and had never since then been with-
out a volume of his. And in the war, no writers had given him greater
comfort than Lamb and Emerson. I wish I could reproduce the charm of
the old man's talk. I liked him hugely.
We came back here on Tuesday. Next Wednesday we start by car for
Antwerp: going through Luxembourg. Then two days there to see the
Flemish pictures on exhibition and on Saturday night home. It will have
been a very happy time; and we all feel thoroughly refreshed.
Our love to you, and Diana calls out that I am to send you a special
message from her. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
*Alfons Dopsch (1868- ), Professor of History at Vienna, coeditor of
Monument a Germaniae Historica (1892), author of Die Wirtschaftsentwick-
lung der Karolingerzeit (2 vols., 1912-13).
5 Hermann Oncken (1869-1945), Professor of History at Giessen, Heidel-
berg, and Berlin, was a leading historian of modern Germany. His writing on
Adam Smith has not been identified.
6 Henry Charles Carey (1793-1879), optimistic critic of Ricardo and
Malthus, best known for his Principles of Political Economy (3 vols., 1837-40).
7Egon Friedell (1878-1938); his Cultural History of the Modern Age
(Atkinson, tr., 3 vols., 1930-32) had much of the mystic gloom and some of the
learning of Spengler's more portentous work.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1281
Devon Lodge, S.1X.SO
My dear Justice: We have been home just a week after a quite wonderful
holiday. We ended it by motoring back from Cochem to Antwerp through
Luxemburg, some of the most thrilling scenery I know. And at Antwerp
I spent nearly a day at the exhibition of Flemish pictures which would
have won your heart. What moved me most was the elder Brueghel, who
is clearly a philosopher of the first order; his insight into men is as re-
markable as his sense of colour. And his etchings are almost more thrill-
ing than his paintings. I wonder if you know them, particularly the Seven
Sins? They have a verve and a power of command over detail that left
me gasping. Here I have been mostly busy on an article about Diderot
for Harper's1 which I have thoroughly enjoyed doing (I hope you will
enjoy it later). It meant much re-reading; but when I came across the
sentence "I would give ten Watteaus for one Teniers" I wished I could
have shaken him by the hand. Did you ever look at his "Pensees sur la
nature"? It is amazing what vistas they open up.
We had a surprise visit the day before we left Cochem from Z. Chafee
at Harvard and some good talk with him. But his account of Pound dis-
turbed me much; if it is only ten per cent true P. must have become
impossible. And even Chafee's loyalty could not conceal the fact that all
the people at Cambridge you and I care about are unhappy about him,
especially Felix. It seems to be a very bad case of megalomania. But when
anyone, like Pound, has written the same book seven times, one begins
to suspect that something is wrong.
I envy you the talk with Cardozo, whom I met for one evening in 1926,
and by whom I was enormously impressed; not merely by his wisdom
but, almost more I think, by his simple beauty of character. And I am
glad you liked Hooker, even at one draught, for he always struck me as
a big fellow with a style as impressive as a piece of gold brocade. Diderot
apart, I have been reading Leigh Hunt and Lamb since I got back, always
with delight, and, in the case of Lamb, something more. He is pure
magic; and he can't put a pen to paper without showing you that he is
magical. Incidentally I have re-read Arnold's essays in criticism and was
much struck by the fecundity of thought in those on Marcus Aurelius
and Spinoza. And I read a volume of essays by Virginia Woolf called
The Common Reader, one of which (on not knowing Greek) I do urge
you to read. I thought it beautiful in the supreme sense that anyone,
however big would have been proud to have written it. Just now I am
in the middle of Evelina; and its adorable simplicities compensate even
for its Johnsonian rotundities.
1 "Diderot: Homage to a Genius," 162 Harper's Magazine 597 (April 1931),
reprinted in Studies in Law and Politics (1932), 48.
1282 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
One or two little things have pleased me and I put them down on the
general principle that one should share one's pleasure. The Berengaria
leaves tomorrow for New York with four of my young men on board, all
the sons of working-class parents, two bound for professorships in Canada
and two similarly in the U.S.A. Another of my young men has been given
a fellowship at Oxford, and another one still a big job in the League.
That kind of thing makes one feel that one doesn't sweat in vain. And
I whisper in your sceptical ear that had there not been the artificial
equality of free education they would probably have been clerks and
grocers' assistants like their fathers. As a matter of fact any logical dis-
section of Holmes, J.'s "betterbilitarianism" [sic] would demonstrate that
he shares these views with me.2
I have bought but little since I got back, as Frida and I were captivated
by an eighteenth century tallboy in Soho, and by joint effort we bought it
to adorn the hall where it presides in silent majesty. But I picked up a
pretty copy of the Dr. Armamgaud's Montaigne together with the very
rare book of Villey on his sources. The latter which I have been paging
genially in bed is an astounding feat for the author, who seems to have
tracked Montaigne down the most devious bye-ways, is blind; and one
simply becomes silent in the face of that type of heroism.
I must add also that I went out last night to the Disabled Men's Hos-
pital at Richmond and gave the 70 men there a lecture. I wish you could
have seen those brave fellows — all of them after 12 years without hope
of recovery and mostly still racked with pain as cheerful and kind as any
set of human beings. I was supposed to stay till ten but they begged for
more talk and it was midnight before I crept away. One poor fellow, so
wounded that he has to wear a mask, asked me for books to read, so I sent
him a parcel, and this afternoon he called up to say that "he 'oped Vd
meet 'azlitt in 'eaven." Isn't that adorablel
We are hoping that tonight Morris Cohen will turn up. He has been
at a philosophical Congress at Oxford.
Our love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Beverly Farms, Sunday, Sept. 14, 1930
My dear Laski: Two letters from you within a week — the last (espe-
cially delightful) coming this morning and written from home. I, mean-
time, have been having the Pollocks here. They arrived last Monday after
9 p.m. having motored from N.Y. successfully to Boston but after that
wandered for a wasted hour in the effort to find the North Shore. They
2Holmes*s simplest definition of a "bettabilitarian" was: "One who thinks
you may bet more or less on the universe/' (Holmes to Felix Frankfurter,
February 16, 1912.)
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1283
left yesterday ( Sat. ) morning for a night at Chocorua — I know not
where — thence to motor back to President Lowell next Tuesday and
then home. Rather sporting for two so old people, both lame from broken
legs, and Lady Pollock having also broken her right wrist. They were
fully on deck and said that they enjoyed themselves. I think they really
did. I had in some agreeable women for luncheon and a married couple
for supper, and took them to drive to Gloucester and Marblehead. There
was no chance to take them around Rockport. P. and I would take a short
slow toddle in the morning — and while they were here I took a news-
paper which at other times I do not and so have peace.
Naturally I haven't read much — a little Carlyle and De Quincy and
now Eckerman, Conversations with Goethe. I have on hand the second
part of Faust with Bayard Taylor's translation for another try at that.
I am prejudiced against it. If a man chooses the form of a play, it seems
to me that his first duty is to make it good in the external sense — i.e. to
give it a coherent, interesting, easily intelligible movement. If it doesn't
have that I don't care for inner meanings. Let the author put them in
a treatise — but a play must in the first place be a play — not be a lord
among wits and a wit among lords. I found myself repelled by the pro-
phetic magisterial tone of Carlyle — especially as in some cases I
thought he had no message to deliver. So far as my limited memory goes
I don't agree with you and Diderot about Watteau and Teniers. I was
much moved by the discourse of a former boss of the Wallace Collection
(a very well known critic, now dead) standing in front of the Watteaus.1
He became a different man as he showed Watteau looking on at but not
sharing the gaieties and splendors. In a fortnight my vacation will be
over, and I expect some certs, before then. I have done 175. The time
has rushed by — old age and routine make time fly fast. I don't feel
as if I had much to show for my quasi leisure, but a fairly long list of
books read (long for me — not for you) looks respectable. I have kept
very well — so far. My love to you all.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 20.IX.SO
My dear Justice: I have been pretty busy since I wrote last. First Morris
Cohen turned up from a philosophical congress at Oxford 1 and spent
five days — a delightful guest. His range of knowledge and acuity of
^ir Claude Phillips (1848-1924), art critic, was Keeper of the Watteau
Collection at Hertford House from 1897 to 1911.
Cohen's paper, "Possibility in History," which he had delivered at the
meeting, is published in Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of
Philosophy ( 1931 ), p. 19.
1284 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
insight were even more remarkable than in the old days; and he has lost
a certain acerbity of temper which used to blunt the edge of his wisdom.
We talked the world round, hardly disagreeing. There was one tea at
which I wish you could have been present. He imported a German
mathematician and they discussed mathematical logic. For one hour I
heard names and ideas discussed as of vital significance without ever
knowing whether I was on my head or my heels — an experience that
makes one humble. Then we paid a visit to my people in Manchester —
enlivened by an evening with Alexander the philosopher who, as always,
was delightful. He cracked up Whitehead to the stars, spoke warmly of
Dewe/s Experience and Nature, and was passionately angry about the
evil influence of Bergson on French philosophy. But Manchester is like
a lesser Pittsburgh, and we were both very relieved to be home. How-
ever, I found one book there which pleased me, the five volume edition
of Bynershock 1730, in nice vellum for five shillings; I remember
Lowdennilk offering it to me for thirty dollars and felt comforted. And
I got much reading done. A charming novel — Angel Pavement by J. B.
Priestley, a demi-romantic picture of unimportant people in the city, well
done because it knew how to make detail significant. A good history —
Modern Culture 1543-1687 by Preserved Smith, nothing new, but put-
ting a whole host of things on one plane, and bitterly anti-Catholic which
pleased me much. An admirable book by one Torrey of Yale, on Voltaire
and the Deists, showing that the old legend of his debt to Bolingbroke
has nothing in it; that V. hardly knew him in England and from the an-
notations in Vs copies, (which are in Leningrad) had only contempt
for his work. Then Karl Pearson's Life of F. Galton, too big and full, like
most scientific biographies, but still an interesting light on the Darwinian
and Post-Darwinian epoch. And for the first time since I left Oxford
Lecky's European Morals which I think is really remarkable; I don't know
anything since that touches it except perhaps Friedlander's Roman Man-
ners, and that, of course, touches a much narrower field. Lecky made me
doubt more than ever before whether Christianity was not almost wholly
a deleterious influence. Certainly when it conquered it had lost most of
the moral qualities which might have made it valuable. Then the transla-
tion of Max Weber's famous essay on Protestantism and Capitalism. It
deserves its reputation, though I think there is a tendency in him to put
the cart before the horse. I agree that the Calvinist conception of occupa-
tion as a "calling" was exactly what the new economic order needed; but
I don't think it was conscious anticipation of need so much as an inevi-
table response to need. I mean that religions don't shape economic
categories, they adapt themselves to them. But the essay is certainly a
most brilliant and suggestive piece of work. These things apart, I have
been busy writing at Diderot which I finished yesterday and sent off to
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1285
Harpers; you will see it presently there, I hope with pleasure. By the
way, I am sending you to Washington a book of Brueghel's drawings,
We both liked him beyond any other person (as I think I wrote to you)
at the Antwerp exhibition; and these reproductions, though not so clear
as I would like, may, with a glass, convey to you the strength which
impressed us so much. I thought the drawings better than the paintings
with two exceptions, and I don't think the latter reproduce very well.
I have still a fortnight before term begins; though Sankey tomorrow
wants me to begin some delicate work for him in these Indian negotia-
tions, and I am slowly drafting my part of the report on administrative
law. Sankey, of course, is an angel to work for, he responds at once to
suggestion, and he hasn't pride of authorship (that's the chief difficulty
in working for MacDonald who in that respect is much like Wilson).
But this Indian tangle is so complex that one is almost afraid to put sug-
gestions on paper just because generalisations are so very difficult.
You, I expect, are beginning to count the days until Washington. I do
hope the term will prove a happy one. One day at least I shall brighten
before you. I have given a note to you to my friend Schacht, the late
President of the German Reichsbank* and possibly, the next President
of the German Republic. He is a brilliant and attractive creature and I
think will really interest you.
Our love to you. Keep fit and don't overdo it.
Ever affectionately yours, H, ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 27.IX.30
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you, telling me of the Pollock's
visit. It really is astonishing to hear of their courage in making, at their
age, so astonishing an adventure. If I mistake not, it is now something
like sixty-three years since you first met one another — a wonderful
record.1
I have had a busy week. I had to write a long lecture, which I will
send you when printed, on justice and the Law, for which a good gent,
left thirty pounds a year to some society here.2 Then suddenly Sankey
2H{almar Schacht (1877- ); in January 1930 Schacht ^had resigned the
presidency of the Reichsbank in protest against the Reichstags approval of the
Young plan. In 1931 he made a lecture tour of the United States, and in 1933
Hitler restored him to the presidency of the Reichsbank.
1 It is believed that Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock first met in 1874;
see John G. Palfrey's Introduction to 1 Holmes-Pollock Letters, xv, footnote 3.
2 The lecture, delivered before the Ethical Union, is printed in Studies in
Law and Politics (1932), 276.
1286 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
sent for me over the Imperial Conference3 and I have been doing memo-
randa for him ever since. The job has been interesting beyond words; it
has also made me a little Englander. I never imagined that empire could
be such a nuisance on points of no real import e.g. what is to happen to
the royal prerogative in a Dominion if the King goes mad and a Council
of Regency has to be appointed? And I did not imagine, until I saw the
letters, that the King interfered so constantly on points which are bound
to raise grave difficulties for his government. I told Sankey that the real
lesson of this experience is the wisdom of the maxim solvitur ambulando
in matters of government. The lawyers sat down and tried to define the
British empire, which is sui generis, by analogies drawn from dubious
international law. In the result they have raised questions of status and
prestige which are all formidable and all meaningless, e.g. if the empire
is now a union of equal states under a single monarch, what is the stand-
ing of a Dominion High Commissioner vis a vis a foreign ambassador.
The real answer is "Don't be silly." But these blessed legal civil servants
have drafted Acts and Orders in Council enough to make a wise man
shrink with horror into an early grave. I wish you could have seen some
of my marginalia; I think they were not unworthy of your disciple.
A much pleasanter day was in the country with the Allen who wrote
European Political Thought in the 16th Century. He is now worldng at
a book on English ideas 1603-1660 and I went to have a chat with him
about it. We agreed that Hobbes is the genius of the period, and, after
him, a fellow called John Hall whom I discovered about 3 years ago.4
We also agreed that Prynne is a vastly overrated person in whom volume
has been mistaken for insight and learning. He puts Filmer much higher
than I, and Cromwell not so high; and I had a job to make him see the
social significance of the great movement for law reform under Cromwell.
But it was grand talk, and a good change from the meticulous dullness
of the Imperial Conference. Then I went to a farewell dinner to the
German Ambassador5 at Downing Street. Bernard Shaw was there, and
8 The Imperial Conference opened on October 2. Though the Conference
gave its attention principally to current economic problems, its agenda in-
cluded questions concerning the constitutional relationships of the members of
the British Commonwealth which were dealt with in the Report of the Con-
ference on the Operation of Dominion Legislation.
* J. W. Allen, English Political Thought, 1603-1660 (vol. I, 1938). The John
Hall referred to is perhaps the author of "The Grounds and Reasons of Mon-
archy Considered" which was prefixed to Toland's edition of The Oceana and
other Works of James Harrington (1771). Hall, a contemporary of Harring-
ton's, had died "before he was full thirty, lamented as a prodigy of his age."
Id., p. xxv.
5 In June 1930, Dr. Friedrich Sthamer who had been German Ambassador
in London since 1920, was succeeded by Baron Constantin von Neurath
(1873- ). In 1932 von Neurath became German Foreign Minister, hold-
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1287
I came away with the impression that he felt that he was the guest of
honour and rather resented the attentions paid to the poor Ambassador.
He really is a poor creature for a great man — talks glibly of things about
which he knows nothing, (e.g. reparations), lays down extravagant gen-
eralisations which he has never thought about, and is patently unhappy
unless he is the centre of attention. A nice German there said to me that
he supposed it was the artistic temperament; I said I thought in the
non-elect, it was usually called bad manners.
I haven't as you can imagine, had much time for reading. But I have
read a supremely interesting book by Namier on party politics at the
accession of George III which makes one feel that, with all its ills, the
present condition is admirable. George's letters to Bute are incredible;
they are written with a degrading servility which makes his attitude to
others, and his general attitude later, almost unintelligible. I may say
that I think you did well to get rid of him; I wish we had. I read also
Ghandi's Autobiography; and the best phrase for him that of Leslie
Stephen for Robert Owen "one of those intolerable bores who are the
very salt of the earth." His nobility of motive, his courage, and his sim-
plicity, are all beyond praise. But he has no political sense whatever, his
humility has that final arrogance which belongs only to the ultimately
humble man, and he has that intimate communion with God which makes
rational argument quite impossible. I can see that he presents any govern-
ment with the problem that Christ would do; and no modern government
dare repeat the Crucifixion. Incidentally this reminds me of a good re-
mark of D'Abernon6 to Stresemann at one of the disarmament rows in
Berlin. The French made a great fuss about four guns they discovered.
"What possible result/* said Stresemann to D'Abernon, "could four bits
of old iron have." "Remember," said D'Abernon, "the mischief brought by
four nails at Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago/' I must add
Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer — a book with a wistful beauty
quite beyond praise.
I have bought one pleasant trifle — a Machiavelli's Discorsi in the
Aldine edition, bound, for some swell I should think, in a beautifully
tooled morocco of about 1540. It is very attractive, and I picked up a
nice set of Bynershock in five volumes for two shillings.
I hope the journey to Washington was accomplished with comfort.
You will not forget that I am dining with you on your birthday.
Our love and warm greetings for the term,
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
ing that office under Papert, Schleicher, and Hitler. In 1946 he was sentenced
to fifteen years' imprisonment as a war criminal.
8 Edgar Vincent (1857-1941), first Viscount D'Abernon, was British Am-
bassador in Berlin from 1920 to 1926; author of An Ambassador of Peace (3
vols., 1929-31).
1288 HOLMES TO LASK1 [1930
Washington, D. C., October 9, 1930
My dear Laski; Your promise to dine with me on my birthday is delightful
and all I can say is; May I be there to see. For although everything seems
to be going well life seems precarious. If one has no illness it is so easy
to fall and break a hip bone — but I don't worry, I only wonder. Your
letters are full of interest as usual and I am rejoiced at what you say
about Bernard Shaw— also I am thankful for the quotation from L.
Stephen about Robert Own — also D'Abernon to Stresemann about
4 nails at Jerusalem — but there is no end to the good things you tell
me or say.
The term has begun. The first two weeks for certs. &c. not to speak of
private work — acknowledging books &c. I was rather put to it to frame
an answer to Milt Gross for He Done Her Wrong; The Great American
Novel with not a word in it — No music too — I quote without the
titles before me. We both are appreciators of Nize Baby. This, though it
has fun, presents more difficulties. In your last but one you quote Alex-
ander about Whitehead. About % of W.'s book I did not understand —
but I felt a limit to my interest. Whitehead has, or seems to have, the
mathematician's conviction that he can get in on the ground floor of the
cosmos. It seems to me so unlikely that man should reach the cosmic
ultimate that I don't care for such speculations. Of course I can't say that
Whitehead hasn't uttered the last word — but I know no reason for
believing that he has, and doubt if he or anyone else could offer one.
I said to my secretary1 the other day — (it pleased me and I'm not sure
that I didn't tell you) : "It would make one a little happier if God would
come down and snuggle up to one and say TSfow I'm going to give you
the real tip about the universe — and to show you that I'm the genuine
thing I will do a little miracle for a starter.' Puff. 'You see you are in
another world/ Puff. 'Now you are back again. Well, the correct tip
is XXX. But don't tell it for they'd lock you up as crazy* " — I must stop
but just a word about the Nicomachean Ethics, in the Everyman transla-
tion — read to me by my secretary — I sleeping when I saw fit. Of course
I really revere Aristotle as a great man and saw some few evidences in
the volume. I also understand that many things are formulated that were
not in Aristotle's day. But for present purposes the book seems to me
hopeless drool — I haven't read the like for years. If I am wrong indicate
how and why.
Now I really must stop. Affectionately yours, O, W. H.
1 Robert W. Wales, presently a practitioner in Chicago, was Holmes's secre-
tary in 1930-31.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1289
Devon Lodge, 11.X.SO
My dear Justice: You, I expect, like me, are now in the whir! of term. It
lias been hard work this week, for there has not only been the ghastly
rush of students and committees, but, even worse, aid to Sankey on the
constitutional side of the Imperial Conference. This last has been hard
going, so infinitely complex and delicate, with the Irish and S. Africans
making pretty little points of no special importance which have yet to be
met A good example is a four-hour discussion on the instrument to be
used as seal for a Gov. General's appointment. Shall it be the great seal:
Or the signet royal? Or shall the privy seal be used for this end? Or a
plain wafer with the royal arms? When the legal mind goes into these
mysteries, it gets much more excited than over large issues. I evolved,
I think, a good solution. It horrified the lawyers, but it seems to have won
a warm welcome from the politicians. It was, breathe it low, that no seal
should be used at all. A document should be prepared saying "I George
R etc, hereby appoint," he should sign it, and the Prime Minister of the
Dominion concerned should countersign it in the presence of the Chief
Dominion legal officer as his witness.1 To think that grown men should
quarrel over this kind of tripe in 1930.
I have had to go to various dinners to meet the Dominion premiers.
The Canadian, I think, has brains;2 he is vigorous, direct, and forcible.
The New Zealand man hasn't even ordinary intelligence.3 He can't follow
an economic, much less a legal argument, and merely bleats. The Aus-
tralian is a good, simple fellow who simply was not made for complex
issues.4 He told me that he was greatly impressed by the King's wit;
I asked for a sample. "Well," he said, "the King said to me, 1 expect
you will be pretty busy while you are here, Mr. Scullin.* 'Yes sir/ I re-
plied, 'Conference all day and a dinner evexy night/ 'Well,' said the King
(this is the wit) 'you must be glad you haven't to eat two dinners/ " On
the other hand I was greatly impressed by the Canadian Attorney-
General 5 — Loring Christie ten years older in type — clear, succinct,
and with a real flair for getting to the roots of the problem.
1 The final decision was that the commission of the Governor General should
continue to be countersigned by the Secretary of State, who controls the
Signet. See Beiriedale-Keith, "The Imperial Conference of 1930," 13 Journal
of Comparative Legislation and International Law 26, 35 (1931).
2 Richard Bedford (1870-1947), first Viscount Bennett, was the Conservative
Prime Minister and Minister of External Affairs, 1930-1935.
8 George William Forbes (1869-1947), Prime Minister of New Zealand,
1930-1935.
* James Henry Scullin (1876- ), Labour Prime Minister of Australia,
1929-1931.
5 Hugh Guthrie (1886-1939).
1290 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
Of other things there is less to tell. I have read with pleasure, but
without excitement, the first volume of Trevelyan's Reign of Queen Anne.
It is in the true Macaulay tradition, but lacks Macaulay's vigour and is
uninformed by any philosophic insight into history. But it has great
charm and paints a most interesting picture of Marlborough. Also the
Hammonds' The Age of the Chartists, A thrilling book, with one or two
things in it which are unforgettable, especially the comparative study
of discontent in 19th century England and discontent in Greece and
Rome. There is one tidbit in the chapter on education which I must not
forget to tell you. The Inspector visits a school where, for twopence
a week, the master gives his happy pupils instruction in reading, writing,
arithmetic, the use of the globes, astronomy, geology, elementary the-
ology, and linguistics. "Multum in parvo, in fact," says the Inspector.
"Yes," replies the Master, "you can put me down as teaching that too."
Then a first-rate book by Judge Parry (a retired County Court judge)
on the law as it affects the poor — a beautiful piece of effectively simple
humanism; and the autobiography of Wilamowitz the classical scholar,
which is quite moving. I also enjoyed Balfours fragment of autobiog-
raphy, noting two things, first that A.J.B. was rendered semi-futile by
the fact that he didn't have to do anything unless he wanted, and, second,
that in the eighties for sheer insight into the nature of the social question
there was certainly no man who came within miles of the quality of
Chamberlain for insight and force. The Home Rule split, I believe,
is more responsible than anything else for the destruction of the natural
evolution of British politics. It was simply a tragedy. I must mention,
too, an amusing novel of the life literary which I urge upon you as the
accompaniment to solitaire — Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham.
Please see that your secretary procures it for you without fail.
Of books bought I can note only two (I) the Aldine edition of
Machiavellfs Discourses — a really beautiful copy and (II) The Opera
of Bynkershock, five noble volumes, at 2 shillings per volume. But the
real chances do not begin until November.
Term, of course, has brought its amusements. I was visited by an angry
mother who informed me that her daughter, now in her senior year, had
become engaged and asked me to take the necessary steps. I said that
I did not know what I could do: we could not interfere in a student's
private affairs. Her idea then came out that we should sack the young
man. I explained gently that this was impossible. So she left threatening
that I should be held responsible for anything that occurred. Another
joy was an Iraqui gentleman who wanted a Ph.D. He had no under-
graduate training and I stated my regret that this was essential. "In the
ordinary case, yes," he said very gently, "but I am from one of the first
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1291
families of Iraq, obstacles of this kind cannot hinder my career." That's
the real way to make a fortune.
Our love to you. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., October 24, 1980
My dear Laski: How many interesting and amusing things you always
tell me. I am a little surprised by your high praise of Parry — the little
that I have read of his writing has not impressed me. I sent at once this
morning on reading your letter for Cakes and Ale, and it is to be read
as soon as we finish Humanity Uprooted by Maurice Hindus which
Brandeis put me on to. I am the minion of you children of the upward
and onward in my reading — though I am not an upward and onwarder.
I am kept at home today by the doctor because of a little cold but have
hopes of being able to go out tomorrow to the conference of the JJ. This
is the first week of arguments. I foresee some clashes of opinion and am
wondering what turn our new member will take.1 He makes a good
impression, but as yet I have little notice of his characteristics. I may have
remarked before that it is strange how many important modifications of
the law McReynolds has been the mouthpiece for, including the over-
ruling of a number of decisions written by me — without, so far as I can
see, any more convincing argument than that he had a majority behind
him. There are several points on which all that I can say is let those who
have established the change say how far they will go. These local dif-
ficulties are not interesting, but they more or less occupy my mind and
bother me.
Later. I have not attempted to work today and there is a horrid rate
case on which I am ill prepared to recite.2 But I have listened to more
of Humanity Uprooted — a very interesting account of Russia by a Rus-
sian who returned from America to see how things were. His account of
the Communists shows in the most extreme form what I came to loathe
in the Abolitionists — the conviction that anyone who did not agree with
them was a knave or a fool. You see the same in some Catholics and some
of the "Drys" apropos of the 18th amendment. I detest a man who knows
that he knows. I gather from the book and more from other sources that
the Communists have killed so far as they could those who did not agree
with them and want to kill the rest. They present a case where I fail
to see that war is absurd. When two crowds determinately wish to make
1 In June 1934, Owen J. Roberts ( 1875- ) had been appointed to the
Court to fill the vacancy resulting from the death of Mr. Justice Sanford.
2 Perhaps Beaumont, Sour Lake and Western Railway v. United States, 282
U.S. 74 (argued, Oct. 20; decided, Nov. 24, 1930; opinion by Butler, J.).
1292 HOLMES TO LASKI [1930
different kinds of a world, if they come in contact I don't see what there
is to do but to fight. I must stop — I am sorry to write a dull letter but
I can t help it. I am not sorry to think that I shall get my marching orders
before long. Ever affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 26.X.30
My dear Justice: Hectic days since I wrote to you last, beginning with a
telephone call from Felix in New York. Since then I have been nearly
run off my legs, frying to get the Prime .Minister and Webb to see sense
about their policy) I think the P.M. would be all right if he were left
alone; but Webb has the rooted and incurable obstinacy of the doctri-
naire who, when he has arrived at a position, can be more impossible in
defending it than the least practical man who has ever handled a prac-
tical policy. It is a bad business, hardly compensated for even by the
pleasure of hearing Felix's voice three thousand miles away.
What else have I done? Tried to talk sense into Irishmen at the
Imperial Conference on the question of British nationality. Quaere, does
it really hurt Irish prestige, if a ship of British registry leaves Dover
with a crew containing one Irishman. The ship is wrecked off Barcelona.
The lifeboat takes the crew into harbour, and its members call on the
British Consul for means to return home. The Irish say that an Irishman
is humiliated by having to call on a British consul. They would prefer him
to be helped by any other than a British official unless we can invent
an adjective less historically offensive to their national pride. Can you
beat that? Imagine calling a man "His Majesty's Consul for the Common-
wealth of Nations to which, inter olios, Ireland and Great Britain are
parties"? Certainly nationalism, like religion, is a source of intolerable
difficulty in the modern world.
Of other things, not much seems worth reproduction. I have given a
public lecture, a copy of which I enclose separately.2 I have dined with
dusky Indian delegates to the Round Table Conference.3 I have agreed
to give three lectures in Minnesota University in April. I have listened
to H. G. Wells on the future of biology in its social context. I have
settled a big labour dispute in the Isle of Wight; and I have agreed with
my colleagues in the Industrial Court that a promotion in the Civil
Service ought always to involve an increase of pay. This last seems un-
1 Presumably with respect to Palestine; see, supra, p. 1261.
a Probably his address before the Ethical Union, supra, p. 1285.
8 The Round Table Conference convened on November 12. Its principal con-
cern was the demand of India for Dominion status — a demand which was
sympathetically received by MacDonald as Chairman of the Conference.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1293
important but it actually costs half a million dollars at the end of eight
years.
Of reading little of the first importance. A good book on Luther by
Bohmer — the clearest portrait in the light of recent research that I have
read. It is intended, I think, to make one admire Luther more; I think
it made me like him even less, though, compared to Calvin, I should
say that he must have been a grand companion. Then two volumes by
Brehier on the history of European philosophy 1600-1800, good French
clarity, but lacking in architectonic quality. I should like to see a history
of philosophy which puts the doctrine into its actual and immediate
mental climate, explains why it is significant that Kepler and John Haw-
kins belong to the same epoch, and these neat French schemes leave me
a little cold. But he is very good on Hobbes whom I love, and properly
respectful to Spinoza whom I am compelled, doctrine apart, to revere as
no other man in the history of the human mind.
I must not omit to tell you of our lecture at the University by an emi-
nent continental gent, (from Turin) on the history of bills of lading. Old
Scrutton was in the chair and, over-persuaded by him, I went along.
At first I thought the man was talking Italian of a dialect my feeble
Italian did not allow me to follow; but a look of complete bewilderment
on the Italian Ambassador's face comforted me on that score. I then
assumed that it was Esperanto and composed myself for sleep. An Eng-
lish word, clear, vigorous and unmistakable, aroused me — something
was "damn silly." It turned out on a final inquest that the learned lec-
turer had translated his piece into English, a language with which he had
only a visual acquaintance, mostly from novels. He read out his transla-
tion on a principle of private phonetic theory. You cannot even imagine
the utter chaos of the result. I was sorry for poor old Scrutton; but the
judge was worthy of his job. He picked up the sheets of the ms as the
lecturer put them down, and, at the end, produced an exquisite little
five-minute summary with a felicitous hint that the lecturer had been
wandering in dark seas with no lamp save that of nature to guide him,
and that those present had not only been given a lecture in law but also
an illustration of the way in which new dialects may conceivably have
originated. Incidentally I sat next to Mr. Justice Hill there. He has just
retired from the Admiralty and Divorce Court. He said he had had
enough; "It is difficult to spend fifteen years with one foot in the sea and
the other in the sewer." A good description I think.
Our love to you warmly. Four months today I hope to land in New
York. Ever affectionately yours, H, /. L.
1294 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
1.XI.30
My dear Justice: A week of hard toil with amusing experiences to diver-
sify it! Of interest, a lunch with the Prime Minister of S. Africa.1 He is
a most curious mixture of medievalism and modernity, When he talks
of commerce, universities, or foreign affairs, he speaks like a man who is
eager to be abreast of the last possible development. Speak to him of the
native in Africa and it sounds just like a Southerner of the Dred Scott
period defending slavery! Then a tea with Austen Chamberlain who
spoke with feeling of your friendship with his sister. He is a curious type.
He has at the bottom'the feelings of a great gentleman, but all these are
so plastered over with a stiff manner that unless you go on trying, when
his real kindness becomes evident, you tend to think that he is just being
rude and give up the effort to talk to him. I am inclined to guess that
the statesman suffers enormously in ordinary life from the fact that he
speaks from an artificial eminence. He is accustomed to giving orders;
he does not easily argue; he isn't used to having his premisses examined.
And he is, of course, surrounded with excessive adulation which makes
him unwilling to realise that criticism need not proceed from hostility.
That's what is so wrong with MacDonald, and what constitutes the great
charm of Baldwin. You can talk to the latter as though he was a friend.
With MacDonald, as with Wilson, unless you can convey your criticism
in the form of eulogy, it is likely to do your cause more harm than good.
I wish a technique could be invented for persuading statesmen not to
live on a pedestal. Webb is suffering badly from it just now. He is literally
shocked that I should criticise his policy for Palestine and he assumes
that I can't really like him personally if he is not to be supported by me
in his plans.
I have been reading a good deal. The first volume of Churchill's Auto-
biography— a good book, full of grit and courage. To himself he is
amusingly Napoleonic and I think about as unpleasantly active as Roose-
velt, One feels that he has never had half an hour's quiet reflection
in his life; but he has certainly lived every minute of it. Then E. S.
Montagu's Indian Diary — which I would like to make compulsory
reading for all administrators. It reveals the physiology of empire amaz-
ingly, the isolating effect of ceremonial, the cringing influence on the
subjects of an irresponsible government, the evil of routine. Then a
really good book on the Moral Sense philosophers of the 18th century
by old Bonar whose Life of Malthus you may remember. He is very good
on Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. He gives rein to an old hobby of mine,
the notion that a good deal of right conduct is born of aesthetic sense;
1 General James Barry Munnik Hertzog (1866-1942), the South African
Premier from 1924 to 1939, was attending the Imperial Conference.
1930] HOLMES TO LASKI 1295
it's like the capacity to appreciate a good picture. And, lastly, Trollope's
Eustace Diamonds which I had never read before. Quite one of his best;
a little jog-trot in style, as always, but with real plot and good character
drawing. Sir, that man could certainly tell a story.
I have also bought one or two things. A heap of pamphlets on the
prelude to the Fronde, one or two of them important and moving. A man
who comes from Bordeaux where the disarmed troops are waylaying the
passer-by writes pathetically to the Queen-Regent to beg for "internal
peace and work. "These three months I have found no labour, these four
days I have had no bread. I thank God that my wife and children have
not lived to see my misery. Give us peace, O Queen, that we may work
and satisfy the yearning of the soul for quiet and meditation." Does not
that come poignantly in a tattered tract of three hundred years ago?
I have bought also a nice Bartolus, a sixteenth century edition; and
I have, as Felix would say, paged it not without admiration. He is as
naturally over-subtle as Williston, but even two hours' half-idle reading
convinces one that he had a mind.
Of other things, not much to report. But I must tell you that with the
twenty-five dollars' royalties on Collected Legal Tapers I have fitted up
a miners* reading aide in S. Wales, where almost everyone is unemployed,
with fifty volumes from Everyman's Library. Their gratitude was almost
overpowering. On the whole I think the pleasure of giving pleasure is
about the best thing that there is.
And I was pleased because on receiving the notification of my reap-
pointment to the university for the rest of my days, the chairman of our
governors wrote that "we build the next years of the School more round
your work than that of any other teacher/' That made me feel that, on
the whole, it is probably better to go on with the hard work of teaching
than my dream of a house in the country and endless leisure to write.
But dreams are futile things 1
My love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., Nov. 10, 19SO
My dear Laski: Although there has been no intimation from you I must
assume that a big volume on Les estampes de Peter Bruegel comes from
you. So I thank you for a renewal of the pleasures that I thought had
died with Rice (former print boss in Cong. Library). I haven't yet quite
finished my first examination — but I am much impressed and really
interested. (I am not yet reconciled to Bruegel instead of Breughel).
His "Devil's Progeny'* lives as others that I remember do not. You be-
lieve 'em all. Also he was a surprisingly good landscape etcher, before
1296 HOLMES TO LASKI [1930
the great advance with Rembrandt, B. had a fertile brain. I shall know
more I hope soon*
I have written my first decisions for this term and expect from present
appearances that they will go through.1 Their only merit is brevity, I
hope accurate and adequate — but somehow it put new life into me
to write again.
I have received books and essays on legal themes from professors and
others — more or less flattering to my vanity — but I was particularly
struck by the tone of a N.Y. professor — Llewellyn, that I think I have
noticed in one or two others.2 They utter harmless things that I should
not think could provoke antagonism, and that do not seem to me daz-
zlingly new, as if they were voices crying in the wilderness — or heroes
challenging the world. I say to myself, "Why so hot?"
I am amused by your Irish and the British consul and your Italian
lecturer and slightly tremble to hear you talk of "poor old Scrutton"
whom I haven't got over thinking of as a promising young man.
I read or rather listened to Cakes and Ale. I don't willingly read novels
any longer but this seemed different. However, I thought the best thing
in it was the end when Rosie explains the charm of Lord George: "He
was always such a perfect gentleman." That I thought masterly — like
the place in (Man and Superman?) where after the genius has explained
that his engagement ends his performance and his sister calls Mm a brute
— his girl says, "Never mind, dear, keep on talking" — or words to that
effect. Jours ever, 0. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 22.XI.30
My dear Justice: I am ashamed of myself for so long a silence; but I have
been simply overwhelmed and have hardly known where to turn. The
P.M. dragged me in to try and help to arrange a modus vivendi between
the British government and the Zionists, and I have been working at it
like a slave. What with Webb's pedantic obstinacy and ambiguities,
Felix and Brandeis's immovability, and the hectic indignation of die
Zionists here it has been a grim business, and I don't know yet whether
I have done any good. But much of it has been built upon letting every
one talk to me about it and then acting as the honest broker between
them, and they certainly can talk. I have spent a fortune in telegrams to
New York, and at the end of each day I creep wearily to bed wondering
if human nature is capable of mutual understanding.
1 Klein v. Board of Supervisors, 282 U.S. 10; Sherman v. United States, id.
25 (Nov. 24, 1930).
2 Karl N. Llewellyn, "A Realistic Jurisprudence — The Next Step," 30 Co-
lumbia L. Rev. 431 (April 1930).
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1297
Of other things, accordingly, not many. I am so glad you like the
Breughel (note my spelling); I think I told you how enormously im-
pressed I was by his paintings at the Antwerp exhibition. Then I have
been helping a little with the Indian conference — mostly trying to
explain the implications of federalism to them. They are queer people —
a little extra dose of courtesy makes an absurdly great difference to their
outlook, and the trouble with the British is the high degree in which they
lack the imagination to see the importance of courtesy. Then I went up
to Glasgow for a day to settle a strike and similarly to Manchester. The
second I enjoyed, for I was able to give ten thousand men a week's holi-
day with pay annually and I really felt that the Recording Angel might
accord that to me for righteousness. They were dairy workers who in the
past had not even had Xmas day as a holiday thro' bad organisation in
the industry. And I must not forget to tell you of going to the inaugural
lecture of a colleague on law in which he developed with an air of
immense daring and originality the three following propositions (I) law-
yers who know economics may understand judicial decisions better than
those who don't. (II) Judges are bound to be impressed by the mental
climate of their generation. (Ill) Judges ought not to have political
ambitions.1 The chair was taken by an eminent Kings Bench judge who
said that for him the lecture opened out great vistas of new thought.
Afterwards he told me that he had felt as he listened to the new pro-
fessor that at last a legal philosopher had been born in England. He
(the judge) added that he had just been reading Pollock and Maitland
and was astonished to find what good stuff there was in it. Nor must
I omit to tell you of a visit paid to me by the father of one of my students,
a Plymouth brother. The son had been pleased to report that my lectures
did him great good. The father had learned with distress that I was an
Agnostic and for my own sake wished to remonstrate with me. He offered
(I) to give me instruction in the true faith or (II) to arrange for me to
interview the Reverend Thomas Mark Smith, a child of Hght? a true
vessel of the Lord or (III) to pray for me daily. I chose the third course
but suggested a weekly rather than a daily prayer as involving less
physical strain on him. He was much moved and left with the exhortation
that I should (I) wash myself in the blood of the Lamb and (II) dis-
tribute some of his business cards (he is a caterer and left me six) among
my friends. My dear Justice, is there anything in the world as completely
arrogant as the man who really believes that, in his own phrase, he is a
vessel of God? I wish I could find words to tell you of his absolute con-
fidence that he was conferring on me the chance of salvation, that God
had sent his son to London for this purpose, and that this was, so to
1 D, Hughes Parry, "Economic Theories in English Case Law," 47 L. Q. Rev.
183 (April 1931).
1298 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
speak, my last opportunity as he had other souls needing attention. Thank
heaven I was able to preserve my gravity and he left convinced of my
respectful gratitude. I was at least convinced that Heine was right when
he said that the main attribute o£ the deity must be a sense of humour.
I have read one or two items worth recording. First and foremost the
posthumous volume of Parrington's work which even in its fragmentary
form seems to me a brilliant performance. I thought him particularly
good on the Adams family and on the Knights of Labour people, but
over-eulogistic of Henry George who to me always seemed rhetorical
small beer and incapable of serious analysis. Then a book called Cor-
porate Personality by Hallis with a good account of Kelsen and such-like,
and a particularly good criticism of Duguit. I had a piece of luck in get-
ting for review a marvellous modern edition of Restif de la Bretonne's
Monsieur Nicholas with 500 engravings from people like Moreau le
jeune, six volumes of about as beautiful a book as ever I have seen. And
I picked up from a French catalogue one or two nice items, especially
a most interesting attempt by a lawyer named Lavie written in 1770 to
relate Montesquieu to Bodin, a book as good as anything below the first
rank as I know; a book, too, curiously undiscussed in the literature.
February comes closer and I am beginning to get really excited by its
prospects. You will not forget that we dine together on March 8.
Our love to you. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Devon Lodge, SO.XL30
My dear Justice: A grand letter from you which warmed my heart.1 1 was
interested by what you said about the operations performed on your
draft decision. I yesterday presented a beautiful draft memorandum to
Sankey for the Indian comment; he accepted it wholly except for two
quite beautiful sentences which, if vigorous, gave, I thought, point and
colour to the whole. I did not fight for them, but I felt like one of Brue-
ghel's little devils. I hate this process of emasculation to avoid offence.
There are some interests it is a public duty to offend. ,
I am still pretty busy on behalf of Felix and Brandeis.2 Between our-
selves the latter is a very difficult person. He is intransigent and dominat-
ing, and unnecessarily prone to read evil motives into obvious actions.
Felix is like clay in his hands, and if it were not for my deep affection
1 The letter referred to is missing.
2 The part which Mr. Justice Brandeis played in opposing the proposals con-
tained in the Passfield White Paper is briefly referred to in Mason, Brandeis:
A Free Mans Life (1946), 595. See, for a fuller account of the matter,
Frankfurter, "The Palestine Situation Restated/' 9 Foreign Affairs 409 (April
1931 ); reprinted in The Brandeis Aoukdh Volume of 1936 (Rabbi Shubow, ed.a
c. 1932), 245.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1299
for them both, I think I would have told them long ago to go to hell and
see what they could accomplish without my intervention. I can't ran
daily to the Foreign Secretary because Brandeis has doubts about a semi-
colon — at some point in a negotiation one has to assume that the
cabinet really means what it says. I did not realise before how curiously
suspicious a nature Brandeis has. He is extraordinarily profound in his
insights, but, I should have said, not quite human in his contacts, with the
result that he does not always see round a subject.
Of other things, the most amusing, 1 think, was a dinner last night with
half a dozen of the Prime Minister's colleagues, when business was out
of the way, and a good brandy had mellowed them, they began dissecting
him and it was like nothing so much as a group of actors dealing with a
successful rival. I gathered that he was vain, arrogant, aloof, reserved,
theatrical, over-subtle etc. I asked why if he was all these things, they
continued to work with him; to which the pretty unanimous reply was
that he was really all right and that these were only surface defects. I
asked the First Lord3 what he would take to be really serious ones.
I also went with Frida to a dinner to meet Virginia Woolf , the novelist.
She tickled me greatly; it was like watching someone organise her im-
mortality. Every phrase and gesture was studied. Now and again, when
she said something a little out of the ordinary, she wrote it down herself
in a notebook. . . . Really it was as good as an opera to see her put up a
lorgnette and say in a coy whisper "You write?" "Yes." "Ah, I read so
little — the effort of creation exhausts me." I wonder if you ever met her?
She is L. Stephen's younger daughter by his second marriage.
It was interesting to hear your feelings about Emerson. I continue to
rate him pretty high in the second class. A sweet mellowness of temper,
a shrewd and homely wisdom, a real distinction of phrasing. I agree that
most of the learning is neither profound nor necessary; but I have always
assumed that it was simply a necessary offering on the New England
altar of the thirties and forties. And I think there was a big poet in his
prose and a judge of character. Of all the Americans of that epoch I think
he comes best out of the test of time. So does Moby Dick which I reread
in bed and thought superb. Did I tell you of the comment of Arnold
Bennett on the Hollywood version of the book — that it was Mobydicu-
lous? A really good word, worthy of Lewis Carroll.
I have not read very much. A novel or two, none very startling, a life
of General Lee by Sir F. Maurice which made him out the biggest thing
America has produced, and Einstein's book on Roosevelt which I enjoyed
with the note that I think T.R. was out of touch with America after 1912
and that his war-activities in the Wilson epoch were simply mischievous.
I read Owen Wister on T.R. too, but with the feeling that the talent he
s Albert V. Alexander, supra, p. 1200.
1300 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
depicts was that of a first-rate megaphone and not of a statesman. I
accept the view that he talked well, adding that I never heard him do so
in the half-dozen talks I had with him and that Wister reports nothing
I could accept as proof. I also reread the Faerie Queen, largely on Diana's
account and my main impression was vast longueurs with now and then
an oasis of ten lines. But I went to see Antony and Cleopatra and felt
it was one of the three or four supreme acting plays I have ever read, at
times simply overpowering, and with a subtlety that not even Macbeth
surpasses.
Our love to you. Please keep very fit until I get to Washington.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L,
Washington, D. C., December 19, 1930
My dear Laski: Belated hest wishes for Xmas and the New Year and a
word to say I have read your essay on "The Limitations of the Expert7'
with unqualified pleasure and agreement.1 Many years ago Albert Nick-
erson,2 long dead, a powerful Philistine with insight, said to me that
a merit of the English government was that it had bodies of competent
experts in the departments, but put a man of the world (or some such
phrase) at the top — and I cannot help recalling as slightly relevant that
with a similar idea in my head I said in my book that ignorance is the
best of law reformers — a paradox looking your way. The discourse is
admirable. My love to you all. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 27.XI1.30
My dear Justice: First of all, our loving good wishes to you for 1931. I
hope it will bring you great happiness.
1 have had very pleasant days since I wrote last. First of all a brief
trip to Paris. I saw much both of people and things. Tea with Briand,1
a long talk with the philosopher Meyerson, a jolly dinner with the critic
Lanson, book-hunting galore, and a marvellous, quite marvellous exhibi-
tion of Felicien Rops. Briand was to me like a benevolent snake. His
mind never moves directly upon anything. He is really brilliant beyond
words, but, I should say, incapable of any of the ultimate sincerities. I
had to see him for Ramsay, and it was most amusing to watch him en-
deavour to discover what my own views of the P.M. were before com-
1 162 Harpers Magazine 101 (December 1930).
2 See, supra, p. 417.
1 Briand at the time was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Tardieu govern-
ment.
1930] LASKI TO HOLMES 1301
miting himself to the disingenuous epigrams he was anxious to make.
Meyerson is a great man. He takes his job au grand sSrieux and nothing
of the godly comes into it. On that head, indeed, he pleased me much by
dismissing Whitehead, Eddington and Co. in one fell swoop as people
whose religiosity made it impossible for them to see the real perspective
of metaphysical problems. Old Lanson was a delight, especially when he
fired up with superb indignation when I said that Fenelon was a much
greater man than Bossuet. I told him that B. is one of the illusions of the
French mind, the decorative commonplace, just as Mr. Gladstone is with
Englishmen. The bookshops were a joy; I bought, I suppose, some fifty
or sixty things, none of them extraordinary, but all of them pleasant to
have. The most interesting was a rare little brochure of the Abbe de Saint
Cyran2 in defence of monarchy written before he was sent to prison by
Richelieu; and I found, also, some of the Jesuit replies to the Provincial
Letters which I was very glad to have. I also bought a number of 17th
century treatises on usury, which were interesting as showing how long
the Canonist doctrine persisted in France. I came back to work, mostly
with the Indians on behalf of Sankey. In that connection, we went to
a great reception by the Secretary of India which, as a mere spectacle,
I wish you could have seen. The robes and jewels of the Indians and their
wives were like a Titian, a mass of superb, even dazzling, colour. The
Indian problem goes slowly and with difficulty. How seriously the
Moslems take themselves you can see from the fact that the Aga Khan,
who, I gather has the blood of the prophet in his veins, is able to sell
the water in which he washes to disciples in the East at so much a pint;
and it is kept there in temples as sacred! One or two of the Indians are
really first-rate people, especially Sastri3 whom I should reckon among
the noblest men I have ever met; but the depth of their religious fervour
makes any plan for effective justice between them a matter of extraor-
dinary difficulty. Then I have had a further dose of Palestine which
convinced me even more that Moses made a great mistake. I add that
your remark about Brandeis is certainly just.4 Since these negotiations
with the British government began I cannot remember one telegram of
his which has been really helpful. All statesmanship is, after all, the
power to compromise on inessentials; he digs himself in on what are
really matters of no consequence with the passion of a tiger defending his
cubs; and that makes him, in my judgment, much less effective on the
big issues where he is really entitled to care. He exercises a strange hold
*Jean Du Vergier de Hauianue (1581-1643). The pamphlet, in all prob-
ability, was Question royaHe et sa decision (1609).
8V. S. Scinivasa Sastri (1869-1946), Indian statesman, was at the Round
Table Conference.
* The letter referred to is missing.
1302 LASKI TO HOLMES [1930
over Felix, for the latter, who can usually be cool and independent, is in
these things simply an echo of L.D.B. He gives orders like an omnip-
otent Sultan and negotiations do not come to a success in that way. More-
over he treats his fellow Zionists who differ from him almost as criminals,
and, as I think, gravely injures his own prestige by so doing.
I was not much moved by Whites remark on Jews which you quote.
Taking them as a whole they seem to me very much like other people.
There is a small class of rich social climbers, the type, I should guess,
whom White knew, who are all that he says. But they are a tiny class,
and they have the inferiority complex which comes from the horrid
conjunction of great wealth and the sense of uncertainty which comes
from ostracism. I don't think one can safely generalise about any people;
Felix, Morris Cohen, Einstein, Julian Mack, don't fit into any box. I
should say that White s remark was less true than most. My difficulty
with Jews is their tough resistance to assimilation, their pride in being
different, their excessive sensibilites, their intellectual hubris. But I should
certainly not accuse them of being selfish in any ordinary sense.
We leave tonight for a week in Antwerp with our Belgian artist friends.
It's always a jolly time and we look forward to it greatly.
Our united love and every sort of good wish.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 101.81
My dear Justice: We have just come back from a most jolly ten days
abroad — mostly at Antwerp. But we went also to Brussels and Amster-
dam and had a real feast of pictures. On the whole, my loyalties remain
with Vermeer and Rembrandt's etchings. ... Do you, by the way, know
the etchings of the Belgian Ensor? Some of them seemed to me to be
quite definitely of the first order. There is a good book of them which is
sure to be in Congressional Library, and it would, I think, give you pleas-
ure. I also fell in love with Jacques Callot1 — a proof of my ignorance that
I did not know his name — and I send you separately a little book about
him which at least gives a taste of his quality. His series on War seems
to me a better exploration of the Age of Louis XIV than half a hundred
volumes. I wish I could send you the vast catalogue raisonnee of his work,
but it was, alas, beyond my means.
I came back to the conferences on India and Palestine and have been
hard at work on both. The latter is all done except for formal registra-
tion; I hope Felix and Brandeis will be grateful for a job which has taken
infinite pains and ought really to satisfy every decent aspiration to which
1 Supra, p. 609.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1303
they are entitled. The Indian show, at the moment, goes very well.2 It
has been a perfect delight to work for Sankey, hard though it has been.
He not only takes one's points, but he treats one with an eager sympathy
which is very moving, and he is always open-minded. On the whole I
think the risks we take are right; certainly we could not have sent the
Indians back with less. But there is still the difficulty of knowing what
will be the attitude of India and the extremists when the draft is in shape.
Anyhow, now that it all draws to a close I am glad to have had a hand
in it especially as Sankey seems to feel that I have helped him.
Of other things minora canamus. I have read much abroad; nothing
that can be called startling but much that I have enjoyed. I put first
Siegfried's Tableau des partis politiques en France which is excellent;
I wish that similar books existed for Germany and America. Then Flex-
ner's book on the universities which I think ought to have a very whole-
some effect. Trollope's Eustace Diamonds, which Oxford has just
reprinted, and I agree with Diana that it is among his very best. Then
a great dose of Hazlitt who turns out better than ever. Do you know the
perfect essay on "Persons with one idea"? That alone ought to give him
a title to immortality. I have also been reading the newly-discovered
letters of Diderot to Sophie Volland which are, like all that comes from
him, full of his quick, vigorous, ardent nature and so thoroughly enjoy-
able. And lastly a symposium edited by one Norman Foerster on what
appears to be the new American hobby Humanism which seems to
preach the glory of moderation once you have got enough to be satisfied.
I thought the gentlemen who made the book about as complacent a set as
I have ever encountered; and I felt that on the whole America can make
bigger contributions than this to the future of civilisation.
I'm also pretty busy with writing. An article for the Yale Law Journal
was finished last night;3 in case it is a secret of those young people I will
only say that it left me not without admiration for your opinions during
the last twenty-five years. Then a long article half-done on democracy
for the new Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, an interesting job to do,
but irritating because of the limitations of space.4 Most interesting of all,
and already done, a piece on Woodrow Wilson for the March number of
the Forum5 (a journal I know not but which will, I hope, pay me $200)
trying to estimate ten years after just where he stands and what he stands
8 The Round Table Conference had made considerable progress towards
its goal of establishing the principles upon which a federal constitution of
India might be based.
8 "The Political Philosophy of Mr. Justice Holmes," 40 Yale L. ]. 683 (March
1931).
4 5 Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (1931) 76-84.
8 "Woodrow Wilson Ten Years After," 85 Forum 129 (March 1931).
1304 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
for. On reflection I concluded that his stature had diminished [and]
that his social philosophy was out of date even while he was preaching
it. But I must not anticipate what I hope you will read.
It pleased me enormously that you liked my article on experts, espe-
cially as it runs counter to the fashionable thesis which even Felix (see
his Yale lectures) seems to accept.6 I prefer the gifted amateur in almost
every walk of life, and I can't imagine anything worse than trying to
explain to a man like Hoover why one can't handle men as though they
were units in an engineering problem. But I don't want to repeat myself.
It really gives me comfort as well as pleasure to have your assent.
Of books bought some were pleasant — the nicest, I think, a good lot
of the early 17th century French lawyers like Loyseau, and a host of
Mazarinades. One has pleased me especially because I have found that
it was done in London as English propaganda! So unoriginal are our sins!
I have booked my passage on the Aquitania for February 18th. It gets
very near; and you note that I can now definitely accept an invitation to
be in Washington on your birthday.
Our love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Devon Lodge, 251.81
My dear Justice: I have almost begun to know what leisure is, now that
the Indian Conference is over. It ended with a heavy burst of hospitality,
in which the striking thing was a dinner given by the Indians to the P.M.
I sat next to a Maharajah with an income of a million sterling a year, and
if there is living a more banal idiot I have not met him. He was a most
incredible fellow to watch. He had windows opened and closed simply for
the sake of giving orders and drawing attention to himself. Then I was
bidden to dine with another Prince who made no less than nine speeches
in one evening. Poor Sankey and the P.M. were bored to tears; I enjoyed
the first five simply because one never knew just what he was going to
say next. Then I have been busy settling some co-operative disputes,
a very interesting job. To compile wage-scales in terms of a balance sheet
is a good experience for a political philosopher, and as both sides went
away satisfied I don't think I can have done too badly at it. I went also
to dine with the Webbs. Much good talk, especially from him on the
pressure of tradition in an office like his. But though he complained, I
felt that, on the whole, he welcomed its pressure because it saved him
from the labour of going at the facts for himself. I had a queer lunch
with Bertrand Russell. He wants a definite academic job. . . . He re-
mains dazzling; but there has come into the tone of his mind a curious
and distressing cynicism which I should have said was the worst possible
'See Frankfurter, The Public and its Government (1930), Chapter IV.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1305
attitude for one who wants to teach the young. And I felt that he was
prepared to give opinions without thought on almost everything; — not
the outlook a man of his achievement ought to have. He is very loveable,
and obviously very lonely. But he wants to have his cake and eat it ...
I must add a word about a dinner with the German Ambassador who is
extraordinarily able and attractive,1 He told us much about Holstein,2 the
eminence grise of the pre-war F.O. in Berlin; he had all sorts of black-
mailing holds on people which made it dangerous to demand his resigna-
tion. At last came a foreign secretary with courage and Holstein went.
It was then discovered that most of his threats were based on sheer
intuition, and that he had a genius for scenting the bad streak in a man's
character; but he was quite unable, the Ambassador said, either to tell
a good man when he saw one, or to trust anyone. Yet he was undoubtedly
one of the people most powerful in fixing German policy in Western
matters. I collect one phrase of his I liked — a description of Roosevelt
in Berlin on his visit to the Kaiser as "a corybantic Nimrod who always
fired his gun and mistook the explosion for a bull's eye."
In the way of reading I have been fortunate. A good book on the need
for law reform in England by Claud Mullins. I think he shows that we
need a Bentham, that costs, the English law of evidence, the excessive
use of juries and appeals, the hazards of uncertainty all represent mat-
ters which need careful enquiry. One county court case he gives in detail
where a suit for sixty-seven pounds ultimately implied costs of over six
hundred. Then Tawney's new book, Equality, with which you will pro-
foundly disagree, but which you will, I think, admire for the sheer beauty
of its style, and, what always appeals to me, its power in the use of the
ironic method. I have also enjoyed a good book on ethics by W. D. Ross,
the Aristotle man, called The Right and the Good, and an excellent book,
quite the best I know, on the Paris Commune by a young American
called Mason. I was lent the life and letters of C. W. Eliot by Henry
James; but, alas, I found it infinitely dull. One could see that he was a
man of enormous organising power. But I thought his genius was clearly
for the particular and as James thought it necessary to fill his book with
Eliot's meditations on the universal, the result, for me, was boredom.
It's no use assuming that the general comments of a man who is big in
one line of life are necessarily worth preserving. I urge you, too, to read
1 Baron von Neurath, supra, p. 1286.
2Friedrich von Holstein (1837-1909); his retirement from the Foreign
Office occurred at the time of the Morocco crisis, when Billow, the chancellor,
resigned.
1306 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
a book by an old Harvard pupil of mine, Crane Brinton, on the Jacobins;
first it is dedicated to me, which gave me the pleasure of satisfied vanity,
and second it really is an admirable study of what may be termed the
mechanics of a revolutionary organisation. Not even Aulard has made
one see quite so well how the thing really worked. I add the comment
that it is really a wonderful experience to see one's pupils becoming
people with solid achievement to their credit.
It is now only just over three months till I sail. I hope I may assume
that we are going to dine in Washington on your birthday. Nothing else
in my American visit matters quite so much as that.
We all three send our love. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Devon Lodge, 7.11.31
My dear Justice: I have just passed the first really peaceful week in
months, and it has really been a relief beyond words. I'm not sure that
it isn't an oasis in a desert, for things seem to be looming up for next
month. But at least it has been peace. Mostly I have been reading
Tocqueville for a lecture I have to give next week at King's College.1
It has been frightfully interesting. One of the problems one has to solve
in the history of ideas is the changed attitude to America in Europe after
1800. Until then it clearly was paradise, and no one doubted that any
Utopian ideal must be placed in America. After, and until Tocqueville
no words were too harsh for it, and Europe wanted mostly to hear the
land of thing Basil Hall and Mrs. Trollope seemed to give. I think the
reason is that America was democratic, that democracy meant 1789,
and that the more it was attacked as democratic the more the "classes"
could take comfort that in resisting popular reforms they were resisting
democracy which threatened all decent ways of life. That's why I think
TocqueviDe so remarkable. Everything about him was patrician in tem-
per; yet by a deliberate effort he made himself see the significance of the
new world and appreciate its possibilities. With all his limitations, one
could make out of his book a political anthology about as fine as any in
the nineteenth century. I was amused to find in looking at the material
a speech by Sir R. Peel urging Conservatives to read the book as a warn-
ing against democracy, mainly, I think, because the phrase "tyranny of
the majority" which Tocqueville invented fell pleasantly on Peel's ear.
It was also interesting to see how completely he had anticipated all that
is good in the general part of Bryce's American Commonwealth. Outside
this, I have read mostly international law. And this leads me to the re-
flection that there is no juristic literature which so tempts the writer into
1 Printed in F. J. C. Hearnshaw, The Social and Political Ideas of Some Repre-
sentative Thinkers of the Victorian Age (1933), 100.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1307
eloquent turgidity. With the one exception of Westlake, none of the
English books of authority seemed to me first-rate or even closely rea-
soned. I was more impressed by the French, and still more by the Ger-
man. But I should have said that the whole subject wanted a man of
genius to devote himself to its philosophic foundations. I also re-read
Maine's Ancient Law, and fell again under its inexhaustible charm. If
I had to name a book to tempt the outsider into a sense that jurisprudence
was a great subject I think I should ask him to read Maine and then deny
greatness at his peril! Of other things, I read Galsworthy's new novel 2
which has been highly praised, I think wrongly. Its theme is the nobility
of strong, silent men who do their job and accept the loss of privilege
without repining. But there is a little oasis of insight in a vast sea of
sugary sentimentality which I found really painful. Curious to reflect
that ten years ago he seemed on the way to becoming an English classic
and that now he appears almost wholly devoid of anything but a thin
and vapid sentiment. Whether it is that the atmosphere is more hard or
that he has lost skill one once felt I do not know. But I would give the
whole of this novel of his for one good Jeeves' story.
I have also had a book-hunt in the Caledonian market where one can
buy anything from a seventh-hand dress suit to packets of seeds for a
slum window-box. I don't think I have ever emerged from an expedition
so wholly dirty as from this. But I found the remains of a library belong-
ing to a descendent of a Hugenot exile, and it yielded treasures at a
shilling a piece. I got three rare works by Jurieu, the Hugenot pastor
of Rotterdam and the opponent of Bayle. I got three contemporary
critiques of Montesquieu, one of which came from the pocket of an
overcoat which I can only describe as really mouldy; and I got a perfect
first edition of Rousseau's Lettre a M. d'Alembert. It was really a good
afternoon's hunting and worth the necessity of sending my suit to be
cleaned (at Frida's stern instance) immediately afterwards.
One man came to see me during the week whom I would have liked
you to meet — the French writer Daniel Halevy. He was the real French-
man of legend. He is going to write a survey of contemporary England 3
which he was visiting for the first time in fifteen years. He would visit
London, one industrial town, one mining village, one country town,
Oxford and Cambridge. He wanted to interview (for the chapter on
political ideas) one liberal, one Tory and one socialist. For literature
he wanted to see one critic of the Right and one of the Left. I tried so
patiently to explain that no such animals existed. With equal patience and
exquisite courtesy he explained that they must exist since all French
critics could be so divided. I said that a man could be a Tory and yet
8 Maid in Waiting (1931).
8 The survey, if completed, has not been identified.
1308 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
appreciate Shelley's Masque of Anarchy. He thought it impossible. When
I went on to affirm that old George Saintsbury who was a Tory of the
School of Walter Scott adored the novels of Dickens he said that as a
people we were incapable of consistency; and I could see the notion of
perfide Albion coming definitively into his mind.
I must end with a tale illustrating the glorious use of the British lan-
guage by native Hindus. My friend Coatman4 used to be inspector
of prisons in India. Visiting the prison of Udaipur, he was shown round
by the Babu superintendent. They came to the condemned cell where
a poor, shivering prisoner was crouching. Coatman asked about him. "He
is to be hanged tomorrow/' said the Babu. Pause. "He is innocent." Pause.
"That is why he looks so peevish."
My love to you, my dear Justice. I wish I could drop in on you for a
talk. Ever affectionately yours, Harold J. Laski
Devon Lodge, 10. II. 81
My dear Justice: Forgive my silence. I have been in bed with a bad dose
of influenza, and am only just about again. This is merely to say that
I leap at the chance of staying with you. I shall come on March 7th and
catch a late train to New Haven on the 8th. It will be a joy beyond words
to be with you.
Our love as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Yale Law School, New Haven, Connecticut, 2111.31
My dear Justice: A very hurried note to ask whether it is all right for me
to turn up at 1720 on Saturday afternoon and stay until a late train
on Sunday night? I am more excited by the prospect of this visit than
anything I can remember in years.
My love as always. Ever affectionately yours, Harold ]. Laski
Idle Law School, 16.IILS1
My dear Justice: I ought to have written to you last week; but I have
been terribly driven and have not yet emerged from the welter of cor-
respondence this visit seems to entail. Yet I must put on paper my joy
at seeing you again. They were exquisite hours, among the very happiest
that I have ever known. And to have been with you on that day will be
a memory I shall always cherish.1 Forsan et Jiaec olim meminisse juvabit.
4 John Coatman (1889- ), after many years as a civil servant in India,
had become Professor of Imperial Economic Relations at London University
in 1930.
1 Holmes was ninety on March 8.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1309
I wish I knew how to tell you what friendship with you has meant to me.
But it is one of the things that lie too deep and too intimate for words.
The days pass very swiftly. It is extraordinarily interesting here.2 The
level is not, I think, quite as good as at Harvard, especially not in the
Law School. But they are most attractive people, as eager as could be,
and I enjoy them. I don't know what they make of me; but I seem to keep
them excited, which is, after all, the teacher's main business. If I had
to criticise I should guess two things (I) too much university interest in
building and too little to [sic] men. (II) too much attention to points
of administrative detail. They ask less, has X learned to think, than has
X obtained a sufficient number of credits to entitle us to assume that he
has learned to think. And this last involves a pretty vast structure
in which the teacher gets buried unless he is painfully careful. The boys
read too little for themselves, and what they read is too much in bits. The
result is that they aren't accustomed to the job of tearing the heart out
of a book or to thinking on their own. It may be that English experience
gives me a wrong perspective of approach, but I should have said that
my lads in London were much more critical and sceptical than the lads
here because we throw on them a much greater onus of responsibility.
Majora cano. I had two delicious days with Felix this week-end. His
powers are to me more mature and more creative than ever, and his
mind far more balanced. Indeed I am tempted to say that of all the
younger Americans he has the best instrument at his disposal. I have,
too, seen a little of Morris Cohen. There, again, new sense in me of
impressive power; and delightful new humilities in him, new doubts, and
new kindness. I heard him lecture here on Hegel's logic — a quite re-
markable analysis, simplification without excess, a personal point of view,
a brilliant dialectic, and a power of evoking enquiry which one could not
but admire. Of other things the most enjoyable was a journey by air from
New York to Boston. It was quite thrilling. The sense of space is intoxicat-
ing; and the view in its grandeur gives a new element of drama to life.
Long Island Sound at 10,000 feet, and Boston at nightfall with a million
lights are unforgettable. In the cockpit of the aeroplane one feels very
little and negligible; but the inference I drew from the almost complete
balance of the pilot, the regular 140 miles each hour, the easy ascendancy
over the clouds and rain, was of a mastery over nature which makes the
result of rebellion against her limitations a mighty achievement.
1 have read but little, as letter-writing has kept me busy. I danced
through Jerome Frank's book3 which I thought made a point though with
2 During the second term of the academic year Laski gave two courses in
the Yale Law School: an Introduction to Legal and Political Theory, in the
first year curriculum, and a course in Administrative Law for advanced students.
8 Law and the Modern Mind (1930).
1310 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
insensate exaggeration. What I did like in him was his skilful dissection
of Pound's undistributed middles. And I read Beard's American Levi-
athan— a good description but one which selection would have made
into an Iliad.
My love to you as always. One of the best things about being here is
the sense of your proximity. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., March 17, 1931
My dear Laski: Your letter gives me great happiness. Few things possible
could give me so much. I will say no more except that it came just as
I was asking myself whether it would not be better if I should die now
— (without assistance from myself — Hen entendu).
All my leisure time, i.e. all my time out of Court has been taken in
writing letters and the end is not yet — but I have managed to write a
little decision, distributed today and accepted by all but three not heard
from yet. On Sunday the 15th most of my old secretaries turned up and
made me a charming call. They proposed that next summer Hopkinson
should paint a second portrait — half length, sitting — for the new
Court house — which will not be much of a job and will be pleasant.
Of course your lads in London are more critical. They live in a thicker
atmosphere of culture than any large body of men here — not only in
the society they meet but in what comes through their eyes. Perhaps
we spoke of that. I have read nothing but letters but have listened to
the third volume of Parrington — posthumous about the rise of critical
realism in the U.S. or some such title. There is a touch of radical dogma-
tism in his tone and speech — the catch words catch him — "exploita-
tion" — "acquisition" &c. He cares most for those of his way of thinking
— &c. &c. but he has a great deal of keen insight and I am sorry that
solitaire going on while I listened, somewhat blunted the impression of
his words. At the end of this week, or rather on the Monday following
it, we adjourn for 3 weeks which will be a relief and let me catch my
breath. Now I am panting all the time.
In my turn my love to you — always.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Yale Law School, 2S.IIL31
My dear Justice: Your delightful letter gave me great joy. The boys,
I gather, gave you their Journal on Saturday, where I hope you dis-
covered my real birthday present.1 One thing I must say. It was difficult
1 See, supra, p. 1303.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1311
to present the appearance of insight without the display of that intimate
affection unsuitable for a learned journal. But I count on you to read
between the lines.
I keep as busy as ever. I went to Williams and to New York — the
latter particularly brightened by a long evening with Morris Cohen.
I was immensely impressed first by his integrity of rnind and second by
his intellectual maturity. It is a great thing to meet that kind of mellow
wisdom which handles ideas as tools and is not wedded to private
dogmas. His insight is hardly less remarkable than his learning. I must
add a word of a visit to his parents — two old Russian Jews well in the
eighties. Neither speaks English and they have a tiny three room apart-
ment on the East side. I told them of my pride in Morris and the esteem
in which we all hold him. The old lady's ideas [sic] became twin fires
as she said "I am poor and ill, but when I think of my son I bless America
for making me the richest woman in the world." Do you mind if I envied
America that? I also spent an hour with Walter Lippmann, but not very
profitably. I think wealth has done two things to him. A good deal of his
sensitiveness has gone. He is interested in external things, queer little
worthless comforts e.g. a bad display of temper because the servant
forgot a cup of coffee he ordered. And he has arrived at the stage where
he is not eager to take intellectual risks. ... I found that he had ceased
to read much outside modernities and he lacked a sense of perspective.
He lives in the immediate moment and is not poised about it. I also had a
good talk with Julian Mack whom I really like. He isn't, heaven knows,
a big rnind; but he is full of capacity and he has a nature generous and
kind beyond praise. To see his face light up when he spoke of you and
Felix warmed my heart.
In the way of reading I have mostly been at Morris Cohen's book.2 It
is extraordinary in its range. Now and again I demur, but, on the whole,
I do not know another living American who could have done it. The
range and temper are in the great tradition. I also read, without convic-
tion, Jerome Frank's book. I thought it clever journalism, but no more.
Really his case is one for more judges like Holmes, J. rather than for an
attack upon the pursuit of logic in the law, a more conscious awareness
by the judge of his bias and his limitations rather than a disavowal of
the possibility of legal principle, I also read, for my lectures here, Maine
again. It does strike me after ten years as quite obviously a masterpiece.
Take all that research has done away, and the power to state principle,
the easy grasp of masses of detail, the ample-rnindedness are extraor-
dinary. All of which reminds me to say that he and Frank and others
put in my head the notion that most legal writers exaggerate enormously
the place of custom in law. I should like to bet that commercial practice
2 Reason and Nature (1931).
1312 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
apart about two-thirds is the outcome of judicial selection and that
BejJUGTes are what gives custom its sharpness and not vice versa. A big
theme for a letter but I want to put it only dogmatically, reserving the
right to dwell further on the matter.
And two other minor things. Wherever I go, I think I see a real intel-
lectual renaissance in America. There is a spirit of critical enquiry abroad
which it is quite refreshing, even exciting to witness. People are sceptical
about inherited values — always the beginning of wisdom. Against it
I put a curious passion for taking pleasure externally rather than inter-
nally. A man says at dinner 'What shall we do tonight" not "what shall
we talk about?" I wonder how few things like the radio and the motor
car are responsible for that. Materialise the source of pleasure and you
destroy the faculty for inner satisfactions. Wherefore you lose the
pleasure of reflection by asking others to do things and think things for
you; and to the tired mind after a day in Wall Street it is the easiest way.
But I am sure that mental breezes blow from within outward.
My love to you. The very thought of you as near is my main consola-
tion at my distance from Frida and Diana.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Jale Law School, 6.IV.S1
My dear Justice: A delightful letter from you last week wanned my
heart.1 I am glad you liked the lads from the law journal. They came
back lyrical with excitement, and each came alone to my room to give his
separate version of the event.
Since I wrote last, my main experience, and fascinating it was, has
been a week in the Middle West. I had not been there since 1915, and
then only for two days in Chicago. This time I went to Chicago, Minne-
apolis and Columbus, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Impressions pour in on
me so that it is difficult to select. First, I think, a most attractive simplic-
ity in the people. It might easily be social crudity, but I am convinced
it is not. On the contrary, it is a simple pleasure in simple things wliich
I found charming. They are, of course, unsophiscated [sic] compared
with the East, and curiously provincial. But there is a healthy earnest-
ness about them which I could not but admire. Then I felt the immensity
of distance from Europe. Our problems, clearly, do not even enter their
consciousness. They are not reported because they do not interest. They
are not even quite certain that the East really exists; and their minds are
definitely turned Westward. Then I noted a curious faith in mass action,
a sense that the more people are alike in taste and opinion and feeling,
the better things will be. If a man wanted to condemn his neighbour the
1 The letter referred to is missing.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1313
usual ground was the possession of a strong individuality. He was Ir-
religious, or socialist, or pro-negro, or crazy about books and pictures,
or did not go to the movies. It was a different civilisation from anything
I have ever seen and I enjoyed every moment of it. You will, I hope,
congratulate me on finding in Chicago Knolles' translation of Bodin
(1616) a very stately folio, which belonged to Ellesrnere the Chancellor,
for ten dollars; I would cheerfully have paid seventy-five for it, as it gets
increasingly rare. I lectured twice — once at Minnesota and once at Ohio
State and perhaps because everyone was land to me, I thought the
standard there compared pretty favourably with Yale. I also spoke in
New York with Redlich on parliamentary government to a show called
the Foreign Policy Association.2 Redlich was charming, but suffered from
the historian's fallacy that the is is the inevitable. Now I have peace
until the week-end when I go to give a lecture at Bryn Mawr. I must add
that wherever I went interest in your birthday was profound. I think
it would make you really happy to find how widespread is the affection
for you among men whom you yourself would respect. At Minnesota,
for instance, the Governor,3 a silent, able Swede actually unbent when
I said I had been with you on your birthday and said that his party
(farmer-labour) had a confidence in you which they extended to no other
person on the bench.
I read much while away as the journeys were long. First, and for the
first time in years, Gulliver. Really a great book; and the Academy at
Laputa is so like research here in the social sciences that Swift emerges
as a prophet. Then Cardozo's essays4 — rather slighter than I expected
and at times excessively mellifluous, but all of them, none the less, having
point and pungency. Then P. G. Wodehouse's new novel — Big Money
— which I adjure you to read; adorable farce which made me the cyno-
sure of the Pullman through my inability not to roar with laughter. And
a Trollope called Ayalcfs Angel which was quite charming and in his best
style.
1 expect you heard of Arnold Bennett's death. It moved me a good
deal for I used to see much of him. He was a very generous soul, full of
kindly wisdom, and I think three or four of his novels have a permanent
place in English letters. He had taste, too, for pictures, wine and many
other things. He first made me see the curious power of Gauguin and first
made me realize the defects of Rodin. That's the worst of distance. It
2 The Decline of Parliamentary Government, Discussed by Harold J. Laski
and Dr. Josef Redlich, March 28, 1931 (Foreign Policy Association, Pamphlet
No. 74, 1931).
8 Floyd B. Olson (1891-1936), Farmer-Labor Governor of Minnesota, 1930-
1936.
and Literature and Other Essays and Addresses (1931).
1314 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
insulates you from talk which comforts one. If I could have half an hour
with Frida or H. G. Wells and talk of him I should feel less lonely about
it. For I cling to my friends.
Do you know yet when your Court stops for the term? I want, if I
may, to have another week-end with you either at the end of May or early
in June, whether at Washington or Beverly Farms as you think best. I
can't, alas, do it before. But I must have one more glimpse of you before
I sail.
My love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., April 12, 1931
My dear Laski: To answer your last question first. We adjourn for the
term on Monday, June 8 if nothing changes — and I should expect to
head for Boston on the following Wednesday — June 10. Except on days
too near departure and arrival to be consistent with making you com-
fortable, you always will be welcome. I should be much disappointed if
we didn't have another time together.
The sittings begin again tomorrow, I believe with an important case
between New Jersey and New York about taking water from a river1 —
in which the Chief can't sit and that I fear may mean that I shall have to
take it to write — but I can't tell about that yet I haven't had the leisure
I hoped for — one never does — but still I have had a little and some
charming drives in the parks and by the river. The apple blossoms around
the basin are out today and the place is packed with automobiles. Also
some wonderful white magnolias &c. but I am afraid such details don't
interest you. My secretary has just finished reading to me the Maritime
History of Massachusetts, an enchanting book. After ending it last night
we turned to your recommendation — Wodehouse — Big Money — and
I have roared over all that I have heard. I should think it was one of
W's best if it doesn't fall off. At odd minutes I am tucking in Cohen's
Reason and Nature — but that I must read to myself as I get a chance.
My only criticism so far is that when talking of particular impressions
and universals, he doesn't think of the composite photograph — which
seems to me more than an analogy — a type of the process. These most
frequently recurring elements make coincidents and therefore deeper
marks and you get a generalization mechanically achieved without any
bother about particulars and universals.
I heartily agree with his repudiation of the irrationalists &c. — but
speaking only as a bettabilitarian and within the limits of our very finite
experience I have no faith that reason is the last word of the universe.
1 New Jersey v. New York, 283 U.S. 336 (May 4, 1931); opinion by Holmes,
Hughes, C.J., and Roberts, J., not participating.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1315
I know nothing about it. I have no prejudice against a miracle — but I
will bet a dollar to ten cents that any miracle alleged to have occurred
within the world of our experience didn't come off. I am sorry to have got
only less than half way through Cohen when the sitting begins again. I
am much interested by your impressions of the middle west. They sound
plausible. My secretary comes from there — but discloses from time to
time a critical judgment that I have not exactly measured. Speech there,
as elsewhere here, I think has degenerated — largely through the obliter-
ation of the consonants. Our crier opens court excellently in other re-
spects but he says The Unihd (this letter is H) States of America.
My blessings on thee, lad. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Yale Law School, 20.IV.S1
My dear Justice: A grand letter from you cheered me considerably, for
I have been feeling rather badly homesick and forlorn. Time is a definite
category at three thousand miles distance from Devon Lodge; I realise
the gay agony of devotion more than I thought possible. But really I am
having a most interesting time. I had a great week-end in Philadelphia
where I saw a superb collection of French pitcures in the house of one
Barnes1 — Renoirs and Manets which took my breath away and a
Cezanne which was like a piece of the sun. Then a week-end in Cam-
bridge mostly with Felix, but with a grand interlude with Mcllwain when
we talked political theory and found ourselves obviously right because we
agreed on things. I dined too with the New Republic and felt they were
as solemn as a gathering of Baptists met to do justice to the Scarlet
Woman of Washington. Felix is in grand shape. Really the lad's person-
ality is electric and I sit watching its play in happy admiration. For you
and him alone I am amply repaid for this visit to America. Pound I have
not seen; but having read his new book2 I don't think I want to. He seems
to me to have reached the stage of regurgitation and it read like a pale
edition, faint and wan, of his papers of fifteen and twenty years ago. And
looking at the new law school I thought he had a bad attack of the
folie de grandeur. Teachers oughtn't to live in palaces. They get inter-
ested in buildings instead of their subject. I am for luxurious simplicity
not for complicated luxury and there really is a difference between them.
I also had a good hunt round Goodspeed's and found a nice cheap set of
John Q. Adams Diary which I have always wanted to possess. He was the
best of all that race and a fellow whose character I admire the more I
read him. On Wednesday I am off to Cornell, which I have never seen,
Albert Coombs Barnes (1872-1951), inventor of Argyrol, educator, and
renowned collector of modern art.
2 Criminal Justice in America (1930).
1316 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
for three days, an exciting thing for me as they have a famous collection
of French Revolution pamphlets which I am anxious to look over.
In the way of reading I have some notes to make. I finished Morris
Cohen with much admiration. The essay I find most hard to follow is
the one on Natural Law which does not seem to me to end. The best,
I think, within rny field of competence is the one on History and Value,
an extraordinarily neat piece of thinking. His learning and dialectic power
are admirable. It isn't, I feel a mind of original insight but it has an
amazing power to deal logically with what it does see. Then I read Sena-
tor Lodge's letters and the Life of Henry White, and had a most unpleas-
ant picture of him as a dubious intriguer whose hatred of Wilson carried
him to lengths which sometimes overstepped the bounds of decency. I
also thoroughly enjoyed a novel by Willa Gather called The Lost Ladij
which seemed to me to have poise and balance and an attractive simple
dignity. And I must mention a topping book on Montesquieu by a French
man named Carcassonne which deals with his relations to the problem
of the French Constitution in the 18th century and makes one see ad-
mirably the truth of an old hobby of mine that the great man of a genera-
tion is always the peak of a mountain range who gets picked out because
he is saying magistrally what the generation is wanting to hear. That was
true of Hobbes and Locke, and I think Rousseau less started romanticism
which is in Moliere and, in a sense, in the placid egotism of Montaigne,
as gave it its letters of credit. And I read the diaries of John Bright and
marvelled that a man who so moved his generation could be so dull
within fifty years of his death. I suppose it is merely changed interests,
though I can read old Pepys and Saint Simon and even Fanny Burney
pretty exhaustively. And the Oedipus Coloneus and the Antigone which
I swear are consummate art at a level of constant grave emotion quite
unsurpassed. Old Henry Jackson of Cambridge always used to say to me
that a real appreciation of Greek depended on whether one understood
that Aeschylus was the biggest of the three. As he interests me the least
I suppose that means that I do not appreciate Greek. But except for the
Persae 1 think I would give most of him for almost any play of the other
two. I nearly forgot to add that I also found a (to me) unknown P. G.
Wodehouse on a railway stall entitled Jill the Reckless and cracked my
sides over it. Quite unquestionably he is the best creator of unadulterated
nonsense alive today. There is in that book the picture of a young man
going to meet his stern mother at the station accompanied by two friends
which is for sheer power to evoke laughter in my judgment unsurpassed
in literature.
You meanwhile are deciding I suppose whether New Jersey is to thirst
or New York and whether that admirable young Mackintosh is fit to be
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1317
the citizen of an America which digests Mr. Otto Kahn quite painlessly.3
I am for Mackintosh on the admirable grounds upon which Sydney Smith
defended Catholic Emancipation a century ago.4 I expect you are finding
constant glories in this superb spring. Even I notice the magnificence of
the magnolias on every hand and the willows in their new green are
singularly moving.
How would it suit your plans if I came down to Washington on Friday
May 22nd and stayed until the Sunday? If that fits your household I
needn't say that it would be grand for me.
My love to you as always. Jours ever affectionately., H. /. L.
Jale Law School 11.V.S1
My dear Justice: 1 ought to have written earlier to tell you how glad I am
that I may come on the 30th.1 It will be the culmination of my stay here.
I add that I shall try to steal one day with you in Beverly Farms before
I leave on June 17 so that we can drive out together. Haec olim memi-
nisse juvabit; but we can talk of this when I come.
I have been pretty busy since I wrote last. A week-end in Cornell, one
with Felix, and four days giving the Weil lectures in North Carolina.2
It has all been very exciting to me, though a little tiring. Cornell I shall
long remember because I met there Carl Becker. He is really superb —
a mature scholar, with a width of interest and a tolerant maturity that
make talk a joy. And he shares my passion for the French 18th century,
has the right contempt for Bossuet, and the proper realisation that
Diderot is the biggest force of the age. N. Carolina fascinated me — an
oasis of liberalism in the Southern desert. Here was a body of men who
understand that ancient memories can be futile as well as precious and
see the need for new thought and new energy. I must add that the Law
School there was very good, and it was moving to me to see your picture
(a photograph of the Hopkinson portrait) in the place of honour over
•In United States v. Macintosh, 283 U.S. 605 (May 25, 1931), a majority of
the Court held that under Congressional statutes relating to naturalization, an
alien who was unwilling to take an oath of allegiance without reserving the
right to decide for himself that a particular war was morally justified, was
ineligible for citizenship. Holmes, Brandeis, and Stone, JJ., concurred in a
dissenting opinion of Hughes, C.J.
4 In Sydney Smith's Peter Plymley's Letters (1807) his plea for Catholic
emancipation was based largely on the thesis that the enlightened self-interest
of England required that Irishmen should be her friends.
*Two short notes, one from Laski of April 28 and one from Holmes of
April 29, 1931 are omitted.
s Later expanded and published as Democracy in Crisis (1933).
1318 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
the Dean's desk in the faculty room. I liked the students too — lads with
charming manners and an evident anxiety to acquire not only information
but the way of thought. Clearly the South is in for a bad time unless it
can tame to social purposes the vast industrial revolution that is taking
place there; and the impressive thing about the faculty is its sense that
the university must play its part in preventing the catastrophe of a hun-
dred years ago being repeated through absence of social purpose in the
plan. Of course the difference in temper from the North is astounding.
It comes out in the softness of speech, almost clinging manners, the amaz-
ing and excessive deference to women, the tendency to look backwards
for inspiration, the sense that they are of different clay from the Yankee.
And I should have guessed that they suffer much from intense religiosity
which clouds their minds and makes them feel that the Lord will provide
without undue exertion on their part. I also had (in New York) a most
charming dinner with Cardozo where we had much talk of you. He is a
very beautiful person, with a combination of penetration and sweetness
that are unforgettable. Morris Cohen was there; and I much enjoyed
Morris's defiant dogmatism and the gentleness of Cardozo's footnotes of
dubiety. Certainly he is among my half dozen American candidates for
my comer of heaven or hell. I met there, too, Jerome Frank whose book
I think you know. He is pleasant and earnest, but, I should have guessed,
rather a muddled person, though attractive through it all. And I met
Charles Burlingham3 whom I thought wholly delightful in every sort of
way. His views on Felix went straight to my heart.
My love to you eagerly. I shall count the days till Washington.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Yale Law School 11. VLSI
My dear Justice: I have waited to write to you until I felt you had really
settled down in Beverly Farms. I need not tell you how delightful those
two days were. I came to America primarily to see you, for no friendship
I have ever had has given me the same beauty or exhilaration; and these
two brief visits to Washington have made me feel even more intensely
what a happy day for me it was when Felix brought me to Beverly on
July 10, 1916. Thank you again and again.
May I raise one or two things that come out of our talk. (I) A propos
of the Bent book about you,1 you will, I hope, send me a few words say-
ing that you agree that Felix is the best person to do a really authoritative
account. I build a great deal on this. (II) I think, too, that you should
s Charles C. Burlmgham (1858- ), distinguished leader of New York's
admiralty bar and sage student of public affairs.
1 In 1932 Silas Bent published his book, Mr. Justice Holmes; A Biography.
1931] HOLMES TO LASKI 1319
leave the bound volumes of your decisions and such papers to the Har-
vard Law School. That ensures their fullest use. (Ill) And the Poe ms to
the Library of Congress. That is its proper home. (IV) But I want
to have, at least for my own life, your copy of The Common Law.2 That,
with Maitland, was my first real introduction to scholarship, and it is full
of precious memories for me. I should, when I die, put it in the Maitland
Library at All Souls'. But, while I live, I want to have it as the embodi-
ment of my own ideal of scholarship. Don't, please, think me interfering
in putting down these things. You know the motive of affection from
which they spring.
I have had some pleasant days lately. A charming visit to Eugene
Meyer, where I saw a bust of his wife by, I think, Bourdelle3 which was
magnificent. Then two days in New York with a good dinner at Charles
Burlingham's. Now I am clearing up here. Tomorrow I go off to Felix
until Monday; then to New York (at the Commodore); and on Wednes-
day I sail on the Aquitania. I am very anxious to be home. The sense
of being with Frida again is magical. But I hope Felix has arranged that
we shall run over to see you while I am with him. Of course, as soon as
I am home, I shall resume writing to you in the old way.
My best love, my dear Justice. I cannot put into words how precious
are the memories you have given me.
Ever affectionately yours, Harold J. Laski
Beverly Farms, June 2,0, 1931
My dear Laski: When you left I wondered if I ever should see you again
— but such inquiries are unprofitable. About that time I was feeling very
feeble and finished — whichever way I look here there are only ghosts
and memories. But whether I am recovering from more fatigue than I
realized or what it is I don't know, but I am getting back something of
a wiggle. People call — Mrs. Beveridge — sweet creature — with 2
fresh books from Paris — Udpre et splendide Espagne — Camille Mau-
claire — bully talk about pictures — and Decadence de la nation fran-
gaise (R. Aron and A. Dandieu) which the title makes me not want
to read. The two JJ. Hand lunched here yesterday and were in better
talking condition than I was.
Hopkinson who is going to do another portrait of rne, sitting — prob-
ably not full length, is coming this p.m. — and I have driven to many
of my favorite haunts — only to the outskirts of Rockport as yet, the
2 Holmes's last will contained no specific provisions on the matters referred
to. Holmes's executor, however, gave the Justice's copy of The Common Law to
Laski, and Laski in turn gave it to the Harvard Law School in 1940.
8 Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929).
1320 HOLMES TO LASK! [1931
journey being a little long for me. I must try to resume a little walking.
Now, I hope only for > 6 mos. disuse, I can go but a few steps. But the
doctor looked me over and said arteries A-l — heart O.K. and urine
satisfactory. Forgive these medical details. I still like to live though I
awaited the doctor's answers I think without a quickened heart beat.
We are rereading the Romany Rije having finished Lavengro and I have
read a striking little book that I should like to hear you talk about: The
Impending Storm by Somerset De Chaire — a boy of 18. To my igno-
rance it seemed remarkable.
The certioraris have not begun to come yet — and I am idle and
worthless. I breakfast upstairs to avoid climbing, so far as I can — but
this is under the dictatorship of Mary1 who seems to think it a wrong to
her if I do anything for myself.
Ever, dear boy, affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, July 25, 1931
My dear LasJd: It is so long since a letter has come from you that anxiety
begins to set in. But probably it only means that your hands were more
than full on your return. I will wait, not speculate. With me things are
going well. I think I must have been tired on my arrival here. I medi-
tated on death — but I do so no longer. (I don't mean suicide, of course,
but the imminent cloud.) I see slightly more people than I want to see
but generally individually welcome, and my secretary reads copiously
to me. The other day we finished Our Mutual Friend and now are deep
in Vanity Fair. Separately I have tucked in Plato's Laws &c. &c. The
Laws seem somewhat remote, but has fine aperqus in it, and is as despotic
as even you could wish (if Laskt were at the head). We have reread
Lavengro and The Romany Rye — with somewhat abated enthusiasm.
I was rather thrilled by Camille Mauclair — L'dpre et splendide Espagne
— with fine talk about Goya, Velasquez and El Greco and about places
and the moors. Also by V. Sackville-West — All Passion Spent. She is
a very remarkable woman — when you take this — and her poem, The
Land — and, unless I am confused, some book of travel in Persia1 to
say nothing of The Edwardians. Talking of books — I recur to some
possible book about me after my death. While Felix seems to me the man
for the law part I can't help thinking that there well might be another
part dealing with the old Yankee that could perhaps better be managed
by some other Yankee. I should think Palfrey would be good to advise
1 Mary Donnellan was the devoted and imaginative manager of Holmes's
household until his death.
1 Ticelve Days-, An Account of a Journey across the Bakhtiari Mountains in
South-western Persia (1928).
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1321
with. He is my executor and knows the ropes. I blush to assume so much
interest in me — nor do I expect it — but I make the suggestion in case.
I recall our times together with delight, and when I go through Rock-
port never fail to cast a reminiscent look down the road by the harbor
side whence you radiated literature for two years. I like that drive super-
latively but it is a little long for me.
I have pretty completely given up walking, and seem none the worse
for it.
Now for Vanity Fair. Affly yours, 0. W. H.
As from Devon Lodge, 6, VIII. 31
My dear Justice: Let us resume operations! I should have been ashamed
of so long a silence, had it not been that I knew you would understand.
From the day (a very wonderful day) that I got home until we came
abroad on July 31st my life was one mass of work. There were the royal
commissions to which I belong.1 Then Sankey roped me in to do a heap
of things for him about the Indian Conference. Then university com-
mittees ad nauseam; and I who had hoped just nicely to avoid university
examinations found that one of my colleagues had taken ill and I had to
do my share after all. Indeed, I think I did more work in the month after
I came home than I did during all the four I was in America. Now, how-
ever, it is really perfect peace. We came abroad just a week ago today,
bringing the car with us and motoring on from Calais. A night at Rouen,
one at Chartres, and after four days with some French friends near Tours,
we are now staying for I expect about a fortnight at Amboise. We over-
look the castle (a miracle) and the river and the views are quite beyond
words. Each day we have motored genially round. The thing of all things
that I have seen so far, after the Cathedral at Chartres, is Chenonceaux.
That literally trembles with big moments. It is not only Renaissance
architecture at its most efflorescent. The pictures, the situation, are all
so completely blended into a harmony. And one understands better the
spaciousness of the sixteenth century for having seen it. Only less lovely
is Blois: the room there where the States-General of 1576 were held, and
in which Bodin sat, is really a masterpiece of proportion made to produce
the effect of massiveness. The whole countryside gives one a mass of
ideas. It is clear, that in a full sense, a French nation, and nationalism,
could not have been born. It is clear that these noblemen thought of
themselves as each a state, going forward, if possible, but, if not, at least
hanging on to what he held. It's also interesting to see how the province
1 At this time Laslci was serving not only on the Commission on Ministers*
Powers but on the Departmental Committee on Local Government (see, infra,
p. 1464).
1322 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
is in a literary sense still the underlying reality; the department has all
kinds of traditions, but it has not built itself into the unconscious bones
of the people. Yet now it is almost as old as the province itself! It is
amazing, too, to see a people to whom equality means something so sub-
stantial as to the French. Talk to the man in the garage, or the peasant
in the field, and he speaks to you with a vigour that is remarkable. At
one little town, Chancay, about six miles from here I saw the Mairie,
with the village registers going back in a complete series to 1573. I
opened up two historic years — 1715 when L. XIV died and 1789. The
entry in the first among "choses notables de Tannee" is that there was a
thunderstorm worse than any known since 1668, and in 1789 that the
grapes (it is the Vouvray country) were of admirable quality and
brought a high price. That shows the truth of Jane Austen who could
write her novels without even a glimpse of the Napoleonic wars.
Of reading, I have not much to record; I have had too little time. I read
with real delight Glotz's Cite Grec which is the best thing of its kind
I have read except Zimmern's book, and in a sense better than Zimmern
since, without the latter's enthusiasm, it is a more balanced picture. Then
I read the final volume (some years old) of Geny's Science et technique
en droit prive from which I gather that the natural law of the Thomists
is the essential postulate on which all law is based. And I read a novel by
Clemence Dane called Broome Stages which had, I thought, real merit.
I have not been in a bookshop since I got home, except on a day's visit
to Oxford. I found there a nice copy of the Bodin of 1586, in French,
the best edition for five dollars, and brought it home. But before I leave
here, I hope to spend a few days in Paris and there to have some happy
hunting.
But America remains most vividly in my mind. It was one of the su-
preme adventures I have ever had. Even now, I hardly begin to realise
how much I learned, and preciously. I thought on all sides it was a
richer civilisation than in 1926; and there was evidence and to spare
of a growth of intellectual stature. One had the sense that America was
trembling on the verge of great discoveries — that round the corner was
the prospect of something of enormous significance to civilisation. I liked
so much in the young men — and I thought the best of them, at least
in the law, up to the best we produce in Oxford and Cambridge. I had
unforgettable moments with you; for that birthday night alone in Wash-
ington I would have come over. You and Felix teach me what friendship
can mean and if I say no more than that of our days together it is be-
cause I do not know how to find words for these things. I can only some-
how stutter that few days in my life have meant more than when Felix
brought me to Beverly Farms in 1916. What you have given me in these
fifteen years has about it the richness that one dare not hope to repay.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1323
I came home to find Frida and Diana both well; and their welcome
almost made it worth while to have gone away. In some ways I find
England very troubled and sad. She needs to make an immense effort,
and is rather like a patient to whom lethargy is itself a source of pleas-
ure. I have no doubt that at base she is sound. But she needs to save
herself by her energy and then, as Pitt said, she may again save Europe
by her example.
My love to you, dear Justice. Take care of yourself and be happy.
Ever your affectionate, H. }. JL
As from Devon Lodge, I5.VII1.S1
My dear Justice: Your letter was very welcome. It came just as mine to
you must have been half-way across the Atlantic. Of course, I agree
largely with what you say about Johnny Palfrey and the biography. Only
I think that is a matter for consultation rather than collaboration; or for
chapters contributed. For anything else destroys the artistic unity of the
work, and I feel there that Felix has a great opportunity to make a pic-
ture of a turning-point in the history of the United States, which ought
to be of capital importance; and he is scholar enough to see the full
implications of the opportunity he has.
The holiday proceeds peacefully. We have seen one or two things
worth recording. Outstanding have been the Cathedral at Tours with
some windows which, to my mind, were hardly less notable than those
of Chartres and Notre-Dame. And a quite exquisite chateau at Azay-le-
Rideau which, both for situation and for proportion made me hold my
breath. The latter interested me particularly because it appears to be
by a local architect — Berthelot1 — of whom nothing else is known. I
went also to the abbey of Fontevrault which I wish you could have
seen. First the abbey church itself — a miracle of proportions and renais-
sance carving — some of the most realistic devils I have ever seen. Then
in the church the tombs of Richard I, Henry II and their wives. These
were only discovered in 19 10,2 and the dust of centuries had acted so as
to preserve the original polychromatic colourings of the originals. That
of Isabella of Angouleme which is in sculptured wood — I believe a
great rarity — was really a masterpiece — simplicity of outline, the
beautified folds of the drapery and the purity of the line of the face.
Altogether it was a most moving sight. The vision of this endless proces-
sion of chateaux produces in me the sense of the triumph of common-sense
1 Gilles Berthelot, counselor of Francis I, and seigneur of Azay-le-Rideau,
early in the sixteenth century tore down the existing chateau and built its
famous renaissance successor.
* LasM was in error in his kte dating of the discovery.
1324 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
in the destruction of feudalism. It is difficult to believe that the life of
the common man could have been endurable when the jurisdiction to
which he was subject was so amazingly spasmodic in its operations. And
one feels intensely how great must have been the hatred of the peasants
for their masters when one reads in chateau after chateau that it was
pillaged and destroyed in 1789. I think too that the French government
deserves a tribute for the superb way in which it looks after them. I
have never seen restoration done with such delicacy and care, or rooms
so arranged as to mesmerise the original idea of spaciousness.
I have also done a little book-hunting at Tours. I found there for fifteen
francs a fine first edition of Rousseau's letters from the mountain, and
for a hundred francs a complete Cujas which belonged to Domat in five
volumes beautifully bound in red morocco. We have also spent a good
deal of time with Chevalley, a friend of mine who is an old diplomat.
He is fascinating — the best type of cultivated Frenchman. He interested
me particularly in his power so to recite Racine that one sees a meaning
of emphasis in simple adjectives due to their position which I had
never seen before. He is now writing a book on P. L. Courier, the pam-
phleteer and one discovery he has made is amusing. Courier's assassina-
tion has always been attributed to the Jesuits, and the books usually
conclude with a long dissertation on their sins. He has found letters
which show that, in fact, Courier's wife had a peasant lover and the
drama is one of those very ordinary crimes passionels in which the French
specialise.3 He is interesting, too, on the habits of the peasant. Himself
the son of one, he says that he continually finds that they save despite
themselves. The man who works for him will walk five miles to read a
newspaper rather than buy one. He has never been to a large town save
Tours, for the railway fare is more than fifty francs. Yet he is a peasant
who owns his own house, fifteen hectares of rich vineyards and has some-
thing like twenty thousand dollars in the bank. His son and daughter
work in the fields and except on Sunday and in harvest time never know
what it is to eat meat. And this is characteristic of the whole neighbour-
hood. One old man even wore his wife's spectacles not, as he explained
to Chevalley, that there was anything wrong with his eyes, but it would
be such a pity to waste them. Harpagon must have lived here. Even the
rich peasants' houses lack the most elementary sanitary accommodation;
and I think an English or American Medical Officer would condemn in
bulk the poorer houses as unfit for habitation. The infantile death rate
3 Paul Louis Courier (1773-1825), political writer and Hellenist. The theory
that Courier's assassination was prompted by political considerations was con-
clusively disposed of by Sainte-Beuve, and the true circumstances of his death
were dealt with at length by Robert Gaschet in Les aventures d'un ecrivain,
Paul-Louis Courier (1928).
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1325
is huge and the peasant reply is that one can always manufacture more
children but that money spent is money wasted. Even agricultural meth-
ods are primitive. They prefer to kill themselves rather than spend money
on modern machines. The result is that at forty all the women look old,
and at sixty there is hardly a man not crippled by rheumatism. But they
have their little plot of land and cottage and they seem very content.
We stay here until next Wednesday when I go off to Geneva4 and
Paris. Frida and Diana go in the car to Britanny and thence on to Ant-
werp where we meet. So I hope to give you news of significance when
I write next week.
My love, as always, Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
As from Devon Lodge, 26.V1II.S1
My dear Justice: This is written in Antwerp where I have come on from
Geneva and Paris. And in each place there have been adventures worth
recording. At Geneva I found a very nice copy of the first edition of
Spinoza's Ethics which I liked to have. At tea with Sir E. Dramrnond, the
Secretary of the League,1 there was a Japanese under-secretary not one
word of whose conversation could I follow. Nearly every sentence of mine
was "Would you mind repeating that?" When he left I apologised pro-
fusely to Drummond for my slowness. "Don't apologise," said Drum-
mond, "I haven't understood a thing he has said to me since he came to
Geneva ten years ago." I saw James Brown Scott there with French pro-
fessors of international law eating out of his hand in the hope of a
subsidy from the Carnegie Foundation. The city itself looked, as always,
superb; the mountains behind it give it a magnificent solemnity. Then
to Paris where I hunted cooks all day and talked most of the night. I
dined with Meyerson the philosopher, very happily. What pleased me
most was a denunciation by the old man of Hegelian idealism, in which
he got so worked up that he took the first drink of brandy he had in
fifteen years in order to give substance to his vituperation. Then a Jolly
dinner with G. Jeze, the French lawyer who has a happy name for
Nicholas Murray Butler "II Ponderoso" — and a lunch with Prof. Garner
of Illinois,2 a nice fellow with a land of frock-coat mind, e,g. H.J.L.:
"I have no doubt at all that Geny simply mistakes old Catholic dogma-
* Laski lectured at the Geneva Institute of International Relations on "The
Theory of an International Society"; see Problems of Peace (Sixth Series,
Laski and Zimmern, eds., 1932), 188.
1 Sir Eric Drammond, kter Earl of Perth (1876-1951), was Secretary Gen-
eral to the League of Nations from 1919 to 1933.
2 James Wilford Garner (1871-1938), Professor of Political Science at the
University of Illinois and author of many works in international law.
1326 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
tism for legal philosophy and I hate it." Prof. Garner: "It is not impossi-
ble that there is justice in your observations." The books I found gave
me great pleasure as they mostly came from inexpensive little shops. The
best of them was the very rare Andrographe of Retif de la Bretonne — a
kind of economic Utopia on a communist basis which he did before 1789.
I could not, alas, find the sequel Thesmographe in which, having seen
Robespierre at work, he abandoned it all, and went in for ordinary
liberalism. I also found some very interesting contemporary criticisms of
Montesquieu, one of which, by one Crevier3 at least, anticipated a good
deal of what Eugen Ehrlich said in his book; and a pretty attack on the
Fronde by Claude Joly Traite de la restitution des grands which might
well have been written in 1789. I read a good deal, too. Vandal's Avene-
ment de Bonaparte — an impressive panorama in which, as always, I
came out with the feeling that Fouche alone justifies the existence of
capital punishment; meaner slime never assumed human flesh. A great
P. G. Wodehouse which I had never read before called The Indiscretions
of Archie — has that ever come your way? — which made me laugh so
loud in the Metro that I seemed to infect my fellow-passengers and de-
scended to the accompaniment of a tornado of smiles. Also an admirable
novel by Theodore Dreiser called Twelve Men — well worthy your at-
tention and without the stylistic difficulties which usually accompany his
books. Also a first-rate French translation of a first-rate Italian book on
International Law by Anzilotti — the President of the Permanent Court.
I went, too, to a grand exhibition of Cezanne and Gauguin. Among the
latter's things was a Christ for which I go bail any day. It is a crucifixion,
and the body has a sense of horror and agony, so that you feel all he
endured. There is no beauty in it, and the face conveys only the sense
of searing pain. I am trying to find a reproduction of it to send you;
after the conventionalism of six hundred years you have an immediate
sense that this is really a great masterpiece. I was going to stay in Paris
until next week, but the English political crisis4 resulted in some tele-
grams which take me home tomorrow and I am stealing unjustifiably two
8 Probably Jean Baptiste Louis Crevier's Observations sur le Iwre de It esprit
desloix (1764).
*On August 24, following a series of critical controversies concerning the
economic crisis and measures to meet it, MacDonald tendered his resignation
and that of the Labour ministry to the King. He was immediately asked to
form a National Government. When the new Cabinet of ten was formed there
were, in addition to MacDonald, but three members of the Labour Party, in-
cluding Lord Sankey, who continued in office. On assuming office as head of
the new government, MacDonald had indicated that when steps to meet the
financial crisis had been taken, his National Government would be dissolved. It
was not until October, however, that the dissolution of Parliament occurred
and when it did, MacDonald appealed to the nation for a return of the
National Government That appeal was successful.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1327
days here with our artist-friends on the way back. What I shall find I
don't know; but all my sympathies are dead against the new government
and I am praying that political differences won't, as they should not,
make my personal relations with Sankey difficult. Things are clearly very
confused and I dread a little the problems involved until, at least, the
general election has cleared things up. Frida, meanwhile, has been
motoring with Diana through Britanny and writes with ecstasy about the
people and the churches.
My love to you as always. . . .
Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 8.IX.31
My dear Justice: This is in fact written from Manchester, where I have
come to spend a few days with my people. It has produced one or two
interesting encounters. First, I put meeting an old school-fellow whom I
met in the street. In my day he was perhaps the most brilliant classical
scholar we had, a Balliol scholar, a double first and an incredible series
of university prizes. Now he is a bank clerk and at nearly forty his only
interest in life is collecting stamps. He took me off to his rooms — he is
an old-young bachelor of devastating meticulousness — and showed me
album upon album with that light in his eyes that Harpagon must have
had when he spoke of money. He was preeminently content Books,
sport, the theatre, women, all these mean nothing to him. Was there any-
thing I could do for him? Yes — there was an American aviation stamp
he was anxious to procure; could I get him the address of a good New
York dealer. His self-concentration was fascinating. He asked me no
questions about myself. When I spoke of school, or Oxford, or the world's
affairs he was clearly and obviously bored. But when I let him explain
his stamps he was clearly in the seventh heaven. Then I met another
school fellow who has become a brilliant physician. The contrast was
remarkable. This fellow guides his life by the passion for scientific dis-
covery. Beyond his specialty, he seems to have made the scientific world
his province. He knew by name and achievement even the remoter
Americans like Alfred Cohn and Phoebus Levin1 [sic] whom I mentioned.
'And when I spoke of his own work he had a power of detachment about
what it implied, the lacunae still to be filled, the degree to which statis-
tical verification was still wanting, which was very moving. I had, too,
a long afternoon with Alexander the philosopher. It was grand talk for he
had just been re-reading Spinoza and was intoxicated with him. I found
1 Phoebus A. T. Levene (1869-1940), distinguished biochemist who was
associated with the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research from 1905 to
1939.
1328 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
that he, like you and I, had discovered Chauncey Wright through an old
bookstall and was very impressed. He said that C.W. gave him the im-
pression of the most powerful philosophic mind America had so far pro-
duced. He told me an amusing story of his interview with the King
when he was given the Order of Merit. It was clear that the King had
never heard of him and did not know what to say. So he asked Alexander
(I) if, like all philosophers he was absent-minded (II) if he did not find
thinking very tiring and (III) if he ever went to the movies. At this point
the equerry felt that the King had done all that could be expected and
Alexander was quietly removed. I went to an exhibition in the art gallery
of pre-Raphaelites — and found them quite ghastly. All the Burne- Jones
were pretty-pretty; the Rossettis had a kind of green sickness; and the
Holman Hunts seemed based on the principle that any violent contrast of
violent colours on the same canvas is necessarily a work of art. But in
the gallery there was a small etching by Hops — a French cafe near the
Pont Neuf , which for verve and diablerie was worth a year of one's life
to possess, the land of miracle which produces new ideas and new visions
every time one looks at it, I played around the bookshops a little — but
I found nothing save an amusing laudation of Montesquieu published, I
should guess, as a kind of publisher's encouragement to the general
reader who is afraid of the size of the Esprit des Lois, And I found a
cheap copy of Charles Warren's history of your court which I was glad
to have for reference purposes. Otherwise my impression of this city is
that its second-hand libraries consist chiefly of theology and the less ad-
mirable Victorian fiction. I was interested to hear from one bookseller
that of children's books he still sells more of Louisa Alcott than any other
writer except Grimm; and he told me amazing tales of the run on books
by businessmen on how to achieve success in life and the emotional
athletics of a writer of the sunshine type (of whom I am ashamed to say
I had never heard) called Ralph Waldo Trine.2 I bought a sixpenny by
the latter and it was worth the money. It was Polonius with flowers: "You
cannot afford to economise on sincerity." Have faith in God and you will
win faith in yourself. Hard work and grim earnest make the pauper a
prince among men, et hoc genus omne. He told me not a week passes
but forty or fifty copies of this stuff are sold and that they are very
favourite Xmas gifts from aunts. In a word, Main Street is the highway
of the world. As I say, I have never encountered Mr. Trine; but my
father's chauffeur, on whom I tested him, knew him at once and spoke
of him with dim, religious awe as a great thinker. I asked if he thought
* Ralph Waldo Trine ( 1866- ), Calif ornian author and fruit-raiser, whose
many products include In Tune with the Infinite (1897), What All the World's
A-Seeking (1896), and Through the Sunlit Jear (1919).
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1329
Alexander (whom he brings to the house often) a great thinker: "Oh,
no!", he replied at once, "He's a professor of philosophy."
In the way of books I have not overmuch to record. Soltau's French
Political Philosophij in the XlXth Century — a good solid book, with an
admirable and satisfying account of Guizot, Taine and Renan. I doubt
whether he makes as much as I should of Tocqueville, and he doesn't,
I think, see how greatly Kenan's scepticism is the outcome of the break-
down of religious conviction at an early stage; also a little curiously he
takes Lamartine almost seriously as a politician. But it's a book which
gives you a real sense of a big epoch in history; and he explains as I
have rarely seen explained the peculiar connotation which the French
Revolution gave to the idea of liberty. Then a charrning book on Julie de
L'Espinasse by Naomi Royde-Smith. I don't think I should like to have
married her; one cannot live every day on the heights. But if I could
have dropped in every Tuesday evening at her salon, I think I should
have felt a special flavour in life. That took me on to Mme. du Deffand's
correspondence with Horace Walpole. It is like an eighteenth century
pastel in which, quite properly, Harlequin is a bit of a blackguard; and
the comedy can't prevent you seeing behind the masque the grim con-
tours of tragedy. If the Lespinasse book comes your way you would, I
think, find it pleasing for solitaire.
We all send our love. I shall be back in London tomorrow with the
decks cleared for action. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Devon Lodge, 17.IX.31
My dear Justice: 1 was so grateful for Wales's letter;1 and ever so glad
that you feel better. All that you say of Vanity Fair commands my full-
hearted assent with the note that one of the miraculous touches in litera-
ture is that brief word about Becky being heard weeping in her room at
Miss Pinkerton's — but they were the tears of rage and not of sorrow.
Tve never understood why M. Arnold refused to agree that W.M.T.
was a very great writer.
I have been busy beyond words with the political crisis here — work-
ing with Mr. Henderson morning, noon and night.2 But it is not a thing
to put on paper except to say to you that the spirit of this country is as
fine and as sober as anyone could desire. In the front of danger, it is a
great people, amazing in its power of self-control. Even in the very grave
1 Robert W. Wales, Holmes's secretary, 1930-31.
* Arthur Henderson Bad refused to follow MacDonakFs leadership into the
Nationalist government and was the principal spokesman of Labour's opposition
to MacDonadd's new policies.
1330 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
naval trouble3 the good humour of the sailors was the main feature of
the situation. I also have been doing a good deal at the Indian Confer-
ence. It was fascinating to see Ghandi at work and try and penetrate his
secret4 It comes, I think, from what the Quakers call the inner light —
a power of internal self-confidence which, having established its prin-
ciples, is completely impervious to reason. At bottom it is an incredible
egoism — what I think Canon Sheehan once described to you as the
arrogance of humility — sweetened by an indescribable sweetness of
temper. He is also an amazing casuist, with a Jesuitical love of dubious
formulae which would be amusing if it might not so easily become tragic.
But the drama of this wizened little man with the whole power of the
empire against him is a terrific spectacle. The basis of it all is, I think, the
power of an ascetic over Eastern minds who resent the feeling of in-
feriority they have had for 150 years. And to watch his people hang on
his words, he who has neither eloquence nor the gift of verbal artistry,
is fascinating. Whether we can come to terms with him, heaven alone
knows; much depends on Sanke/s negotiating ability. But at least I
understand now why Christianity in the first century appealed to the
poor and the oppressed. Through Ghandi the Indian ryot feels himself
exalted, he embodies for them their own impulse to self-affirmation. And
another interesting side is the way in which he has become a feature
of English life — the crowd goes out to see him arrive in his loin cloth
and blanket as they might want to see Charlie Chaplin. Coming away
from the conference yesterday I asked a workman craning his neck to
see, what Ghandi stood for: "I don't know, guv nor!" "Then why do you
come to see him?" "I always come to look at the sights. Floodlighting
yesterday, Ghandi today, if s like a blooming festival." I don t think that
even the prospect of losing the empire would disturb the sang-froid of
the man in the street.
Reading, as you can imagine, has not been easy these days. My chief
delight has been Hazlitt's essays, in 'bus and tube, above all "My First
Acquaintance with Poets" which, read for the nth time, seems little less
than a miracle. You see Coleridge in that pulpit as I can see Frida in
the armchair by my side. Then I have had great pleasure from Middle-
march which I persist, however unfashionably, in regarding as one of
the two or three supreme English novels. Will Ladislaw and Mr. Brooke
seem to me portraits of genius. I must, by the way, tell you a good story
8 The Government's reduction of public expenditures, approved by Parlia-
ment in early September, included reductions in naval pay. This had led to such
serious unrest that maneuvers of the Atlantic Fleet had been canceled.
* Gandhi served on the Federal Structure Committee of the India Round
Table Conference, under the Chairmanship of Lord Sankey, at its September
session.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1331
of Hall Caine5 which is going the rounds. One night he was coming
home from a party and hesitated two or three times to cross the road at
a place where the police were holding up the traffic for him. At that
time he especially cultivated his resemblance to the statue of Shakespere
in Leicester Square. "Come on, Lord Bacon," said the policeman, "or
youll never get back to your pedestal tonight." And I must tell you
of the Japanese professor who arrived last Sunday at tea with a page of
questions on this model — 1. "What does the eminent professor think
of the influence of Althusius on Rousseau, with references to the text"
2. "Shall we discuss the influence of Montesquieu on the French Revolu-
tion?" 3. "Which are the hundred best books on political theory?" I re-
produce verbatim and literatim from a typewritten document. I am
afraid I balked them all as genially as I could which led to his remark-
ing that in English academic conversation as compared with Japanese
there is much more lightness and irrelevance!
I want, also, to boast a little and tell you that an essay of mine on
the general character of the Age of Reason in France6 has been made
compulsory reading for students in letters in Paris University — which
pleased my vanity. I had a Frenchman in here this morning who would
have interested you. He is, I should judge, about sixty, and his whole
life has been devoted to discovering the books Pascal read with a view
to measuring the influences he underwent. I had said in some book re-
view that it seemed to me likely that Pascal had read Hobbes and the
little man was dancing with excitement at the prospect of another book
in his list. I suggested reasons for my view and then hinted mildly that
the person Pascal read most carefully was P. himself. He looked at me
with a reproach so sweet that I had the utmost difficulty in maintaining
a straight face. And one other interlude was a young German who is
writing a book on Occam and talked about him with a familiarity which
left me staggered and humble. I asked him why he had taken so tough
a subject and he said, with adorable simplicity, "Ah! no one has written
on him at length since Rietzler [sic] in 1874." 7 Blessed are the energetic
for theirs is the Kingdom of learning!
Our love to you. I shall write once more to Beverly and then to W'ton.
Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
5 Sir Hall Caine (1853-1931); a sympathetic biographer has stated that his
novels "are chiefly remembered for their astonishing popularity."
8 Presumably his essay in Heamshaw, The Social and Political Ideas of Some
Great French Thinkers of the Age of Reason (1930), supra, p. 1232.
7 Sigmund Riezler, Die Literarischen Widersacher der Papste zur Zeit Ludvcig
desBaiers (1874).
1332 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
Devon Lodge, 27.IX.31
My dear Justice: It was good to see your writing again.1 I do hope you
will be really fit for the new term. Please take great care, and do not
overdo things,
I am leading a grimly busy life. Half the time I am a kind of eminence
grise for Sankey at the Indian Conference; the rest is taken up with the
political and economic crisis here. I interview Saints like Ghandi, princes
with unpronounceable names, and Mohommedans who would cheerfully
cut my throat in the name of Allah. Ghandi is really remarkable; there
is no difficulty at all in understanding the veneration he inspires. He is
quiet, precise, and subtle, and there is an inner dignity about him which
is of supreme quality. He isn't easy to negotiate with except on details;
on those he is accomodating [sic] almost to an extreme. But on principles,
he tends to put reason outside the pale and you can only counter dogma
with dogma. The princes, with three exceptions, are a pretty poor lot.
They are ill-educated, tyrannical, and with no conception of negotiation.
They take you straight back to the days of the East India Company and
make you feel that discussion with the likes o* them is folly and that one
ought to act like a Warren Hastings with them. The Mahomedans
are a poor lot in things of the mind, and their religious fanaticism is
terrible. I guess, without evidence, that Pan-Islamic hopes are a huge
farce in the East today and that behind their impossible demands are
vague and terrible dreams. Poor Sankey! He and I both think a settle-
ment possible. But what with Tory impossibilism on one side and Indian
extremism on the other I fear that it is very unlikely. My prediction is a
breakdown, Sankey's resignation, and three British army corps in India
by Xmas. And this isn't the pessimism of a tired negotiator but a solemn
estimate of the probabilities.2
You will know what vast events are taking place here. I will not com-
ment on them except to say that if you want to see life at its most credu-
lous fust now the House of Commons lobby is the ideal place. If I see
Henderson and say he is tired, by the time I get into the street, he is
seriously ill. If MacDonald says a word to me, a lobby correspondent
infers a coming rapprochement between him and Henderson. There is
no rumour too wild not to be believed. From tales of immediate dictator-
1 The letter referred to is missing.
2 The first difficulties in the September meetings arose in connection with
the problem of the rights of minorities, Gandhi and the Moslem leaders being
almost hopelessly divided. In December the Conference came to an inconclu-
sive and unsuccessful end. Lord Sankey did not abandon the government's
policy with respect to India but remained in office until the Nationalist gov-
ernment was replaced by the Conservatives in 1935.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1333
ship downwards the buzzing goes on. If the events round which it centres
were not so big with tragic destinies, it would be a marvellous comedy.
I have certainly been given a complete lesson in how miracles come to
be accepted. And I beg you to double your regard for Gabriel Tarde. I
undertake without effort to make ten members say the same thing in
ten minutes, not because they believe it, or have stayed to examine it,
but because someone has said authoritatively that it simply is so. A man
started a rumour that twenty labour members were crossing the floor to
support MacDonald. It was repeated with increasing emphasis until, at
the adjournment, it was seventy members and four ex-ministers. I was
even given the names of men with whom I had been sitting in com-
mittee that same evening drawing up the Labour programme for the
imminent election as men certain to cross the House. Herbert Samuel
went to see MacDonald in his room; ten minutes after he had come out,
he told his secretary that he would not be in the House any more that
day. Five minutes after that it was whispered everywhere that he had
had a quarrel with MacDonald and that his resignation would be in the
paper next morning. The actual truth was that he had a slight attack
of diarrhoea and had asked the Prime Minister to arrange for someone
else to answer the debate so that he could go home. Now I say that in
this atmosphere you have all the elements which (I) explain miracles
and (II) explain things like the touch and go element in such coups as
Thermidor or December 2nd, 1851. One literally can count on the fingers
of one's hand those who can keep calm in the atmosphere and refuse to
believe without verification. When the crisis is over and there is normal
life once more (if there ever is) I want to put some reflections about all
this on paper. It is extraordinarily fascinating. It is the best commentary
I have ever seen on the meaning and worth of testimony when abstracted
from the possibility of objective measurement.
All this, as you can imagine, has left me busy and without time to do
much reading. I have most heartily enjoyed a life of David Hume by
Greig with a very interesting picture of Scottish life in the eighteenth
century, and I snatched time to write an attack on DuhameFs Scenes
de la vie future* — one of those cheap and superficial attacks on Ameri-
can civilisation as merely mechanical and materialistic which make me
really angry. They have the air of the lower regions of Montpamasse
about them, and are unworthy even of the absinthe in which they were
conceived. As real relief I reread Nicholas Nickleby almost always with
delight. Mrs. N. seems to me one of the great triumphs of fiction, and
though, as always with Dickens, there is a terribly rhetorical sentimen-
3 Georges DuhameFs book, in translation, was entitled America: The Menace
and was reviewed by Laski in 147 Spectator 423 (Supplement, Oct. 3, 1931).
1334 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
tality all the way through, still I think the whole is masterly, and the
scene between Mrs. N. and the lunatic entitled to contest the palm for
the best piece of broad humour in literature.
But I must end for the moment as some Mahommedans have to be
seen. I send this to I Street whither, I expect, you will be going next
week. You know what warm affection it brings and what devoted good
wishes. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
1720 Eye Street N.W., October 9, 1931
My dear Laski; How long would you write to me if I do not go through
some form of reciprocation? I don't know that there's anything the mat-
ter with me but I am not up to writing and so far as may be make my
secretary1 take my place. We are doing the usual work and arguments
begin next Monday. Paltry personal details prevail over world problems
and cosmic questions. I have lost two front teeth and can't get the den-
tist before Monday (it is Friday now). The Bar Association Medal has
come at last — frightfully heavy — I suppose with precious metal.2 The
enervating heat of Washington has left me very languid. I infer that I
must be careful about my heart. My bed was moved downstairs at Bev-
erly. I don't worry — but my most willing activity is listening to my
secretary. Just now Juan in America (Eric Linklater) — well enough —
not very much. My affection for you is not flabby — everything else is.
Jours ever, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 80.X.31
My dear Justice: I do hope you have cherished no hard feelings against
me. But I have had no moment since the election began until now in
which to do anything but its grim work. Three meetings a night for a
month, with India and teaching by day have been a heavy toll But at
least the Tory victory has been so hugely complete that I can hope for
leisure from politics for pretty well five years.
It has been a curious experience. I have never before seen a whole
people in a panic. They were, above all, terrified of a German currency
debacle here if we won, and all else was subordinated to that. So that
one saw an atmosphere in which reason had completely abdicated and
no lie was too great to be believed. I don't take our defeat tragically,
even though I think five years of Tory government a heavy price to pay
1 Horace Chapman Rose was Holmes's secretary at the October term, 1931.
8 At its annual meeting in September the American Bar Association had con-
ferred its annual medal on Holmes "for conspicuous service in the cause of
American jurisprudence." See 17 Am. Bar Ass. J. 715-717 (November 1931).
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1335
for a moment's panic. But five years Is a small period in the life of a
people.
Of course, except in trains, I have had little time to read or think. I
have enjoyed greatly a book by a Harvard economist named Mason on
the Paris Commune, in which I think he makes a very powerful criticism
of the classic Marxian interpretation. And I read a book on Property by
an old student of mine named Beaglehole which is a study, quite well
done, of its place as a response to psychological necessity in man. I went
back, too, to old novels with fervour. The one that came out best was
Esmond which I did not read without tears. The description of the break
between Beatrix and her people is really magnificent. Then I read again
Wilkie Collins's Moonstone which I think has most of the modern de-
tective fiction beaten flat as a piece of skilful suspense. And a Wode-
house previously unknown to me (perhaps not to experts like you) called
Jill the Reckless which I am tempted to put very high indeed in the
canon. In fact, there is one moment in the book where the old uncle is
about to propose to the wealthy widow of New York which I regard as
of quite definitely epic quality. Finally, I have been reading Troeltsch's
Social Teaching of the Churches in its English translation. It is extraordi-
narily impressive. But I think the real thesis it makes clear is one that
its author did not intend: namely that no church can mingle with this
world and preserve the original purpose of its doctrine. A church, in a
word, once it becomes an organisation becomes quite incapable of other-
worldliness and is bound to make the kind of compromise which trans-
forms it into an institution very like any other. Indeed, as one studies
the shifts of doctrine that he describes, not less under the Roman empire
than in our own day, one can't, if one lacks faith ab initio, avoid the
conclusion that all religions must at some stage become part of the in-
evitable tactic of conservatism. That is quite astonishing in the case of the
fathers of the Church who have an almost fiendish ingenuity in avoiding
the conclusions inherent in their doctrine; and it stands out almost star-
tlingly with Luther. But though I don't read the evidence as Troeltsch
does, his book is really a great study in the history of ideas. Please ob-
serve that I do not ask you to read it; but I want to emphasise its value
for the sake of the record.
Most of my interesting experiences apart from the election have come
from the Indians. Sankey made me try to bring the Mohammedans to
reason, and I had their leader here for hours trying to find a basis for
discussion. But it was like talking to a wall. His religion was ultimate
truth, and he was never even willing to find a plane of secular institu-
tions which implied, so to say, a non-theological society. It was like
being taken back into Reformation times. Then I had a long negotiation
with Ghandi about the army. Here we got somewhere by my discovery
1336 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
that one could separate his rhetorical requirements from Hs actual. If
I had had a free hand I think a settlement would have been compara-
tively easy; but, alas, the new political situation has hardened the mind
of the Secretary of State1 and I think my long hours will probably go to
waste. The real tragedy of work like this is the sacrifice, on both sides,
of reason to prestige. At the back of the Secretary's mind is the complex
that the white man ought not to be asked to give way to the black; and
at the back of Ghandfs mind is the haunting fear that the white man in
India will always take a yard for each inch of compromise. If ever one
saw reason as the slave of the passions it is in this realm. And I am terri-
fied of failure which means an India in flames in the next few years and
out of that tragedies too vast even to think of. What makes it so terrible
is that each side knows this as well as I and is yet so damnably obstinate
that it will offer a holocaust to pride without a moment's consideration
of the cost. In a world like ours the only real thing to be is a mathema-
tician or a physicist to whose work the human animal is irrelevant.
And I must" not omit the visit of a German professor2 who has written
a book on de Maistre about whom I expressed some views in my first
book.3 He was the real German Gelehrte dismayed because I compared
De M. with Bismarck who were of different epochs. I said that one could
compare 1789 with the Russian Revolution. He said he could not pro-
nounce on that as either was outside his period. Oh God! Oh, Montreal!
Well, henceforth I shall write peacefully and continuously. Meanwhile
my love as always. Make your boy send me a word about your health.
Ever affectionately yours, H, ]. L.
November 12, 1931
My dear Laski; It is so good to get a letter from you that it almost be-
comes possible for me to write. I have been rather seedy since August,
the month I always fear; but this little adjournment with my work done
seems on the up grade. I don't feel tired all the time, as I did. My events
apart from a short dissent from an opinion not yet seen if written,1 are
the books my secretary reads to me — some rather slight — Bliss Perry,
Emerson Today — Bertrand Russell, The Scientific Outlook — Maurois,
Lyautey, Birkenhead's potboiler — Famous Trials of History, Robertson
Fra Paolo Sarpi — the book not much but the Me most interesting —
1 Sir Samuel Hoare ( 1880- ) , later Viscount Templewood, had become
Secretary of State for India in MacDonald>s Nationalist government in August.
2 Perhaps Peter Richard Rohden, author of Joseph de Maistre als Politischer
Theoretiker (1929).
* Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (1917).
1 Probably Hoefer v. Tax Commission, 284 U.S. 206, 218 (Nov. 30, 1931).
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1337
Sarpi seems to have been one of the greatest men that ever lived —
Stevenson, Thackeray &c. I don't like Stevenson very well. Thackeray
gives me new pleasure every time. Lately I have read to myself 2 vols.
of Lettres clwisies of Voltaire. Not very delightful. A rather noticeable
book Thomas Craven (of Kansas) Men of Art — a little conscious of
culture — but really pretty good — and to me instructive. I try vainly
at the Cong. Libr. for Jill the Reckless — but have got Mason, The Paris
Commune which I expect to begin tonight or tomorrow. Tomorrow will
be Brandeis's 75th birthday and the papers are or will be full of him. I
have owed him much in the way of encouragement. He doesn't seem
even to want it. Today I am listening to Arthur L. Goodhart, Essays in
Jurisprudence and the Common Law with moderate pleasure. He seems
to me not to get much above mediocrity, and makes one squirm by the
constant respect and more, shown to Salmond, a pleasant gent, as I
remember him at Judge Hitz's2 house here some years ago, but not
winged.
If you never read about Sarpi you had better — of course the book I
read was by an unlimited admirer, a Scotch hater of the papacy (which
gave Sarpi trouble) but I also marvelled.
I am not good for a long letter — to write one, that is — I am OK
to receive one.
Yesterday I visited a fine new building next to the Congr. Libr. for
an amazing collection of Shakespeare's works — 70 or so of the first
folios, to show all the corrections, and everything on that scale. Folger
was the collector and left it to Amherst College with supporting funds.
The books are not yet in — but are getting in.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 14.XLS1
My dear Justice: I hope that the Vanguard Press has sent you the new
volume of your decisions, and that it meets with your approval1 Of the
Foreword, I will only say that it comes from the heart and that every
word of it is instinct with affection for its subject.
1 have had a busy week — mainly academic and with the Indians
here. After all our efforts, the Conference has broken down,2 and I fear
that with the turn of the year we are bound to be in for bad times in
India. It is a great tragedy, which makes me feel inclined to curse reli-
2 William Hitz (1872-1935), successively Justice of the Supreme Court, and
of the Court of Appeals, of the District of Columbia, 1916-1935.
1 Representative Opinions of Mr. Justice Holmes (Lief, ed., 1931), in-
cluded a Foreword by Laskl
2 See, supra, p. 1332, note 2.
1338 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
gion — the real root of the problem — as a social disease. I made an
eleventh hour effort, at the joint request of Sankey and Ghandi, to make
the Mohamedans see reason. But it is impossible to talk to men who be-
lieve themselves to have ultimate truth in their possession, and my three
hours were simply a dutiful wasting of time. I blame MacDonald in part;
for if he had been strong-minded instead of weak and vain and indeci-
sive, I think he could have compelled agreement. But he would rather
go to Timbuctoo than make up his mind upon a difficult subject.
Minora canamus. I had an amusing experience in giving a public lec-
ture at King's College on Tocqueville. For some reason the college as-
signed the Dean of Westminster to take the chair and he knew no more
of Tocqueville than a good and gentlemanly cleric should. So his ex-
ordium was something Hke this: "Professor Laski is going to speak to us
on Tocqueville who was a very great man. It will interest all of us to
learn something about him because he was a very great man. He wrote a
classic book on America which all the critics agree was the work of a
very great man; and a book on the French Revolution which is usually
considered great But I do not want to anticipate anything Professor
Laski may say, and I will therefore call upon him to deliver his lecture
upon this very great man/* I will not spoil his speech by comment. Then
I went to lunch to the Aga Khan, the Mahomedan leader. I sat next to a
young Indian prince with an unpronounceable name who wore jewels
which he informed me were worth half a million sterling; otherwise he
did not open his mouth except to ask me if I collected emaralds: I said
no, and he relapsed into a sad somnolence for the rest of the meal. After-
wards I regretted that I had not said that I collected rubies to see what
effect I might have produced. And I must tell you of the Japanese stu-
dent who came to see me with a desire to write a treatise on socialism.
His English was, if I may say so, at about the level of my Japanese. I
asked him from what angle he desired to write the book. "Angle?" "From
what point of view?" "Point of view?" "What line of approach do you
want to take?" "But, Professor, it is not geometry but socialism about
which I desire to write." So I sent him on to the department of inter-
national relations, feeling that it was really their business to promote
good feeling between East and West I
I had one intellectual pleasure I must put on record. I went on Monday
night to the University Law Society where F. Pollock read a paper.3 It
was a remarkable performance. He never faltered for a word, and when
the discussion was over he made a reply which did not miss a point and,
in his dry Pollockian way was as incisive and direct as he must have
been thirty years ago; and his familiarity with the recent literature I can
8 "The Lawyer as Citizen of the World," 48 L. (X Rev. 37 (January 1932).
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1339
only describe as astounding. I went also to the inaugural lecture by
young Plucknett, who used to be at Harvard and has come on to us — an
astonishing effort.4 The piece de resistance was an entirely new theory
of the Year books which I shall not spoil by summary; you shall have
the lecture when we print it. To my mind, it was the best thing of its
land done by an English academic lawyer since Maitland's inaugural
lecture.5
In the way of reading, I have been mostly in the line of work. But
I mention a novel by Edna Ferber about a New England house6 which,
despite a somewhat cinematographic method, I thought very charming,
and the Life of Rosebery which I thought about the most pathetic monu-
ment to plaintive egotism I have read. On the evidence of Lord Crewe's
documents, Rosebery's trouble was that he thought in his inmost being
that he was entitled without effort to primacy over his fellows. Struggle,
therefore, was an attack upon his self-esteem, and contradiction a blow
to his vanity. So after his resignation in 1895, there are thirty years of
brooding at Epsom on the injuries inflicted upon him by [those] who felt
they were entitled to differ. It is a most curious record; I don't think the
mask has ever been so fully pulled aside from aristocratic self -sufficiency
even though Crewe does it very gently and, I think, only half-consciously.
I read also a book on Lincoln by the poet (is he a poet?) Edgar Lee
Masters, which seemed to me simply a bad attack of that terrible disease
Lytton Stracheyitis — the notion that to write a good biography all you
need to do is to attack a great reputation with shovelsfull of irony with-
out any regard to the evidence. No one can doubt Lincoln's greatness,
I think, who looks at his changes in Seward's dispatches. That is states-
manship if ever there was such.
One nice purchase — a copy of the 1606 translation of Bodin — as
new as on the day when it first appeared. It was amusing that the book-
seller let me have it cheap — five pounds — because instead of the usual
engraved title-page this copy has only a plain lettered one. This he re-
garded as a grave defect.
Our love to you. I hope you have the same succession of sunny autumn
days as is being vouchsafed to us.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
* Theodore F. T, Plucknett (1897- ) had been teaching legal history at
Harvard from 1923 to 1931, when he was called to London; author of many
works on English legal history; literary director of the Selden Society. Pluek-
nett's Inaugural Lecture, "The Place of the Legal Profession in the History of
English Law/' was published in 48 L. Q. Rev. 328 (July 1932).
5 "Why the History of English Law Is Not Written," 3 Collected Papers of
Frederic William Maitland (Fisher, ed., 1911), 488.
e American Beauty (1931).
1340 HOLMES TO LASKI [1931
Washington, D. C.} November 21, 1931
My dear Laski: As you have discovered, it comes hard to me to write.
The physical act comes hard. I don't know why or why I write smaller
than I used to — but so it is. We come in next Monday. I have had a
little feeling of rest and leisure though not much with 30 new applica-
tions for certiorari this last week, but I am in better condition than I
have been, in August or September or most of October. My boy has read
lots of books to me and I have done others by myself. I have this minute
finished one by Virginia Woolf — Mrs. Dalloway. I don't care much for
what I have read by her though I am deeply interested in her as Leslie
Stephen's daughter. I suppose old age makes everything less pleasing to
me than it used to be. There is a difference between 80 and 90. Just
now my secretary is reading John Buchan — The Blanket of the Dark —
but again I am not so interested as I hoped to be.
As I look back — Young, The Medici, and Robertson Fra Paolo Sarpi,
both recommended by Brandeis, stand out — not for literary merit but
for the amazement of the subject matter. Perhaps I might add Craven,
Men of Art9 which one hardly would have expected from Kansas. But,
Lord, all the high aesthetes come from queer places nowadays. Parring-
ton from Oklahoma (I believe he is dead) had a posthumous volume
after his doing up our earlier efforts in a pretty smart way. I believe I
have told you I can't see why they seem to take the author of W olden (I
forget the name) so seriously.
I like what you say of Tocqueville and I have made much the same
remarks about Maine's Ancient Law that you do. I delight in your letters
but as I have said I find it very hard to write.
Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
I think Brandeis has been repaid for the row that was made about his
appointment by the volume of appreciation called out by his 75th birth-
day — and he deserves it all.1
Devon Lodge, 21.XI.S1
My dear Justice: Will you get that young man of yours to drop me a line
about you? Felix writes me that all goes well; but I should be comforted
by a word from Washington.
I have had a jolly week. First I found a quite fascinating manuscript
of Bentham's in an East End shop. It is a mass of notes he made in 1820
for an essay on the dangers of despotism to itself — from the date and
contents born of his dislike of Sidmouth and Eldon. Its care and precision
are remarkable, I hope to print it with some notes soon, and you shall
1 See, infra, p. 1387.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1341
then have a copy.1 Then I have had a grand time with an Edinburgh
catalogue — a first edition of Ricardo's Principles, the diary of D'Argen-
son, the works of that queerly attractive fellow the Abbe S. Pierre, and
a nice set of Savigny — so that I feel well set up for the moment. I even
liked what I could not afford to buy. Someone has found the almost com-
plete library of Sir Isaac Newton and I handled such things as his own
copy of the Principia with all his marginal annotations for a new edition.
It was an interesting library — mathematics, travel and theology, with
a small section on currency, deriving, I suppose, from his place as Master
of the Mint. The travels — such things as Chardin — surprised me, ex-
cept on the basis that a man such as he finds relaxation in reading of
what he cannot do, just as one satisfies one's hunting instinct by reading
detective stories! I add that the theology was terrible stuff — the worst
land of sixteenth and seventeenth century apocalyptic literature. It gave
me the same feeling as I should have if I found in your library a set of
essays on the British-Israelite movement.
Of reading, some very pleasant things. A life of Mme. de Stael by
R. Wilson (whom I know not) — in the modern ironic manner, but very
well done and obviously based on wide reading. If that is available in
Washington, I think you would really enjoy it. Then a charming French
anthology of reviews of classics published between Corneille and Vol-
taire.2 That's a really amusing experience, to see a man gradually gain-
ing his public in the face of malice and hostility. In the whole period
Racine and Montesquieu come off best. Each seems to have had instant
recognition as being in the first class. And it's amusing to see the queer
changes in taste. Boileau up to 1700 is as near God as it is possible to be;
after 1700 you see his reputation slipping until after the revolution it
begins again not on the basis of his being a pleasure to read but that it
is an obligation to read him in order that one may properly savour the
spirit of the classical age. I read, too, with some pleasure an American
book by one Howard Robinson on Bayle. It is a little heavy in the man-
ner — forgive me — of American professional monographs, and it doesn't
quite manage to make Bayle live (one could write a supreme book about
him); but it is solid, and the expository work is amazing in its care and
detail. One other book I read with pleasure was a study of the Encydo-
pedistes by Ducros. That's a real book — not too long, real pungency of
style, and that perfect finish of style which the Frenchman at his best
produces. I wish I knew why French professors write perfect French and
American professors a queer academic dialect almost wholly devoid of a
sense of humour. Indeed I can only call to mind Carl Becker as a first-rate
1 The hope apparently was not fulfilled.
2 Perhaps Vol. II of Marcel Hervier, Les ecrwains fran$ais juges par leur
contemporains.
1342 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
man who has the great virtues of lightness and weight at one and the
same time.
Of other things there is not much to tell. I have been trying vainly
to pick up some pieces from the wreck of the Indian Conference; and
collecting money to send a poor devil of a young historian who has de-
veloped tuberculosis to Switzerland for the year. I was present at a dis-
cussion between two of my legal colleagues which is, I think, worth re-
porting. A: "Speaking as a lawyer, I regard the evidence for the truth
of the Gospels as wholly satisfactory/' B. "For myself I should have sent
most of the papers to die Public Prosecutor for perjury." A. "Can't you
see that they bear on their face the clear stamp of self-evident truth?"
B. "I regard them as a mass of self-contradictions." A. "If that is the sole
result of a training in the handling of evidence, I am doubtful of the
value of a legal education." And I must not forget that the other day
the Master of the Rolls (Ernest Pollock) presiding over a legal lecture
at the School wound up by contradicting, not without vivacity, every-
thing that the lecturer bad said. A friend of mine, consoling the lecturer
afterwards said that, after all, to be a Pollock is less to be a person than
an institution whose traditions must be preserved. I was also visited by
an amiable young professor from Tokio who told me with unblushing
cheerfulness that he had made the journey to England on the profits of
his unauthorised and pirated edition of my Communism. He was so
damnably happy about it that I literally could not bear to suggest that,
at least possibly, he had somewhat neglected my rights in the matter. But
he assumed that he had met his obligations by presenting me with a
copy of his translation!
Our love to you, as always. Keep fit, and take care.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 28.Xl.31
My dear Justice: A letter from you rejoiced my heart. I am so glad you
feel more rested and that the work goes well. Thackeray sounds to me
good nourishment; Thomas Craven appears unknown to English book-
sellers. I was not much impressed by Goodhart's essays. The decisive one
was, I thought, that on the ratio decidendi of a decision, and I thought
that this omission of the "Inarticulate major premise" showed that he
did not realise the guts of the problem. I bow my head and undertake to
recite on Sarpi by the end of the Xmas vacation.
I have had a pleasant but busy week. The most interesting item was a
discussion with our professor of international law1 before the graduate
1 Herbert Arthur Smith ( 1885- ) was Professor of International Law in
the University of London, 1928-1946.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1343
students on "Freedom of the Seas in International Law." He is one of
those happy Englishmen who assume without discussion that inter-
national law = the dicta of English courts and that we have therefore
always been right. In the result he produced a series of dicta indicating
that it has been for the good of the world that Great Britain has domi-
nated the seas and laid down a series of principles uniquely conceived
in the world's interest. I showed, I think, with justice, that the case is
not so simple and that his rejection of all continental or American views
might be regarded as the passionate utterance of a saddened believer in
the Ptolemaic astronomy who sees the growing acceptance of the Coper-
nician hypothesis. His remark at the end was glorious: "I view with deep
regret Professor Laskfs inexplicable tendency to regard the opinions of
American and continental jurists as a priori entitled to equal weight with
those of British prize courts." It is magnflcent as self-esteem, but, I think,
pretty poor as jurisprudence. Then I spoke at the annual meeting of the
National Birth Control Council on the desirability of scientific distribu-
tion of information on birth control by competent medical men instead
of its furtive distribution by every sort of quack. I think that was sensi-
ble; and I was delighted when the British Medical Journal devoted a long
leader to the wisdom of my remarks and the obligation of doctors to see
that religious prejudice did not prevent people obtaining the best possi-
ble information when they wanted it.2
In the way of books. I have had some happy finds. Item, a grand set
of D'Argenson's memoirs. Reading them, even fragmentarily, is like see-
ing 1789 creep into the picture before one's eyes; and his bad temper,
and sense of disappointment at being thrown out of office, make him a
very amusing human being. I found also a most interesting article of
Jeremy Bentham's on the poor law reprinted from Young's Annals of
Agriculture? There in 1796 is a complete scheme of vital statistics as the
necessary basis of legislation. It is a remarkable piece of insight for its
date; and certainly ahead of anything even attempted in this country for
over eighty years after his time. Its whole basis is a plea that law must
have its roots in the quantitative measurement of social experience; and
as a legal methodologist, it puts Jeremy, in my view, up alongside Mon-
tesquieu as an innovator. Then I found a nice copy of Grace's Nouveau
cynee — perhaps the first book to plead for free trade and international
organisation; and the 1557 edition of Sir T. More's English works which
was sold to me for ten shillings because its title page was defective. The
8 In 2 British Medical Journal (1931) 1044 (December 5, 1931) there was
a detailed account of Laskfs remarks at the first annual meeting of the National
Birth Control Association on November 23.
8 Pauper Management Improved (1820) was first published in Young's
Annals in 1797.
1344 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
modern collector, I was given to understand, is not interested in texts,
but in perfection of copy, with special attention to the breadth of mar-
gins. O God, O Montreal!
In the way of reading, I note much that is pleasant. A really good
detective story by one Carr, called The Lost Gallows, published with you
by Harpers, and, I think, guaranteed to intrigue and baffle. A really
charming book on Goethe by dear old Nevinson — short but complete as
a picture of an influence and, as always with him, charmingly written.
Then a volume of essays by Edmund Blunden the poet, called Votive
Tablets which contains," I think, the very best essay that has ever been
written about Lamb, tender, delicate, wistful, so that one felt that no
one could have written it except someone who had known Lamb in-
timately; the kind of thing I wish I had the gift to write about my friend
Hazlitt. Lastly I must mention a wholly admirable Life of Bossuet, by
Lanson, a book which conveyed B's personality so admirably that you
almost catch a glimpse of the gold brocade on his episcopal garments.
No, not lastly, for I re-read in bed The Virginians, and loved every word
of it. (This last sentence is spoken with deliberate defiance in case it is
challenged.)
Felix" sent me his very interesting paper on Brandeis's point of view;4
but I thought, also, that he overindulged his quotations with the result
that his own style and presentation suffered. What struck me was the
extraordinary power of Brandeis's mind as an instrument for the dissec-
tion of the immediate and the concrete; how, also, it was comparatively
uninterested in abstract principle. I should have guessed that it needs the
great case e.g. busting Smyth v. Ames5 to draw out his full strength and
energy; and that a trumpery case in a remote New England town, even
if it illustrated a pretty point of doctrine, would frankly bore him; but,
though I regard this as a defect, he is clearly a noble fellow whom it is
good to have in great place.
Here, for the moment, I must end. This week-end has to go to the
grim and grave task of drawing up a report on the Home Office adminis-
tration of alien laws. When one discovers that a little jack-in-office can
stop an English woman married to an American from visiting her parents
to exhibit their grandchild because the girl has a Russian name, as a
civilised person one has got to act. So I went to the Home Secretary and
4 "Mr. Justice Brandeis and the Constitution," 45 Haw. L. Reix 3S (Novem-
ber 1931).
5 169 U.S. 466 (1898). In a series of notable dissenting opinions, e.g.,
Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Public Service Commission, 262 U.S. 276,
289 (1922), Brandeis had attacked the rule of Smyth v. Ames which sought to
establish fixed constitutional standards for determining the fair valuation of
utilities.
1931] HOLMES TO LASKI 1345
threatened to start a press campaign. Now, for rny sins, I have promised
him a report on the general principles. But I've got that girl a visa for
her passport and I feel that at least it is a tiny flower in the wreath of
freedom.
Our love to you, as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., November 27, 1931
My dear Laski: One of the greatest pleasures of my waning life is a
letter from you, One came this morning. I am specially tickled by what
you say of Lincoln's corrections in Seward's dispatches. I used to say
that reading them had convinced me that Lincoln was a great man. Be-
fore that I had supposed and said that I was watching the growth of
a myth. Apropos of the Bodin title page — when I was getting a first
edition of Paradise Regained two copies were shown me — one scribbled
all over the title page and others following by uninteresting remarks of
some 2d rate 18th century man, the other clear, but perhaps cut & inch
shorter, and therefore a guinea or two cheaper. I should have bought it
if the dearer. It seemed to me a curious criterion. I am wandering and
browsing in my reading — mostly by my secretary after working hours.
Another of the books on Italian themes that I have mentioned, suggested
by Brandeis — Isabella d'Este — by Mrs. Julia Cartwright I was pleased
to learn that a beautiful familiar drawing by Leonardo was of the heroine
— and also interested to see further evidence of the great place held in
his day by Montaigne. I have three of the Mantegna Triumph Series.
They have fine points but leave me rather cold — I see evidence that I
haven't done him justice. I am reading to myself at odd moments Philip
Schuyler Allen Medieval Latin Lyrics — Chicago University Press —
which so far as I can judge is a contribution, but written disagreeably
— to my taste. Miss Helen Waddell still holds the centre of the stage,
so far as my knowledge goes. We read a recent book by John Buchan
which didn't seem to me a success — The Blanket of the Dark — the
name better than the tale. But I am afraid that there is no doubt that
old age is dulling my taste for books as well as for food. I eat my meals
with a pleasure that diminishes at each hour of the way, and books also
find it harder to please — I also find it harder to write — partly eyesight,
partly, I think, head. Living is harder work at 90 than at 80 — but I
hope you won't get tired of writing while I still can read and be thankful.
Affectionately yours, O, W. Holmes
I don't know how it is that I have failed to tell you how I am moved by
your introduction to the book of my opinions. You make me happier than
I can tell you. I don't want to talk about it.
1346 HOLMES TO LASKI [1931
Washington, D. C., December 3, 1931
My dear Laski: A delightful letter from you this evening, bidding me tell
my young man to write. Before this you must have had one or two from
me. I don't know why it is that it comes so hard to me now, except that
all life comes harder, I think that my usefulness is pretty much over and
I am not sad. When the day's work is done my secretary from duty or
devotion reads to me for an hour and a half before supper time and
after it returns and reads again to say 10:30 when I go to bed. We have
got through a lot. This p.m. 2 volumes Julia Cartwright Isabella D'Este
— I think you must know a beautiful drawing in profile — with her
hair down, by Leonardo da Vinci, and probably a portrait by Titian —
I am quite charmed by the account — while the picture is so rich that
it rather bores me. This, like the life of Sarpi, I owe to Brandeis who
was lucky enough to spend part of his boyhood in Italy. ... I may have
mentioned Virginia Woolf — Mrs. Dalloway also not very pleasing to me
— and your young man's book on the Paris Commune (Mason). I am
afraid that old age makes me difficult. Books and victuals both find it
harder to please. This seemed to me to be wanting in clearness of ex-
position. Some light things I don't mention e.g. like Buchan — The
Blanket of the Dark — I found disappointing. Clouston — The Lunatic
in Charge and another of the series made me laugh — not as much as
your Jeeves man, but pleasantly. This evening I expect to begin — (we
have read 2 or 3 pages) Green Hell by Julian Duguid which Lady Scott
(Leslie's separated wife) asked me to read. So I dabble along — finding
a sort of pleasure in life but expecting no more. 90 seems to have turned
a corner. I am content however. Please don't let my flabbiness discourage
your writing. It is one of my greatest pleasures.
Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Washington, D. C., December 26, 1931
Dear Laski: It seems as if the shrinking of one's handwriting corre-
sponded to a shrinking of one's being — both involuntary. I seem to be
becoming a kind of well invalid. The faithful Mary the other day called
in the doctor and he wanted me to go to bed. Things go very well if I
don't try to accomplish anything — but I rather think the day of ac-
complishing is over. Like an invalid I talk about myself and my library
is the field of my adventures. Philosophy and murder the main directions.
You put me on to The Lost Gallows, which, when off the high horse, I
do think A-l. For one thing it keeps the tone, throughout, and doesn't
skip from tennis to poisoning a wife. To balance, a volume of John Dewey
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1347
— obscure but always good.1 ... In short, leisure kept me busy with
agreeable reading and slumber. But meantime a dissent that the ever
active Brandeis put upon my conscience waits untouched.2 I have said
my say before and don't worry, but I suppose that shows my decline —
I ought to.
Tell me if Addison Bridge Place is the echo of a tradition? as also
Devon Lodge?
I was interrupted above. I believe I was going to say I don't know why
it is a burden to write but latterly it comes hard. I hope it won't be so
with you. I feel full of talk — but find it hard to drive the pen.
Ever affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 7.XIL31
My dear Justice: A grand letter from you! But I don't want you to bother
answering my letters unless you feel like it. They will flow on and on
irrepressibly, and independently of response.
- I am putting in a separate envelope the last P. G. Wodehouse I have
reacj — which seemed to me an unadulterated miracle. Beyond that I
have read little by way of fiction except a novel by an old student of
mine called Apartments to Let1 which seems mainly to deal with the
difficultv of distinguishing between professional and amateur promiscuity
in Bloomsbury. I thought it singularly dull, that there was no point in
telling me that Pansy of the Slade Art School slept with Jones on
Tuesday and Brown on Wednesday, unless I could be made to feel that
Pansy was significant; but I couldn't find significance even in the bed,
though in accordance with the modern passion for realism it was a dated
Heppelwhite. But you can see how poor my taste is when I say that the
Times hails it as a masterpiece and the Spectator suggests that nothing
so good has been done since Guy de Maupassant.2 Other things have been
more substantial. A really excellent book by a Russian exile in Paris
named Gurvitch called Histoire du droit social s beginning with Grotius
and going down to 1900 — full of learning and quite beautifully clear
in exposition. Then a volume of economic essays by Keynes — Essays in
Persuasion — which I thought quite masterly, technical exposition so
1 Philosophy and Civilization (1931).
58 No such dissenting opinion has been identified. It is not unlikely that the
case in question was First National Bank v. Maine, 284 U.S. 312 (Jan. 4,
1932), in which Holmes and Brandeis concurred in a dissenting opinion de-
livered by Mr. Justice Stone.
'ByNorah Hoult.
'The review in 147 Spectator 776 (Dec. 5, 1931), praising the book, did
not explicitly make the comparison.
* Georges Gurvitch, L'idee du droit social (1932).
1348 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
beautifully written that is was a joy just to watch the movement of Ms
mind even where one disagreed with him. One essay — "The End of
Laisser-Faire" — would I think have interested you greatly, for it is a
wholly admirable pendant to your dissent in Adair v. U.S. Then a volume
of Gooch's essays4 — mainly bibliographical learning save for one really
interesting portrait of Holstein the German diplomat, the eminence grise
bf Bismarck which made one feel that if this was biography the most
extreme thriller was almost less than true, I know the Julia Cartwright
books — they pass, I think, but not much more. And I have read Buchan's
new novel which I thought pretty thin stuff, a man trying to be profound
but without the wits or the knowledge to be it, I must add one other
book, if I have not mentioned it before, Moritz Bonn's Prosperity — a
translation from the German — which I think a short masterpiece, the
best book, because (a) the wisest and (b) opening the most intriguing
vistas I have read in many a day.5
Most of the rest of rny time has gone in Indian negotiation, especially
with Ghandi. What will come of it all, God only knows.6 I have been
trying to stop it becoming a question of prestige on either side, which,
as in all nationalist issues, it has a tendency to do. The trouble is that
while I satisfy Sankey and begin to get a move begun Sankey doesn't
get his way with his colleagues in the cabinet and it isn't at all easy to
build up a coherent plan which fits into one cabinet minister's instruc-
tions, and then find that a large part of one's results are undone by the
obstinacy of another. Half the trouble with the Indians is a question of
national and racial pride. A good example is the army. Ghandi says "I
want control of the army; otherwise you don't give us responsible govern-
ment/' The cabinet says "You are not ready for control; in any case we
can't put white troops under Indian control." I say, "Let us begin with
a preamble affirming Indian right to control and then add that while an
Indian army is being built up, the following safeguards, a, b, c, d, shall
obtain." Then I take back the dangers, leaving all the rhetorical claims
amply satisfied. This contents Ghandi, and it satisfies Sankey who, being
a sensible man, doesn't mind leaving the other man the shadow, if he
surrenders the substance. But the damned Tory Secretary of State7 gets
on his hind legs and develops a prestige complex just as footling as you
can imagine, throws it all back into the melting pot, and one has to
begin all over again. Truly the way of the negotiator is hard. I get loving
* G. P. Gooch, Studies in Modern History ( 1931 ) .
5 Reviewed by Laski, 2 New Statesman (N.S.) 817 (Dec. 26, 1931).
8 Early in 1932 things went from bad to worse in India. With the revival of
the Congress policy of civil disobedience, Gandhi, who had returned to India
on December 28, 1931, was placed under arrest on January 4. It was not until
May 1933 that he was released.
7 Sir Samuel Hoare; supra, p. 1336.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1349
words from Ghandi and Sankey, and kicks from the rest; and the added
joy of knowing that if anything at all comes of it the credit goes to a
government I utterly despise. In one way it is, of course, extraordinarily
interesting. The job of trying to bend the mind of a man who in his
turn influences the minds of millions in India is a fascinating experience;
and the intellectual effort of trying to discover middle terms in the
infinite series which prestige involves is a good mental exercise. I have a'
high opinion of the subtlety of Ghandi, and his charm is immense. But he
is a ghastly faddist — and on economic matters he has literally not even
the beginnings of realism. What the future holds for him and us I
tremble to think. If he and Sankey and I were left alone for a week we
could have solved the whole damned business and, I think, in a way that
would have commended itself to most reasonable men. But, alas, that
is not the way that things happen in politics.
I have bought only one book in the week — a nice copy of Spinoza's
Works in a new and rather noble German edition which has the ad-
vantage of a really good bibliographical apparatus so that you can see
what happened to each of his books in different countries.8 I tried hard to
get from Paris a volume containing 17th century pamphlets on toleration
which I should have prized — but, alas, I wrote instead of sending a
telegram and suffered the requisite penalty; which served me right. One
of my colleagues had a stroke of fortune — he was left some books by
an old clerical great-uncle among which was a perfect copy of Thomas
Lodge's Rosdynde for which his uncle paid forty pounds in 1881; my
colleague put it up at Christie's today and it was knocked down for
twenty four hundred pounds. I, alas, have no great uncles!
Our love to you, I wish I could drop in for a talk.
Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 13.XILS1
My dear Justice: I imagine this will arrive in the proper time for our
Xmas greetings. You know how warm and affectionate they are.
A letter from you, with much account of reading, was a great joy, I
have had a busy week. Long interviews with the Indians; a couple of
meetings of the committee on administrative law, now in its last sessions,
I hope; a long dose of Sankey who (a) is unhappy in the government
and (b) doesn't want to leave it and is therefore in that difficult frame
of mind where a full sincerity is a dangerous luxury; a grim industrial
arbitration where I had to reduce 2000 men's wages by 7 and 1A% as an
alternative to throwing tJiem out of work altogether; and a dinner at
8 Probably Spinoza Opera, 1m Auftrag der Heidelberger Akademie der Wis-
senschaften, herausgegeben von Carl Qebhardt (4 vok, 1925).
1350 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
Gray's Inn spoilt for me by sitting next to the Bishop of London who has
that intolerable kind of unctiousness which makes you really want to
vomit. When I hear men of his type speak of the "beautiful spirit of the
poor" and the "noble sacrifices of our aristocracy" and the "devotion of
the clergy to their Divine obligations" I really understand why the
tricoteuses sat unmoved under the guillotine. However, I learned there
one great story. At a Cambridge dinner the Master of S. Johns said that
he dreamed he was present at the Day of Judgment. When the sheep
had been divided from the goats, the late Master of Trinity (H. M.
Butler)1 arose from a prominent place among the sheep and without
invitation spoke as follows: "I do not feel I can allow this great occasion
to pass without extending to the Deity, on behalf of those present, and
particularly for those among whom my lot has been cast, our sense of
the admirable and, may I say, perceptive fashion in which a very difficult
task has been performed. Not, indeed, that I am surprised; for there is a
special sense of the word in which I may claim for the Deity the great
privilege of being a Trinity man." Don't you think that is a really ad-
mirable example of dry academic humour?
In the way of reading there are some things it is worth while to report.
I read with enjoyment a book by a Columbia Professor named J. H.
Randall, called Our Changing Civilization. Marred a little by a certain
religiosity of atmosphere, it was still a really interesting example of the
way in which one can depict the relation between ideas and the material
environment over the last four centuries so as to bring out their causal
relation. Then, for the first time, I looked at Buckle's miscellaneous
papers. There isn't much in them except one essay which would, I think,
move you profoundly as it moved me. It is a review of Mill's Liberty and
is written round a protest against the decision of Coleridge, J. in a
blasphemy case known as R. V. Pooletj.2 I don't know if the essay has ever
come your way. If not, I think it is worth half an hour as a really superb
example of the eloquence of generous indignation against injustice. Mill
himself could have done no better. Most of the rest was hardly worth
reading except as an interesting insight into Buckle's inexhaustible curi-
osity. That led me into reading J. M. Robertson's Buckle and his Critics
which contains inter alia a savage and unjustified attack on L. Stephen.
But I think the general thesis of the book wholly right i.e. that the
explanation of history in terms of great men is foolish, and that one must
penetrate to the reasons which permitted great men to succeed for
verae causae. In fact, he made me feel that an argument like one of
B. Russell's which I saw lately, that if 100 men like Descartes had
1 See supra, p. 902.
* See supra, p. 1184.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1351
perished c. 1600-1700 there would have been no such thing as modern
civilisation is really futile. One can say that the one thing certain is that
no man is indispensable to any movement; and that even Napoleon only
shifts the axis a degree or so without altering its direction, I also read
with great pleasure L. Stephen's English Literature and Society in the
XVIIIth Century which I thought wise and mature talk from an armchair
by a man who knew his materials as a scholar and a gentleman should. I
was interested in your observations on Virginia Woolf. I have never suc-
ceeded in getting through any of her novels which always seemed to
me precious and labryinthine. But there is a volume of her essays called
The Common Reader in which there are two pieces (I) "On not knowing
Greek" and (II) "A Room of One's Own" which are, I think, really
superb. Her novels seem to me to belong to the modern tradition of
minute psychological analysis of the fantastic or the insignificant which
I regard as a real waste of time. It exhibits the infinite ingenuity of the
writer; but it is the same thing as a juggler keeping six balls in the air
at once. The justification of technique surely depends upon its application
to vital subject matter. A friend of mine has just produced a novel which
gives in 400 pages an account of a day in the lives of a suburban clerk
and his wife.3 You are told everything from his morning diarrhoea to their
habitual intimate embraces at night; the menu of his lunch with the
note that the waitress had a smut on her cheek; the fact that when his
wife shopped she could not get a sole for his dinner. But you never feel
(I) that the fellow can tell a story (II) that the presence or absence of
any detail makes an atom of difference (III) that the mere description
of the detail is art when it is a photograph in which there is no distribu-
tion of emphasis. But the critics have selected it as a "masterpiece of
realism"; one of brains even suggests that this is the work of a Balzac
in posse, and I am made to feel that I don't know my job when I cannot
be enthusiastic! But it may be that die critics are wrong.
Our love to you as always.
Ever affectionately yours, Harold J. Laski
Devon Lodge, 19.XILS1
My dear Justice: On the whole, a quiet and peaceful week. Some com-
mittees, the inescapable student (who does not realise the meaning of
vacations) and a dinner party. This, plus the difficult task of finding
Xmas presents for Frida and Diana has absorbed most of my energies.
But I have had a jolly time reading, and writing a little. I am trying
to do a pamphlet for the Fabians on the constitutional side of our recent
* Not identified.
1352 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
electoral debauch, and I find it both delicate and amusing.1 One truth
it has convinced me of and that is that in the realm of the conventions of
the Constitution, we have no practices to which the term constitutional
can be applied. On the question, for instance, of whether the King can
grant or withhold a dissolution from the Prime Minister I find that three
authorities are on one side and three on the other. What one decides
in that perspective I really do not know. Reading, too, has been very
pleasant. I read a good book on English Constitutional Law by Wade and
Phillips in which it was particularly interesting that they should take for
granted the impossibility of accepting Dicey's views on administrative
law. Then a rather queer book by an Amercan named Haines called
The Revival of Natural Law Concepts of which the point seemed to be
that any writer who took the view that ethics were relevant to law
believed in natural law. The man seemed to have read everything under
the sun and to have remained entirely unaffected by what he read. Then
I paged C. K. Allen's Essays in Jurisprudence. They reveal all the merits
and defects of the English lawyer: (I) great clarity of style (II) a re-
markable knowledge of the cases (III) a pathetic belief that references
to Pound and Korkunov constitute a knowledge of modern jurisprudence
(IV) a sense that law is a private mystery into which none save the
lawyer can enter. Of English jurisprudence in its formal sense I really
think it would be true to say that since Sir H. Maine no one save Pollock
and Maitland have made any contributions of real importance, and, on
the juristic side, they have been episodic even if profound. There must
be something narrowing in the discipline as it is here conveyed. If you
look at Salmond or Holland whose names are repeated in rebuttal in a
tone of reverent ecstasy, you read a dull body of formal definitions so
made as to evade all the essential problems involved. Compare, for
instance, Salmond on juristic personality with Maitland; the former isn't
even aware of the nature of the problem. The same is true of liability
without fault, the same is true of public policy. I thought Winfield's
article in the November Harvard Law Review2 a good instance of docta
ignorantia. He really thought he had dealt with his problem by stringing
together a body of second-rate judicial pronouncements which took no-
body anywhere. Clearly he knew the reports superbly; clearly also he
had never thought that the discovery of principle meant examining and
not merely classifying the dicta of the reports. In a very different line
I read Scott's Waverley and found that while I thoroughly enjoyed the
dialogue, the descriptive part bored me stiff and I had to skip it. But
1 The Crisis and the Constitution: 1931 and After (Day to Day Pamphlets,
No. 9, 1932).
2 Percy H. Wmfield, "Ethics in English Case Law," 45 Hare. L. Rev. 112
(November 1931).
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1353
I was interested to discover the clear kinship between Scott and the
"horrific" novelists of the eighteenth century. It's queer how Sehnsucht
became a rooted part of the romantic tradition. I think I could show that
it is a part of what calls itself modern realism, that e.g. the pose of the
aloof cynic in people like Aldous Huxley is really nothing more than
the Byronic pose in a modern expression. I also re-read with immense
enjoyment M. Arnold on translating Homer, and Newman's Apologia.
The latter is really masterly — a marvellous piece of special pleading.
On the merits he is only saying that he believes this and this to be true
because he feels it intimately. He has no sense of truth about the evidence
he accepts and a certain queer economy of scruple that is, I suppose, an
almost necessary part of the priestly temperament. I also had for review
a queer book on Rousseau by a Frenchman named Charpentier.3 If it
did not say twelfth edition on the back I should have guessed that the
man was a half-wit. He seems not to know that R. could not at once
have moved the world and have been nothing more than a stupid
blunderer. And he perpetrates with gusto the old piece of stupidity that
R. was the chief cause of the French Revolution. That isn't anyhow a
dement; but how today anyone can say that its course would have been
deflected by a hair's breadth if Rousseau had never lived I cannot
imagine. Finally, I must mention a really good novel Without my Cloak
by Kate O'Brien which, despite an Irish scene, contains no brogue and
has real brains in it.
I have had one book adventure which deserves recounting. I bought
at a West End shop for ten shillings a copy of Godwin's Enquirer. While
examining it I saw that it had notes and after paying I looked into
them. One had S.T.C. on it and comparison with a letter in the shop made
it clear that they were Coleridge's beyond all doubt. So I resold it to the
man for fifteen guineas with the result that I now possess a most dignified
set of the Somers' Tracts and the Harleian Miscellany! This either proves
the potential business ability of the academic mind, or the fact that
Jewish blood will out — which I do not know.
I think this should arrive in time for the New Year. I need not tell
you how affectionate are the good wishes it brings.
Devotedly yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 29. XII. 31
My dear Justice: Xmas has come and gone, and we are off to Antwerp
this evening. I have had a pretty busy time as Leslie Scott kept us at the
Administrative Law committee until Dec* 23, and owing to the illness
8 Laskf s review of John Charpentier's Rousseau, the Child of Nature ( 1981 )
has not been identified.
1354 LASKI TO HOLMES [1931
of a colleague I suddenly had to do a long and complicated university
report on academic policy — which I found very dull. However, it is
done; and I can recite manfully on the needs of the university, supposing
a millionaire to come along which he won't. And my great editor-hero
C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian — the noblest journalist I have
ever known — is dying and I have had at top-speed to write the kind
of tribute which friendship demands on these occasions.1 That is a
curiously difficult decision to make. You don't want to write, because you
feel the thing is too intimate for public utterance; but you feel that you
must write to be sure that the just thing is said. I never knew a man more
chivalrous than he, or with a finer sense of justice. He would fight at
the drop of the hat. Only the other day he helped me with a grand
protest against the foul action of Mussolini in dismissing all university
professors in Italy who refused to sign a declaration of loyalty to the
Fascist party. A man who will fight like that at eighty-six is worth having
as an influence in public life.
In the way of reading, there is not very much to tell. I enjoyed greatly
a life of Bishop Berkeley by Hone and Rossi, a book of great merit with
the curious undertone of conviction that what mattered most in Berkeley
was the fact that he was an Irishman. Incidentally I was arrested by the
fact that he and Hume had both completed their essential philosophic
work by the time they were thirty. That must be rare among philosophers,
though common to mathematicians and physicists. Then I read a charm-
ing book on Montaigne by Lanson, particularly good on the relations
between M's ideas and the theology of Raymond de Sebonde.2 I also
spent a pleasant evening with Pascal, which tempted me very much to
an attack on him. It would take the line that his mind told him con-
tinuously that he had no right to faith, and that he perpetually crucified
himself to stifle his intelligence. The famous "the heart has its reasons
of which reason itself is unaware" is the cry of a man seeking at all costs
to betray reason. Why? I think that the causes are first a sense of dis-
satisfaction with the milieu of the Court — he is not well-born enough
to succeed there, and his sense of intellectual superiority did not brook
subordination — and second the probability of a disappointment in an
affair of the heart. I should seek to show that apart from his scientific
work Pascal might have done more than any man before Bayle to
1 Charles Prestwick Scott (1846-1932) had been editor of the Guardian
since 1872; he died on January 1? 1932. Laskfs essay on Scott was in the
Daily Herald for January 2, 1932.
2 Raymond de Sebonde (P-1432), Spanish theologian whose principal work,
Theologia Naturalis, sive Liber Creaturarum (1487), was translated by Mon-
taigne.
1931] LASKI TO HOLMES 1355
prepare the ground for rationalism, whereas he was content to anticipate
Newman's Grammar of Assent — itself an inherently sceptical work. It
is tragic to see a mind so keen and a style so exquisite devoted to the
effort to find grounds for the defence of obscurantism. Then I read a
most able little book by Carl Schmitt, the German lawyer, called The
Necessity of Politics of which the real point was the inability of a purely
materialist outlook to give birth to a scheme of values; therefore politics
protects the soul of man; but politics is worthless save as it is built on
eternal truth; eternal truth is religious truth; the only true guardian of
religious truth is the Roman Church. It is of course unfair to make so
crude a summary, for the book has something of the power of de Maistre,
with Russia substituted for 1789. And I must not forget to add a very
good detective story called the Green Falcon.3 If that comes your way,
I commend it for an accompaniment to solitaire.
Little queernesses have happened in the last days. A Chinaman turned
up with a request that I read a ms on Ancient Chinese political philoso-
phy. I protest my ignorance. He thereupon offers to tutor me in prepara-
tion for the reading of his ms. He pledges himself that with one afternoon
a week for six weeks he will undertake to initiate me into the central
principles so that I can then devote myself to his book. He is pained at
my refusal. He had hoped for a greater interest from an academic col-
league. Then a request that I give three lectures at Louvain University
on the Political Philosophy of the 16th Century Jesuits. There are no
conditions save the need to submit my manuscript to the Father Pro-
vincial of the Order in Belgium. I explain that I never speak from a
manuscript. It is politely explained that this time I must do so if I wish
to speak in Louvain. So I explain with some emphasis that I do not so
wish. Finally I must record the history of the gentleman who read a
report of a speech of mine in which I said that if humanity learned to
control population the result might be more important than any event
since the discovery of fire. He called to see me on "a matter of urgent
importance." I wondered what it was when he arrived and put a bag
on the table from which he proceeded to take a large box with electric
plugs. He then explained that this was an electric birth control apparatus,
price fifteen dollars, which he was about to put on the market; and in
view of my admirable speech he invited me to join the Board of his
company without obligation to take up shares. You see that I am a
public character!
Our love to you, my dear Justice, and every sort of good wish for the
New Year. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
3 No book of that title has been identified; perhaps the reference intended
was Charles Rodda's Green Talons (1931).
1356 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
Devon Lodge, 13.1.32
My dear Justice: I read in this morning's Times of your resignation.1
I was not surprised, but deeply moved. And I will say no more than
this that you will know how much of what you felt went through my
mind and how wholly I was with you in spirit.
I came back yesterday from a most restful fortnight in Antwerp and
am back at work. I had, mostly, a feast of pictures of which the most
delightful experience was to find a man who had a complete set of all
the etchings of Callot. They were grand indeed, and one got from
the completeness a sense of 17th century France that it would not be
easy to see otherwise. I had also a feast of Brueghel drawings, all of
them very fine, but especially the etchings illustrating the proverbs,
which probably you know far better than I. And I had some grand
book-hunts in Brussels and Ghent. My best find was a collection of 200
Mazarinades, some of them really rare, which I got for three francs
apiece. Some of them I had been searching for in years. I found also a
copy of Dupin's attack on Montesquieu which I value not only for
itself but also because it was suppressed by the order of Mme. Pompadour
and this was one of a dozen copies which Dupin was allowed to retain
from the bonfire. I also bought a set of Bayle's Nouvelles de la republique
de lettres, the first serious literary-philosophic journal, which I have
been dipping into ever since, and with enormous enjoyment. Queer old
fellow Bayle. I look forward to writing about him. All Voltaire is there
except the lightness of touch. I met some interesting people. The out-
standing one was an old Jesuit who had been for forty years on the
borders of Tibet and China. I asked him why so long. It was a punish-
ment originally for excessive devotion to theological heresies. Why did
he stay so long? After the first ten years he liked it; it was so peaceful
never to be overlooked by another Jesuit. At eighty, his brother had left
him a small income and he had returned to Belgium knowing (1) that
if he had trouble with the Order he could always live and (2) if he had
no trouble he could also live. Please imagine the adorable shrug of the
shoulders that accompanied this. What did he do in China? He mostly
read Buddhist theology and the French deists who, he declared, have
almost a Chinese lack of cosmic excitement, He found Europe very little
altered. Men are mad, he said, about different things; but they are still
mad. They have invented some more conveniences and complicate their
lives still further in order to use them. In his old age, he was reading
the great French sermons of the 17th century. Bossuet he thought an
eloquent snob; Bourdaloue should have been an English politician —
he had le cant anglais. Fenelon he admired for his graciousness, but above
1 On January 12 President Hoover announced Holmes's retirement from the
Supreme Court.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1357
all lie cared for Massillon who had pity and sociability. What did he
learn in China? Above all, two things: first that it is the sense of com-
passion which makes man civilised, and, secondly, that to multiply one's
wants is to dimmish one's compassion. I wish I could depict the old
man — bowed, white-haired, blue-eyed, almost a ghost, but as though
all the travail of humanity had been reflected upon and distilled into an
exquisite sweetness. In marvellous contrast I put a Belgian painter —
the fashionable portraitist of the hour. He has a trick of verisimilitude
which has made the big business men feel that he must confide their
features to posterity. He is the finest actor I have ever seen. He literally
lives by the beau geste. He strikes an attitude with every phrase. He is
got up for the artist's part, — purple velvet coat, great flowing tie, black
sombrero. Every other phrase is "Ma maitresse fart* or "fidelite a
Cezanne demande que. . " It was the best evening of its kind since I
saw Bernhardt in Les precieuses ridicules! On the whole, I hope vou
will agree that I did not waste my time.
I read much too. The most moving thing was a re-reading of Rousseau's
Confessions which have haunted me ever since. For I can't get his
liveliness out of my head, or the sense that, temperament apart, he was
the victim of a system in which the man of letters had to pose before an
aristocratic clientele and was lost if, like Rousseau, he could not find the
right pose. I saw nothing of the charlatan or sophist, but a man yearning
to be himself, dependent on friendships, and unable to find the key to
either gate. Then a novel by Louis Golding called Mangold Street [sic]
which I dare to say is not unworthy of Dickens. I beg you to think
of it as an accompaniment of solitaire. I read also Goodharfs Legal Essays
and those of C. K. Allen, but I thought both of them flat beer. Neither had
the trick of reaching the jugular and both were intolerably long-winded.
Why cannot England produce jurists of the first order?
Now work has begun and I am fairly buried in it. But for the moment
I have compensation in entertaining for a week a German archaeologist
whose subject is ancient Chinese and Siamese bronzes. I, God help me,
as am innocent of these as of, let me say, ancient Coptic inscriptions, but
in the intervals of his visits to the Museum he tells me that bronze A
in the Museum at Kiev makes it impossible — do I not agree — to accept
X's ascription of bronze B in the museum at Bangkok to the Tang period
(or is it the Ming?). I shake my head with very great solemnity over
X's heresy and agree with him that no savant would be guilty of such
sloppy work. It gives him pleasure and I find no guilt in my conscience,
I hope you are neutral on the ethical implications of this genial hypocrisy.
My love to you, dear Justice. Be happy.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
My greetings for 1932 to Mary, please.
1358 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
Devon Lodge, 20J.32
My dear Justice: Term is in full swing, and with all its problems. The
most interesting, I think, is to satisfy the human material and make it
sceptical about the foundations of its thoughts. The American to whom
his experience is already of final validity, the Indian who does not doubt
that self-government will solve all his problems, the Englishman who
thinks that foreign differences from him are really a measure of inferiority
in intelligence. To make each say to himself: I may be wrong; perhaps
there are other possibilities is as good an exercise for the mind as I know.
Curiously, right on top of your letter, I had to take the chair at a lecture
by Goodhart on "Recent Tendencies in American Jurisprudence." It was
a curiously interesting -though second-rate performance. He thought,
clearly, that the realists a la Karl Llewellyn of Columbia were just wicked;
that you and Cardozo had undermined that faith in the place of in-
escapable logic in the law which was fundamental to security; and that
all the materials of legal decision could be found in the reported cases.
I said a few polite criticisms at the end, mainly to the effect that
"inarticulate major premises" had played their part in legal history; that
law was woven from the stuff of life and was not a thing apart from it;
that certainty in law was a static ideal and not a dynamic fact. Good-
hart's commentary was a very revealing one: you (Laski) talked legal
philosophy and not law. And this reminds me to note an amusing tussle
at our committee on administrative powers on the question of whether an
ordinary court would be more impartial than an administrative court.
I heard paeans from the lawyers to the inherent impartiality of the
judge which made my hair stand on end. Even L. Scott whom I respect
not less than like spoke words to this effect which would make you
and your brethren more (or less) than human. I amused myself by
quoting with gusto and effect your remark on the judges as "commonly
elderly men who hate at sight" l etc. which did my side immense good.
And then I have been busy helping Arthur Henderson with his speech for
the Disarmament Conference which opens in the first week of February.2
Altogether I do not feel that I have been laizy.
In the way of reading I have, alas, too little to record, though that
1 "Jtidges commonly are elderly men, and are more likely to hate at sight any
analysis to which they are not accustomed, and which disturbs repose of mind,
than to fall in love with novelties." "Law in Science — Science in Law," Col-
lected Legal Tapers, 210, 230.
2 Arthur Henderson was President of the Conference for the Reduction and
Limitation of Armaments, an agency established by the League of Nations. Its
first meeting was held in Geneva on February 2, 1932, Henderson's opening
speech is in I Records of the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of
Armaments (Series A, 1932), 39.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1359
little good, A grand book on La Bruyere by Lange took me to La B. him-
self. I have never enjoyed him so much. I don't think he is profound as
Pascal or LaRochefoucauld. I think he excels rather in what one may call
exterior rather than interior insight. But with that limitation, he seems to
me unsurpassed in his genre. I should have liked to see him in the
House of Conde, neglected and passed over, observing all and revealing
nothing until the great book is published and he takes the world by
storm. Did the Condes ever know his quality? Did they think him
significant even when the book was published? These, I think, are fasci-
nating questions. Lange's book is grand because it makes one at least
see all the external influences that played on La Bruyere. I have rarely
read a better book of its kind. Then I reread a good deal of Adam Smith.
I was tremendously impressed. There is a penetration, an equilibrium,
a balanced judgment, a width of view, that are beyond what I have
encountered in economists. And, especially, the practical acumen im-
pressed me. The collector of Kirkaldy had missed nothing that came his
way. Then I also read the Life of Sir W. Harcourt by A. G. Gardiner —
too long a book, like most official political biographies, but really good as
a portrait. You, I expect, knew him. I was not old enough in his last
years even to recollect him as a name; and I fear that he has already be-
come one of those minor figures whom history, cruel }ade that she is,
leaves to the specialist. But I thought he had a grand combative vigour,
and an intellectual honesty rare among politicians. Lastly I must note a
lovely edition of Dryden's plays sent me for review I know not why.3 I
was amused to find that the editor curses all his predecessors, including
W. P. Ker, for their horrid ignorance. But twenty of his forty footnotes
of illustrative material follow precisely those of Ker without acknowledge-
ment; which seems to me somewhat of an indirect tribute to Ker unless
I mistake me. I could not avoid a wonder whether the plays of Dryden
justify six quarto volumes at two guineas apiece; but I suppose that as I
do not pay for them I must not look a gift horse in the mouth,
I have been so busy that I have had no time to do an afternoon of
book-hunting, and the catalogues have been disappointing so far. They
reveal that my own rarities increase in value, but they do not offer the
other rarities I want. It is pleasant to see that the collected Bentham
has gone up to forty pounds where I paid five, and that the 1679 Year
Books are five times what I paid for them as an earnest undergraduate
who felt his mission in life depended on knowing them as a bible. But
I also note that my Lyndwood (1515) which I have cherished has de-
8 The reference is presumably to the six-volume edition of Dryd&n s Dramatic
Works (1931-32), edited by Montague Summers. Laski's review has not been
identified. W. P. Ker (1855-1923), literary critic and historian at the Univer-
sity of London, was the editor of The Essays of John Dryden (2 vols., 1900).
1360 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
clfned and that for a queer reason I do not understand so have my
Edmund Burkes. But it may just be the slump of the moment, with
recovery round the corner. By the way, did I tell you that I bought in
December in Oxford Bryce's copy of The Common Law with under-
linings? I have three now, my own, his and one that belonged to
Bailhache, J. — the last with the note in his handwriting "this is the work
of one of the few judges who ever had the courage to be a scholar."
Rather a pleasant word, I think.
Our united love to you, dear Justice. Take care of yourself.
Ever affectionately yours, H, J. L.
Washington, D. C., January 23, 1932
My dear Laski: I hope that I am not going to be confined to sending
messages by my secretary, but for the time being at least I find it very
hard to write. The doctor seems to think that I am better since my
resignation and I really believe that I sleep better, though I don't care
much for food. There has been a big chore answering letters &c. but my
secretary has done most of it. He is angelic and reads to me even after
supper, when he has no duty to be here. A good many detective stories;
just now Lea's History of the Inquisition of Spain — - which I always have
meant to read. I think it a poor piece of literature. It does not marshal
the facts in a luminous way, but it is very instructive. How can one care
what people did who thought as men of the 16th and 17th centuries did
about life and religion?
The President's secretary has repeated what the President did on my
last birthday — sent me a great package of mounted clippings from the
newspapers. I can't take such things very seriously, but I really have been
surprised by the semblance of popularity. (I did not mean to let egotism
get beyond the first page — but the little devil slipped between my
fingers.) I am open to suggestions for reading as I don't expect to have
much else to do indoors. When the weather permits there is pleasure in
driving out for an hour or two in Virginia or Maryland. One might go
to the Congressional Library and turn over a portfolio — but I lack the
energy to follow up suggestions of others than those I ask for about
books. Frankfurter was here at luncheon last Sunday greatly to my de-
light — though I didn't get as much time with him alone as I could have
wished. And people do come in and call, being warned I think by my
watchful parlor maid and secretary not to stay too long. In short I am
pretty idle and find it easy to be so for I am tired. This poor little missive
must stand for a letter from me. My energy gives out. I do hope that
you won't be discouraged from writing to me, Your letters help to keep
me alive. Affectionately yours, 0. W. Holmes
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1361
Devon Lodge, 30.L32
My dear Justice: Ten days of hard work since I wrote last. First this
incredible government decided to abandon the doctrine of collective
cabinet responsibility,1 and I had hurriedly to write a long appendix to
a booklet I am publishing very shortly on the crisis; then Mr. Henderson
asked me to help him with his Presidential speech to the Disarmament
Conference at Geneva, and, of course, for such an occasion I had to
sweat blood to see that the thing was really well done; then I have done
a big industrial arbitration which involved trying to understand the
boot and shoe industry and settling six separate schedules of wages. So,
that, altogether, I have had the feeling that I have earned my keep.
But, mostly in trains, I have read one book which interested me
enormously. It is called American Literature and is by a man I never
heard of named Blankenship. He deserves a medal. There are things
from which I fiercely dissent e.g. the emphasis on Cabell, whom I believe
to be a mere faker, as an important figure. But all in all it is a model
of what such books should be — as good in its way as Lanson's History
of French Literature. It has learning and wit and incisiveness. Now that
Parrington is dead, that fellow takes his rank at the very head of the
American critics. I do hope it will come your way for I know nothing even
to compare with it in its field. I read also an admirable book on France
by E. R. Curtius, the late German Foreign Minister. It is rather
Germanisch in the sense of searching for quintessences, to which light
and shade are sometimes sacrificed for the sake of the thesis. But I
don't know a better book to use for explaining what the idea of France
is in the history of the last three hundred years. I have also been reading
— for a book review — some of Dryden's plays. And I was led by them
to the thesis that the difference (Shakespere apart) between English and
French tragedy is that in the former incident is the source round which
the treatment coheres while in the latter the essential action takes place
in the mind. The result is that with Dryden you are always the spectator
at the drama while with Corneille or Racine you are an actor in it The
editor of this new edition amused me mightily. He begins by attacking all
his predecessors as worthless; I supposed that to be true until he turned
on W. P. Ker who, whatever his sins, was not lacking in scholarship. So
I spent a little time comparing the editions and found (it makes a good
sentence) that the first thirty [sic] footnotes of the two editions coincide2;
and I think that is one up to Ker.
1 On January 22, members of the Cabinet being in disagreement on fiscal
policy, it was announced the four ministers were to be permitted in Parliament
to oppose the proposals of their colleagues. See Laski, The Crisis and the Con-
stitution: 1931 and After (1932), Appendix, p. 59.
* See, supra, p. 1359.
1362 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
I must now tell you of my great book adventure. I went bookhunting
yesterday and was offered a first edition of the Nouvelle Helo'ise with the
Pompadour's arms for seven pounds. I was impressed by the thickness of
the back end paper and guessed that something might be there. I bought
the book on that chance and adjourned to a cafe and a paperknife. The
tihickness was in fact a screen for a pocket in the cover and there I found
a letter from Rousseau to his publisher telling the latter to send a copy of
the No. 4 to the Pompadour and one from the publisher to the lady
saying that she might like Rousseau's note. Well, that was too precious for
me, so I decided to sell it and have the money for books. I tried three
booksellers and the last offered me fifty pounds for it with which I
closed. I left him feeling what I imagine J. P. Morgan must feel when he
brings off a big international loan. I am reserving the proceeds for a
visit to Cambridge next week-end and a few days I hope to have in Paris
at Easter. But you will, I know, sympathise with my general sense of
mental elevation.
Felix sent me the very moving letters which passed between you and
your colleagues on your resignation;3 and I have lent them to Leslie Scott.
As you know, he and I meet twice weekly at the Lord Chancellor's Com-
mittee, and he never fails to ask me if I have any news of you. I like
him greatly. He is very Conservative and rather slow, but he has an
innate sense of justice and a fine integrity of mind. I scan the papers
anxiously for the name of your successor. Fitness seems to me to demand
that it be Cardozo, but I suppose that three New York members of the
Court will not be available. I shall be very angry if it is either Rugg*
or Pound.
I hope you wfll look at the February number of Harper's Magazine
where there is a piece of mine on the American College President.5 I
think it is full of common sense but I do not, of course, know what the
experts will say to it. I wrote it largely out of the experience of my last
visit, and partly in special because Alfred Cohn, the physiologist, whom
I much respect, told me that it was needed. It's a curious problem, al-
together; and one that ought not, as now, to be taken as effectively solved.
My love to you, my dear Justice, You are never long absent from my
thoughts. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Please give my warm greetings to Mary.
S284U.S. v-vi.
4 Arthur Prentice Rugg (1862-1938) was Chief Justice of the Supreme Judi-
cial Court of Massachusetts.
5 164 Harper's Magazine 311 (February 1932).
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1363
Devon Lodge, 1611.82
My dear Justice: I begin by congratulating you on Cardozo's appoint-
ment.1 Nothing, I think, can more securely measure the sense we all have
of your place than that he should be your successor, I know it will give
you pleasure. And it gives a great tradition security. I could throw my
hat to the sky.
I have had a busy fortnight. The most pleasant incident was a week-
end in Cambridge where I talked to the lads on law reform. They are
quite charming, and full of a zest for life which is exhilarating beyond
words. The dons are a different proposition. They all seemed oppressed
by over-work, especially in the realm of college administration. They
lack fire and enthusiasm and eagerness for novelty. There is a curious
fear of ideas in them, I used to think that if one put a university away
from the big towns men had an opportunity for spacious reflection. But
to judge by Cambridge, its real result is a provinciality which is painful
The lawyer who doesn't "bother with the American traditions," or "feels
that philosophic jurisprudence destroys the practical lawyer" or the pro-
fessor of politics who tells me that if a man knows his Aristotle and
Plato he can be indifferent to later traditions or the historian who can
write on the social ideas of the Reformation and ignore the fact that it
was also a grave economic upheaval seem to me stricken into impotence.
The root of it all, I think, is reading for lectures instead of reading for
life. One's horizon there gets bounded by considering not the subject as
a bridge to the universe but the subject as something divided into so
many hourly divisions each of which can only be treated in a limited
kind of way. But I had a grand time in the bookshops. I bought a
marvellous Kant, and a very interesting collection of the German Cameral-
ists of the eighteenth century. I found, too, a pretty Bentham manuscript
which I am going to present to Yale.2 It is a digest the old gentleman
made at the age of 80 with a view to a book on universal jurisprudence,
done in his characteristic tabular fashion, and with that fine sense he
always had that work being endless one may regard life as endless too.
In the way of reading, one or two enjoyable things. I found instruction
as well as amusement in F. L. Allen's Only Yesterday (Harpers) which
told me lots of queer oddments that add colour to the picture. C. W.
Everett's Education of Jeremy Bentham (Columbia) had some pretty
touches from unpublished mss. It gave me an added vision of Bentham's
1 On February 15 President Hoover nominated Cardozo as Holmes's succes-
sor; the Senate confirmed the nomination on February 24.
3 During the academic year 1932-33 Laski gave two manuscript sheets of
Bentham's notes, dated January 17, 1820, and April 21, 1833, to the Yale Law
School.
1S64 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
courage and the conviction that if I only had a thousand a year of my
own I would sit down to do nothing save write and see whether in that
way I could not by sheer devotion make my small dent on the universe.
Then, at Fridays order, I read Aldous Huxley's new novel Brave New
World. I thought it foul . . . like a small boy taking you into a corner
to snigger at a bawdy story. The critics talk of it as though Swift might
have written it. Why, God knows. No one can fail to see that Swift has
a fierce idealism his savage irony only throws into stronger relief. . . ,
Then a truly remarkable Histoire de Tidee social en droit by a Russian
exile in Paris named Gurvitch. It is monumental. Full of learning, pointed,
suggestive, it gives you a sense of legal philosophy changing to fit new
needs which I found really exhilarating. And, lastly, I must not forget to
mention Nevinson's book on Goethe, published for the centenary, which
is really charming.
I have been having long fights, mainly with Holdsworth, on the
Donoughmore Committee, over the theory of judicial decision; and that
has taken immense time. He has written a section of our report which
suggests that in the judicial interpretation of statutes the judge is a purely
impartial arbiter who simply decides on the plain meaning of words. I
have been insisting on the importance of the inarticulate major premise,
e.g. when K.B. says that "educational expenditure" cannot be interpreted
to mean that an education authority may pay for children to see a
performance of Shakespere the judges have a theory of education in
their minds which goes into and colours their interpretation of the
Statute. I wish, in your leisure, you would write a short paper for our
School journal on "The Judicial Process." It needs someone of your
authority to end this humbug of the judge as a soulless automaton whose
mind and heart are silent when he performs his operations. And I
should of course be proud beyond words to have a paper from you in
the journal I edit. If you say you are too old to write, I reply first that
this is untrue, and second that Ranke (bless his memory) began to write
his Weltgeschichte when he was eighty-nine.3 Indeed I wish you would
put down on paper your reflections on legal philosophy for us. It would
be a grand and exciting legacy fifty years after The Common Law to
say what has happened to the ethos you then discovered in it.
I was so glad to have your letter. As long as you feel fit and go on
reading I feel as though a special sun was still shining.
Our love to you. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
8 Ranke in fact was eighty-five when he began his Weltgeschichte.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1365
Devon Lodge, 23.11.32
My dear Justice: A grand letter from you today. I do admire your tenacity
of spirit in being able to work through two volumes of Lea. I have
always recognised that the material was grand; but his style and con-
fused arrangement have always appalled me, and though I have often
sat down with resolution, I have always desisted from weariness. Sherlock
Holmes is a different matter. Things stick in the mind e.g. "Do you
remember the remarkable incident of the dog in the night-time?" "The
dog did nothing in the night-time." "That," said Sherlock Holmes, "is the
remarkable incident," Now I assert that the man who could write that
did know how to tell a story.
I have been pretty busy since I wrote last week; two days in Birming-
ham settling a silly industrial dispute needlessly wasted my time. If the
parties had been intelligent it could have been done in half an hour.
Between you and me, once you are outside the small number of really
first-class business men, the only possible explanation of their success is
the fact that they have only to compete with one another. I had an
amusing dinner with Lady Astor, where I sat next to the journalist Garvin.
You do not know what journalism can do by way of breeding egoism
until you have met him. He does not indicate opinions; he pronounces
oracles, and they are sometimes quite marvellous e.g. "The essence of the
Chinese problem is their lack of the British sense of right and wrong."
"Lincoln represents the manifest destiny of the ordinary American at
his best." I do not argue with such men. Duty demands that you draw
them on and obtain the maximum delight from their majestic progress,
"Never," said he, "have I ever felt so conscious of the hand of God in
British destiny as I did when the government decided upon a protective
tariff." Imagine this vast voice booming these gigantic conclusions to
twenty people who only by effort can prevent themselves from collapsing
in quite helpless laughter. Then Frida and I went to a jolly party at the
Russian embassy, where we met old George Moore, whom I had never
before seen. He is a different type of egotist — the esthetic type who
broods on his own introspective results. He told me he had never pub-
lished any book until he was sure (I) that it was in its way perfect (II)
that it had a definite contribution to make to aesthetic technique. He
thought Hardy, Meredith, Dickens, Fielding, unreadable. There were
exquisite moments in Flaubert and Pater; Balzac could observe, but
could not omit. Poets who battled with life lost their purity of gesture. He
regretted that I wrote about politics. "You have," he said, "a clear gift of
pointed phrase. Why waste it on so low an object." He had once been
invited to meet Bismarck but felt that his nerves could not stand it. On the
1366 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
other hand the mere presence of Manet in a room gave a sense of ex-
hilaration. He was interested in the new Russia as he felt that new and
keen impressions could be gained there. He had a happy life by always
denying the reality of what displeased him; so, he said, he could always
suppress a critic who disliked his work. A very happy old gentleman,
conscious that he was a classic, and talking, I am sure, in the hope that
his auditors kept notebooks so that the torch of his wisdom could be
handed down the ages. He asked me, with a graceful gesture whom
I admired most of living novelists, making an effective pause for the
reply. But I took a moment of artful reflection and said P. G. Wode-
house" which completely disconcerted him as he felt it quite out of
keeping with his character to descend to argue with one whose tastes
were so wholly unseemly. Frida said it was like watching a minuet on
a canvas of Watteau to listen to him, and I think the comparison is not
inapt to the scene.
One or two nice books I have managed to pick up. At long last, and
after some years' searching, a copy of Haureau s Philosophie scholastique
which I have wanted ever since I read it in your house and I think I
got a bargain at sixteen shillings. Then a superb copy of the Opera of
Covarravias the Spanish jurist. I hope one day to write of that 16th
century school and its work. Also a not so nice copy of the Italian and
English translations of Bodin, interestingly bound together in a vast
folio by one Edward Mendham, Gent, (so he signs himself) in 1662; and
a very interesting book on Montesquieu by the President Lavie called
Corpus poMques in which about 1760 he studies Montesquieu's relations
to his predecessors and brings out very well his obligations to Bodin. He
also mentions a number of Italian creditors, though not Vico, which I take
to mean that the latter was still hardly known in France in the second
half of the 18th century, since Lavie was clearly a scholar who knew his
way about things.
For the rest, I have been busy with a paper on Duguit for the memorial
number of a French law journal.1 I didn't find it easy to make it plain
that I thought he had done a useful critical job without contributing any-
thing of a positive kind to the evolution of doctrine. And I have been
putting words together on Tocqueville for a university volume always
with the sense that he is a really great man.
We all send you our love as always. And please remember my remark
last week that if some of your leisure went to written reflections on the
foundations of law it would be a great day for all of us.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
1 "La conception de 1'etat de Leon Duguit/' Archives de Philosophie du Droit
et de Sociologie Juridique, 1932, p. 121.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1367
Washington, D. C., Feb. 24, '82
My dear Laski; Of course the nomination of Cardozo delights me. I hear
that the committee reports unanimously for confirmation. I can't suppose
there is any doubt. (Later) I hear he is confirmed. I have no news but
books — McDougali, (I believe a successor of William James), World
Chaos, led me to Whiting Williams's Mainsprings of Men — emphasizing
at not too great length the weight of the imponderable, with working
men as with others — these two by myself. My boy is reading to me a
translation of The History of World Civilization by a German —
Schneider — Frankfurter put me on to it. I rather doubt if it is worth
the trouble. He seems to think that the Germans do or have done all
that is worth doing — so much so that when my lad read a sentence
about something done by a German poet, Kleist, I thought he was
presenting the son of God in a new light.
Much to my regret we have finished the 6 volumes of Sherlock Holmes.
So much better than his successors. I have made a note to inquire about
some books mentioned by you. Also I thank you for your Studies in Law
and Politics. I don't always agree with you but I generally do and
admire the learning and power of your presentation. Brandeis has been
having trouble with his throat, which has cut down his calls, but he was
here a few days ago and I don't think the trouble serious.
(Later) I have got Nevinson's Goethe from the Library. I would rather
read it than Schneider — who lays down as facts matters of neolithic
religion and many others with an absolutism that provokes doubts akin
to those I used to feel when White in an opinion pronounced some
generality as obvious. Also a book of likenesses Drawn from Life (the
title) coupled with interviews — one of me inter alios — not bad. I re-
member the author, S. J. Woolf, as pleasant.
Lest I forget it Mary wanted very particularly that I should tell you
how pleased she was by your remembering her and your message. You
have stood very high in her opinion since you were last here (very likely
earlier, but it has been brought to my attention lately).
Feb. 26. 1 go out to drive in a few minutes but must not keep this note
of affection longer. Affectionately yours, O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 8JIL82
My dear Justice: First and foremost, a very happy birthday to you. At
this time last year I was, I think, listening to your broadcast — an un-
forgettable moment.1 And certainly sometime next year I shall do all I can
to appear in 1720 and review the universe with you.
1 On Holmes's birthday the year before, he had delivered a short radio ad-
dress, responding to the felicitations of the American Bar Association and others.
1368 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
1 have been fearfully busy. I have, for my sins, had to take on the
chairmanship of the Faculty which involves a multitude of petty duties
of one sort and another, of the kind that the academic is said to like and,
if he is I, loathes like poison. But my colleagues insisted on my taking
it as the alternative to one of those men who cling by nature to the
glories of procedure. Then I have had the closing meetings of Scott's
committee on administrative law, a big job as I had to fight hard for im-
portant changes and in the end write a careful minute of dissent on the
English method of interpreting statutes. I enjoyed it all, as the minute
will, I think, show; but it was fearfully hard work. My fight was the old
one against regarding a judge as an automatic slot-machine into whom
you put the statute and from whom you get a construction in which there
is no articulate major premise. When the report comes along you will
see that I am supported not only by Lochner but also by a grand quo-
tation from Sir F. Pollock who have given me the means of a great
peroration;2 I even hope to attract support thereby from other members
of the Committee. Then I have had to write out a long lecture which
has to be published as a condition of delivery; and to do a paper in piam
memoriam Duguit for a French law journal. The latter was funny for as
it got itself written it turned out a somewhat devastating criticism of his
postulates secreted within the appropriate eulogies. Altogether it has been
a hard time. But I am off to Paris as soon as term is over and that is al-
ways a great refreshment to me.
One or two things of interest. I sat at a dinner the other night next to
Lord Atkin — the Lord of Appeal. He spoke with immense feeling about
you, especially of "The Path of the Law" 3 and said that when he was
a young man in Chambers Davey had told him to keep a close eye on all
your work. Also a long dinner with Sankey trying (I hope successfully)
to persuade him to set up a committee of enquiry into legal education in
England.4 I want, before I die, to get a law school of the quality of
Harvard in this country, and with the funds of the Inns of Court that can
be done if proper steps are taken. We also spent a jolly week-end in the
country with Arnold who, you may remember, came to see you in Wash-
ington when MacDonald was over in 1929. 5 He told us much of interest;
and what pleased me greatly was his eulogy of Stimson for whose
See Shriver, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, His Book Notices and Uncollected
Letters and Papers (1936), 142.
2 See Command Papers #4060, pp. 135-137.
8 Collected Legal Papers, 167.
* In August 1932, the Lord Chancellor appointed a Committee on Legal Edu-
cation under the Chairmanship of Lord Atkm. Laski was a member of the Com-
mittee which submitted its report in 1934. See Command Papers #4663.
5 Supra, p. 1186.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1369
integrity of mind I have always had a high regard. I also had an amusing
dinner at the French embassy where we fought over the question of the
French epigram and its quality, I was amazed at the French insistence
that their finest saying is Vauvenargues's "Great thoughts spring from the
heart"; I plumped for Pascal's "Partir, c'est mourir un peu" which seems
to me the more magnificent the more it is considered. The Ambassador
was the first Frenchman I have ever met who attacked Sainte-Beuve —
a thing which excited my horror. He put Vfflemain6 and Scherer above
him which seemed to me an impossible judgment altogether. Good as
they are, they lack the range and weight and poise of Sainte-Beuve.
I sympathise with all you say of Sherlock Holmes who is the only
detective about whom I can re-read. I think that is because Conan Doyle
created in him a character who really has an independent existence. Other
men's detectives are lay figures your interest in whom depends more on
the mystery itself; and when you know the solution you don't bother
about the man again. I don't think much of Felix's recommendation of
Schneider which the publisher gave me. It seemed to me a third rate
piece of bookmaMng. Of things I have read recently I had both amuse-
ment and instruction from F. L. Allen's Only "Yesterday (Harpers) —
a very elegant and pointed trifle. And a French law book, short but
good, by one Morin, La revolte des faits contre le code was good indeed.
It showed in a most interesting way how the facts of French life had so
outgrown the code that the purpose of simplification was no longer
served because the interpretative adjustment was less and less possible on
the original basis. Then I reread Acton's History of Freedom and thought
it really in the grand manner, big in conception and big in execution, the
kind of book which really opens vistas on every side. And I re-read, too,
for lecture-purposes, Carlyle's Cromwell with the feeling that if ever there
was a man in English history that is he. A noble book, written when
Carlyle must have been relatively free from indigestion and saw things
in a light fairly free from abdominal acidity.
Of book-buying none for myself — but one great adventure for the
school. I got on the track of a rumor that there was a great collection of
civil war (ours) tracts at Kimbolton Castle. I went down there and found
£000 all uncatalogued and many quite unknown. So I persuaded the
Governors of the School that it was a great thing to put them at the
disposal of students and that they were worth £700. They authorised
me to treat with the Duke of Manchester and I got them for £600 from
him. They are superb — 79 not in any catalogue and 143 not in the
6 Abel Francois Villemain (1790-1878), literary critic; author of Cours de
literature jrangam (1830). The French ambassador at this time was Aim6
Fleuriau,
1370 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
British Museum. I am making a careful list in my spare time and really
enjoying it. Don't you think that a good day — a real application of sic
uos non uobis?
Our love to you. Please tell Mary that while she keeps you well, I am
her humble slave. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., March 18, 1932
My dear Laski: You are in the middle of affairs and I am out of them
altogether. I find idleness life-giving — I get up late — have a motor
drive — this morning to Mount Vernon and back in an hour and a
quarter — easily brought down to an hour. After luncheon my secretary
reads to me and people call. I write the few letters that I attempt. I find
these come hard as I have told you before. Don't let it stop your writing,
I hope, though I hardly have the right to ask. My lad read to me C. 33.
Broad — The Mind and Its Place in Nature. I found it difficult to follow
and not worth bothering about — though he is sharp enough. All manner
of other things. We are just finishing The Double Heart about Mme. de
FEspinasse — rather good and written as if the author, Naomi Gwladis
Royde-Smith had had some experience in the business.
Wigmore has praised Stimson's My United States but I hardly believe
him. The "my" excites my prejudice — et superest ager as ground for
criticism, for Stimson is clever and can be very agreeable1 — perhaps
I may venture on. His name reminds me of the Secretary of State who
comes here from time to time and who certainly is very pleasant. Your
pamphlet on the Crisis and the Constitution has come and I am reading
it. Also Keynes, Essays in Persuasion — gifted cove — I suspect dogmatic
and unprepossessing but seeing things.
In short you amaze me by your activities and help me to realize that
I am finished — but I hardly do. I still enjoy life — but I must shut up.
Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 26.111.32
My dear Justice: This is the first breathing space I have had for a fort-
night. A visit to Glasgow, a sojourn in Manchester, and a long industrial
arbitration for the Co-operative people have overwhelmed me. The latter
at least had the merit (I should have said the last) that for the next
month I shall be able to recite backwards the wages and hours of the
boot and shoe operatives of England.
At least I have had time in trains and in dingy hotels at night to
read. There is so much to tell you on this theme. I warmly commend a
'Frederic Jesup Stimson (1855-1943), author, lawyer, and diplomat.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1371
book by one Guerlac called Les citations jrangaises which I imagine you
can get from Stechert in New York. It is a collection of French aphorisms
from the earliest times, and I have had some delightful hours with It.
One phrase alone, of Leon Blum, describing revolution as "Ugalite en
vacances" is almost worth the price of admission. It interested me to find
that La Fontaine and Moliere have easily contributed the most remark-
able dicta to the list; though I think the most distinguished are one or
two from Montesquieu and Chamfort — the former's "Les pires mesal-
liances sont celles du coeur* is, I think, magnificent.1 Then I have read
Vinet's Etudes sur Pascal — a great book, full of a great spirit; not the
judgment I should make, and omitting the part played by fear of the
unknown in the formation of Pascal's mind, but still a very moving per-
formance. Then a good essay on recent French jurisprudence by Mile,
Piot, in which she very skilfully takes to pieces Duguit, Jeze, Hauriou et
al. Her conclusion, that salvation is to be found in St. Thomas I find less
appealing than her analysis but she is a good logical analyst with some-
thing of the pungency of Morris Cohen. I also enjoyed a Life of Robert
Emmet, the Irish revolutionary, by R. W. Postgate. It is an extraordinarily
moving tale, and explains the character of Anglo-Irish relations with great
ability. Also it told me a thing I never knew before that McNally,2 who
always appeared with J. P. Curran in the trials of their patriots as their
junior counsel, was throughout a spy in the pay of Dublin Castle. He
even communicated to government the information afforded him by
Emmet in their relations as client and counsel. That eighteenth century
Ireland leaves a taste in one's mouth nastier than any other episode in
modem British history. Postgate tells the story admirably — no eloquence
but a simple record of fact which is twice as damning as adjectival em-
phasis would have been. And he makes it clear that once any govern-
ment neglects profound grievance there is no infamy to which it will
not be driven to stoop in order to conceal the wrong it is doing. I have
also dipped into a vast work sent me by Louis Boudin on your court —
some useful matter, but I should have said a many-headed book since
(I) your constitution makes judicial review inescapable, and (II) if the
Court goes one way and Boudin another that isn't usurpation but the
divergency of view upon the nature of the good, which is inevitable in
any society. I think it lamentable that so many of your bretheren [sic]
have been closed minds dealing in dubious absolutes; but I did not feel
that Boudin indicted them successfully for any crime except the closed
mind. And I feel difficulty in bringing in a verdict against them when I
1 The aphorism **Le fire de toutes les mesalliances est celle du co&ur** was
Sebastien Chamfort's (1741-1794), not Montesquieu's.
2 Leonard MacNally (1752-1820) was informer against many other revolu-
tionaries than Emmet.
1372 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
know that I should have done just the opposite and been charged by
them as Boudin charges them. The thing that destroys the world is the
inability of men to realise that they really are not infallible.
Someone sent me the report of your birthday dinner.3 I wish I could
have been there. I was glad to see that the English bar spoke proper
words fittingly. I was very moved by a note to me from a quite unknown
English barrister the other day saying that he had bought your Collected
Papers second-hand and was so inspired by the "Path of the Law" that
he felt impelled to write and thank me for having got them together. And
I was pleased beyond words when a reviewer in the Times of my recent
volume of essays drew special attention to the one on your political
philosophy and said that it was "a superb portrait of the ideal judicial
mind." 4 You see that a prophet is not without honour even outside his
own country. I press again my yearning that some of your leisure should
go towards writing at your ease — especially on the foundations of law.
And sometime I want to tempt you into telling me what you think of our
English rules of statutory construction. I have written in the Donoughmore
report a careful memorandum to the effect that they are too narrow —
that from the words of the Statute itself it is not effectively possible to
gather the intent of the legislator. I got a good deal of support on the
committee from the civil servants and the members of Parliament, but
Leslie Scott and the lawyers, somewhat to my surprise, seemed to think
that there was no problem save one of drafting, which I find it impossible
to believe. It seems to me that cases like Priestly and Fowler5 in its im-
pact on the theory of liability show clearly that no amount of good
drafting can prevent a strong judge like Bramwell from reading a
statute in the context of his unconscious presumptions about the wisdom
of the legislation involved. And once questions of reasonableness come
in, whether under our system or yours, I think it is imperative to guide
the judge either by the kind of brief Brandeis put in in Mutter v. Oregon9
or by affixing to the Statute a memorandum of explanation which defines
beyond the compulsion of the operative words of the Act itself the pur-
3 At its Annual Dinner on March 8 the Federal Bar Association had paid
birthday tribute to Holmes. A message from the English bar was read at the
dinner. See 1 Federal Bar Association Journal 34 ( March 1932 ) ,
4 In the Times Literary Supplement for March 17, 1932, p. 181, the reviewer
spoke of Laskfs "masterly discussion of the political philosophy of Mr. Justice
Holmes which few Americans and possibly no other Englishman could have
written/7
5 3 M. & W. 1 (1837). The case established that a servant may not recover
from his employer compensation for damages which he suffers as a result of
the negligence of a fellow servant. The opinion in the case was delivered by
Lord Abinger.
6 208 U.S. 412 (1908).
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1373
pose it is intended to serve. But I shall send you the report when it
appears next month and hear where and why I am wrong.
I have abstained from book-buying this last month as I am off to Paris
for ten days on April 7 and propose to have an orgy there. I did bid at
Auction for a grand copy of the Selden Society's publications, for which
my heart yearns, but it went far beyond my possibilities.
Our love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, S.IV.32
My dear Justice: Your letter was very welcome. Be sure that I shall go
on writing. For it's the next best thing to talking to you, and so long as
I have an occasional note from Eye Street to say that you are well I am
more than content.
I have had a really pleasant week, free from all cares except a couple
of lectures to workingmen. The latter were interesting as there was a
strong group of communists among them, and answering their questions
was a grim job. It amused me to watch their anxiety to make the best of
both worlds e.g. (I) how dare the bourgeois state suppress working-class
freedom of expression (II) Russia is entitled to suppress bourgeois free-
dom of expression because that threatens her safety. Pressed by me on
the lines of cet animal est mechant, the answer was that the proletariat
being, historically, the rising class, it is entitled to different principles.
I had a happy time with them. Otherwise, I have been reading quietly,
writing a little, and seeing friends at dinner. Last Monday we spent with
Sprague, the American adviser to the Bank of England. He was very
gloomy about the outlook, mainly because it seems so difficult to persuade
the nations that freedom of trade is their one secure road to survival. And
I could not, I fear, comfort him. Then an amusing lunch with Garvin the
journalist who was so magnificently ex cathedra in his pronouncements
that I told him he could make a fortune by giving lessons in the nature
of infallibility to prospective papal candidates.1 Some of his judgments
were too magnificent not to quote. (I) Every American feels instinctively
a special kinship with the English people. (II) What has made Great
Britain what she is is tibe fact that her business men have always been
passionate idealists. (Ill) In the last nine months there has been a moral
renaissance in England — otherwise the income-tax returns are inexplica-
ble. (IV) The special mission of England is to assure fair play by and
among the other nations, imagine these judgments delivered by a great
bull of a man, without a smile, and with the earnestness of a prophet in
1Laski wrote of Garvin in the Daily Herald; reprinted in 341 Living Age
514 (February 1932).
1374 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
ancient Israel. Then I went to dinner with old Birrell, now over eighty,
and had, as always, a delightful time. He began by saying that he was
in sackcloth and ashes. He had always unduly belittled Matthew Arnold.
He now thought him a great essayist and a great poet. He regretted the
revival of Tennyson, who was a poet for milkmaids — pretty verse meant
to be hymned by a choir in a country church. He thought Hazlitt re-
mained the supreme causeur among essayists and "My first acquaintance
with poets" his supreme causerie. He asked me why it is (I could not
answer him) that conveyancers, who have so marvellous an experience
of precision In English, almost always write books which are heavy and
confused in style. The only exception he knew was Challis on Real
Property which had, he thought, exquisite limpidity. He thought criminal
lawyers had a good sense of humour probably by compensation as a
refreshment from their job. He talked a good deal about Sir William
Anson whom he compared to an ostrich — in the distance the body
looked most dignified, but when you got near the head was buried in the
sand. I told him some tales of Vinogradoff and he said that Maitland once
brought V. to dinner to Morley's. The latter said something about chan-
cery lawyers and this started off V. on a monologue about the early
history of chancery which lasted for half an hour. They all looked on
helplessly until he finished when Morley broke in with some talk about
an aphorism of Goethe's which led V. into another vast monologue on the
influence of Goethe on Russian philosophy. Birrell in despair led the con-
versation round to electoral talk (the election of 1895); but this only
started off Vinogradoff on the philosophy of English freedom and its
probable relation to the Protestant tradition. Birrell said that Morley was
furious, Rosebery aloof in aristocratic hauteur, and Maitland grinning like
an Italian circus man whose well-intentioned bear has got off the chain
and really thinks he is pleasing everybody by gloomy pawings among
the audience. Can't you see the picture?
In the way of reading I commend to you warmly Sir Arthur Salter's
Recovery (Century) the best book on the world situation since Keynes
of thirteen years ago. It is a real masterpiece of wisdom. I have been
reading also with great pleasure Marcel's Tocqueville, a good and re-
vealing book. And I have had much pleasure out of Chassin's Genie de la
revolution, an old book — the seventies — but one which had not previ-
ously come my way. It explains and describes the atmosphere of 1789
better than any other book I know; and it is particularly good in its
picture of provincial feeling.
I was moved by the death of F. J. Turner the historian. I knew him
intimately at Harvard, and learned a great deal from him. No one I ever
met had a sweeter nature; and I always thought that his insight into
1932] HOLMES TO LASKI 1375
the conditions which have made the American pattern were more pro-
found than any his contemporaries showed. I hadn't seen him for twelve
years. Yet he remains in my memory as one of the great experiences of
my Harvard days.
I am off to Paris on Thursday. So 1 hope to tell you of conquests
next week.
Our love to you. Keep well. Maybe the decline in Atlantic fares may
enable me to steal over one day if I get a windfall.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C.? April 9, 1932
My dear Laski: Your letters are such a pleasure to me that I tremble to
think of their being interrupted by my failure to come up to them. You
will remember and allow for my difficulties. Inter alia I have gone back to
Virgil. A few years ago I reread the Eclogues, the Georgics and the Brst
six books of the Aeneid. I like to have a translation on hand and had
none after book 6. Now I have one and my secretary reads the English
while I read the Latin. But this is at odd moments — a break in the
serious business of murder cases — but alas there are few good ones.
Sherlock Holmes is not equalled by later tales. I think you recommended
the best: The Lost Gallows— (Carr). That keeps the tone throughout
I reread The Moonstone (W. Collins) the other day and thought it the
best of all. Of course I read your political pamphlet with proper awe
in the presence of things I know not of. I am insisting to myself that I
have outlived duty and have a right to be idle. I greatly enjoy being so.
The notion of writing recollections and reflections I abhor. I might at-
tempt a statement of law in my own terms — with no rights or duties,
but I have only a few sentences in my head and I don't want to work.
Is not a man of 91 free? Cheer me up and don't give me any damned
exhortations. But I am very grateful for recommendations for reading —
not in German except in extremist exigency. English much preferred
because mainly I am read to by my secretary. It would be good, if you
made a little list. But I have no right to bother you and don't mean to,
A good many people come in the afternoons. The other day for the
first time of recent days Mrs. Longworth (Alice Roosevelt) very pleasant
— and at intervals several good-lookers. 7 cherry trees have come out
around the Potomac basin — but today when they should be expanding
it rains hard — and I fear the result. I do so enjoy the successive flower-
ings of the spring. I am afraid you don't care quite so much for them. No
high thoughts for today — but affectionate ones from
Jour affectionate 0. W. H.
1376 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
Devon Lodge, 17.1V. 82
My dear Justice: I got back yesterday from ten most happy days In
Paris. The first three I spent with the International Institute of Public
Law. Of those I met there, Kelsen of Cologne, certainly the first German
jurist of the day, was the most Interesting. A profound philosophic mind,
quick, agile, and widely read. He interested me greatly by his comments
on our friends. Pound he rated on the whole low; "a mass of undigested
learning," he said. He thought well of Morris Cohen with the limitation
that he had an evil tendency to score dialectic points. His great God
was Maitland whom he — wisely — never ceased to praise. He knew you
well through the German translation of The Common Law and asked
why so few of your successors at Harvard had seen the necessity for
pursuing your combination of the comparative-historical method with
a system of hypotheses. Of the others I liked much a Spaniard who was
no great shakes but most charming and at dinner gave me a great account
of the night of the King's abdication when they did not know from one
hour to another whether he would go without bloodshed or not.1 Then
I spent two long mornings with Meyerson the philosopher — a really
grand old fellow. We fought over many things; but he pleased me greatly
by his bitter contempt for the neo-Thomist revival and his criticisms of
Eddington, Jeans et al for trying to get religion back by the side-door
of the new physics. I was surprised at one or two things he said: he is
one of the first men in the world in the history of science and he took
the view unhesitatingly that Leibnitz had the right on his side in the
controversy with Newton over the calculus. He spoke with much ap-
preciation of Dewey's later works but with a good deal of doubt over
his earlier. I was amused too at the anger which Bergson aroused in him
— Tapotre de la reaction contre le rationalisme — le pierre de la neo-
Catholicisme — lui petit juif. And when I left and asked him what
English books he would like me to send him, he pleased and surprised me
by asking for P. G. Wodehouse. He had recently discovered him and was
in the proper frame of mind. "You English," he said, "are the only people
in the world with a nonsense-literature which a man can read with
pleasure." Then I had a jolly evening at Chevalley's, the old diplomat,
where I met Andre Gide whom I liked, but did not understand, Maurois,
whom I understood,2 but thought altogether too charming, and a clever
young fellow named Andre Billy who has just written a really good life of
Diderot, Maurois is the real Frenchman who used as a petit abbe to
1 King Alfonso had left Spain in April 1931, following a bloodless revolution
by the Republicans.
2 Laski wrote of Andr<§ Maurois in the Daily Herald; reprinted in 344 Living
Age 332 (June 1933).
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1377
decorate an eighteenth century salon. He never says anything profound,
even by accident; but everything he says is charming, and nearly every-
thing is perfectly phrased. I also had dinner with our Ambassador,3 a
clever fellow but something of a Metternich, with his nose in all sorts of
dark corners sniffing for scents which are not there. I thought the France
he knew gravely limited in character; and if I were our Foreign Office
1 should feel very unhappy at the limitations upon the kind of opinion
upon which he could report. He was, also, far too anti-German for my
liking, in that sense rather a hang-over from a dead age. I met, also, a
very attractive young Harvard professor named Friedrich4 who has just
published (I have not seen it) an annotated edition of Althusius — at
least an interesting thing to do. But he was a iittle solemn and portentous
and did not quite like my teasing him about attaching momentous im-
portance to minutiae. He had the right views about Mcllwain and
Lowell; but he had an immense, almost idolatrous worship of Pound,
built, I gathered, on Pound's capacity for the footnote. And when I teased
him about this I had the sense that I was committing sacrilege. I told
him that if Pound found that it was necessary to say that the bathroom
had made large developments in America he would put in references
(a) to the Sanitary News (b) to the Plumbers Journal and (c) to the
Commerce Department's report on the increased manufacture of lead-less
glaze together with a note to the effect that there was a Czech thesis on
the sociological significance of the American bathroom which he had
not seen.
Sir, I beg to report that the hunting of books was most happily effec-
tive. I got a beautiful copy of Perrault's Vie des hommes illustres which
explains how the 17th century looked to itseE It begins with Richelieu
and ends with a most charming note on my hero Jacques Callot Then
I got some attacks on the philosopJies of the 18th century which are by
way of being rare, especially a defence of St. Bartholomew by the Abbe"
Caveirac. I bought a nice edition of Descartes which gives the house, as
Frida says, the air of a super-tax payer and a good collection of the
Voyages imaginaires which the Abbe" Prevost edited — a thing I had
long coveted as I believe they are very influential as the precursors of
the Lettres persanes and Rousseau's two Discourses. I picked up also
some of the answers to Pascal written by the Jesuits of the time — such
as I have read, distinguished rather for mental agility than for meeting
8 William George Tyrrell (1866-1947), first Baron Tyrrell, was British Am-
bassador in Paris from 1928 to 1934.
*Carl Joachim Friedrich (1901- ) had been in the Department of Gov-
ernment at Harvard since 1926. Laski reviewed Bis edition of the Politico.
Methodice Digesta of Althusius in 4 New Statesman and Nation (N.S.) 186
(Aug. 13, 1932).
1378 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
the point. Of modern things the best I got were a long run of Cournot5
— a remarkable fellow for his day — and some of old H. C. Carey's
stuff which in England has become very dear. It was happy hunting, and
the French booksellers, as always, were a joy. They treat one as a friend.
One old lady, Mme. Belin, who has the best shop in Paris, gave me the
run of it as though I was in my own study and showed almost as much
pleasure when I found something I wanted as if I had been a millionaire
to whom she was making a good sale.
Well! My love to you, my dear Justice. I am eager to hear how things
go with you. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Devon Lodge, 23.IV.S2
My dear Justice: A grand letter from you followed on the heels of mine
going Westward. You ask for names of books — and I assume that you
want a combination, like Artemus Ward, of amusement and instruction.
I read this week a life by Ernest Kantorowicz of Frederick II (Stupor
Mundi] which I think would tickle your palate; and a reaUy amusing and
exhilarating study of Mme. de Steel by R. McNair Wilson which set
Frida and me discussing for hours. Then I got much instruction from an
admirably written book on Hume by John Laird which I commend very
warmly — not the usual academic angle, and, in addition, some fresh
and original material. I have also read with great interest a new life of
Fontenelle by J. F. Carre (Alcan) which I think would give you a good
deal of interest. It explains awfully well the transition between the 17th
and the 18th century; and it shows — a thing one too little realises —
how profound was the naturalistic and humanist tradition which went on
growing from Rabelais to the philosophers behind the elaborate fagade
of the classical tradition and the religious revival. It is a rather big
book, but I think one can honestly say that there isn't a word in it
unnecessary to the purpose. In the way, also, of what the French call
the "vie romancee" I enjoyed a life of Brissot de Warville by J. F. Primo
— really amusing, full of novelty to me, and a very striking picture of
the journalistic dessous of the 18th century. The only defect is a tendency
on tie author's part to be somewhat excessively intimate with his reader,
rather like a man who will whisper in your ear instead of speaking to
the company at large. But emphatically a jolly book about a really
interesting creature.
As this has been the last week of my vacation I have spent it idling very
pleasantly. We went to hear a discussion on the state of the world by
eminent economists and business men which amused me greatly. One
5Antoine Augustin Cournot (1801-1877); philosophical mathematician and
economist best known as a theorist of chance.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1379
man read out a programme of the measures necessary for salvation and
explained that it was impossible to hope they would be carried out.
Another saw the only hope in Russia which he had not visited and did not
propose to visit in case he suffered disillusion. Then came the piece de
resistance in which a most eminent business man explained that the woes
of the world had come because we had forgotten Christianity; by which it
appeared, to our astonishment, that he meant the gold standard. Then an
eminent economist suggested (I) that America should go Free Trade
(II) that the world should disarm and (III) that the working class should
accept a thirty per cent cut in wages. At that point we went home feeling,
as John Bright once said, that the worst of great thinkers is that they will
not think greatly. We also had one of the most amusing dinners I have
had in many a day with Behrman, the American playwright. He has
been working at Hollywood and his picture of its habits was just one
glorious farce. He told us how a film company decided to do a movie
for children. After various attempts none of their scenario writers could do
an adequate dialogue. So a man was got in from another Company on
the condition (I) that he was to have two thousand dollars a week for
writing the scenario. (II) As the other writers had made their efforts
towards the text their names were to appear with his on the screen; in
consideration of which, as he was to do the work, he was to receive
an extra 500 dollars a week. When the first night came, to his utter
amazement, his name was the only one on the screen and not one word of
the text was his! He told us also how his company had bought the
screen rights of an English play for one hundred thousand dollars; when
they got it over, they realised that as all its episodes represented English
history it would not be very intelligible to an American audience. So they
decided to scrap everything but the title and to fill it in with episodes
from American history instead. After dinner he introduced us to a "star"
who was in the hotel. She asked me what I did, I explained. She said
"Gee! Isn't that a job that taxes your bean?" I said modestly that I did
my best. She then said "Gosh! I guess I should register fatigue," and then
lapsed into complete and panicked silence. I wish I were an artist and
could draw for you the marvellous expression of pained astonishment on
her face. We had one other adventure worth recording. We were invited
to dinner by a friend who gave us an address with the number 5. When
we got there we found 5a, 5b, 5c and took the risk of 5b. We rang and
the door opened by some electric arrangement. In the hall was a printed
notice inviting you to walk up to the studio on the first floor. We did
so and found two complete strangers seemingly engaged in a most
passionate love scene — the lady in a dressing gown having her last overt
resistance broken down. They waved us to chairs and our feeble protests
of error went unremarked until the lady suddenly said "Joe, I think we
1380 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
shall have to do that scene again" and we were allowed to steal away to
5b. But it was very difficult to recover serenity of mind.
And lastly I must report that I received from New Mexico a request for
an explanation of my habits of work and words of counsel and encourage-
ment to young students who wish to emulate my example! I am not often
baffled; but that did really stump me.
Our love to you. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 1.V.32
My dear Justice: A week full of the alarums and excursions which al-
ways accompany the beginning of term. Masses of new students, unend-
ing committees, and the fatigue of getting back into a half-resented
routine. But there are incidents which water the torrid earth. Imagine an
American student, to whom I had commended the reading of Kelsen's
Allgemeine Staatslehre during the vacation, "Oh baby! some thinker
that!" Or, again, the Spanish professor who finds me unwilling to be
positive upon certain points of doctrine and says that, in Germany, a
savant never says "perhaps." I really enjoy it all; and when, as this term,
the students in my department sweep up all the prizes in the university
I find myself clucking like a really contented hen.
I went down to Oxford over the week-end and had an interesting two
days there. I am tempted to the generalisation that, in my themes, Oxford
breeds elegant learning rather than real profundity; and the conversation
implicitly assumes that Oxford is the centre of the universe. There is a
vacancy in the Wardenship of All Souls; and it was amusing to find that
one or two eminent public men are being considered for it on the basis
that of course they would be happy to give up their political work for the
chance of so profound a position. I met a number of the law dons at
lunch at Arthur Goodhart's. There were a most pleasant crowd; but I
should have said very emphatically that they did not even begin to com-
pare with a random sample taken from Harvard or Yale. They had more
elegant and cultivated minds; but they had nothing like the thoroughness
which a Harvard man brings to his job, and I should have said that they
tended to lack the speculative faculty. And they all suffer, as lawyers,
from an incredible regard for the House of Lords, and an inability to
realise that the Common Law lives also in other climes. It was, I thought,
characteristic that not one of them, except Goodhart (who is American)
read the U.S. Supreme Court reports; and when I said, talking of the
judicial function, that you and Brandeis had shown a profounder ap-
preciation of Heydon's case1 than any of our judges, that, as a general
*3 Rep. 8 (1584). In this decision Coke formulated the basic principles of
statutory interpretation to which the common law thereafter stood committed.
LASKI TO HOLMES 1381
rule, American canons of statutory interpretation were ampler for their
purpose than the British, there was a smile of polite incredulity which
grew out of an ignorance I regard as lamentable. I believe, you know,
that universities ought really to be built in great towns. To cut off the
student of humanities from the main stream of affairs is to set him con-
templating his own navel with equanimity; and it really isn't good for
him.
But the bookshops were a feast. I picked up a grand folio of Suarez's
De Legibus; before I only had a poor modern reprint. I found Forbonnais's
critical study of the Eprit des lots2 — a very interesting document as a
kind of link between Montesquieu and the Physiocrats, and a nice copy of
Mariana, all for a pound and all giving me great pleasure. You would
have been amused at a theological library on sale there — of a well-
known preacher. It was in part a collection of sermons — about 2000
volumes — and in part a collection of intimate gossip about royal fami-
lies. I assume that the canon read the second and fished about in the
third for passages suitable to them. I was amused to find a letter of his
to Queen Victoria of regret at the death of the Duke of Clarence printed
in a private obituary of the latter. It was some ten pages long and was a
quite literal, unashamed and unacknowledged translation of one of Bos-
suet's funeral orations; and the memoir said that no letter moved the
Queen — no wonder — quite so much and that it was the reason she
made the gent, resident canon at Westminster. I felt tempted to publish
the story as a study in the art of gathering rosebuds; but as the son is
still alive I came to the conclusion that a quiet chuckle was ample reward.
In the way of reading one or two things are worth noting. The new
Oxford edition of Hume's Correspondence is a delight — two volumes
fully on a par with the very best of Horace Walpole. The letters to
Adam Smith and those anent the row over Rousseau are simply fascinat-
ing. That led me to a new book on him by Professor Laird which is very
well done and even better written. I also read an admirable novel by
Beatrice Kean Seymour called Mistresses and Servants which I commend
to you and the first volume of a very interesting study of Taine by Andre
Chevrillon. Honesty compels me to add that I tried to read the new
stories of Kipling3 and was compelled to say Ichabod though Frida as-
sures me that I am wrong and that the old magic is still there. Finally I
must mention an old book though new to me, Le salon de lime. Helveiius
by A. Guillois which is like an elegant minuet.
I went to the private view of the Royal Academy — three miles of
a The title of the work of Francois Ve~mon de Forbonnais has not been ascer-
tained; see Carcassonne, Montesquieu et U probleme de la constitution fran*
gaise au XVIII^ siecle (1926), 127-129.
8 Limits and 'Renewals (1932).
1382 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
pictures of which two only — one by Orpen and one by an unknown
youth — struck me as significant. The portraits were intolerable, and the
landscape tried to be realistic by being photographic. And I read that
the President thinks no other nation could produce so notable an exhibi-
tion! O God!
My love to you, dear Justice. When do you trek to Beverly Farms?
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., May 3, 1932
My dear Laski: The only things of which I can tell you are books that I
have read or more or less listened to. One of the last is Spengler's 2
volume (translated) The Decline of the West. I read volume 1 with a
dictionary when it came out, but the translation makes it easier — though
it is not always easy — and comparisons with the State of Egypt under
the — th Dynasty, Rome under — , Arabia in X A.D. &c &c convey
nothing to me. He certainly is an able and learned man — but I can't
measure his pretentions. In view of his suggestion that philosophy is
the insignificant reaction of a given personality, varying with the makeup,
I hardly understand his ambition to make the philosophy of Germany —
and I hardly can doubt that he has an abnormally swelled head. Have you
views about him? We have just begun Mcllwain's Growth of Political
Thought in the West — sent by Felix. Stories by Locke who I think has
some charm. Yesterday we drove out to an apple orchard with 7000 apple
trees in flowers — which was pretty fine. And today at last Cardozo
(my successor) came to luncheon — with his beautiful face and nature.
So I idle along and expect to go to Beverly Farms on June 8. They have
been putting an elevator into my house there — so that I still can sleep
upstairs and shan't have to receive people in my bedroom. I think more
or less on death but don't worry and seem at present likely to last for
some time. Affectionately yours, O, W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 8.V.32
My dear Justice: I am sending you separately our Report on Ministers'
Powers which may, I think, interest you, at any rate to glance over, as
most of it is the work of Leslie Scott and myself; and I venture to hope
that the note of dissent I was driven to write will command your assent.
That was one of the few points on which Scott and I could not agree. He
seemed to feel that judicial interpretation was solely a matter of good
drafting; and I believe that, schooled by you, I belong to a wiser tradition.
I have had one of those busy weeks upon which one looks back at the
end and wonders to what exactly it amounts. Committees, lectures, the
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1383
Indian students annual dinner, the dinner of the Rational Press Associa-
tion. The latter was made interesting by a really fine speech from J. M.
Robertson who contributed to me really fascinating memories of Kingdon
Clifford and Bradlaugh. I should much like to know where the militant
secularism of the working-class, to which Bradlaugh used to appeal, has
gone. So far as I can make out that kind of fighting spirit, which used
to read Tom Paine's Age of Reason by the hundred thousand, makes
little appeal. Yet the need for a militant temper in the religious field is
just as great as ever. If the fight is stopped for one day whether in
education, or Sabbatarianism or what not, you find the clergy creeping
back to its old positions. Robertson's picture of Bradlaugh hissed in the
House of Commons by men who later fought for the honour of being
pallbearers at his funeral was very arresting. He also told how, as a young
man, brought up in a pious Scottish home, he had heard Kingdon
Clifford lecture to a workingrnen's Sunday lecture society and came away
feeling that a new universe had opened before his eyes. It was impressive
to hear him say that no man he had met since seemed to him to have
embodied so completely the ideal of the scientific temper as Clifford.
Robertson, then a printer's apprentice, wrote to him for books and
advice on study; and for three years Clifford directed his reading as a
teacher might the work of a disciple for this unknown boy whom he
was never actually to meet. The story moved me profoundly; the kind
of thing that gives an extra sweetness to life.
I had one visitor this week whom I wish you could have seen, for he
might have been a character out of a P. G. Wodehouse novel He literally
bounced into my room and announced that he was from Minneapolis.
He had been reading some of my articles in Harpers, and felt (yes, Sir)
that I had a message for the middle West. I must go out there at once
and put my story over and (yes, sir) it would sure go big. OH! baby! I
was some thinker, and he wasn't going to pass through this little burg
without shaking me by the hand. There was a ladies* circle in Minneapolis
which would sure be proud to listen to my exposition of the deeper and
higher truths. His wife was a deep thinker and a follower of the great
Bahai movement. He could not explain it himself as he was just a plain
business man who made (yes, sir) the finest ladies' corset in the finest
factory in the United States. But his wife was a deep thinker and had
already given eleven addresses to Congresses of women's societies in
America, seven to state-wide assemblies and four to nation-wide. His
wife felt that my work was lacking in the deeper spirituality, but, say,
I had a kind of cutting wisecrack which she sure did appreciate. Please
imagine me reeling before the impact of this terrific barrage, bleating
feebly that he was very kind, being smitten heartily on the shoulder to
emphasize each point so that no sooner had I swayed back from one
1384 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
blow than I was swaying again forward. I was nearly ill with suppressed
laughter, and yet I could not help being touched by the man's simple
pride in his wife's achievement. Evidently for him she was a great per-
son; and he wanted to talk about her under cover of delivering an invita-
tion. He stayed an hour, during which my colleague Ginsberg, who is
Professor of Sociology,1 drifted in. "Say, Professor of Sociology. Dr.
Ginsberg, I want to say to you that that sure is a deep subject.
is very strong on sociology. She says that the United States
'
needs to give more attention to it. She told the Women's Congress at
Saint Louis that we needed to think sociologically if we were to get out
of the depression." Can you see this little preux chevalier going home to
tell Mrs. - how the two English professors were very greatly im-
pressed by her way of looking at the universe and how happy he would
be when she purred a sentence of content. But he really ought to have
met P. G. Wodehouse.
Of books one pleasant find, a grand copy of the Oceana which be-
longed to old Tucker, the gloomy dean of Gloucester,2 and a rare little
attack on monarchy by Fortin which is one of the few really radical
productions of the Fronde. But I have mostly been reading the wholly
delightful new edition (Oxford: by Greig) of Hume's Letters, many
wholly new, and most in full for the first time. They are grand; they make
Horace Walpole look like five cents. I conjure you by your belief in the
right to pleasure to get them quickly. And they are grandly edited.
Our love to you. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., May 15, 1932
My dear Laski: My secretary tells me that by a rough calculation we
have read 4,500,000 words since we got here — some of them just buzzed
through my head. Do speak ill of that accursed Spengler, Decline of the
West. It is not lawful to know as much as he assumes to know. Per contra
this p.m. we began Sir A. Salter — Recovery which I like very much — -
though I don't think the now unfashionable Laissez-Faire has been dis-
posed of yet
Wodehouse is a joy every time — we even have reread some volumes.
I expect to go to Beverly Farms on June 8 — and drive there at once
from Boston on the 9th. I suppose I shall find an elevator put in. I am not
allowed to walk upstairs. I am enjoying my idleness vastly. I think of
death, but don't worry. Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
1 Morris Ginsberg ( 1889- ) , Professor of Sociology in the University of
London since 1929; author of Reason and Unreason in Society (1947).
2Josiah Tucker (1712-1799), economist and theologian whose critical supe-
rior, Bishop Warburton, is said to have considered that the Dean made a reli-
gion of his trade and a trade of his religion.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1385
Devon Lodge, 16.V.32
My dear Justice: The week-end was made sweet by a delightful letter
from you. I am so grateful, for to have a glimpse of what you are doing
and thinking is really important to me. I envy you the lunch with
Cardozo. He is a beautiful nature in every sense of the word.
I have had a full week. Dinner with Sankey to discuss the details of
this government committee on legal education. I think I shall get it out
of him, and even persuade him to appoint some of the people who are
likely to do a real job. It will be grand if it actually comes off; for though
Westbury when he was Lord Chancellor saw the need of it nothing has
really been done consciously to plan the matter, and the amount of waste
in the present system of things is appalling. Then I went to a long dis-
cussion of the Labour Party executive to advise them on necessary con-
stitutional change — an interesting job in which I found much more
sympathy for the things I regard as urgent than I hoped. I was very
amused in trying to persuade them of the need for a smaller and more
integrated cabinet to find that my critics were the politicians who might
be in a cabinet of say twenty the next time Labour is in but would
certainly not find a place in a cabinet of a dozen, which is the proper
size for the problems involved. Then I spoke to a big teachers conference
on the relation between the schools and the universities in which I was
fascinated by the clear fact that for the teachers they were natural
enemies and that the methods of collaboration I had come to propose
were almost a new way of life for them. The whole atmosphere was a
curious and interesting comment on the aloofness of the universities
from the real problems that confront them. Their well-being depends
largely on the schools; and they have never really thought through what
the relationship ought to be in order to make it a creative one. On top
of this Abraham Flexner came to dinner and we had a grand talk out
of which two main themes emerged which are, I think, worth putting
down: (I) the harm done to education by Dewey and his followers in
telling teachers that the child ought to study the thing it finds pleasant,
which has the result of making effort seem an evil on the ground that it is
unpleasant. In the result the student fails to learn the need of that
organised concentration of mind which gives understanding because as
soon as it is difficult it becomes unpleasant. (II) We agreed also that
the main difference between people lies in the capacity for abstraction.
The weakness e.g. of the uneducated lies in the fact that they see all
problems in terms of persons. So that a quarrel or a dislike makes them
the enemy of an idea where education ought to reach that point where
the personal can be transcended into an abstraction, e.g. I remain a Re-
publican even though Mr. Hoover did not make me a member of the
1386 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
Law Enforcement Commission; or, "I do not condemn American civilisa-
tion" (the keynote of most comment at this moment) even though I am
horror-struck at the Lindbergh tragedy.1
In the way of reading, some interesting things. Mcllwain's book,
which the Harvard Law Review sent me,2 is very good; less I think in
the earlier than in the later period. Its weakness seems to me the
separation of a body of doctrine from the living world to which it be-
longed; and, at times, an excessive interest in minutiae to the exclusion
of the big problems. Sometimes, also, I disagree with the emphasis. I
should, for instance, give more space to the Counciliar movement than he
on the ground that though the movement did not give birth to new ideas
it gave first-rate significance to views which were of little importance
when they were first put forward. I think he is very good on Fortescue,
and quite unquestionably right as against Holdsworth on Hobbes. Alto-
gether I should regard it as the most important book of its kind since
Gierke, and a credit to American scholarship. Then I read a most amusing
and delightful book on the Prince Consort by Bolitho — a little in the
Strachey manner, but full of little sidelights which are attractive. And,
for work purposes, the official biography of Sir R. Peel. I am doing an
essay on him for a friend's volume on the Victorian age3 and have been
quite fascinated by the casuistical question of whether Peel was justified
in his action over Catholic Emancipation and the Corn Laws. The docu-
ments have convinced me that my earlier views are mistaken and that
he should have resigned. But you shall see the essay in September and
tell me what impression it makes upon you.
In the way of book-hunting I have not much to report. I found a pretty
little collection of 17th century answers to Hobbes made by Groom
Robertson the philosopher and worth the five pounds I paid for it; and a
curious set of essays by Freron, the enemy of Voltaire, in the third volume
of which there is a very Interesting series of essays on Montesquieu
mostly by other hands one or two of which have acuteness and all of
which are most revealing testimony to the amazing impact he made on his
generation. And I must not forget to tell you what I regard as my pretty
discovery. Among the Mazarinades there is one solitary republican tract
printed at Bordeaux. I have never made out why it was solitary. All the
other tracts are pro-monarch but hostile to the particular advisers of
the King. Now I have found that the reason is that the tract was English
propaganda. It was written in London, translated into French there, and
shipped by Cromwell to Bordeaux as a means of causing trouble at the
1 The kidnapping of the Lindbergh child had occurred in March; on May 12
the child's body had been found.
2 Reviewed by Laski, 46 Harv. L. Rev. 345 (December 1932).
8 The Great Victorians (H. J, and H, Massingham, eds., 1932).
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1887
weakest point of tihe French chain; and as it produced no comment I
assume that it was solitary because no Frenchman of the time was pre-
pared to play with the idea of a republic.
Our love to you. If your sun is as bright as ours you will feel the
beauty of things as I did yesterday when we motored to Kent and heard
the nightingales among the orchards.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., May 25, '32
My dear Laski: Your letters do give me much pleasure. One today in
which you say much the same things that I had been thinking about
Mcllwain's book — especially the end better than the beginning; exces-
sive interest in minutiae &c, &c, but on the whole a creditable book. Sir
Salter's book, Recovery, impressed me but didn't move me to
such intelligent scrutiny as it deserves. Two good books by Tomlinson
about 1) the wilds of the Amazon1 and 2) the Islands near Borneo or
Sumatra.2 Clive Bell, An Account of French Painting, a Japanese story.3
. . . I am just finishing a book on Sam Houston — (Texas) partly squalid
but impressive4 &c. &c. I got a heavenly drive — before luncheon. A
good letter from F. Frankfurter today pleasing me much by showing
that Brandeis and Mrs. B. were pleased by a few words of introduction to
a book about him I wrote5 — and speaking in a high hearted way of the
effect of the hard times on our young men. I don't know why writing
comes so hard to me these few last weeks — I suppose it is old age — but
I can no more. . . . Affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 29.V.32
My dear Justice: 1 was amused and pleased with your account of your
strivings with Spengler. I read him when he first came out, and thought
him pretentious and absurd. Of course I can't check a good deal of Ms
learning, e.g. in the history of architecture or of mathematics. But I could
not bring myself to believe that history repeats itself upon a morphologi-
cal pattern and I felt that the book belonged to the category I always
suspect which seeks for scientific laws in a material not susceptible to
that kind of expression. As I see the historical movement, decline and
1 H. M. Tomlinson, The Sea and the Jungle (1923).
•Tide Marks (1924).
8 Lady Muraski, The Tale of Genji (Waley, tr., 1925).
1 Marquis James, The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston (1929).
5 Mr. Justice Brandeis (Frankfurter, ed.» 1932). Laski reviewed the book in
72 New Republic 50 (Aug. 24, 1932).
1388 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
improvement are the products of a large number of incommensurable
factors — technological changes, the birth-rate, immersion in luxury,
power to postpone immediate consumption, effective control of vested
interests, wisdom in government, etc, and I doubt the power to build
prediction on their operation. So I simply assume that you are entitled
to relief from headaches upon the simple basis that Spengler belongs to
those people like Mme. Blavatsky1 whom one assumes to be outside the
realm of necessary experience.
I have had a pretty busy time lately. Some long articles to write, which
cost a good deal of trouble, and a heavy load of university business.
But I must say that the one definite conclusion of the latter was the
futility of international congresses. We have had in London one on local
government which seemed to me a ghastly waste of time.2 Eminent ad-
ministrators preened themselves for a week and said that the electoral
system was good (or bad) that one ought to combine the merits of
central control with decentralisation, that efficiency was desirable; and
they ate large dinners and thanked their hosts for their hospitality. Every-
one seemed to avoid the necessity for understanding one another; and all
of them, including the Americans, seemed to consider that American
local government was beneath the gaze of civilised men. I don't know
what they got out of it not much more easily available in good books.
I felt that I wasted a week of my time being amiable with no good
result.
In the way of reading some interesting things have come my way. The
first volume of Arnold Bennett's Journal is quite fascinating. He is really
attractive — honest, kindly, supremely intelligent, and incapable of any
of the self -humbug which is the writer s cardinal sin. Then I have been
enjoying a brilliant book by W. D. Ross called The Right and the Good,
(Oxford Press) the best book on ethics I have read in many a day. I
don't agree with it, because I cannot see that there is any escape from
the fact that ethical criteria are the result of social experience and that,
accordingly, the things we deem right are the things which get accepted
in the struggle for existence as most adapted to its necessities. But it
is really most stimulating and gives one that sharp kind of mental effort
which comes from testing one's theories against a really first-class mind
equipped to maximise the difficulties. Then I re-read F. Pollock's Spinoza
with unadulterated pleasure. It's not only the best of his books, but
quite easily, I think, the best study of Spinoza ever written. He is an
1 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), wandering theosophist, founder
of the Theosophical Society; author of Isis Unveiled (1877).
2 The meeting was the triennial session of the International Congress of Local
Authorities; see 20 National Municipal Review 577 (August 1932).
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1389
amazing fellow. I see from the paper this morning that he was down
last night at Birmingham talking to the law students there on the
"talkative profession" — and that he is to speak to a London law club
next week. Not bad that for nearly ninety! The final thing worth men-
tioning is an old novel by George Gissing called The Crown of Life — a
very able picture of London and its queer intermingling of classes forty
years ago, with that undercurrent of sad acceptance of life as on the
whole a mistake which is omnipresent in him. No! I should add H. C.
Lea's History of Sacerdotal Celibacy which I persuaded the Rationalist
Press to reprint at five shillings. There is a real masterpiece for you —
solid learning on a great theme finely used in the cause of enlightenment.
I wish there were more historians like Lea. Since the writing of history
was mainly entrusted to the academic professionals the tendency has
been to avoid the themes that might give offence; and men get a reputa-
tion for learning because they know everything possible on the medieval
wardrobe or the liturgy of the ancient Nestorian Church of Ethiopia. I
look back with regret at the age of the great amateurs. The longer I live
the more convinced I feel that in the social sciences the typical expert
misses the great themes dilation upon which really elevated the mind
of his time. I forget who said that an expert is a man who knows more
and more about less and less. But I believe that there is a terrible truth
in those words.
We are living here through a period of grim pessimism — worse than
anything I have known. The dark outlook in Germany, the black prospect
in the Danubian states, the failure of America to recover, and the danger
of war in the Far East raises awful questions of economic collapse. Our
people are making a mess of it. They lack courage and faith in big
principle and we seem to be drifting rather helplessly to disaster. No
one seems to nail his colours to the mast; and if I had to find a metaphor
I should say that statesmen look like nothing so much as squirrels running
round a cage. Unless I gravely miss my guess the foundations are being
laid of a position out of which, all over the world, there is no egress save
through social conflict; and the price we may have to pay for that is
hardly likely to be worth the results.
Our love to you. I hope this will find you pleasantly installed at
Beverly, and with the new lift adding to your ease.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 4.VL32
My dear Justice: Your letter was very welcome; and I was particularly
glad that you agreed with my view of Mcllwain's book. Felix has just
1390 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
sent me the volume on Brandeis: the little tribute you paid him must
indeed have fallen pleasantly on his sight. And I think he richly de-
served it.
I have been pretty busy this week. First I had to help Sankey with
further arrangements about this committee on legal education which now
seems pretty definitely to be near the birth. Atkin is to be chairman.
I was amused to find that Holdsworth expressed the view to Sankey
that no enquiry was needed, since English legal education could hardly
be improved! This in the face of the fact that not more than ten per cent
of the students at the Inns do any formal work for their bar exams and
that more pass among those who don't than among those who do is a
really interesting comment from a professor of law. Then I have been
busy colloguing with the French socialists for our labour party on their
line of action in this crisis.1 It was an interesting job — not easy. They
are a curiously divided lot — some admirable, some about as Chauvinistic
as Roosevelt or Lodge. They seemed divided into those who would like to
see Germany ruined politically and damn the economic consequences and
those who realise that the world market means that a ruined Germany
means in the long run a mined France. I was amazed at the intensity
of their dislike for America. Mainly of course their attitude is based upon
sheer ignorance. The America they know is tourist America — rich,
careless, dominating. Their knowledge is made out of a composite picture
built on the stock yards, the skyscraper, Rockefeller, Capone and the
Lindbergh tragedy. They know little or nothing of American literature
(or any other except their own) . They believe she is entirely materialistic;
and an hour's speech from me on the America they did not know I can
only describe as a real revelation. But it does make one feel that, with
all their great qualities, the insularity of the French is something like a
danger to the world. For the assessment of national motives is at bottom
the thing that forms the stereotype out of which foreign policy emerges.
In the way of reading one or two pleasant voyages are worth recording.
Ortega's The Revolt of the Masses — he is a Spaniard — without being
profound is interesting and suggestive. I greatly enjoyed Sam Morison's
Builders of the Bay State [sic] — and even felt that when I retire I could
enjoy writing a book on the two Mathers — especially Cotton; and I
found much profit in John Laird's Idea of Value. I also read a highly
praised American novel 1919 by John dos Passes. Its technique I did
not fully understand; and the innumerable fornications of the different
characters didn't seem to me worth the space they occupied (surely
fornication as such is only significant to the persons involved) . But now
and again I got an impression of power in the novel though I thought a
1 On June 4 Edouard Herriot had formed a government of Radical-Socialists
from which the Unified Socialists under Le"on Blum were excluded.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1391
power fettered by the man's inability to shake himself free from the
conviction that he was effecting a profound revolution in the method of
fiction. I also enjoyed a brief little row in the New Republic over the
pretensions of a young Harvard group of aesthetes to be significant in
American culture.2 I didn't know their magazine — The Hound and Horn
— but I found a number and suspected that they had not achieved the
elementary obligation to separate conception of self from conception of
Deity. Lastly I re-read for the fourteenth time the Leviathan and, on
top of it, L. Stephen's life of him. The first supreme — one licks one's
chops over the wholly unsurpassed power of phrase. And the Life is
Stephen at his best — weighty, temperate, and with the unerring eye for
the bit of humour that adds spice to life. I wish one could persuade the
publishers to do cheap editions of his 18th Century and Utilitarians. They
are both out of print and both, I think, a lesson in the job to the present
generation. Contrast Mcllwain and Stephen and you have the real weak-
ness of the academic mind exposed — learning for learning's sake as
against learning for life's sake. I wish I had known Leslie Stephen. I
have bought little mainly because I have lacked the time for search.
But you will be amused, I think, to hear of a visit of mine to a bookshop
where I found a certain English peer trying to knock down the price of
a second folio which had once been in his family. The bookseller asked
a pretty reasonable price; the peer seemed to suspect that he was doing
the bookseller a favour by restoring it to its original habitat. They asked
me about the price. I pointed out that a better copy couldn't be had and
that a poorer one had recently brought thirty pounds more. The peer
looked round, hummed and hawed, and at last noticed a finely bound set
of the works of Ouida. At last with an effort he offered to buy the
Shakespere if he could have the Ouida thrown in. The bookseller agreed;
and the peer turned to me with immense satisfaction and said "Now I
have something to read and the damned family can't get at me any
longer."
1 hope the journey from Washington was pleasant. Here we have not
yet had summer. There are occasional gleams of sun, but it is mostly
rain and grey skies.
Our love as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 19.V1.S2
My dear Justice: Please imagine me surrounded by vast heaps of exami-
nation-books on every side. If there is a grimmer or more wearisome task
2 See 70 New Republic 278 (April 20, 1932); 71 id. 48-49 (May 25, 1932).
The antagonists in the controversy were Mr. Granville Hicks and the editors of
The Hound and Horn, Bernard Bandler, II, Lincoln Kirstein, and A. Hyatt
Mayor.
1392 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
I do not know it; and it leaves one deprived of mind. Now and again a
great moment of relief comes, as when a candidate makes Bolingbroke's
Patriot King the main inspiration of James I and goes into rhapsodies over
the skill with which Hobbes demolished him; or there comes a good
mixed metaphor like "in admiring expediency Burke sowed a seed which
was later to take wings and, with Bentham, move solidly over the straight
track with its feet firmly on the ground." But I shall be glad indeed when
it is all over. I was amused and pleased to find Felix quoted two or three
times, and always by the better students.
I have also had to be about a good deal. The most pleasant occasion
was the dinner of the Stubbs Historical Society — a student's club at
Oxford — to celebrate its 700th meeting. The Bishop of Durham and I
were its guests. I was almost tempted to go in for an episcopal career
when I saw his violet evening dress which is the full kit of bishops. He
told one great tale of Stubbs as a lecturer — a crowded hall to hear
the Professor on the Reformation, and an abounding collection of Anglo-
Catholic dons. Stubbs in a booming voice begins "Henry has a permanent
place in English history. Henry the Great"— (an effective pause dur-
ing which consternation reigns on the Catholic faces) —the Professor
resumes — "Henry the Great Widower had the largest known matri-
monial experience in our annals." I dined also with Sankey and was
amused to hear of the struggles through which he is going in his effort
to abridge the long vacation. One eminent law lord told him that now
a National Government is in office he thought it would be more suitable
if he (Sankey) dropped these socialistic notions. Sankey told me also
of a talk with the French Ambassador to whom he expressed hopes of
a successful outcome of the Lausanne Conference.1 "I am afraid," said
the Ambassador, "I notice that Mr. MacDonald is talking in metaphors
before the Conference has even opened." Then I had a lunch at the
House at which Austen Chamberlain enquired after you with real
affection and spoke most charmingly of your affection for his sister. We
discussed the position of the National Government and I asked him when
he thought we could guess the beginning of its downfall. Like a flash
Austen said 'When they take Winston into the government." I also had
a dinner here at which Tomlinson told the story of his voyage up the
Amazon thirty years ago. (Have you read his Sea and Jungle)? We sat
enthralled and almost felt the summit of exciting description had been
reached until Lady Rhonddha, who was also there, told us of her ad-
ventures on the Lusitania when it was torpedoed.2 Her most interesting
*The Lausanne Conference on reparations had opened on June 16. The
French Ambassador in London was Aime Fleuriau.
8 David Alfred Thomas (1856-1918), first Viscount Rhondda, statesman and
financier, accompanied by his daughter (1883- ), later the Viscountess
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1393
point, I thought, was that while on the boat itself, before jumping over-
board, she was in agonies about her father, whether he had a life-belt
etc. But once she had jumped and was in the sea nothing seemed to
matter except the prospect of being saved. She was in the water 4 and
M hours, was picked up quite unconscious, and the action of the sea had
stripped her of practically every shred of clothing. She thought the
officers and crew managed very badly — boats over-crowded, not enough
life-belts, no order enforced etc. But as 12 and /£ minutes elapsed between
being struck and the disappearance of the vessel her view may be post
hoc inference. Her father told her later that in the water the one thought
that obsessed him was whether he had or had not made a certain codicil
in his will and that he found the notion of dying made simply irritating
by this failure to be certain of whether he had given his solicitors his
signed instructions.
In the way of reading one superb experience — Trotsky, History of the
Russian Revolution, Volume I. It is really epic in character — one is
swept along by its sheer dramatic force; and even when one makes all
the necessary allowances for his parti pris, his explanation of the Bolshe-
vik victory seems to me quite unanswerable. Then I read a Life of
Roosevelt by one H. F. Pringle which I enjoyed. It destroys any claim on
the part of T.R. to statesmanship; but he emerges from it a not unattrac-
tive figure and I was glad to see certain legends neatly punctured. I read
also a queer book by Theodore Dreiser called Tragic America from which
I gathered that only a communist revolution can save you from your
threatened fate. I was reminded of Adam Smith's grand phrase "there is
a great deal of ruin in a nation."
Term ends next week and I hope for a good deal more leisure in July.
And as the sun really shines nowadays Me offers prospects even though
the economic horizon is so grim.
Our love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 28.VLS2
My dear Justice: Of course the supreme event of the day is Felix's
nomination;1 compared to it little things like the Presidential election
pale for me into insignificance. I am more overjoyed than I can say, even
though I suppose confirmation to be uncertain and that, like Brandeis
sixteen years ago, he will go through a grim time. But I am so glad this
Rhondda, was returning to England from a governmental mission to the United
States when the Lusitania was sunk.
1 On June 22 Governor Ely had nominated Felix Frankfurter as Associate
Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. In July the Governor
announced that Professor Frankfurter refused to accept the nomination.
1394 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
recognition has come to him; and I get peculiar pleasure from the fact
that it is just fifty years since your nomination to the same court. I
don't know any better way of celebrating that great anniversary. I do
hope his friends will work their hardest to put the thing through.
I have had a busy time since I wrote last. At least all the examination
papers are done and that nightmare is lifted off my shoulders. I had a
curious dinner with (this between ourselves) the Governor of the Bank
of England 2 who evidently wanted to sound me out on the drift of
labour opinion. It was a curious experience. He is the type who sees
things intuitively and finds the process of being articulate a very diffi-
cult adventure. I liked him; but I felt that he lived in a very circumscribed
world, as compared, for instance, with Eugene Meyer, and that he found
it very difficult to realise that what could be open to doubt was his
assumptions. Then, at the School, I had to go to an address by the
Bishop of Durham which I wish I could circulate to you. It was like
nothing so much as a saddened protest by a believer in the Ptolemaic
astronomy against the growing acceptance of the Copernican hypothesis.
He ended with the remark that only a full acceptance of the doctrine of
the Cross could save us in this grimly materialist age. I asked him later
what he meant by the doctrine of the Cross. He said it meant (I) living
the ascetic life (II) putting spiritual well-being before material comfort
(III) making one's individual life an example of these truths. I suggested
that the Churches had been preaching this, without visible result, for
2000 years and that its failure was surely a comment on the postulates.
But he seemed to have no doubt that the world, as he put it, was turning
to Christ and that agnostics like me were incapable of seeing the facts.
It reminded me of Sidgwicfc's explanation of the principle that the greater
good of the world being more important to me than my lesser good as a
self-evident postulate which provoked from Bradley the remark that for
him none of Sidgwick's postulates was self-evident.
I have had one great book adventure. I got a Paris catalogue in with
very cheap collections of (a) the contemporary critics of Grotius and
(b) the great Spanish jurists of the sixteenth century — Vasquez, Cor-
ravurias [sic], Suarez etc. I thought this the kind of opportunity too good
to be missed so I telephoned an offer of ten pounds for the lot. They came
this morning; and I had the pleasure, human nature being what it is, of
showing them to the Librarian of the Middle Temple who had just
ordered them for his Library by telegram. Then I picked up for nine
shillings a copy of Ravenstone's Doubts concerning the Accepted Doc-
trines of Political Economy which is so rare that it has only been up once
* Montague Norman (1871-1950), later Baron Norman, was Governor of
the Bank of England, 1920-1944.
1932] HOLMES TO LASK1 1395
for auction since 1880; I found it on a hand-barrow in Caledonian mar-
ket. Altogether a really good week.
In the way of reading, some pleasant things worth recording. 1 put
first Lewisohn's Expression in America (Harper) a study of literature
rather a la Parrington which I thought quite masterly, and particularly
good on the very modern period e.g. Sinclair Lewis, Willa Gather et al.
In a very different realm the new edition of Althusius by Friedrich has
good stuff in it, though its style has the verbose conceptualism of the
German. And I thoroughly enjoyed Westermarck's Ethical Relativity
which came nearer to the expression of my own views upon the nature
of morals than any book of years. Instead of verbal felicities and dialectic
you get a solid account of social experience and the way in which it
issues into ethical principle. I think you would get great comfort out of
this eloquent denunciation of the absolute. Then a really amusing novel
may tempt you — James Laver's Errant Nymph — which is only a trifle
but, I think, quite delightfully done.
Now, for my sins, I must go off to a government committee on the
civil service — a hard thing to do in brilliant sunshine.
Our love to you, as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. ]. L.
Beverly Farms, July 10, 19S2
My dear Laski: Every letter from you is a book — those from me are
merely petitions for another. Life goes on very pleasantly. I delight in this
place with its early associations — but most of my friends are dead. . . .
John Morse is as alive as ever at 92 M — and took luncheon with me
yesterday. I go around by Rockport once in a while and sigh for you.
The place is not much changed, I think. Books, Morton In Search of
Ireland — the Beards' Rise of American Civilization — good. James
Truslow Adams, The Epic of America. I don't care much for it. Hardy's,
Dynasts, I don't care much for it — all mitigated by Wodehouse, passim.
The excitement has been the nomination of Frankfurter for the Su-
preme Court of Massachusetts. I hear tell lie is disposed to decline. I
thought he couldn't after so much talk and his ensuing silence. But I
believe he wrote at once and that the silence rests with the Governor.
Brandeis I hear is against his taking the place — but it is a mystery to me
and I await developments. I hardly know what I should advise if asked.1
1 Some months earlier, Holmes had written to Governor Ely expressing the
warmest opinion of Professor Frankfurter's capacities. After Governor Ely's
nomination was announced, vigorous opposition to the appointment was ex-
pressed by ex-Governor Fuller, who charged that Professor Frankfurter was
"an open sympathizer with murderers'* and expressed the fear that if the nomi-
nation were confirmed he saw "no reason why murder should not flourish here
in Massachusetts"; New York Times, June 23, 1932, p. 23, column 2.
1396 HOLMES TO LASKJ [1932
It Is curious that the Sacco and Vanzetti business has left such deep
prejudices. I dare say you know more than I about the whole matter.
You see with what difficulty I write. I hope that will not stop you.
For I am as always your affectionate 0. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 12.VIL32
My dear Justice: I have had a fortnight of hard extra work which has
prevented me from any serious correspondence. Sankey finished the
draft of his Indian Constitutional Bill 1 and called me in to comment.
The result was the need to write a series of memoranda on his proposals
which were literally done with sweat and blood. It was all very interest-
ing, but very grim;'' the more especially as I don't think the measure will
satisfy Indian demands and is cluttered up with all kinds of checks and
balances which seem to me to reproduce the worst features of the worst
modern constitutions.
But there have been some compensations. We had Alvin Johnson2 to
dinner and had good talk with him on the present position of social
studies in America. He interests me. It takes about an hour to stoke him
up, and he is then rather like an artichoke which you have to strip leaf
by leaf in order to reach the heart. But he has most sterling commonsense
and is wholly without malice. Then a good dinner with Sir Maurice Amos,
who leaves me breathless. In the course of two hours he moved through
the canonical doctrine of marriage to the significance of the seal in con-
tract, to the diffusionist controversy in anthropology, the danger of
principle in politics, the value of the snob to a social system, why judges
die from arterial sclerosis, the virtues and defects of the English nobleman
with special reference to Eustace Percy, Bertrand Russell and the danger
of life on the heights, and, as a final dish, why Love's Labour Lost is
Shakespere's most admirable comedy. He always talked with persuasive
vehemence and never without knowledge. As a sheer exhibition it was
quite marvellous. Then a dinner with Low3 our most famous cartoonist
in which one incident is worth recording. He explained that he saw
Ramsay MacDonald today as a quite different person from when he
began to caricature him ten years ago. We asked why; and he proceeded
to draw six pictures of J.R.M. on the menus in which he began with a
dreamy idealist, continued with a man trying hard to make himself look
'The Government's proposed bill contemplated the inclusion of provisions
providing for provincial autonomy and for the federation of Indian states and
provinces.
2 Alvin Saunders Johnson (1874- ), economist and Director of the New
School for Social Research, 1923-1945.
8 David Low (1891- ), caricaturist and cartoonist for British papers,
principally the Evening Standard.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1397
important, and ended up with a face that had exchanged nobility for
slyness, and left one with a sense of profound distrust. A Tory M.P. who
was at dinner said he thought them the best biography he had seen. I
wish you could have seen them, merely as a piece of draftsmanship.
They were cruel in their intensity of perception; but they were simply
masterly.
My mind of course dwells very much on what is going to happen to
Felix. Thompson4 wired me that F. is now himself the difficulty and that
Brandeis is against his acceptance. I think Brandeis is wholly wrong.
First I don't believe any man ought to evade vital responsibility. Then
it looks to me as though the nomination ought to be, as with yourself
and Cardozo, the stepping stone to Washington. Indeed Brandeis made
me rather angry by his attitude for exactly the same was said to him
in 1916 about his own nomination by Wilson and I gather that he did
not hesitate at all. It is terribly trying to be at this distance where I can't
urge Felix to what seems to me the quite obvious line of duty for him
to follow.
In the way of books I have little to report as I have been buried in
papers. But I read with real emotion Madame Bovary which I had not
looked at for ten years. It seemed to me quite definitely of the first
order; and the perfection of the style leaves one enchanted. Then a book
you once recommended to me on the history of art by T. Craven. I
thought him a man of parts, with power of shrewd observation; but I
thought also that he was continually sitting back to admire himself and
let you know that he did so. I also reread Mommsen and though I am
convinced that Bismarck rather than Caesar is the hero I do not see
how, in the field of purely political history, the thing could be better
done. Of course it is a manifesto; but it really isn't possible to read it
without a lifting of the spirit. It is like a trumpet call.
I have bought some very nice things. First a contemporary attack on
Bodin by Jean de Serres, not without merit and foreshadowing the com-
ing of Louis XIV which is good prophecy.5 Then a superb folio of
Covarruvias which would enchant you. It is in stamped oak boards with
clasps which lock, and the whole is in perfect condition even down to
the key. Finally the De Republica of Gregory of Toulouse, a real rarity
and in admirable condition. It expresses the kind of institutional pattern
which the Hugenots wanted in the period before Henry of Navarre
actually got the throne.
4 William G. Thompson (1864-1935), Boston lawyer who had been defense
counsel in the later stages of the Sacco-Vanzetti case.
6 The reference is probably to Jean de Serres, Inventaire general de Thistoire
de France (1576).
1398 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
There is still a fortnight before we go to the sea breezes of Cornwall.
I hope you are resting as adequately as I propose to do.
Our love as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 23.VII.32
My dear Justice: A grand letter from you sent my heart to the skies. You
seem to be traversing wide ground. I agree in your praise of Beard; but
Truslow Adams Epic of America seemed to me the kind of book written
to secure a wide audience by a man who has not really prepared himself
for the job.
I have had a terribly busy time — as always just before I get away.
I have done two long and difficult industrial arbitrations in Manchester,
the land of thing in which you have to grasp complicated masses of con-
troversial statistics and settle schedules of wages. Then I have had
some long meetings with Sankey, partly over Ireland,1 — a terrible and
stupid problem — and partly over our committee on legal education
which is now all ready except for the actual letters of invitation; it's a
funny thought that it should have taken me three years to convince him
of the need for an enquiry of this sort. Then I have been busy with
examiner's meetings — always a grim job — and the hateful task of writ-
ing a 4000 word article for Alvin Johnson on liberty,2 and trying to say
in it what one really needs ten times the space to say adequately. How-
ever, it is nearly done; ano! a week today as ever is we depart to the
peace of Cornwall. I am more anxious about getting away than I can
remember.
I went to one dinner which is worth recounting. It was the annual
feast of the law teachers and I was very interested by the speeches. They
were of two kinds. One lot — very well typified by Holds worth — went on
the lines that the law teacher ought not to encourage criticism of the
judiciary and its decisions in an age of scepticism, and produced the effect
of a desire on his part to fall flat on his face before a law lord. The
other — typified by my friend Gutteridge — argued that the essential
task of the teacher of law was a critical one; that he ought to make the
law schools the centre from which juristic principle is born.3 And I was
struck by the fact that in this lot the names occurred over and over
again — Holmes, Maitland, Pollock, Eugen Ehrlich, Demogue, and that,
1 In June and July there was vigorous disagreement between the British gov-
ernment and the government of the Irish Free State, culminating in the with-
holding of land annuities payable to Great Britain and the retaliatory imposition
of duties on Irish imports.
2 9 Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (1933) 442.
8 See Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law, 1932, p. 67.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1899
quite clearly, this attitude was the dividing line between the younger
men and their elders. There were over 200 teachers of law there; and,
Oxford and Cambridge apart, it was clear that Harvard was the ideal at
which they aimed. Queer that after fifty years since Maitland delivered
his inaugural address at Cambridge4 nothing serious should have been
done to realise his quite moderate ideals.
I had to learn from the New Republic that Felix had declined the
Mass. Supreme Court.5 I assume, at this distance, that he knows best.
But I was a good deal disappointed, for I felt (a) that one ought not
to decline that kind of post except on grounds beyond dispute and (b)
that five years of that court might well prove the direct high-road to
Washington when Brandeis goes, which is, of course, where I want him
to be. It's an immense satisfaction to know that the opposition to him
collapsed. But, as I say, at this distance I do not assume a title to judge.
I only hope that he will not regret the choice he has made. Felix was
made to have a big field in which to play.
I have bought some pretty things since I wrote to you last. The nicest
is the 1557 folio of Sir T. More's English works which I got astonishingly
cheap at auction because the title-page was missing — one of the results,
I suppose, of the slump in the book-market. Then I found an interesting
little volume of 1754 with half a dozen contemporary criticisms of Mon-
tesquieu in it. Two were very interesting. One argued that the good
Catholic must be on his guard against M. because his evolutionary point
of view was ultimately incompatible with the truths of revealed religion.
The other attacked him on the ground that he had failed to see the
connection between law and economic power. Both have the additional
interest of treating him with enormous reverence and diffidence. It is
pretty clear that no book in the 18th century made quite so weighty or
so wide an impact. One ought really to find a first-class Frenchman who
would give us a critical edition of the Esprit des lots and tell us precisely
what happened to it in the first generation after it was published. The
third thing I found was a run of 20 volumes of the Annee litteraire —
Freron's journal from 1742-62. Thaf s the review of the Catholic right, con-
ducted unscrupulously, but with a good deal of talent and it is amusing
to see how the philosophes simply turn the heads of their opponents grey.
Voltaire, of course, is the supreme enemy. There is even a certain tendresse
for Rousseau, especially after his letter to D'Alernbert, which suggests that
the abler Catholics already saw in his lifetime that his ultimate influence
would be favourable to religious reaction.
You see from all this the kind of reading I have been doing. The
*"Why the History of English Law is not Written,** 3 Collected Papers of
Frederic William Maitland (Fisher, ed., 1911), 488.
5 71 New Republic 247 (July 20, 1932).
1400 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
only other thing worth noting that I have read is Maine's Popular Govern-
ment which I had not looked at since I was an undergraduate. It had all
Maine's charm of style; but I thought its philosophy poor and its insights
based on unstated assumptions of which he was himself unaware.
Our love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
As from Devon Lodge, 3.VIIL32
My dear Justice: If you were with us here in Cornwall, I am not sure
that you would not protest that you were back in Massachusetts. The
house is on a mass of great rocks, looking out over fields on three sides
to the endless sea. All around us are granite and barberiy bushes so that I
am not always sure that I am not at Rockport again. A mile away in the
harbour, I can see the fishermen's boats with their red and brown sails;
and each night the sea-mists come round the house with the moon send-
ing a faint silver gleam through them. When it is fine, it is all a mass
of blue-sky and clear grey rock; when it rains, it is a symphony in the
subdued blacks and greys of Whistler. I find it enchanting. It is three
miles from anywhere. There is no sound save the wind and the remorse-
less plashing of the waves. The views are always changing with the
changing light, and they are always beautiful. Frida has never discovered
so comfortable a house, even down to the admirable library, and the
interesting collection of etchings by Diirer and Meryon — above all a
superb print of the former's "Melancholy." For a month at any rate I shall
be lapped in peace.
The programme here is very simple. I work quietly at my book from
breakfast until lunch.1 Then we go out in the car or walk until tea; then
I read until supper; and then play again until bed. At present, at any
rate, the book goes with a swing; I have that pleasantly uncomfortable
feeling which comes when ideas crowd in upon one. And I have read a
good deal. An interesting book by Joseph Barth&emy on the Crisis of
Modern Democracy — a more simple analysis than I should make, but
full of the shrewd observations of a man who has combined academic
with parliamentary experience. Then I re-read Maine's Popular Govern-
ment with greater appreciation than on any previous occasion. There
is one remarkable prophecy: that the emergence of the positive state
necessarily means the supercession of the legislature by the execu-
tive. Apart from Bagehot's discovery of the cabinet I do not know any
other guess so happy or so significant in this period. But it is curious how
the chapter on the American Constitution praises the Supreme Court for
all the wrong reasons. On his principles people like McReynolds would
be the guardians of the true faith; while people like you would, I fear,
1 Presumably Democracy in Crisis (1933).
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1401
be anathema as capable of a dangerous elasticity of mind. Then I have
re-read the Vicar of Wake-field and in the art of being wholly artless I
must say I think it amply deserves its position as a classic. I also read
a first-class detective story by John Buchan called The Dancing Floor
which I commend highly.
Our love to you dear Justice. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. JL
As from Devon Lodge, 11.VIII.82
My dear Justice: I expect you will hear of Graham Wallas's death.1 He
was on holiday near us here, and developed quite suddenly a fatal attack
of uraemia. I shall miss him sorely. He was always full of ideas, he had
humour, and sensitiveness. Above all things, he was a great teacher. All
over the world there are first-rate people in the social sciences who owe
their original impulse to work to him; and I don't think a man could
wish for a finer epitaph. And two of his books did a big fob. I don't
think it is too much to say that his Francis Place made the rewriting of
a big period in English history inescapable; and a good many books have
been written since out of its suggestiveness. Human Nature in Politics
also created a tradition; and I think it would be possible to show that
people like Walter Lippmaim have built their reputation out of develop-
ing its ideas. He had warm affection and admiration for you, and I don't
think we ever met this last dozen years without my being minutely
questioned by him on what I knew of your activities. His death is a big
gap among my friends.
Otherwise, happy is the family that has no history. I watch Frida and
Diana getting bronzed and refreshed in the sun. I write for four hours
each day — a little book I hope you will see round Xmas-time that is
quite certainly the best I have ever written.2 I walk a little, and read
quietly in the garden — a marvellous garden. The others go motor
excursions in the car; but I find stillness my main joy. I have reread Anna
Karenina — which is a definite masterpiece of the first order; and Leslie
Stephen's Studies of a Biographer. This last is Stephen at his best —
always moderate, which is to say always wise; always with a mind of his
own, seeing things for itself; and always with the trick of putting his
finger on something novel which is the hallmark of the great critic. For
instance there is a review of Texte's book on Rousseau and the Origins of
Literary Cosmopolitanism.3 Texte makes a great fuss of scientific tests
of its origin. Stephen remarks quite drily that if Louis XIV chose by
repealing the Edict of Nantes to send a hundred thousand Hugenots
1 See Laski, 4 New Statesman and Nation (N.S.) 199 (Aug. 20, 1932).
'Probably Democracy in Crisis (1933).
»4 Stephen, Studies of a Biographer (1902), 247,
1402 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
abroad, many of whom found their way to England and the Palatinate,
it is not really remarkable that they should have begun to read, and
therefore to praise English and German literature, There is also a paper
on Trollope4 which is, I think, the best thing I have ever read on him,
as well as the kind of essay that makes you yearn for acquaintance with
the author. Stephen never, perhaps, touches the heights of Sainte-Beuve
or Hazlitt, and he has none of the sudden and dazzling moments of
Coleridge; but just below them he seems to me unsurpassed, and to have
a loveableness about him beyond words. I really envy you friendship with
him; I wish I had been born ten years earlier so as to have paid my
homage in the flesh.
Well — these holiday letters are mere paralipomena — a greeting
rather than an account. You know that they bring you my love.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
As from Devon Lodge, 21. VIII. 82
My dear Justice: My tale begins with my journey back from town last
Saturday. I sat oppose [sic] a clergyman who was, I should imagine, the
grandson of that Rev. Mr. Stiggins about whom Sam Weller felt so
strongly. When he had read his papers he tapped me on the knee and
asked me in a loud voice (there were five other people in the carriage) if
I had found Christ. I said that I was, I feared, exempt from religious
experience. He then proceeded to deliver a sermon to me of which the
outstanding points were as follows: — (1) He washed daily in the blood
of the lamb. (2) The magic of the Eucharist, taken weekly, and pref-
erably on Sunday, is that it is a complete safeguard against sin. (3) The
end of the world is coming in 1966; where shall I be when the last trump
sounds if I am not girded in the armour of salvation? (4) The King is
a devout Christian. Yet, by the miracle of God, his grace is open equally
to the least of the King's subjects. (That appeared to be myself.) (5) In
far-off Abyssinia there are Christians. Are they not entitled to known
[sic] that in England, God's chosen land, there is no man so vile as to
reject his message. (6) Prayer before meals is an excellent way of
resisting the temptations of the flesh. I condense a monologue which
lasted from London to Exeter; and I spare you the Biblical citations with
which this vast monologue was supported. But I think it exceedingly
probable that these great truths have either not come your way or have
not been adequately appreciated by you. I cannot help feeling that if,
say between now and your return to Washington, you washed daily in
the blood of the Lamb it might be of great spiritual assistance to you.
We have had Nevinson down here with us for the last few days and
*4 Stephen, Studies of a Biographer (1902), 168.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1403
have had grand talks with him. His account of the siege of Ladysmith,1
and the provision by Sir George White of dog cutlets for a birthday dinner
of the Chief of Staff as a quite special delicacy, was really epic. He em-
barked on a passionate defence of Carlyle as the least appreciated of the
great Victorians. His French Revolution was the proof that poetic insight
can always grasp the perspective of history in its essentials. He thought
Emerson the greatest of American poets. Henry James was a little man
with a big manner. He thought that civilisation consisted in the evasion of
simplicity instead of realising that it was the discovery of the essential. You
can read his novels once to discover whether he escapes from the labyrinth
he has constructed; but you cannot read any of them twice because even
when he is out of the labyrinth, he has never got back to the highroad,
Bernard Shaw has made a fortune out of the discovery that a successful
middle class always enjoys the sensation of being told that it is in a state
of sin; that persuades it that it has had all the experiences which the
ethos of the middle-class prevents it from attempting. Xenophon was the
supreme embodiment of the ideals which make an English gentleman of
the best type: he was a successful soldier, he appreciated letters, he was
a passionate sportsman. He did all things well, but nothing so well as
to suggest that he made his living by it; and like all inspired amateurs
he was never quite sure at any moment that the thing he was doing
was the thing he ought to be doing. The sin of a classical education is its
persuasion to portentousness; Rupert Brooke has a memorial in Skyros
with a Greek inscription which the peasantry there cannot read because it
is in ancient Greek and the traveller because he no longer knows Greek.
If it had been in English the peasant would have been equally happy and
the traveller less bewildered. As it is six scholars in Cambridge have
bewildered everybody for the sake of appearing learned. Goethe is the
supreme figure since Shakespere because he most perfectly balanced art
and nature in his teaching. Shakespere was greater because his flashes of
insight had an intense profundity that Goethe never attained. The man
who tries to write a biography of Shakespere is a fool; the scrap-heap
cannot be made a pyramid out of its own materials. I need not say that
I am selecting and abridging from a ceaseless flow. He is a grand example
of the full mind which is brought to bear on the supreme literature of all
ages. And to hear him say things like "perhaps the noblest maa I have
ever known was a savage chief in Portugese Africa7* is really a great
experience.
sSee H. W. Nevinson, Changes and Chances (1923), Chapter XL Sir
George Stuart White (1835-1912) commanded the British forces in the Lady-
smith siege during the Boer War and, in refusing to comply with the order of
General Sir Redvers Henry Buller (1839-1908) that he surrender his forces,
is credited with saving South Africa for Great Britain,
1404 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
We have another week here; then London and the quick approach of
the normal routine. I may not complain, for weather, work and situation
have all combined to perfect peace.
Our love to you. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 27.VI1L32
My dear Justice: I got home this afternoon from one of the best holidays
I have ever spent. And it ended with an amusing day which may interest
you in the telling. Frida and I motored over to lunch with Bertrand
Russell some twenty miles from us. He was in great form. He began with
a passionate attack on the modern physicists. Subjective idealism, as
preached by Jeans and Eddington, is simply part of the technique of
theological reaction. It postulates comfortable inferences and finds their
truth in the applause with which they are received. No science can ever
be properly understood until it is conceived in its social setting. Newton
did his work in England because a man of his type could not have found
a favourable environment (as the experience of Galileo showed) in
France or Germany or Italy. Those who seek to hand over the control of
life to scientific experts ought to remember that Laplace, Lagrange and
Legendre, probably the most brilliant mathematical trio a given age has
ever known, united to reject Fourier's classical papers as ridiculous when
these were submitted to the French Institute. Free will is a doctrine born
in part out of man's desire to be master of his fate, and in part of his
eagerness to prevent God from being identified with the devil. Every age
needs its Dreyfus case to persuade men to remember the limitations of
human justice. The surest sign that a man is unimaginative is when he
takes the idea of progress for granted. Business men's success is incredible
until we remember that they have only one another to compete with. I
select, of course, and abbreviate; but I hope I have said enough to show
that we had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.
We motored back through Penzance; and the sight of a second-hand
bookshop suggested a visit. The old man who kept it gave me the freedom
of the place and my finds were these: (I) a volume of pamphlets for two
shillings containing an uncut copy of Burke on the French Revolution.
This I have already sold in London for thirty pounds. (II) a fine set of
the 1679 edition of the Jear Books, which I have always coveted, for two
pounds; the binding almost as new as on the day of issue. (Ill) a volume
of tracts about the American Revolution containing practically all the
most important Tory attacks on the colonies — 3/ — (iv) a first edition
of Ricardo in its original boards for seven shillings. It was a grand
hunting; and I cannot quite decide whether the old man was more
pleased than I at getting rid of, to him uninteresting stuff. His specialty
was Cornish history; and he bewailed to me the fact that the race of
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1405
Cornish enthusiasts was not what it was when he began selling books
sixty years ago. He sold a perfect Pickwick in the original parts for £900;
but when he put in an auction a copy of the first book printed in Cornish
his reserve was not even reached; as though there could be any com-
parison in the interest of the two books. He had himself offered the
nearest university college (Exeter) to conduct a class in Cornish; but
no students had presented themselves though there were (snort) classes
in Greek and (double snort) Hebrew. I of course extended my warm
sympathies and admired a horrible grangerised history of Cornwall he
had spent ten years in making. That appeased him a little and he told
me that if I came again he would show me his manuscript collection of
genealogical data about the families of Penzance before 1800. We parted
warm friends, he telling me that "yon stufF I had bought would make
room for some fine Cornish topography he had been compelled to keep
at home for lack of space. He came out to the car as we were driving
off to explain that when I came again he would show me at his house his
private collection of books, quite unsurpassed, on the Scilly Isles. Can
you imagine this as an accompaniment to my picking up not only the
items I have listed but a couple of dozen lesser things each of which gave
me quite special pleasure?
We spend a week in Manchester from next Saturday with my people;
and then I go off for three days to my miners in Northumberland to
lecture to them on Democratic government. Meanwhile my book goes
nobly ahead; and it leaves me with the feeling that it has said some
things e.g. on the psychological impact of egalitarianism on the relation
of master and servant that are new. Anyway I am thoroughly enjoying
it; which I take at least to be evidence that it might be worse.
Of books read there are two worth mentioning. I reread Hardy's Re-
turn of the Native which the critics say is one of his three best things and,
alas, could find no genius in it. A few fine pieces of scenery, but the
rest, I thought, naive and artificial. I hope this does not imply excessive
sophistication on my part; but try as I could I never succeeded in the
feeling I get instantly with Dickens or Thackeray or Balzac of being in
and of his creatures and feeling that what happens to them really matters
quite enormously to me. On the other hand I read for the first time (to
my shame be it said) M. Arnold's Friendship's Garland and thought it a
masterpiece of critical insight No doubt the "superior" tone is irritating.
But the things seen are set down with the hand of a master; and the pre-
dictions have something of the great prophet's insight about them. Not
least the attack on the manner of the Times is as fine a piece of irony as
anything since Swift.
My love to you. I hope you are as fit and brown as
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L*
1406 HOLMES TO LASKI [1932
Beverly Farms, Massachusetts — September 1, 1932
My dear Laski: A succession of delightful letters — but I no longer can
give them adequate answers. I simply can't write more than a few
hesitating straggling words — I suppose it is old age, and the worst
feature of it so far. Your last with your notice of Graham Wallas came
today. You give me so much pleasure that I do hope you will continue
even though it becomes more and more unilateral. Most of my reading
is done by my secretary aloud to me. We have just finished the Life of
Beveridge. What a glutton for work B. was — and altogether a pretty
big fellow. I didn't realize how many things he had up his sleeve when
he was talking to me. His boastfulness was innocent and ready to accept
correction. The biography seems to me to be much better than a
political book — The Tragic Era — that the same author, Claude
Bowers, did before. Beveridge had sound theories about writing and
lived up [to] them. He took endless trouble. His travels in Europe and
interviews with most of the important people are interesting. In short
I have been reliving with him for a week and absorbed and moved by it.
Felix and his wife come here to luncheon from time to time. I can't
help feeling as if his declining the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court was a
mistake, but he and Brandeis know better than I do.
Yesterday I went over to the Richard Curtises1 to see the eclipse, which
I did, but sor-ehow was far less impressed than I was when my wife
and I went to Norfolk, Va. to see one 30 years ago. That was my only
approach to seeing people except in this house. Tomorrow I expect Mrs.
Beveridge for luncheon the first time down here, the next day Greenslet2
the publisher &c. Idleness suits me — with a pleasant secretary for
companion. I should like to write more but I can't.
Affectionately yours always, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 10JX.32
My dear Justice: I have had some busy days since I wrote last. First I
have had a difficult 3-day industrial arbitration in which I had to
establish wage-scales for some thirty classes of workers. Then, at short
notice, I had to do a draft report for a government committee on which
I am sitting. Then we spent 5 days with my people in Manchester, and I
may whisper to you that I find the process of meeting a great crowd of
1 Richard Gary Curtis (1894-1951), son of Holmes's old friend, Mrs. Charles
P. Curtis, and brother of Charles P. Curtis, Jr.
2 Ferris Greenslet (1875- ); for many years he was director and editor
at Houghton, Mifflin Company, and as such was a close friend and adviser of
Senator Beveridge.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1407
relatives a distinctly exhausting one. However I am back home again
and almost in the way of a normal routine.
The most interesting thing in Manchester was a long talk with Alex-
ander the philosopher. I wish you could have heard it, for I am sure that
you would have been largely in sympathy. He denounced Hegel and all
his followers as having led a reaction which destroyed the promising
rationalism of the 18th century. He set out a theory of ethics which won
my heart because it went back to Adam Smith and made the judgment
of goodness the result of a sentiment of approval towards the act involved,
and hence enabled the experience of society to be the largest factor in
producing the attitude men take to good and bad things. I confess I can
see no other approach which does not, in the end, become either theologi-
cal or purely personal in character. He told me a very interesting tale
about B. Russell and the British Academy. In 1920 he proposed Russell
for the philosophic section. This was rejected on the ground that as
Russell had just been divorced, he was not a fit person to be a member.
This year he proposed him again; and though all the philosophers were
unanimous that it would be a disgrace not to elect him the council, on
moral and social grounds, preferred a quite second-rate Oxford don. Can
you beat that? Alexander said that all the people concerned agreed that
Russell was by far the most distinguished philosopher in England. But
those who did not object to his divorce (1932 please note!) objected to
his political views and vice-versa. I said to Alexander that on those terms
if I were he I should resign from the Academy in protest; that once
Russell's intellectual pre-eminence was admitted the academy disgraced
itself by allowing any personal questions to enter in. But this was too
heroic a gesture for him. He thought that he might bring the members
round to sanity by staying inside.
In the way of reading one or two pleasant things are worth recording.
First and foremost P. G. Wodehouse's new novel — Hot Water — which,
with one exception, I solemnly affirm to be the very best he has ever
written. Then I read with delight the Life of diaries Lamb by E. V.
Lucas which had never come my way before. Nothing in the way of that
period has ever given me such pleasure; and Lamb emerges from it, I
think, in the proportions of a hero. I remain puzzled by his inability to
"see" Shelley; but his attitude to Hazlitt is really superb, and the tales
of dear old George Dyer1 add new joy to life. I also re-read, with great
profit, WhiteheacTs Science and the Modern World. The last chapter,
especially, interested me, for if you compare it with some of old Brooks
Adams's vaticinations it makes one respect him as a man of quite un-
1 George Dyer ( 1755-1841 ), absent-minded poet and man of letters who
would occupy no niche in the history of letters had not Lamb brought his pleas-
ing traits and trivial talents charmingly to life.
1408 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
questionable insight. Then I read Pringle's Life of Roosevelt which I
thought had point and vigour. I make the remark, in the hope of
challenging you, that of all the Presidents since the Civil War who looked
important while they were in office Roosevelt now emerges as the least
significant Nothing is left of him save the fact that he appointed you
to the court and the memory of a vigorous personality operating fiercely
in a vacuum. I must not, by the way, forget to tell you that Alexander
spoke with immense warmth of Leslie Stephen as one of the great
liberating forces of his time. He said that when he was a young don at
Oxford, things like the "Agnostic's Apology" seemed like beacons of
light in a world which the theologians seemed to possess lock, stock and
barrel, and that the generosity of his private counsel was unequalled.
He added that he had vivid memories of a walk with Stephen in 1889
on which they covered twenty miles, Stephen speaking only once to
explain that Morley lived at a particular house they could see which they
were not going to visit.
I picked up one or two things in M/C. but not anything to crow about.
The most interesting was a copy of Savigny's Vocation of our Time
which had belonged to Lord Lindley. He put a note in to say that he
had lent it to Lord Bramwell who returned it with the remark that he
did not see why a large pamphlet should be written to prove the
obvious. Of such is the kingdom of heaven.
Our love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. ], L.
Devon Lodge, 9.X.32
My dear Justice: I am ashamed of myself for the long interval since I
wrote; but I have really been terribly driven. A visit to Manchester to
see my people; a visit to the miners in Northumberland; three days of
industrial arbitrations; a long job in connection with the dispute between
this country and Ireland;1 and the grim toil of the beginning of term
(I interviewed 168 students in a fortnight) — these are my excuses. But
now that the routine is in full swing again I hope to return to my
decent habits.
In the way of news I have little to record. Our politics, like yours,
go from bad to worse. We ignore common sense in the pursuit of a
stupid economic imperialism which denies every rational economic princi-
ple; and in matters of social constitution we are now reaping the evil
fruit of our class-ridden society. It is becoming terribly true that our
1 On October 5, Mr. de Valera participated in conferences in London with
British representatives concerning outstanding issues between the two govern-
ments. Negotiations which followed between October 14 and 16 quickly broke
down.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1409
governors speak In terms which mean less and less to the multitude, I am
finally convinced that a civilisation dominated by business men is in-
capable of statesmanship. Their habits and motives are not wide enough
for the task of a democracy; and the economic world they make ^ets
into relentless contradiction with the political The result is that the
vested interests of the one deny the established expectations of the other;
and the thing moves with an almost awe-inspiring determination to
catastrophe. I don't say that is for today or tomorrow; I do prophecy that
the basis of common agreement is in process of disappearance. It is a
tragedy; but it is a tragedy implied logically in the facts.
You, I hear from Felix, are immersed (oh wise judge!) in detective
stories, with an emphasis on the need for action on every page. I
recommend to you the writings of one Philip MacDonald, especially
The White Crow and The Rasp which, I think, fulfil the conditions you
postulate. I have been reading many things, new and old. The most in-
teresting, I think, has been the official Life of Asquith which contains
masses of fascinating material, especially on the war and the working of
our cabinet system. The Crown emerges, as always when the documents
are available, as much more significant than we like to imagine; and
minor matters of interest are the petty vanity of Morley as a cabinet
minister, (he liked to resign with some frequency in order to be told
how necessary it was that he should stay) and the meanness of Curzon
who seemed incapable of straight dealing whenever office was in ques-
tion. Asquith, by the way, raises some pretty literary points. Where in
Jane Austen is baseball referred to? What was Darcy's Christian name?
Who first said quern deus vult perdere, etc? The last seems to be from
the scholiast on Euripides, but you may like the amusement of finding
the answers to the two former.2 Then I read for the first time (to my
shame!) Arnold's Friendship's Garland — a really great book, done with
verve and humour and pungency. I very thoroughly enjoyed the Life
of Beveridge, which Mrs. B. very kindly sent me. He seems to have
been a much bigger person than I thought him, though lacking in a
central energising principle, and too moved by the issues of the hour to
discover a' general philosophy. I thought he showed his own defect in
tackling Lincoln after Marshall. Lincoln was the obvious and dramatic
thing to do, but the wrong thing for him because he would merely have
identified himself with Lincoln and written a defence of his own Ideas.
What Beveridge needed was to tackle the philosophy he disliked in the
man he had attacked and to learn from it that the tragedy of politics is
not the clash of right and wrong, but the clash of one right with another.
2 The answers to none of the questions are given in Spender and Asquith,
Life of Lord Oxford and Asquith (1932), though they are raised in Volume I,
pp. 220-221.
1410 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
I also read an amazing and moving book by a Frenchman Gustave
Geffroy, L'enfermt, a history of the great revolutionary Blanqui. It is
done with marvellous force and stirs one like a great hymn.
In the way of purchases 1 have found only one really pretty thing, a
lovely copy of the 1606 edition of Bodin in English, with a note from
the translator presenting it to Ellesmere. I bid on some nice things in
Paris by proxy, but, alas, they soared beyond my pen [sic]. I am paying
for a clever lad to do a year's graduate work at the School this year as
I believe he has great powers, and that restricts my capacity in a way
that is good for my soul but destructive of say twenty per cent of my
pleasure in catalogues. But everyone is the better for discipline.
You, I expect, are just on the way to Washington. I hope the autumn
is going to give you the beauties we have just now. We went out to
Richmond the other day and the Q. Anne houses in Maids of Honour
Row amid the trees which were just going red were as exquisite a picture
as I have seen.
Our love as always to you both. Please keep fit and well, as the first
vacation when I have sixty pounds dr so to spare I shall run over to
see you. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 15.X.S2
My dear Justice: Another week full of students and committees, I will
not say to the point of nauseation, but pretty near it. Of the latter the
most interesting was the first meeting of the Lord Chancellor's Committee
on Legal Education. It's clear we are going to have a hard road. The
Inns of Court members take the view (a) that things are admirable as
they are, quite minor adjustments apart, and (b) that we have nothing
at all to learn from foreign experience. Indeed a remark of mine that we
should look at the work of Harvard produced from an eminent silk the
comment that the American inability to cope with crime was a sufficient
comment on Harvard; I imagine that this takes its place among the best
non-sequiturs in history. Then students have produced, as always, their
glories. A girl from Smith, who proposed to write a monograph *on George
Savile, Lord Halifax. I suggest that she should decide whether he was
not greatly influenced by La Rochefoucauld. She, being anxious to show
me that she is not unaware of French possibilities, breaks in with the
bright remark that she herself has always thought that he much more
resembled Montaigne. I explain that there are certain rather vital differ-
ences; to which she brightly retorts "O, Professor Laski, all these French-
men are much of a muchness." Well did the critic say that dons bury
themselves in a state of resentful coma and call it research. . . .
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1411
I went also to an amusing lunch with H. G. Wells. He and 1 maintained
against the company that in the next generation there was going to be
a great intellectual renascence in the United States — that the present
coincidence of scepticism, material difficulty, absence of overmastering
tradition, faith in experimentalism, made it probable that new views and
new creativeness were far more likely there than in England or Western
Europe. He interested me much by his fervid praise of Dos Passes and
Sinclair Lewis, and we agreed that people like Willa Gather mark the
attempt of any sensitive mind in a critical period to try and find a
private hole in the ground. Wells remains the most alert mind I know,
quick, sensitive, eager to see the light on the horizon and its significance.
He has grave faults of temper, especially his insistence that his private
scheme of values is the quintessence of universal experience. But he is
a mind unafraid and unwilling ever to bow the knee to the conventional
mythologies which are always so comfortable to those who fear the need
to think anew.
Of books much the most interesting this week has been the Life of
Asquith. He comes out of it a very great gentleman — a type rarer in
politics than we like to admit. On the evidence it is pretty clear ( 1 ) that
all his instincts about the war were right and (2) that Lloyd George
dethroned him because Asquith would not pander to the emotional
excitements the other knew how to arouse and use. It is clear too that of
his colleagues few come out well — Curzon much the worst. The latter,
on the same day, wrote to Asquith that Lloyd George was a cad whom
he would never support and to Lloyd-George that it was quite imperative
that Asquith should go. Not quite what is meant by noblesse obligel
It is also obvious, I think, that Asquith did not understand, and L-G
did the post-war world. I have put it by saying in a book review that
Asquith wanted the wrong things in the right way, and L-G the right
things in the wrong way, and I believe that is pretty much the pith of
the matter.1 I must also record a really amusing trifle, a trifle, but really
brilliantly done. It is called Public Faces by Harold Nicholson [sic] and
will, I think, delight you.
The other book I read — don't read it — is the Letters of D. H. Law-
rence which in a way ought to be read since Lawrence is a cult to an
important section of public opinion. What is really arresting in the book
is the colossal egotism of a man who can, obviously, honestly, regard the
war and the post war crisis as, above all, unpleasant interferences with
his personal development. And I think that complete sense of self-
sufficiency, the idea that our little poems and novels and essays are things
to which the world must adjust itself as significant is one of the most
1 The review has not been identified.
1412 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
interesting deposits of post-war experience. A refusal to see that you are
in the universe and must make terms with it; and a condemnation of the
world because your scheme of values does not forthwith become a
universal. It must be a beatific condition when you can honestly believe
that your own emotions are historic events!
Our love to you as always; and don't be too disturbed by Mr. Hoover's
imminent disappearance from public life. If Frank Roosevelt makes
Felix Solicitor-General, I will forgive him everything!
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 30.X.32
My dear Justice: A fortnight of grim labour with one or two pleasant
interludes. The most amusing, I think, was a dinner with H. G. Wells
who was in great form; or perhaps I ought to say that he damned all
the things I like to damn. He made a furious attack on James Joyce as,
effectively, the annihilation of rationality; he went for a D. H. Law-
renceite by urging that no one has the right to make his private emotions
the measure of the universe. And he and I went for a Frenchman who
was anxious to explain that America was materialistic where France was
the spiritual guardian of civilised values. Then I went to dinner with
Slesser L. J. and had a good night of legal talk. It was amusing to find
that his two other guests had just discovered the Harvard Law School and
were eager to explain how much more important it was than Englishmen
realised. And their views of American law were funnier than I can put
into words. They had found a volume of Cardozo in the Inner Temple
and evidently felt about it the same wondering admiration as you or I
might feel if we ran across a copy of Descartes in the hinterland of
Manchuria. One of them was a son of old Lord MacNaghten who is now
a K.B. judge; and he was so full of distress when I propounded the view
that the law of torts was expressive of a certain framework of economic
conditions. When I mentioned your "inarticulate major premise," he ex-
plained to me with something like passion that he had no such premises,
that he "simply applied the law, looking neither to the right nor to the
left/* I suggested that his mind might be slightly more complex than he
knew, to which he retorted that he was a simple and honourable man and
that no damned nonsense about complexity was going to obscure his
motives. "I never give a decision," he said "unless I can find a case to
support it/* I asked him if he had ever read Maitland to which he re-
plied that he read Pollock who was very good, especially in his book on
Contract, but in his "humble submission" Maitland was not a lawyer at
all, but a poet. Don't you think that is a superb way to take life?
In the way of reading, I do urgently beg you to read Carl Becker's
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1413
Heavenly City of the XVIIIth Century which Yale has just published. I
thought it a superb book, especially in its final chapter. If Mcllwain
had known how to put all the relevant things on one plane like that in
his history of political ideas he would have written one of the great
books of our time. Then I read Walter Lippmann's selected editorials,
which he sent me. I didn't think they stood republication very well.
They lacked body, and the power to take a long view. The style is, of
course, simply admirable; but they are very emphatically the work of
a journalist who wants to get an immediate audience, rather than of a
thinker who reflects for the few hundreds who are seeking the way to
penetrate to foundations. There is a desire to please which I found
myself resenting. I read also a very remarkable book by Gustave Geffroy
called L'enferme — a history of the French revolutionary Blanqui. With
all its faults, I am inclined to put it down as the most moving biography
I have ever read. The theme is of course magnificent, as must any life
of an Athanasius be; but it is treated worthily and with a dramatic power
that makes you bang your fist on the chair at least once on every page.
If it is available in Washington its mere narrative excitement would, I
think, give you great pleasure.
I haven't been able to buy anything recently as my spare funds have
gone in paying for a clever lad who has lost his parents to stay on at
the School and get his degree. I sent for a pretty collection of Mazarinades
from a catalogue, but, alas, too late. One of my colleagues had a good
book-adventure. He was in Northampton and bought at a local sale a
mass of letters from some old firm. When he got them home he discovered
that the head of it in 1819 had started a correspondence with Ricardo
and that he had not only all of Ricardo's letters, but copies of those the
other fellow had sent. They cast much light on some nice points in
Ricardian scholarship. They had been untouched in the archives of the
firm for over a hundred years. They are to be published in a new
edition of Ricardo which the Royal Economic Society is undertaking.1
Of other things, there is little to tell. The Industrial Court, two
government committees, my book and academic work take up their
weekly part, and it is now getting most exciting both for Frida and me to
watch Diana really beginning to grow up. She has reached the stage
where people like Hazlitt and Jane Austen begin to seem real persons,
and I find her foraging among my books and ardent in discussion in a way
that makes me leap with excitement.
Our love to you unchangeably. I hope Roosevelt is elected and that he
makes Felix Solicitor General. Then I shall believe in a divinity which
shapes our endsl Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
1 The first two of nine contemplated volumes of David Ricardo's Works and
Correspondence (Sraffa, ed.) were published in 1951.
1414 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
Devon Lodge, S.XI.S2
My dear Justice; 1 feel full of virtue as I took the typescript of my book
to the publisher this week; and re-reading it before doing so, it really
seemed to me very sensible. Otherwise it has been a kind of routine week
in which there was nothing of decorative interest except an American
psychologist who wanted to interest me in the most incredible piece of
research of which I have ever heard. He has a scholarship to investigate
the influence of the present on the future. For this purpose he is asking
two thousand people (a) are you republican or democrat? (b) do you
think Hoover will be reelected, and making a coefficient between the
replies on the basis that this will tell him how much desire governs
decision. I tried to point out weaknesses, but wholly in vain. Then he
had another questionnaire on what he called social vanity. Would I ask
my students to tell him whether (I) they had never, sometimes, often,
done things they regretted and (II) did they look forward to the future
with despair, neutrally or hopefully, and (III) had they last month
wasted no, little, or much time. The answers, it appears, would enable
him to say whether people are vain or not. I tried to dissuade him and
suggested that the answers would not tell him anything at all. But, bless
you, I might as well have addressed the wind. He simply assumed that
I did not understand scientific sociology and departed for more fertile
pastures. And I must not forget the English clergyman who came in
to tell me that he is writing a book on the relations of church and state
in the 17th century and would be glad if (I) I would give him a
bibliography of all writers in that period unduly neglected, (II) provide
a brief account of why I think they have been unduly neglected and (III)
explain just what influence each had on the development of doctrine. He
explained that his parochial duties did not allow him much time for
original research but that Dr. Gooch has spoken so highly of my knowl-
edge that he would accept any material I gave him without further
enquiry. He, again, thought I was very ungenerous when I declined the
request and said that he ought to tell me quite frankly that it was a bad
day for scholarship when savants (his word!) declined to give the time
to helping one another. God! What a world.
I have been having some interesting correspondence with Mrs. As-
quith over a review I wrote of her husband's biography. She tells me
one thing that is, I think, an interesting commentary on the habits of
the politician. When Asquith had his final quarrel with Lloyd-George
the two men to whom he gave his greatest confidence on the Tory side
were Curzon and Balfour who were his most intimate friends. They were
profuse up to the very last day of Asquith's government in protestations
of loyalty to him, and of dislike of L-G in whom, they insisted, they had
had no confidence; but twenty-four hours later they were both members
1932] HOLMES TO LASKI 1415
of L-G's cabinet and Curzon was especially loud in his protestations that
L-G was the only possible candidate for the Premiership. The more there
emerges about those days, the worse the intrigue seems to be by which
L-G got the supreme place. And as a commentary on the poison of
power I know little comparable, except perhaps the folly of Hoover's
last few speeches, to what men were then prepared to do in order to
keep their place. Mrs. Asquith says that she is now convinced that
under a mask of bland indifference Balfour had a quite insatiable ap-
petite for office, and that this was true of him down to his very last days.
Blessed indeed are they who find no satisfaction in that particular kind
of ambition.
I haven't read much this week as I have been busy trying to find out
the limits of a search warrant. Our genial police authorities have been
going into communist headquarters, taking everything they could lay
their hands on, and then founding indictments on the scraps they pick
up.1 To me, perhaps wrongly, that seems exactly the kind of thing the
General Warrants case was intended to prevent; and I know that your
Court has been adamant against it. I fail to find any authority which
entitles them to act in this way, and though the Communists are not
a very friendly type, it seems to me a public obligation to assure them
adequate legal treatment. So if my researches prove me to have reason
on my side, I propose to give the Attorney-General something to think
over in the next few days. Really it is painful that one should have to
re-establish elementary constitutional propositions nearly two hundred
years after they have been regarded as well settled.
My love to you. Keep well, and read The Cask by Freeman Crofts!
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., Nov. 7, 1932
My dear Laski; In spite of all that I have written about not writing it
makes me very uncomfortable to remain silent long. I am still pursuing
idleness, largely in the form of murder stories, and very little serious
reading of any kind. The chief recent exception, Walter Lippmann's
Interpretations which I read with modest admiration. I don't feel excited
over the approaching election — I should think that the President had
little political judgment, but I should vote for him if I had a vote —
vainly I presume — the indications seeming to be for Roosevelt. Brandeis
gave me the idea that Felix was in the inner circle of R. advisers, but
1 Certain aspects of the matter referred to were later dealt with in the Courts:
Elias v. Pasmore, [19341 2 K.B. 164. Horridge, J., in his judgment conceded
broad powers of search and seizure to the police. See, further, The Law of
Public Meeting and the Right of Police Search (prepared by a Committee of
the Haldane Club; New Fabian Research Bureau Publication, No. 13; 1933).
1416 HOLMES TO LASKI [1932
does not believe that he would take the Solicitor-Generalship, I think
it would be queer to turn down a seat on the Mass. Supreme Bench for
a Solicitor-Generalship. Perhaps the perspective has changed and I am
an old fogey.
In the way of murder I like what I have read of John Dickson Carr —
(author of The Lost Gallows),
Owen Wister sent me a poem by Robinson Jeffers — Thursos Landing
— some marks of power in it, but I don't care for it — though the
advertisements tell me that Jeffers is the greatest living American poet.
Also G. Miller (nephew) leaves for me to sample T. Dreiser: An
American Tragedy — but I don't mean to read it.
I have seen most of the judges but I feel very remote from the business.
A Chinaman called the other day — and wanted to see you when he
went to London (soon). I rather liked him — but held out no more
than that I would mention his name when I wrote — Mr. Liang —
Yuen Liang.1
This doesn't call on you to do anything. You see I can't write —
except to say Ever affectionately yours, O. W. Holmes
Devon Lodge, 12.XI.S2
My dear Justice: Well! We watched the presidential election with almost
the same excitement as Americans themselves. Felix, I suppose, is de-
lighted. I have a sense of relief at Hoover s defeat; but though I greatly
like Frank Roosevelt, I am not able to feel enthusiasm at his victory.
I thought he fought a second-rate campaign, evasive and timid; and I
am no admirer of most of the people on whose advice he is going to
depend. And I don't see how a Democrat, with Bryaiiism and Hearstism
and such-like excrescences to consider, has got much chance of being
decisive or courageous. I shall watch with enormous interest; but I
suspect that this is in fact a pill to cure an earthquake.1
I have had a busy week. The most interesting thing in it was a dinner
party of economists at the School — all experts of the first order. What
emerged was that there was no single issue on which any three out of the
twelve were prepared to adopt the same principles or causal explanations;
and when they approached agreement, the kind of proposal they made
would require a revolution to make it possible for the politician to im-
plement it. I came 'away feeling that expertise is a very small item in
common sense; and that statesmanship is a kind of divine intuition which
1 Yuen-Li-Liang (1903- ), law professor and diplomatist, had recently
been a teaching fellow at the Harvard Law School.
*A comment by LasH on Roosevelt's victory was published In the Daily
Herald and was reprinted in 343 Living Age 386 (January 1933).
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1417
hasn't got much relationship to expertise. There was not one of the
twelve whom I should have wanted as a colleague in a cabinet; each
could analyse, not one o£ them could propose. The most distinguished of
them was a German who said that the British cabinet should (I) get rid
of the export trades that were not paying (II) force unemployment up
to five millions (III) smash the trade unions (IV) and so force wages
on to a competitive basis. I said that if the Prime Minister tried to put
his policy into operation he would fill all the jails in Great Britain with
trade unionists and have to use the troops to prevent them being freed
by indignant mobs. Did the economists think that desirable? He thought
it would be lamentable. I asked if he thought a policy with such lamen-
table consequences was practical. He thought perhaps not. I then asked
his alternative, and he said he had none. Don't you think I may be
forgiven if I feel that experts need a course of training in common-sense?
Of reading I have something to tell. I have thoroughly enjoyed our
Winston Churchill's Thoughts and Adventures. He is a most exhilarating
fellow. I doubt whether he even knows what is meant by an inarticulate
major premise. I suspect that, like Theodore Roosevelt, his ideas are
the outcome of physical rather than mental exertion. But if there is
danger, he is in it. If there is action he is at the centre. He is incapable
of reflection or of second thoughts. But he is a grand fighting animal
and I think you would enjoy every page of his book. Even when he
describes his pleasure in painting you feel that for him the canvas is
a battlefield. Then I read an admirable French book by Albert Thibaudet
— Les idees politiques frangaises — a brilliantly clever picture of the
contemporary political ideology of France. He brings out very well the
way in which the Church and the Monarchy have built a kind of per-
manent foundation for French thought from which no subsequent genera-
tion however anticlerical or republican has wholly escaped. And a
remarkable book by Tawney — Land and Education [sic] in China —
so vividly written that you leave it almost convinced that you know what
the Chinese problem is really about. Also a work on Liberalism in the
South2 which seemed to me a little like writing a book on Snakes in
Ireland. He looks at a thin little trickle, and being a Virginian, asks
everybody to come and admire the turbulent mass of water that must
be the Mississippi. Queer it is how writers who have nothing to say
become very important to the writer of a territorial account of literature.
I have had one amusing book adventure. I went to Derby last Saturday
to make a speech. Coming out of the station I found a market — a sight
I can never resist. I found a bookstall in it, and on the bookstall a mass
of Mazarinades, some of them really rare, and all of them in first class
condition. I asked the price and was told I could have them for three-
"Virginius Dabney, Liberalism in the South (1932).
1418 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
pence a piece or seven and six for the lot. So I bought the lot and got
thereby a really precious addition to my library.
One more tale and I must end. A Chinaman came to me to say that he
wanted to come to the School but had exhausted his funds on the journey.
Could I get him some kind of scholarship? He was polished, impressive,
eager. He made me feel that so profound a love of learning ought not
to go unrewarded. I asked him to leave his address, and I would see
what I could do. His address was the Ritz — the most expensive hotel
in London!
My love to you. Keep well and read Henry Wade — The Murder at the
Duke of York's Steps. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 19.XL32
My dear Justice: A grand letter from you warmed my heart. I revel in
the thought of your immersion in romance of the gustier sort. Certainly
I find it a tonic.
I was terribly distressed by Charlie Rowland's death.1 Of the new
friends I made in America last year he was easily the outstanding. Not
only sensitive and fine, but with a generosity and rectitude beyond praise.
We shared many things in common — love of you and Felix and a joy
in ideas. He was the kind of person whose loss makes one feel the folly
of religious consolation.
My most interesting adventure this week must remain a secret between
us — but it was really interesting. Some writing of mine2 had been much
discussed in the press and the King's secretary asked me to go and see
him and have a talk on the functions of the monarchy. I did so and we
walked around the problem for two hours. Charming as he was, I left
him a convinced republican. He made me feel (I) that the King's power,
though intangible, is immense (II) that he is the vital pivot, and almost
necessarily so, in a constitutional crisis, (III) that the sources of his
opinions are drawn from so narrow a circle of experience that he can-
not adequately estimate the claims of novelty in matters of social
constitution, (IV) that he regards his formal powers as contingently
active for emergency purposes. In other words, in a big fight the Crown
would almost certainly be on the Tory side, and if it assumed a con-
stitutional form the monarchy could be precipitated with its immense
1 Charles P. Rowland (1869-1932), lawyer and man of affairs, had died
November 12.
2 Perhaps The Crisis and the Constitution: 1931 and After, supra, p. 1352, and
"Labour and the Constitution," 4 New Statesman and Nation 276 (Sept. 10,
1932). The article urged that large-scale constitutional changes would have
to be effected were the Labour Party to return to power committed to an effec-
tive program of socialism.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1419
social prestige into politics. He picked my brains with skill — not least
about America and Frank Roosevelt. But he didn't know things. What
he had was, so to speak, the best gossip; and I felt that it was an
inadequate basis of policy-formation that he should be so limited. I
liked him greatly, and was convinced of his benevolent intentions. But
he knew only one world and he did not even know that he lacked the key
to the other.
Of other things, there is less to say. An amusing dinner with Bernard
Shaw, at which I met J. M. Barrie. He reminded me of sugar and water
dressed up to look like champagne. A curious effort to be winsome which
left one feeling that he was a case of arrested intellectual development.
Shaw talked well, especially about the immense effect on our times made
by the decline in religious belief as one of the big factors for instability.
A hundred years ago men looked to heaven for consolation for the
errors of this world; now they reject heaven and this world has, some-
how, to make its peace with them. He also made the interesting remark
that Ibsen wrote the best stage dialogue since Moliere, that he had the
supreme gift of the theatre which consists in giving every actor a first-
rate entrance and exit. He thought — Barrie dissenting vehemently —
that Galsworthy was important as a social document rather than an
artist. He understood the Englishman of decent habits and cultured mind
who has a family-place, seven thousand a year, and a butler who stands
by the tradition; but he can't understand why that type does not neces-
sarily impress the English multitude, still less the foreigner. I think that
a very fair picture, though I think the pre-war Galsworthy saw deeper
than him of the post-war period. He has a kind of intellectual arterio-
sclerosis.
In the way of books I have been reading the first volume of Garvin's
official biography of Joe Chamberlain. It's interesting, but far too diffuse.
The main thing about Joe was that he missed the true boat on which
to sail. If he had been less deflected by persons e.g. his dislike of Glad-
stone, and more clear about his ideas he might have made a great radical
party in England; as it was he became the political expression of
Kiplingite Imperialism, one of the cheapest and meanest brands on the
market. How easily, too, by temperament he could have been the
Robespierre of an English revolution. But both he and Morley liked being
entertained by the eminent in society; and, like Dan Webster, once they
got their feet under the appropriate mahogany, they were lost. I read
too with great zest the second volume of Arnold Bennett's diaries; another
instance of a potentially great artist ruined by an inferiority complex. He
wanted the esteem of Society with a capital S; but he wanted it on his
own terms, which required money. So he set out to write for money and
wrote two great novels instead of ten and a hundred potboilers. But I
1420 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
always liked him for he was genuine to the core. I must note, too, an
amusing novel by Loma Rea called First Night which is a very clever
cinemetograph of the first night of a new play as it strikes a good random
sample of those concerned from author to gallery. If it comes your way
I think you would find it a pleasant accompaniment to solitaire.
And I must end with a story which pleased me. A pious Rabbi has a
son who turns Christian. He laments long and mournfully, bewailing
his lot so fiercely that God, who recognises his piety, appears to ask him
what is the matter. "God," says the Rabbi, "All my life I have served
you, and now my son, whom I love deeply, has become a Christian."
"Ah," replies God, "I cannot help you. My own son, whom also I loved
dearly, became a Christian too."
My love to you dear Justice. Keep well. Isn't it grand about Felix's
appointment to Oxford? 3 Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Washington, D. C., November 23, 1982
My dear Laski; If you keep a list of your charities — my name should
lead all the rest.
A letter received a few days ago revives memory of cases we had on
the limits of authority under search warrants. I think Butler expounded
and I will try to add the name of his case if my secretary can find it. I
am rather infirm for a search. Marron v. U.S., 275 U.S. 192.1 I have an
impression there are others — but I have not thought of law for nearly
a year.
As to the election if I had a vote it would have been for Hoover —
without enthusiasm — Roosevelt when I knew him struck me as a good
fellow with rather a soft edge, years ago.
Thank you for book recommendations — some of which at least I shall
follow. I have read very little serious reading — (good life of J. Q. Adams
by a son of Champ Clark — you wouldn't think that name could produce
so good a one). But I almost have given up the effort after improvement
and seek mainly amusement and repose. I hope you didn't despise my
flabbiness — but I am rather flabby.
You will have heard of Lowell's resignation.2 Tom Barbour called last
night just after the radio had brought the news. I thought he was the
8 In 1933-34 Felix Frankfurter was George Eastman Visiting Professor at
Oxford University.
1 In an opinion by Butler, J., the Court unanimously held that, although
general search warrants were outlawed by the Fourth Amendment, federal
officers might, without a warrant, and incidentally to effecting an arrest, search
the premises on which a crime was in process of commission and which were
under the control of the criminal.
2 As President of Harvard.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1421
proper successor but he didn't want it — and is wrapped up in the
Agassiz Museum of which he is head. I see the papers mention Charley
Adams — I should suppose he would be A-l. Brandeis doesn't approve
the suggestion of Felix for Attorney-General or Solicitor-General and 1
guess that he is right.
You see how hard I find it to write — my affection is unabated — but
I can no more. Please keep on writing to me.3 O. W. H.
Devon Lodge, 27.XI1.82
My dear Justice: You will have thought hardly of me for my silence in
three weeks. But I got dragged into the India Conference by Sankey and
had a grim time trying to be useful — five or six hours a day.1 And
though in one sense I learned much — particularly that politicians are
a race apart — I ended believing that imperialism has a curve of its own
the line of which moves quite independently of past experience. I spent
days trying to drum into his obstinate head that as long as thirty thousand
Indians, including Ghandi, were in jail, no one would look at the Con-
stitution and that the part of wisdom was to grant an amnesty before it
was exacted. Not a step have the Government taken; and I think so far
as common sense is concerned I might have saved my breath to cool my
porridge. Sankey is prodigal in assurances that he agrees with me but
gets nothing done. The last quality of a politician is the courage to take
risks, and it is certainly the most urgent.
My great news you may have heard by way of Felix. I have accepted
an invitation from Yale to give the Storrs lectures at the Law School,2
and I shall come over for about a fortnight after March 17th. I haven't
got my dates here quite settled yet, but, please, assume that I shall look
in upon you about the first week in April. I needn't tell you how thrilling
it will be for me to see you again; that is really the point of the whole
adventure. And please be very fit so that we can have the maximum of
talk. It's intolerable to have to wait ten weeks for this joyful consumma-
tion. But even ten weeks must pass somehow or other.
My other news is of a five-day visit to Paris. I had a very jolly time.
I had a dinner with Herriot, who had just been beaten in die Chamber
and was like a school boy released from lessons;3 then a long talk with
8 This is the last letter from Holmes to Laski which has been preserved.
1 The Third Round Table Conference had convened in November and closed
on December 24.
2 Laskf s four lectures at Yale were on "The Economic Basis of Law"; they
were not published.
8 Laski wrote of Herriot in the Daily Herald; the piece was reprinted in 343
Living Age 46 (September 1932).
1422 LASKI TO HOLMES [1932
my old friend Emile Meyerson, the philosopher, who pleased me much
by saying that he regarded Morris Cohen as easily the best living
American philosopher and on a par with all the best in Europe ; an
afternoon with Maxime Leroy, whom I regard as the most creative of
French jurists; and a thrilling afternoon with Tseretelli,4 who told me the
history of the November Revolution from the angle of a defeated Menshe-
vik. I also visited the Institut de Droit Compare and gave a lecture to the
students on recent developments of British Constitutional Law. I found
the latter quite interesting, but not, I thought, anywhere near the level of
the best third-year men at Harvard. They were all annexed to the doctrine
of some particular professor with whom they were working and in the
discussion they didn't seem to me to do much more than regurgitate his
ideas — and some of the ideas were not very bright e.g. an affirmation
that the purpose of law is to reveal the order of nature which remained
undefined after an hour's discussion.
Then I had a jolly time in the bookshops. I did not find any extraordi-
nary things, but some I was very glad to have, especially a copy of the
privately printed inedits of Montesquieu which his relatives got out for
the family. There is some interesting stuff in them, though they still leave
him remote and rather mysterious as a person. I found, too, a collection
of contemporary pamphlets on Rousseau which were revealing and an
edition de luxe of Blanquf s life by Geoffrey [sic] which I think I once re-
marked to you seems to me one of the half-dozen great biographies of
modern times. But the hunting was even more attractive than the kill.
The French bookseller is a special type — almost a savant in his way, and
to talk with him is sheer delight. To find a man who gauges the movement
of opinion in France by the books his customers buy and who is prepared
to be philosophical about it is unknown to me in English experience. I
also had a delightful adventure in a cafe". I had bought a rather rare copy
of Villey's book on Montaigne and it lay on the table while I lunched
in the Boulevard S. Michel. I saw the eyes of a middle-aged man on it
continuously. At last he asked me if I knew that the book was "rarissime"?
I said "yes" and enquired if he was interested in Montaigne. He then
proceeded for the space of six or seven minutes to treat me to a lyric on
Montaigne — his urbanity, his scepticism, his tolerance, that the "ideal
d'un gentleman, le grand ideal anglais" was realised in him one hundred
and fifty years before Sir Roger de Coverley and was in reality French
in origin. I asked him his name and he said he had no reason to give
it — he was a "citoyen tres ordinaire" and would I only think of his
pride in the fact that a foreigner knew the greatness of Montaigne. It
was really a perfect little lyric to see this dumpy little Frenchman of
4 Irakly Tseretelli, Georgian leader of the Mensheviks, had been Minister of
Posts and Telegraphs in the Kerensky government.
1932] LASKI TO HOLMES 1423
sixty or so all red with excitement about what was obviously a private
passion he had few opportunities to satisfy.
Of other things, I have not much to tell. By way of reading I have
mostly dwelt in the realm of technical memoranda on India, as you can
imagine an arid zone. But I have read Trotsk/s History of the Russian
Revolution which even in an execrable translation is as exciting an ex-
perience as when one reads Carlyle for the first time. And Conrad's letters
to E. Garnett which are a quite superb picture of a great artist's tech-
nique. And Sam the Sudden by P. G. Wodehouse, which I had unac-
countably missed and found superb; and the volume of Walter Lipp-
mann's editorials which I thought really beautifully written but not worth
reprinting.
My love to you dear Justice. Please count the days until the end of
March. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
VIII
I933~I935
Devon Lodge, 61.33
My dear Justice: Your telegram for 1933 gave me enormous pleasure;
and I need not tell you how warmly it is reciprocated. My mind is full
of the anticipation of seeing you in about eleven weeks from now. It
will be a red-letter day for me.
We came back this morning from a very pleasant week in Antwerp —
mostly full of talk with artists. I saw there one thing you would, I think,
have enjoyed — a very remarkable exhibition of Rops* etchings. Some
were wicked; some merely unpleasantly obscene; but their power and
purity of line were really amazing. I was interested, too, in a long talk
with Ensor, now the leading artist in Belgium, and some say in Europe.
He was particularly interesting about English art. He is absorbed by
Turner and Constable whom he rates very high; for all the rest he appears
not to give the Duke's two-penny damn. Of the Americans he has literal
worship for Whistler and a high regard for the impressionist Sisley.1
Sargent he regards as no more than a fashionable trickster who had
learned the technique of being impressive without being profound. He
was, of course, an enthusiast for the Dutchmen; but he had some interest-
ing special views e.g. that El Greco and Goya were above Velasquez,
and that after the period of da Vinci Italian art had become so conven-
tionalised that none saw things definitively for himself. He was a gay,
brilliant creature, with a hatred for art dealers which was gloriously
funny. Then I had a good time hunting books in queer little shops in the
market. I found nothing special except an amusing Dictionnaire des
athees by Sylvain Marechal, the associate of Babeuf, an interesting piece
of early rationalism. By way of reading I came across a very clever novel
by Somerset Maugham called The Moon and Sixpence, which I com-
mend to you, if you have not read it, especially for its quite superb
last chapter. I reread there Oliver Twist with moderate enthusiasm; of all
the Dickens I know this is the one where sentimentalism gets most in the
way. I tried also a number of Scotf s which decorated the shelves, but
except for Redgauntlet, I found them quite unreadable; all the magic
seemed to have oozed out in tedious description and terribly stilted
dialogue. I was surprised as I had expected quite different feelings in my-
self, but I found that the price of admission was terribly high.
One evening would have interested you. A friend of ours is Professor
of Chinese at Ghent and has just published a vast book on symbolism in
Chinese art. As you know sinologues do not take easily to one another's
views. He showed me the first German reviews — he was a liar, an igno-
ramus, despicable, brutally stupid, unfit to be charged with teaching. We
agreed that nothing so degraded academic life as this kind of criticism.
Within ten minutes he was telling me that my colleague Yetts (who is our
1 Alfred Sisley (1840-1899), French landscapist, who was much influenced
by Monet and Renoir.
1428 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
London Professor of Chinese)2 was a liar, an ignoramus, etc. I pointed
out that this was what the Germans were saying of him. "Ah/' he said,
"but I am speaking in the name of objective science." Can you beat that?
Another interesting afternoon was a visit to a village where recently
the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to five children. After investiga-
tion the Church was inclined to doubt the miracle. But the local land-
owner, who is also the hotel proprietor, is very pious and brought pressure
to hear to prevent the scepticism from becoming too positive. The result
is that in less than a month he has reaped a harvest from tourists who
haunt the grotto in the evening in the hope of a further appearance. I
add, as a piece of social history, that drink is sold on the steps of the
Church, and that the children involved are already set apart for the
religious life. Do you wonder that the atmosphere made me feel that there
is much to be said for the anti-religious campaign of Soviet Russia? My
friends of Antwerp all took it with bitter indignation. They said that the
effort involved in fighting the church at every stage was intolerable and
that in a Catholic country only drastic social surgery could deal with
its poisonous results. The little I saw of this profiteering in miracles and
its accompanying hysteria made me feel they may be right.
My love and warm good wishes for '33.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 21J.33
My dear Justice: It looks as though we shall sail on the Majestic on March
15; and I shall propose myself for a visit shortly after we get settled in
Cambridge where we propose to stay until I have to go on to Yale. I
need not tell you how excited I am by the prospect. It's more than I ever
hoped to manage.
The most interesting thing I have been doing since I wrote to you last
has been a series of wireless lectures on the state. I said that I would
answer questions and over 700 letters have turned up on the first two.
They vary from requests for lists of books to appeals, abuse, questions,
personal grievances, and are a quite wonderful cross-section of the things
that pass through men's minds. A man for instance writes from Edinburgh
to complain that I called Hume "British" instead of "Scottish." A lady
writes to tell me that justice has no connection with the state as she has
just lost an action in the courts through the dishonesty of the judge.
Another man asks me to defend anarchism which, he thinks, has never
2 Walter Perceval Yetts (1878- ), teacher of Chinese Art and Archaeol-
ogy in the School of Oriental Studies, 1932-1946; author of Symbolism in
Chinese Art (1912).
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1429
been properly defended. Another explains that I cannot possibly grasp
the nature of political truth as I have not yet mentioned Nietzsche who is
the only thinker of any importance since Plato. It is really fascinating to
see how people define themselves in this kind of correspondence. And one
gets the impression that the numbers in society who tremble on the verge
of lunacy is far greater than one normally imagines. There are clearly
people who, because they have read a book, think they are profound; and
there are others who, because they have not read a book, think that they
are profounder still. I believe that the number of men and women who
are convinced that they possess the only clue to the secret of the uni-
verse is very large. One man actually wrote to say that he was surprised
that I ventured to talk over the radio when I admitted that it was pos-
sible for other views to be held. Only those should speak, he wrote, who
had hold of absolute truth. Isn't that superb?
In the way of reading, one or two interesting things have come my
way. With reservations, I liked Wells's new novel (The Bulpington of
Blup)1 which has his amazing power of seeing a society in action and
assessing its motivation. Then I read a quite admirable book on the
physiocrats by Weulersse which, for me at least, was full of new apergus
and suggestions. I read also a book you will not read called Moscow
Dialogues by one Hecker. It was abominably written; but it was pro-
foundly interesting in two ways. It was the first Communist book I have
read which really explains why Moscow attaches such enormous im-
portance to metaphysical principles; and it was amazing in its inability
— a religious attitude — to understand that a man can intelligently hold
an alternative view to communism. It was the book of a widely-read
fanatic; for its temper was exactly that of an inquisitor who does not
doubt your sincerity but argues with passion that your sincerity only
makes your suppression the more necessary.
Of people, the most interesting was a night here with Alexander the
philosopher. The old man was in great form and laid about him with a
will. Apart from Dewey and Morris Cohen, he would have nothing of
living Americans; and Russell and G. E. Moore were the only Englishmen
he thought significant, apart from Whitehead. He cursed Bergson as an
enemy to serious thinking and the ally of all schools of fashionable re-
action. He surprised me somewhat by a rather narrow academic view of
technique. But I shall never forget an hour when he explained just what
Spinoza had meant in his life. It was like hearing a disciple tell of the
master who has given him the clue to the universe. On a quite different
plane, I had dinner with Arthur Henderson, our late Foreign Secretary,
Reviewed by Laski, 5 New Statesman and Nation (N.S.) 105 (Jan. 25,
1933).
1430 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
and learned much about the inner history of our crisis of last year.2 He
made it clear to me that my own much-criticised guess that the King was
largely responsible for what occurred was amply justified; and he wholly
rebutted the allegation that American officials of the Federal Reserve
Bank had interfered. Some of his tales of MacDonald I must tell you
when we meet; they confirm my impression that the politician is normally
ruined not by the pressure of his work but by the influence of the
adulation of his immediate environment. He spoke with great warmth of
Stimson as direct, sincere, and really eager for the big thing; and with
something like affection for Norman Davis. For John Simon he had com-
plete contempt.3 Simon, he said, is a man with a big mind on a small
point and a small mind on a big one. He made me feel pretty hopeless
about the present international situation, not because he himself was
hopeless but because the grounds of his own faith in improvement seemed
to me so fragile. But I have rarely met a finer energy of character de-
voted to high ends.
I am busy trying to get a draft of lectures done for Yale; though I do
not propose to write them out seriously until the long vacation. I am
going to talk about the economic basis of law; and, as I hope, to talk
sound commonsense of which you will approve the method but not the
result.
Our love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Don't omit to read F. Pollock's brilliant little paper in the January L.Q.R*
Devon Lodge, 11,11.33
My dear Justice: I have been hors de combat for a fortnight with a nasty
dose of influenza. Hence my silence. But I am up and about again, and
resume forthwith my epistolary operations.
Bed means reading, and on that score I have nothing of which to
complain. My main interest has been Henry Adams's History which I
2 Arthur Henderson in October had resigned as Leader of the Labour Party
following the action of the annual conference of the Party in adopting a reso-
lution committing it to a program of forceful socialist legislation if it should
obtain office. The "crisis" of 1932, to which Laski referred, was presumably the
split in the Nationalist government which had led to the resignation, in Sep-
tember, of ten Ministers who refused further to continue in a government com-
mitted to the policy of governing through a ministry which had agreed to differ.
See, supra, p. 1361. Other critical issues of the year had concerned unemploy-
ment relief and the means test, the failures of the Disarmament Conference at
Geneva to which Mr. Norman Davis was Chief United States Delegate, and
the termination in December of the Hoover moratorium on the payment of war
debts.
8 Sir John Simon was Foreign Secretary at the time.
4 "The Snail in the Bottle, and Thereafter," 49 L. Q. Rev. 22 (January 1933).
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1431
read with enormous interest. And I must say with emphasis that I emerge
from it very hostile to Hamilton who seems to me wholly alien from all
that is autochthonic in the best of American traditions. I was left with
the feeling that Henry Adams felt all the way through too great a sense
of lofty superiority to his narrative to feel in a full sense what an epic
it might have been. It's no use trying to be superior to men like Hamil-
ton, Jefferson and Burr. To understand them you have to be in the arena
with them; and Adams left me convinced that a large part of him was
terror of failure. I like an historian to prove the redness of his blood; and
Adams has that disdain which comes from the man who knows that his
is blue but is too proud to tell you so. Then I read an amusing, though
over-mannered book on Mark Hanna, by one Thomas Beer, not otherwise
known to me. It was very interesting though in its half-accidental ex-
posure of Theodore Roosevelt. I do not know if I ought to say so to you,
but the more I read about him and Cabot Lodge the more definitely
second-rate they seem to me to have been. Roosevelt was the Autolycus
of the presidency, largely dependent on whom he met and what he
sniffed in the air for the things he did. He never had a clear or coherent
policy; and Cabot Lodge was always a little dog either yapping with joy
at a master or yapping with temper at him. I would rather any day have
the straightforward ruffian Mark Hanna was, who doesn't pretend that
his game is clean, than the Roosevelts and the Lodges who play just the
same game but put on white kid gloves in public. Then I must warmly
recommend one of the most amusing novels and one of the cleverest
I have read in years — Mandoa! Mandoa! by Winifred Holtby, which
explains what happened when Christian civilisation was brought to a
backward native state in Africa; it is a superb and unforgettable tour de
force. I have also been reading with great interest a good deal of
Montesquieu's posthumous works. They convince me that the book on
him is still to be written. The account one could give of his sources would
alone be epoch-making for the history of thought, and hardly less exciting
to trace would be the history of his influence to about 1793 when I
think it became merged with other influences and ceased to operate on
its own account. I also read the History of French Public Law by Brissaud
which moved me greatly, and seemed to me the best thing of its kind,
apart from Maitland that I know. I also read a history of German public
law by Stinzing [sic] 1 which was a monument of exact scholarship but
heavy in the hand. Finally I must mention a Short History of Christianity
by J. M. Robertson, which I had never come across before; it seemed to
be the best critical account, especially for its brevity, I had ever come
across.
1 Presumably Roderick von Stintzing, Geschichte der Deutschen Rechtswis-
senschaft (3 vok, 1880-1910).
1432 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
Of news, of course, I- have but little; bed is a factor of insulation.
But I must not forget to tell you that H. W. Nevinson has, at 75, made
us all happy by marrying his, and our, old friend the writer, Evelyn
Sharp. They have had what I may call a peripheral romance for about
30 years; and though H.W.N. and his wife led separate lives for a
generation the latter would never agree to a divorce. Last October she
died, and these two old darlings are now enjoying a real Indian summer
of happiness that is a perfect joy to see. Nothing has given us so much
pleasure in many a day. Then I must (for your private ear) tell you
an amusing tale of a talk I had with an eminent colleague of the P.M/s.
It was put to me that what I wrote on the P.M. gave him much pain.
I asked the eminent colleague whether he thought what I wrote unfair:
no; had I said anything he would not have said granted my outlook: no.
What then was the objection to my saying it? Only that the last 18
months had so convinced MacDonald that he was the Saviour of the
universe as to make anything less than adulation something he could
not digest when it came from his former friends. I offered to withdraw
anything to which the eminent colleague took objection. His reply was
"the trouble, Lasld, is that I see no cause for objection to what you
write. Only a feminine egotist could." So we agreed to leave it at that.
But you understand why I always insist that power is poisonous!
Our love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Devon Lodge, 1911.33
My dear Justice: Your brief note moved me profoundly.1 You can't
imagine how eagerly I look forward to March. It lights up the whole
horizon.
The last week has been pretty full. Quite the most interesting experi-
ence was a long talk at the House of Commons with an eminent minister
about America. I never quite realised before the importance of imagina-
tion. He had a debt-plan and I think he sent for me in the hope that I
would give him unctuous confirmation. I had to say (I) there really is
an American point of view which you had better try to understand (II)
you must not think, even to yourself, that Great Britain has been called
by God to act as his instrument and (III) the easier you make it for
the President to command your point of view the more rational your
proposals are likely to be. I assure you, with my hand on my heart,
that all this came to him with the force of novelty. He saw the economic
devastation of this country; he was quite unable even dimly to realise
what it was like with you.
Then I went to a judge's dinner at Sankey's — an amusing show. I
1 The letter referred to is missing.
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1433
sat next to an eminent Chancery Judge who gave forth the following great
thoughts. (I) Maitland was a fellow with a pretty wit (II) all this talk
about law reform only unsettles people and is bad for the Courts (III) we
have the best legal system in the world, the best judges and the best
advocates and (IV) he had never seen any point in looking at the legal
system of other countries. I interjected sweetly that, at the moment, there
were at least 3 judges on the U. S. bench better in quality than any who
had sat on ours since Bowen; he looked at me with an air of complete
amazement and said haughtily that he never deemed it necessary to
look at U.S. decisions. So I gave him a ten minute lecture on the
Supreme Court at the end of which he was a sadder, but I hope, a wiser
man. Judges ought to be re-appointed after ten years only if they can
prove mental growth in the preceding period!
I must add an extract from a book on currency I have been reading
which might almost be a comment on the Harvard Law School: I have
neither altered nor added anything: "It is obvious that long before 1931
the Pound was seriously overvalued. When, therefore, the crisis came and
its foundations were examined, it was obvious that those critics were
right who refused to place confidence in its stability, and fifteen months
experience of its effort to live in freedom from artificial support makes
it certain that drastic revision of its value will be necessary before it can
hope to achieve definite equilibrium." Now could you ask a better
vindication than that? I sent it on to Felix who ought to be pleased with
its malicious possibilities.
In the way of reading I have not much to report. I tried to read a
novel by William Faulkner who was reported to me as the major Ameri-
can novelist, but I failed lamentably. I enjoyed a first-class detective
story by A. E. W. Mason called The Sapphire and a most admirable book
by Gilbert Murray on Aristophanes and political parties at Athens2 —
a beautiful thing all the way through. In a lesser way, and perhaps too
much in the Lytton Strachey manner, but still amusing and cleverly done,
was a brief life of Wesley by Bonamy Dobree. I must say that the more
I see great religious leaders near at hand the more certain I am that the
proclamation of religious truth is a form of egotism; and when it seems
to be humility, as with Saint Francis, then I take it to be merely egotism
in its most supremely subtle form.
I have bought little; but I have one book adventure that will, I hope
tickle your palate. A wealthy parent whose boy, I suppose had told
him of my books, told me he had a very beautiful medieval ms richly
bound and that he would value my opinion on it. He had paid £76
for it and he thought of giving it to the Museum. So I went down to
3 Probably his Aristophanes and the War Party (1919) rather than his Aris-
tophanes: A Study (1933).
1434 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
look at it and found that it was a 19th century facsimile, hand-illumi-
nated, of the Hours of Sarurn of the kind got out about thirty years ago
to give to Catholic girls who were about to be confirmed. He asked me
its possible value and I said that I was afraid he would be a little
disappointed. He pressed me and I explained that it was about seven
or eight shillings. Then I understood for the first time what the passion
for money was. He was like a madman in temper, (a) at the disappoint-
ment (b) at the fact of being done by the man who sold it him (c) that
he had lost the chance to impress me. I expressed my regret but he had
so lost control of himself that he was like a volcano. When he quieted
down I asked where he had bought it; he said at a sale in the country
and it emerged that it was some fake auction where he was bidding
against the auctioneer's "mug" in the belief that he was getting a grand
thing for nothing.
Our love to you. Please be fit and well for the end of March.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 4.IIL3S
My dear Justice: If I judge correctly the mysteries of the post, this ought
to arrive just after your birthday. It brings you our love and every sort
of good wish. It is thrilling to think that in about three weeks I shall be
presenting them in person. I need not tell you how I am looking forward
to that
I have been terribly busy since I wrote to you last. When one has to
go away, all the concerns of the world seem to fall on one's head. I have
had some public lectures, some talks on the wireless, two long cases on
the Industrial Court, and a heavy spate of work at the School. Somehow
or other, in between, I have had to find time to get my Yale lectures
done. But they almost are done, though I have found them a job. I must
say one of the most interesting experiences in doing them has been the
completeness of my discovery (you and I always agreed on that) that
Pound really is second rate. First I am dismayed by the inability on his
part to distinguish one idea from another, or a good authority from a bad.
Then I am surprised at his inability to distinguish between description
and cause. Then, I am baffled by the way in which he makes his historical
account lead up to categories and then uses the categories as an ex-
planation of the histories he has summarised. And he so often can't see
things that are just under his nose. It is clear for instance that the com-
mon employment doctrine arises out of the major premises of judges in
a laisser-faire society and is part of the mental climate of a society in
which capitalism is arrogant and determined in the protection of its
interests. Pound won't have this because it gives too much away to the
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1435
economic interpretation of law, which he dislikes. So he tells one
cumbrously that this won't do, and puts forward instead a theory of
the ideal of free contract as its explanation.1 Could anything be more
peurile? Of other things I have read, or reread, with great pleasure
Mathiez's French Revolution, and an admirable book on the cahiers of
1789 by Chassin called "La genie de la R.F." which is quite first-rate.
Also as the Spanish Government has asked me to lecture in Madrid in
June I have begun to read some Spanish history and law which is
complicated but worth the price of admission. It also pleased me by
showing clearly that a people always pays dearly for the acceptance of
religious domination. The fear of the Lord is the end of all wisdom is
what the preacher really ought to have said.
We have had one or two jaunts. We went to dinner to Bertrand
Russell. . . . The most interesting thing was his vivid praise for Leibniz
whom he seemed to put above nearly all philosophers except Plato. Then
he spoke with great indignation of the metaphysical efforts of physicists
like Jeans and Eddington which he (I think rightly) denounced as un-
scientific humbug and pointed out that the really first-rate people like
Einstein and Max Planck had definitely separated themselves from any
such pronouncements. He gave us a most amusing account of his intro-
duction into the House of Lords where he was greeted as though a kind
of minor devil had wandered in by mistake. Another interesting thing
was a dinner at the Soviet Embassy.2 I sat next to one of those typically
English aristocrats who will dine anywhere so long as it is sure to be in
the Times next day. She began by telling me that she had been at the
Palace the night before — if the Bolsheviks had only had a good Tsar
in Russia it all might have been so different. Then she said that the
crisis in America was due to the fact that there were no old families to
whom the people could look for guidance. I ventured a hint of doubt
whereupon she said that her view was that there was too much mingling
of classes in the modern world and that this gave the people the idea
that their views were important. Then she confided to me that "friends
in the know" had told her that a monarchical restoration in Germany was
certain. She thought it very fine as it would stabilise things. I asked her
why and she said, "Well, because you know there simply must be
stability." Then, sighing as she gazed at the table, she thought it so
terrible that the magnificent caviare we were eating was largely at the
disposal in Russia of people who didn't have the hereditary palate to
appreciate such delicacies. At this I laughed outright, I fear; and she
said she was afraid I was one of those terribly sceptical moderns who
xSee Pound, Interpretations of Legal History (1946 ed.), 109-111.
3 Since November 1932, Jean Maisky had been the Soviet Ambassador in
London.
1436 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
did not realise that artistic taste was a function of ancient title. I asked
her if she liked the Velasquez opposite — a great thing from the Hermit-
age. She then said she adored the Italian School She added that the
King of Spain had a fine taste — did I know that good shots were
invariably first-rate judges of pictures? I said that might be a good reason
for making the annual rifle champion of the army a director of the
National Portrait gallery but this did not commend itself to her. Then she
told the Ambassador that Lenin was a wicked man but she forgave him
for his bravery; and the Ambassador gravely said he would report the
fact of her forgiveness to Moscow. Later he told me that her husband
had been one of the main organisers of anti-Russian propaganda in
London until he had been made a guinea pig director of a company
which traded with Russia and became an enthusiast who continually
asked for free trips to the Caucasus "to inspect how our fellows are
doing." O God, O Montreal!
My love to you, dear Justice. Please keep very fit these next weeks.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
192 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Mass., April 3, 1933
My dear Justice: The most important thing is to say that I propose,
subject to your approval, to arrive in Washington on Sunday, April 16th
and to have lunch and dinner with you that day. I must, alas, leave on
Monday morning for New York and home. You will tell me whether I
am to stay with you: that is exactly as you (and Mary) find it con-
venient. I can perfectly well put up at the Powhatan.
The ten days since we landed have been absorbing. Save for a day
in New York we have been constantly with Felix here, and it has been a
liberal education. He is in magnificent shape, full of drive and electric
energy. And there is a mature wisdom about him which, without being
new, is newly refreshed. I did not know how profoundly my emotional
loyalties were engaged to him until these days.
Our plans are simple. We stay here until Thursday; then Amherst
where I have promised Stanley King to talk to his lads;1 then Yale for
a week where I blow off steam about the law; then to you as the climax
of a month brimful of stimulus. Do I need to tell you with what joy I
look forward to those hours.
My love and my homage.
Ever affectionately yours, Harold J. Laski
I insist that your young man2 answer this.
1 Stanley King, supra, p, 967, was President of Amherst College.
a Holmes's secretary at the time was Donald Hiss, who had graduated from
the Harvard Law School in 1932.
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1437
Devon Lodge, 7.V.33
My dear Justice: I have no words to express the joy I had in those hours
with you. They were the kind of thing that gives life its richest flavour,
and they remain with me as the climax of a month of days as happy as
any I can remember.
Indeed I have never had a time so exciting and so stimulating as this
last visit. Partly, no doubt, this was due to the incredible kindness of
Americans. You are certainly a generous people with an hospitality that
goes beyond anything I have elsewhere known. But I found also that
my ideas were enriched in a way that leaves me full of anxiety to get
leisure (not, alas, until August) to work out something of what I have
learned. And it was grand to find that the old friends remain so com-
pletely friends. The relation with you and Felix above all is, my home
apart, about the most precious thing there is in my life. It expresses
poorly what I want to say; but you will understand what lies behind it.
Since I came home ten days ago I have been plunged into a whirlpool
of work. Mainly it concerns this quite terrible German situation, and the
vast academic problem it has created.1 It is so large and so tragic that
the problem is to know just where one can begin. I have got my col-
leagues by a unanimous vote to give up five per cent of their salaries
for three years to form a fund for endowing fellowships for the dismissed
people; and now I am trying, with the assistance of other professors, to
get all the British universities to follow the same road. It looks as though
we may be successful; and if so I hope that we in England can take care
of about one hundred of them. No doubt France and America will take a
similar line; and it may well be, if we show energy and resolution, that
we can make this German tragedy a turning-point at which men make a
determined stand for intellectual freedom indifferently to the views in
which it results. The letters I have from Germany are just horrible. It is
as though a whole people was luxuriating in sadism. There is neither
respect for persons nor for ideas. Mild liberals go out just as much as
Jews and socialists. There has been nothing like it since the aftermath of
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
In the way of reading I have had too little time to adventure much.
But I do urge you to read Gilbert Murray's Aristophanes which is a really
beautiful book, mature and wise. I read also Whitehead's new book parts
of which seemed to me remarkable.2 But I think his power lies less in the
continuity of argument than in sudden and sporadic intuitions, rather
1 During April the Aryan decrees had been promulgated, ousting all Jews
from their positions in the civil service, the academic world, and professional
life,
8 Adventures of Ideas (1933).
1438 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
like the wisdom of the French aphorists than in consistent dialectic. I
read, too, on the boat Morris Cohen's legal papers, always with respect,
but without the same sense of really overpowering knowledge that I had
in his other book. The attitude which emerges is fine; but I think he
lacks, so to say, a metaphysic of law which enables him to see it as a
system of causal relationships resulting in the power to predict. I read
also his son's book3 which was very able but suffered a good deal from
a certain hubris of expression and a formalism which made logical points
take the place of substantial results.
I have had one or two pleasant moments since we got back. I went to
a Fabian dinner where I had the great pleasure of attacking Bernard
Shaw who had sought to be wittily cheap about the Jews in Germany.
For years I had wanted to say to him in public that the right to treat
great themes demanded the duty of seeking to treat them greatly and
his flippancy gave me a superb opportunity. Last night we went to a
dinner with Sprague, the Harvard economist, who is now the technical
adviser to the Bank of England. We had grand talk about the state of
the world, pretty pessimistic, I fear, but the kind of talk which gives one
wide perspectives. He was terribly disturbed by the American decision to
inflate and I, who am hardly less so, found myself in the unwanted role
of explaining the President with vigour to his most technically equipped
critic. Did I by the way say to you in Washington that my main American
disappointment was Walter Lippmann? He seemed to me to have worn
terribly thin, and to be pontifical and dogmatic in realms where his
knowledge and insight were lacking. I mention him because last night he
was described by Sprague in vitriolic terms; and as Walter is now one
of the main voices of American conservatism this attack from the inner
citadel of financial orthodoxy interested me profoundly.
I have hardly had time for book adventures. But I did take off one
afternoon and attended the sale of J. M. Robertson's noble library where
I picked up some pleasant volumes of the 18th century French free-
thinkers and a noble copy of HakewilFs Apology for God's Providence
which is interesting because it is one of the earliest statements I know in
English of the idea of progress.
My love to you, dear Justice. I hope some beneficent university will
ask me to adorn it again next year. Then we can continue in person what
for the next months must be merely paper discussion.
Always yours affectionately, Harold J. Laski
8 Felix S. Cohen, Ethical Systems and Legal Ideas (1933).
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1439
Devon Lodge, 1S.V.S3
My dear Justice: A week of hard work, and of quite heart-rending visits
from German academic exiles each with a tale of brutality beyond words.
I think we are now moving rapidly towards an effective relief organisation
for them, and some of the "stars" we have already managed to take care
of; but it is the future of the young men that disturbs me, and it isn't
easy to see one's way. Yet for the price of one second-class battleship
one could assure that for many years to come.
I have seen people endlessly all week. The most interesting talk was
with Stafford Cripps, the deputy-leader of the Opposition, who is an
ex-Solicitor General and a great friend of mine. I was interested to find
how eager he was for law reform on a much wider scale in England —
especially of the hierarchy of appeals, the revision of the law of evidence,
and the deliberate cheapening of the cost of litigation. And he was
emphatic that of the younger lawyers many are as eager as some of us
outside the profession, that the opposition comes from the Bench, which
dislikes the idea of change, and the leaders of the bar who find things
quite alright as they are. He told me a good story of a lawyer who asked
Alverstone, C.J. if he ever read books on jurisprudence. "No," said A, "I
find that commonsense is all that is necessary." The lawyer mentioned
in succession Maine, Dicey, Pollock, to find that Alverstone had never
read a line of any of them and thought "the literary line" was alright for
the man "who couldn't make a success at the bar." He also told me that
he once quoted in Court Marbury v. Madison to illustrate a point about
the Australian Constitution and found that one noble lord had never
heard of Marshall and was inclined to dislike an attempt to introduce
"foreign jurists" into a respectable court.
In the way of reading I have not much to report. The most impressive
bed-book I have read has been Conrad's letters to E. Garnett — a most
illuminating account of a writer's struggle for self-discovery. In contrast
e.g. with Arnold Bennett's Diary the two men might well have lived on
different planets. Then I read or reread a new book by a young colleague
of mine named Brogan on America1 — soon to be published by Harper's
in New York. I hope you will have at least a look at it, for I think it is
quite definitely the best book published in years on the U.S. Government,
and it has wit and a style as well as considerable profundity.
I have also been buying one or two things. The most interesting has
been Linguet's Apologie pour "la theorie des lois civiles" which is not
only a devastating attack on Montesquieu, but is also, I think, as able
a criticism of the Physiocrats as was done in that generation. Linguet is
1 Laski contributed a Foreword to D. W. Brogan's Government of the Peo-
ple: A Study in the American Political System (1933).
1440 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
decidedly a fellow who needs a book; I think he was the ablest French
conservative mind in the eighteenth century, and there are many points
at which I could see you saluting him. I found also Buret's Mis&re des
classes ouvrieres — a completely forgotten work but of great interest
because large parts of Engel's historic Condition of the English Working
Classes in 1844 were taken from it without acknowledgment. And I found
a nice copy of Sir T. More's English works, 1557 which was only one
pound because the title page was missing; as, otherwise, it is normally
fifteen to eighteen pounds I felt I had done rather well.
Here, as you can imagine, we feel as though we were living on the
edge of a volcano. With the breakdown of Geneva,2 and the madness of
Hitler, there is a general atmosphere of unreason about which is a kind
of cynical revival of the war-psychology. Few people even pretend to
themselves that war can be avoided unless there is a rapid and wide-
spread recovery of trade and the shadow of its coming looms over
everything. There is a nervous tension in the air which gives to rumour
and unreason an authority they have not had for fifteen years. It is a
grim spectacle to see — like nothing so much as watching the suicide of
a culture which, with all its faults, has really represented about the best
that human nature has so far been able to accomplish. It seems stupid
to destroy the foundations when one can with goodwill and determination
reconstruct the house. But I have never realised so vividly before the
grim hold that a regime has upon its votaries, and how difficult it is to
persuade them that there are times in the history of the human race when
it becomes a necessity to reconsider first principles intelligently. Heaven
knows what is to be the outcome of it all; but I understand, for the first
time with sympathy, why Candide was content to cultivate his garden.
My love to you as always. Please let me know when you move to
Beverly Farms. Ever affectionately yours, Harold J, Laski
Devon Lodge, 21.V.SS
My dear Justice: The week has gone by almost before I had adequately
realised it had commenced. The main thing is that we have now really
made a start towards helping the dismissed German professors. Next
week we issue an appeal for a national fund, signed by every figure
who matters at all in English academic life; and my colleagues at the
School have made a start towards giving the appeal reality by subscribing
from the salaries of the staff a thousand pounds a year for three years.
It's going, of course, to be a big job, as there are already over two
2 Despite a British effort in March to save the faltering Disarmament Confer-
ence at Geneva no effective progress was made, and energies were distracted
by Mussolini's effort to secure a four-power pact, which was concluded in June.
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1441
hundred people dismissed. But I hope all this will give a lead, and that
between England and America we shall make Hitler and Co. realise that
freedom of thought still remains a matter of importance if only to a
significant minority.
The most interesting thing I have done this week was to go with Frida
and Diana to a party given by some musical friends of theirs. If you
wanted proof that this was a pluralistic world that evening certainly pro-
vided it. Of the two dozen or so people there I doubt whether there were
five who knew that anything existed outside of music. All the values
were musical; and one pianist after having ascertained that I played no
instrument asked me with sincere bewilderment what I did with my time.
I sat next to a German girl who sang really superbly. She did not know
the names of Roosevelt, Trotsky, Bacon, Spinoza, Rousseau; but she
could tell you the biographical details of even the most minor German
musicians of the last two hundred years. I told Frida that she had given
me one of the most healthy experiences I can remember. I learned why
the things that make me glad or angry fail to make any serious impact
outside a very narrow circle; and why governments so rarely encounter
resistance even to their major stupidities. Not the least interesting mo-
ment was when I asked a quite eminent musical critic if he thought that
one could detect the strains and stresses of the present time in music that
is now being written. He obviously hardly knew what I was talking about
and when I developed the theme he grew quite excited as though he
had been put on the track of a really important discovery.
In the way of reading there are one or two things worth recording.
First a novel by a man whom I take to be an American — Hindu Heaven
by Max Wylie — which is a brilliant picture of the missionary college and
its effective remoteness from anything essential in Indian life. Then an
interesting book on the professions by A. M. Carr-Saunders which lacks
philosophic unity but is a very interesting panorama of their history and
organisation in England, It made me reflect upon a number of things
that deserve investigation e.g. why is a great law teacher so little re-
garded in England and so highly regarded in America? Why is it impos-
sible to develop a serious interest in legal philosophy in England? Is re-
search ever likely to be creative if it is regarded as a merely professional
by-product instead of being central to the profession and its organisation.
Then a very interesting book on religion in France in the 17th century by
Bousson, a work of great learning, which brings out most admirably how
much more widespread the libertinist movement was than is generally
supposed, and how largely its defeat was due to the monarchical sense of
the Church as an essential instrument of order. The man has dug deep
into all kinds of remote corners, and he has thrown a flood of light upon
his subject in a wholly admirable way.
1442 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
I have also bought some pretty things. The nicest is the big folio edition
in four volumes of Dupuy's Preuves des libertes de I'eglise gaUicane
which is both a valuable book as scholarship and a really beautiful one.
Then a very pretty edition of Savigny's History which has the merit of
being printed in decent script and so really legible; and, lastly, a nice
folio of Suarez De Legibus which is one more towards the collection I am
trying to make of those admirable Spanish jurists of the 16th century.
Roosevelt did a great job by his appeal on disarmament.1 Heaven alone
knows what will emerge from the present mess in Europe. But at least
I think the possibility of salvation has been brought closer by his action.
I am off to Geneva for a few days on Saturday to lecture to the
University. Meanwhile, my love to you as always.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 13.VI.S3
My dear Justice: It was grand to have word from you. But I don't want
you to feel any compulsion to write. I can go on quite happily telling
you what things drift my way so long as it interests you to hear them.
I am just back from ten very good days in Geneva. I lectured there
at the University, and in the intervals between lectures saw my friends.
The outstanding fact there was the isolation of Germany — one felt it
pervade the whole atmosphere. They were like men living under a cloud
and trying vainly to act with bravado in order to show that they do not
care. But I thought it interesting to notice that during the sitting of the
League Council, at which German treatment of the Jewish minority in Up^
per Silesia was condemned, the German delegate had to relight his cigar
eighteen times to keep it going. I had some pleasant book-hunts there,
and had one find that pleased me much, a copy of Blanqufs La patrie en
danger in which the old revolutionary wrote a dramatic inscription. I
also found a bookseller who had Gibbon's library for sale practically
intact. He had found it in some Swiss Chateau where it had lain un-
disturbed for nearly 150 years.
I came back to a busy time — examinations and a good deal of quiet
work in the background over the World Economic Conference.1 I went
to its opening which was rather pathetic. Some kind, insignificant words
from the King and a futile speech by MacDonald. Your Secretary of
State has made a very good personal impression. But I felt convinced
1 On May 16 President Roosevelt had addressed fifty-four nations, appealing
for disarmament and a new nonaggression pact.
1 The World Economic Conference met in London from June 12 to July 27.
The Secretary of State, Cordell Hull (1871- ), headed the American dele-
gation.
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1443
that any great hopes from the Conference are doomed to disappointment.
These big shows only succeed where the conference itself registers the
result of precise and detailed preliminary work. Here, this is absent; and
the field to be covered is so wide that it will, I fear, end like that of 1927
with a body of pious resolutions about which no one will do anything.
This apart, I have been busy with the dismissed German professors.
After long efforts, I have persuaded our governors to take on three of
them, one of whom the jurist Kantorowicz, I expect you know by name
at least. It's a tragic business seeing them, especially the younger men,
and telling them one after another that you fear there is no opening.
Some of them seem to me so first-rate, both in mind and temper, that I
cannot even begin to understand how anyone could regard them as other
than an honour to their country. And the distress is widespread. I have,
as you know, very little money; but I have felt that self-respect made it
necessary for me to spend three hundred pounds of my own in relieving
necessitous cases. Heaven only knows what the future holds for the
children of these people — most of them quiet, inoffensive scholars whose
only ambition was the chance to go on quietly with their own work.
You ask me about John Strachey's book — The Struggle for Power.
My view of it is that on the critical side it is full of good things. I agree
with his broad picture of the drift of civilisation. But on the positive side
I disagree. I see no reason why there should necessarily be a communist
victory. The breakdown seems to me more likely to result in a dark age
of dictatorships without principle than in the triumph of any coherent
body of principles. But that this civilisation drifts chaotically to its de-
struction seems to me the inescapable implication of the facts. Its
contradictions cannot be resolved without an overturn of its foundations.
Our business is to think out the planning of a new order. But there will be
blood and tears before we attain it.
I have done a good deal of reading these days. First and foremost, I
place Lauterpachfs Function of Law in an International Community
(Oxford) one of the ablest legal books I have read in many a day. It's a
little long and a little heavy, but a grand piece of work. Then a very in-
teresting little book by Ensor called Courts and Judges, also an Oxford
book, which is a comparative essay on the judicial systems of England,
France and Germany, the kind of book I wish could be widely read by
Judges. And through Felix I read Max LowenthaFs The Investor Pays, an
exciting account of the receivership of the St. Paul R..R. in which the
habits of Kuhn, Loeb emerge as the kind of thing making a communist
philosophy seem intelligent and beneficent. And Lewis Einstein sent me
his Divided Loyalties.* I found its first part enchanting; after that I
thought it somewhat tailed off. But it remains an admirable piece of work,
admirably written.
1444 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
I send this to Beverly in the belief that you must be there. I hope you
will have the happiest of summers. I wish I could wander in to discuss
once more the eternal verities.
Our love to you. Ever affectionately yours, Harold J. Laski
Devon Lodge, 8.VII.SS
My dear Justice: I have been rushed off rny feet these last weeks so that
I have hardly known where to turn. First, and most difficult, there has
been a constant stream of German academic exiles, who have needed
advice and money and ,all other sorts of aid. They are, as you can
imagine, poor, bewildered people, who hardly know where they are;
and merely to explain their own pathetic prospects to them without de-
priving them of hope is a bitterly difficult business. Then one of the
blessed government committees on which I sit assigned the drafting of
its report to me; I did not mind that so much as the endless time spent
in discussing my draft with the members mostly on quite unimportant
minutiae. Then I have had examinations and a series of committees of the
Labour Party; and, as the comble of everything (this between ourselves)
I got into the job of reconciling Litvinoff and Simon over the imprisoned
engineers in Russia;1 and though it came off really admirably it was a
grim and exhausting process. I hope I am pardoned in the light of this
programme.
One or two things are worth recording. A very pleasant dinner with
H. G. Wells, at which, among others, was Walter Lippmann. It was
curious to see him there. As an oracular monologist he was impressive; so
soon as he was cross-examined e.g. by a great civil servant like Arthur
Salter he emerged as feeble and vacillating. He did not really know; he
had a body of prejudices, largely gained at second-hand, which he ex-
presses so felicitously that only discussion reveals their very substantial
weakness. Then an amusing lunch with the Webbs at which she tells
Litvinoff that the reason the Russians are succeeding is because they have
a religion. Litvinoff: "If you are using that word in an atheistic sense,
Mrs. Webb, I think you are quite right/' I also had Siegfried, the
French publicist, to dinner. He is a very clever fellow. But he arrives at
his conclusions by the most drastic selection of evidence I have ever seen
*In March, six officials of the Metropolitan-Vickers Company had been ar-
rested in Moscow, charged with sabotage. Five of the accused had been con-
victed in April, two being sentenced to imprisonment and three being sentenced
to deportation. Sir John Simon, throughout the episode, had led the Parliament
to take stern measures of economic reprisal. In June, Maxim Litvinoff, the
Soviet Foreign Minister had come to London to the Economic Conference.
On July 1, after negotiations with Sir John Simon, he announced that the two
imprisoned Britons would be released.
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1445
a man attempt. His theories about America, for example, are true between
Iowa and Arkansas for one set of premises, and for about two square miles
of New York for another set. Whatever does not accord with them is re-
jected as atypical and therefore useless. But he is very able and pertina-
cious; and then summarising what he has heard in the form of a sweeping
generalisation. Only I wish I felt as certain about my own specialism as
he does about other people's. One or two things he said amazed me e.g.
that Brooks Adams was the most important American publicist since
Hamilton, and that office confers less dignity of stature in U.S.A. than in
any other great state. And I must not omit a visit from the Belgian
socialist professor Henri de Man2 who gave me a better description of
Germany by comparing Hitler with Joseph Smith the Mormon than any-
one I have met in these last weeks.
Books I have hardly had time to read. But I most warmly urge you to
read (I) Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood (Cape) which I be-
lieve with my hand on my heart to be a novel in the great tradition. (II)
Daniel Mornet, Les origines intellectuelles de la rev. frangaise (Colin)
which really reveals the currents of opinion and organisation which made
1789 inevitable. A really creative book, full of new evidence on a hun-
dred interesting matters. (Ill) Five essays by Santayana (Cambridge)3
which has a really masterly centenary lecture on Locke of which I think
you would enjoy every word, and (IV) an American book by Emery Neff
on Carlyle which is, I think, about the best thing I have read on that
queer prophet. I have had two nice finds. One is a copy of Blanqufs
Critique sociale in which the old revolutionary wrote a long inscription
briefly amounting to a plea for setting the world on fire; and the other —
how different! — a marvellous copy, nearly as new as on the day of
publication, of Widdrington's answer to Bellarmine etc. on the duty of
Catholics on the question of civil allegiance. I had looked for this for
years; and Mcllwain had never even seen a copy in a catalogue. But it
turned up at an auction of some Benedictine's possession and came my
way for seven shillings.
I go off to Spain next Sunday for ten days; then back to Cornwall where
we shall be for the whole of August. So I hope to get a genuine rest to be
fit and active for Felix's arrival in September.
My love to you. Keep well and remember me warmly to Rockport.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
* Henri de Man (1885- ), sociologist and socialist, Professor of Social
Psychology at Brussels University; during the Nazi occupation of Belgium he
renounced socialism and supported the Nazis. After liberation he was sentenced
to twenty years penal servitude.
8 Some Terms of Thought in Modern Philosophy (1933).
1446 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
As from Devon Lodge, 6.VIILSS
My dear Justice: I came back from Spain last Monday after a fortnight
there. It was a great adventure, I liked the people, and the sceneiy, and
the atmosphere. The people were the English "gentleman" of legend —
dignified, self-respecting, taking life as an exercise in leisure, and not a
mean and petty thing we are to scramble through as we can. The country
is superb — especially where I was in the first days at Santander with
the sea about me and vast mountain ranges rising one behind the other in
the background. And I liked the atmosphere. It made me understand why
Don Quixote is imperishable. For scratch off just the varnish of modernity
and everyone you meet has really stepped out of Cervantes. He comes to
you as the supreme artist, like Shakespere, in the sense of being com-
pletely beyond the categories of time.
Of the things I saw, I think the most moving, and in some ways, even
the most beautiful, were the rock-drawings in the caves at Altamira. They
beggar description. They have verve and grace and astonishing vigour.
It is almost impossible to imagine that they are some thirty thousand years
old. And what is so remarkable is the way in which the artist has used the
natural formation of the rock to get his sculptured effect of muscles and
sinews; in the bison drawing this is simply superb. Then in Madrid I
had a perfect feast in the Prado of Velasquez, Goya and El Greco. I have
never even seen a collection which made so overpowering an effect. In
some ways I am tempted to think that the supreme thing was the "Aesop"
of Velasquez — the gentle resignation and melancholy wisdom linger on
in one's mind like the haunting cadences of music. After these three, with
their power of painting the within, the Murillos were, I thought, tame —
a conventional beauty, exquisite in colour and proportion, but utterly
lacking in the depth of the others. There was also a Peter Brueghel I had
not seen before, II Trionfo de la Muorte — which I thought a gigantic
piece of work. I went also to the Escorial which interested me greatly. It
was like the triumph of will over wit. A commonplace person conscious
of his power forcing the architect to reproduce his vision as a whole,
with, now and again, the artist's own vision breaking through in a window
or a piece of tracery or the wing of a room. As to people I had a very
interesting time with the Prime Minister, Azafia,1 a fine fellow, honest,
strong, and with a resonant anti-clericalism that went to my heart, I
liked immensely, too, the Foreign Minister, Dos Rios, lately a professor of
Manuel Azana (1880-1940) had been Premier in the Zamora government
since 1931; on September 8, 1933, he fell from office, returning, however as
President in 1936. He provided ineffective leadership to the Republican gov-
ernment in the Franco rebellion and fled to France in 1939.
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1447
law, and widely read.2 He had that kind of generous-hearted liberalism
which sprang from the best of the French Revolution. It was very inter-
esting to see the consciousness in these people of being responsible for
the making anew of a great nation. Heaven only knows what chance of
success they have. My own temptation is to believe that, sooner or later,
they will give way to Fascism; that their special brand of liberalism will
be crashed between the pressure of two extremes. At least I felt confident
that there was no danger of a return of Alfonso XIII. They are done for
good with that particular brand of impotent hypocrisy.
1 had a jolly time in the bookshops of Madrid, especially trying to find
copies, not unsuccessfully, of the Spanish XVIth century jurists. The book-
shops give one an insight into the mind of the people as it has been
shaped by the monarcho-clericalism of the last few hundred years. Most
of the first-rate books in the social sciences, the natural sciences and
theology are translations; the Spanish things that matter are in the realms
remote from possible inferences for daily life. The literature of devotion,
and especially mystical devotion, is enormous; but I was told by Garcia,
the best bookseller in Madrid, that the decline of its production since
1931, has been enormous. Altogether I got a vision of a civilisation which,
if only economic conditions will give it a chance, might easily become
generous and attractive in a way that few recent civilisations have been.
There is still no urge for that kind of business efficiency which gives the
machine its dominance. There is still a fine tradition of popular and local
wisdom. The Spaniard still enjoys more than any other habit of leisure
discussion of life in a cafe in which he can generalise his experience into
an aphorism. It was striking, to me, at least, to be told by a waiter in
Toledo that "life is only a tragedy for those who feel; if you can think it
becomes a gigantic comedy" — then after a moment's reflection, "but,
alas, in Spain so few people think." And a military guard in the train to
Sarragossa told me he was a republican because "monarchy disturbs one's
hope of self-respect/' Nor is there danger, through historical causes, of
excessive centralisation. You will see, in fact, that I was captured by a
certain magic in Spairi. I wish I could pin it down on paper for you.
This is written from Cornwall where we are staying, as last year, until
the beginning of September. I am doing a little work each day; but the
country is so lovely, and the weather so perfect, that I succumb too often
to the fatal charm of idleness.
2 Fernando de los Rios (1879-1949), formerly Professor of Law at the Uni-
versity of Madrid, had been Minister of Justice and Minister of Education
before taking over the Foreign Office in May 1933; in the later stages of his
career he was Spanish Ambassador in Washington and, finally, Professor of
Political Science in the New School for Social Research.
1448 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
My love to you, dear Justice. Take care of yourself.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
As from Devon Lodge, 12.VII1.S3
My dear Justice: A week of perfect peace — beautiful weather, no tele-
phone calls, and only a small discussion with a group of unemployed men
at a camp to disturb me. Apart from reading and driving, I have been
working slowly at a paper on Brandeis for Harper's — a kind of portrait
of the man and his significance.1 It has interested me a good deal to
work at it, and I think the necessity of straightening out my own ideas
has made me understand him better than I ever did before. The three
things that emerge for me are that he is really a Jeffersonian Democrat,
trying to use the power of the State to enforce an environment in which
competition may be really free and equal; this I take to be an impossible
task. Secondly, his method of analysis does magnificently relate law to
the life of which it is the expression; third his criterion for all action is
an ethical individualism. I take him to be intellectually, as to ends, a
romantic anachronism, but as to methods a really significant figure in the
Court. I doubt whether he would have had the influence he has exerted
if there had not been your thirteen previous years there to form the
channel for its reception. But, granted that, I conclude that his contribu-
tion has been that of a good and big man. A prophet, I suspect, rather
than a judge; a grand player for a side in which he believes both disinter-
estedly and with all his might.
For the rest my main pleasure has been a vast dose of Turgenev whom
I found here in large volume. Two short stories, "First Love" and "Tor-
rents of Spring" struck me as exquisite; most of the rest in and near the
remarkable level. The great qualities are complete simplicity and clarity
so that the events become inevitable. After the action has really begun
the story is not told by him, but happens of itself; this I take to be, in
fiction, an even greater achievement than inexhaustible invention. It is
particularly noticeable in Rudin and On the Eve. Then I read a good book
by J. M. Robertson — A Short History of Morals. It is especially illumi-
nating on the non-originality of what is called the Christian ethic and
on the significance of Hume. And I read also a remarkable little book
of Bertrand Russell, which I had somehow missed before, on scientific
method.2 It is not only beautifully written, as, indeed, everything is that
he does, but the exposure of the effort of Jeans, Eddington et al. to
represent recent physical developments as favourable to religious truth
is simply masterly. I wish Bertie would always take the amount of trouble
'"Mr. Justice Brandeis," 168 Harper's Magazine 209 (January 1934).
*The Scientific Outlook (1931).
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1449
this book represents when he writes; then one has the sense that he really
is a great intelligence.
We motored over to Penzance today and I had a couple of hours in the
antiquarian bookshop there. I did not, as last year, unearth any special
treasures, though I imagine that a pretty first edition of John Adams's
Defence of the American Constitution [sic] is not without value. But this
time I had an interesting talk with the bookseller. He told me of a
Cornish ex-miner now a wealthy Nebraskan who buys from him all he
can unearth on Cornish archaeology — an interesting development of
taste. Then he told me a good story of being offered a bundle of Nelson
letters by an old lady from Truro; he wanted some evidence of their
authenticity and she blushingly explained that she was the granddaughter
of Nelson's child by Lady Hamilton. He had also bought for a song a
long letter from General Burgoyne to his sister explaining that Yorktown
and disaster loomed ahead. It was bought for a thousand dollars by a visit-
ing American who wrote in despair a week later to say he had mislaid it.
He also had for sale a grand copy of Burke on the French Revolution given
by Burke to Pitt with his most obliged and humble compliments. He
wanted forty-five pounds for it which was, I think, reasonable as these
things go. In the way of the curious, I was tempted, but refrained, to
purchase fifty volumes of anti-popery tracts collected by a clergyman who
died in 1704. He had grouped them in sections: The Crime of Rome; The
Sin of the Mass; The Error of Celibacy and so on. At ar shilling a volume
they were cheap; and really they might have made the theme of a very
amusing essay. I liked the man's conviction that business conditions were
improving because the last mail had brought him orders from Boston and
Cincinnati.
But I begin to ramble. I send you my love and the news that Diana
next October begins life at the School of Economics. Imagine that!
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
As from Devon Lodge, 19. VIII. 33
My dear Justice: The days roll by here in perfect peace. The weather
remains cloudless sunshine, and with a little work, some books, and com-
panionship, if it were not for the quite damnable world outside, I could
ask for no more from life.
The first thing to chronicle is a book. Years ago there seems to have
been an American professor named Henry Baird who wrote a history of
the Hugenots.1 I hit upon the last two volumes here, dealing with the
1 Henry Martyn Baird (1832-1906), Professor of Greek at New York Uni-
versity, author of History of the Rise of the Huguenots (1879), The Huguenots
and Henry of Navarre (1886), and The Huguenots and the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes (1895).
1450 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. It is turgid, rather long-winded, and
with a good deal of that copious morality which is invariably irritating.
But, heavens and earth, whoever Baird was, he knows how to tell a
story and I wonder (I) whether I should be ashamed of myself for
previous ignorance of him or (II) whether he is one of those fellows
who, good as he was, just missed getting on the main line of reputation.
He left me with certain profound convictions which I venture to detail
to you: (I) It is impossible to make peace with the Roman Catholic
Church. It is one of the permanent enemies of all that is decent in the
human spirit. (II) When an enthusiasm becomes a vested interest, it also
is hostile to all that matters in civilisation. (Ill) Toleration among men has
never been born of a positive love of liberty but always of a growing in-
difference to the idea which was previously safeguarded by intolerance.
(IV) The most usual ground of that indifference is not the decay of the
religion itself but its association with other causes which contradict the
needs of a new time e.g. the Roman Church in 18th century France
plumped for absolute monarchy, feudal privilege etc. and the hatred of
these things rather than a desire to tolerate led to a recognition of the
Protestant claim to liberty, There are some magnificent episodes in the
book — not least that of the revolt of the Camisards2 which I had never
read (more shame to me) in detail before. Those fellows knew how to
die; and I respect anyone who can go to the wheel singing the hymns of
Clement Marot.3
And that leads me to the enclosed.4 I was alone here the other after-
noon when a young man of 23 or so left it. I looked at it and called him
back. He was a pretty little creature who asked me at once if I was saved.
I asked him what being "saved" meant. That led to talk during which I
discovered that he himself had never heard of (I) Galileo (II) Darwin
(III) Socrates, that he thought Einstein was a German Bolshevik, and
scientists generally an infidel conspiracy against the truth. So I weighed
in with a kind of sermon to him (a) on his ignorance and (b) on the
insolence of his certitude in that ignorance. Do you think I moved him?
He upped and turned on me and told me I was a messenger of the Devil
sent to turn him from the ways of the Lord. And in my own drawing
room he went down on his knees and asked for protection against the
wiles of Satan (that was I!). I congratulated him on his direct familiarity
with God and gave him a cup of tea which he refused on the ground that
2 The enthusiastic, not to say fanatic Protestants of the Cevennes who in the
opening years of the eighteenth century waged persistent and for a time effec-
tive war in order to compel the restoration of the Edict of Nantes.
8 Clement Marot (1496-1544), vernacular poet whose popular translations of
the Psalms aided the Reformation in France and led to his condemnation by
the Sorbonne and his exile from France.
* The enclosure is missing.
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1451
he could not "break bread with an unbeliever." There, my dear Justice, is
a measure of the thin little crust of civilisation in this world of ours. I
don't object to ignorance; but when it makes a virtue of itself it is really a
poor compliment to that supposed instinct of curiosity that has led us out
of the woods of barbarism.
A very different experience was a visit from a soldier — a fellow on the
staff of the Air Force — whom you would have loved. First of all, he was
keen on his job and I liked him for that. Secondly, he hated war. Thirdly
he had a hobby — Celtic archaeology — and he turned up here because
there is a cromlech at the bottom of the garden and he was on a Cornwall
walking tour which included the need to visit it. I got him talking over a
cup of tea and he was enchanting. He spoke of people like Arthur Evans5
as I should speak of Maitland or Gibbon. His one idea was his retirement
ten years from now when instead of reading the books of other people
and verifying their results he could get down to original work of his own.
Incidentally I discovered that he had the Victoria Cross for bringing down
a Zeppelin during the war. I wish you could have seen him for he really
did my heart good.
The only other thing I have read that is worth reporting is a book by
H. Levy called The Universe of Science. I think the Century people pub-
lish it on your side and I do conjure you to read it — it's by far the best
discussion I know of what science really means; and it is superb to see
how effectively it gives the coup de grace to the religiosity of people like
Jeans and Eddington. Do let me add that it's joy to come across a scien-
tist who knows some history and realises that the function of science is as
conditioned by the social environment as any other form of human effort.
We are down here until next Thursday when we motor back to London
via Winchester and Salisbury. I am hoping for some book adventures
there.
Our united love to you. Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Devon Lodge, 9.IX.S3
My dear Justice: I have been back here not quite a fortnight, though
with an intermission in Clay Cross, helping Arthur Henderson with his
bye-election, and one in Manchester to see my people. I have been pretty
busy, mainly getting a long article done for a joint book with some friends
(I hope to send it to you next month) on the prevention of war,1 and in
helping these poor devfls of German professors who are now more numer-
5 Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941), archaeologist, whose greatest achievements
were in Crete.
1 The Intelligent Man's Way to Prevent War (L. Woolf, ed., 1933),
1452 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
ous and more tragic than ever. (Just as I write comes a telephone message
to say that the historian Mendelssohn-Bartholdy2 has been dismissed).
It is a terribly grim world, in which, so far as Europe is concerned, I fear
that Benesh is right in saying that war or revolution are the alternatives.
The British government is completely supine. We can't even get them to
raise the question o£ the treatment of the Jews at the League; Mac-
Donald simply argues that it is a domestic German problem in which he
has no right to interfere. Yet a generation ago, I do not doubt that Europe
would have made the same magnificent protest they did against the
Russian progroms. Now we seem to regard it as something it is unneces-
sary to concern ourselves with. I wish I could tell you of the intensity of
persecution there — torture, suicide to escape torture, murder; and yet
the world is content to look on as though this may be regarded as part of
the life of a civilised community.
In the way of reading there are one or two things worth signalling. I
expect you have seen the new Wodehouse — Heavy Weather — which
I thought good but not quite up to his very best. I also read to review the
first volume of Lloyd-George's War Memoirs? It makes three very inter-
esting points. The first is a grim attack on Lord Grey's inadequacy as
Foreign Secretary; this, I think, is justified by the documents and shows
how little sincerity alone is valuable in politics. Second, he is emphatic
that the main Anglo-French negotiations were concealed from the cabinet
until 1912, but it does not seem to occur to him that the failure of cabinet
discussion on these matters is one in which he has to share the blame.
Third, he is very illuminating on the War Office and its habits. It comes
out clearly that the soldiers had little idea of the scale of the war they
were to fight, or its probable intensity; and so far as the old problem of
soldier and civilian are concerned it reinforces one's sense that the in-
compatibility of temper between them is really a final thing. Then I read
a very amusing book on the Foreign Office by Sir John Tilley — ancedot-
age rather than a history, but still with a tang of its own. Otherwise I
have been mostly rereading old favourites like Trollope whose Phineas
Finn comes out superbly on re-acquaintance. In Manchester I had a
very pleasant evening with Alexander the philosopher. He pleased me by
speaking with great warmth of Morris Cohen, and by sharing my own
feeling that the price of admission to John Dewey was very high. He said
that he had re-read the English tradition this last year beginning with
Hobbes and emerged with a sense that Hume was incomparable both for
force and subtlety. He also told me a good story of a young man who
aAlbrecht Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1874-1936), historian of modern Ger-
many, in 1933 was awarded a lectureship at Balliol College, Oxford; author of
The War and German Society: The Testimony of a Liberal (1937).
a Laski's review lias not been located.
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1453
wrote to him asking for a reading list on logic. He sent one; there came
back a letter asking for comments on each book. Alexander replied that
he could not really undertake to do that. The young man thereon wrote
notes himself, asked Alexander for his opinion, and on hearing some
quasi-approval published the comment with a headline to the effect that
this was Alexander's recommendation to students. Alexander complained
and the young man wrote back that he "ought to be thanked for the
publicity he had given a philosopher in retirement."
I have bought one or two pleasant things — the nicest being a bound
collection of Widdrington's pamphlets which, with what I had, makes my
lot almost complete and offers the additional comfort that it would make
Mcllwain green with envy. I also found a very nice little collection of
comments on Montesquieu which a man named Legendre had got to-
gether in 1800 or so. It's curious that he writes in the first volume "sauf
Mably le premier de nos penseurs politiqites" Curious how influential
Mably was — not less in America than in France — and with nothing
real to say.
Our love to you as always. It is very pleasant to be home.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 24.IX.SS
My dear Justice: I imagine that you are beginning to think of the trek
back to Washington; and I am contemplating with regret the thought
that in a fortnight my vacation ends. The one bright spot is the fact that
Felix sails today. You can imagine with what exhilaration I look forward
to his coming.
It has been a crowded fortnight. The most interesting experience was a
lunch at which H. G. Wells spoke on Intolerance — one of the ablest
pleas for free discussion I have ever heard. I had very good talk there
with Lord Horder,1 who is not only our best general physician, but also
MacDonald's specialist and an old friend of the P.M. He told me that
twenty years ago he told MacDonald he had a superb constitution and
that all his illnesses were a defence-mechanism to escape from some
decision he wanted to avoid. He said that MacDonald's health is an al-
most exact function of the state of politics; he can be made ill whenever a
difficulty occurs that he doesn't want to meet by sheer auto-suggestion,
and no amount of persuasion is then effective.' I also spoke at a vast
protest meeting for the victims of Hitlerism. I wish you could have seen
it The thing that impressed and depressed me there was the sense that
all over the world we are building parties who have not only ideas but
1 Thomas Jeeves Horder (1871- ), Baron Horder; distinguished physi-
cian to kings and statesmen.
1454 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
ideas stirred into action by the grimmest of all passions — hate and
revenge. To sit next to a German woman whose husband, a trade-union
official, was literaUy beaten into pulp in front of her eyes was to realise
the kind of future Germany is preparing for itself when Hitlerism breaks
down. Last night I took the chair at a centenary celebration of Bradlaugh
a very interesting occasion. But the most interesting thing was the
history of the effort to have a ten-minute speech on the radio about him.
After three months of negotiation the B.B.C. agreed that he should be
mentioned on condition (I) that they chose the speaker (II) that his work
for birth-control should not be mentioned (III) that he should be called
a "freethinker" and not an atheist. Their original proposal, which the
committee of course refused, was that they should discuss him only in
relation to his fight for admission to the House of Commons. It is an
interesting reflection on the power of organised religion that it should be
able to get a religious service broadcast every day and three times on
Sunday, and that when a really big person like Bradlaugh is to be com-
memorated its pressure should be sufficient to make the soft-pedal
essential even to the mention of his name.
This reminds me that I have been reading with great interest a book
by J. F. Hecker called Religions and Communism in Russia. This per-
suades me very convincingly that nowadays the main root of religious
power is property and that once this basis goes, the power of the Church
goes also with a bang. Aulard showed this was true of the French Revolu-
tion; and a very interesting book by an American named Bakke on the
unemployed has just been published in which the author, whom I should
judge to be a mild Liberal, says that organised religion in England, the
Catholics apart, has no influence whatever on the lives of the working-
class who regard it as simply an instrument intended to promote ac-
quiescence in an established order. While I am on books I want warmly
to recommend to you a book of short stories called Ah Sex [sic] by
Somerset Maugham.2 The first is no good, but the others, and especially
the last, are not, I think, unworthy of Guy de Maupassant. I read also
a first-rate short book by my young legal colleague Jennings called The
Law and the Constitution which is a very effective criticism of the gen-
eral approach to constitutional law of Dicey, done with learning, realistic
commonsense and insight.
Books to buy I have not seen lately, at least at reasonable prices. I did
see a grand copy of the Ellis and Spedding edition of Bacon, which I
coveted, but the bookseller did not realise that this is a period of eco-
nomic crisis and spurned my offer. However, tomorrow I go to Oxford
(actually to discuss with Lady Margaret Hall the prospect of Diana going
* Ah King (1933).
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1455
there next year3 — imagine that! ) and I hope to be more fortunate than
I have been for some time.
My love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H, J. L.
Devon Lodge, 10.X.33
My dear Justice: My main news is to tell you that we have seen Felix at
Oxford, and he seems happy and comfortable there. He has a house like
a small palace, all complete with servants, and from what I gathered his
reception has been particularly warm. He and Marion both look very
fit, and I think that if he does not try to do too much he will have a rest-
ful and creative year. You can imagine what a joy it was to have first-hand
news of you.
Term has begun, and, at present, I am simply drowned in a perfect
ocean of students. One or two look promising, and I believe that I can get
something started with them. I was amused by a Nazi student from
Berlin who asked me whether I was a Jew, and, on learning that I was,
explained that he could not work under me. I sent him along to a
colleague who told him that, for his subject, (the sources of Hegel's
philosophy of law) I was the only person from whom he could get help
in England. So he complained despairingly that all the people who might
help him in Germany had been dismissed and when he came to England
for help he was assigned to someone with whom he dared not work! I was
sorry for the lad, but his dilemma was really comic.
I have been up to Edinburgh where I had the first really grand book-
hunt of months. For a shilling I found a perfect first edition of Locke's
Two Treatises and for five shillings a bound set of all the tracts of Old
Dean Tucker.1 And on a hand-barrow I found a really fine copy of Francis.
Hutcheson with David Hume's signature on it for half-a-crown, so I felt
I really had a good day. In the evening I spent an hour at a vast meeting
to commemorate the centenary of Charles Bradlaugh. When I left to
catch my train an old gentleman came to me and said that as a boy of
eighteen he had dined at James Russell Lowell's to go on with the latter
to hear Bradlaugh speak; it was, I think, sometime in the late seventies.
He also told me that in 1885 he heard Leslie Stephen speak to an ethical
society, in Glasgow, and tell them that when America passed through a
great economic crisis she would, with her energy and resilience, set an
example in constructive determination to the whole world. I think that is
a pretty piece of prophetic insight.
8 In 1938 Diana Laski received her B.A. degree from Lady Margaret Hall,
Oxford.
1 See, supra, p. 1384.
1456 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
In the way of people, the most interesting thing to tell you of was a
long dinner alone with Sankey. He wanted to consult me on the queerest
problem I ever encountered. Perhaps you know that in the general
economy move our judges' salaries have been cut ten per cent and there
has been deep resentment about it owing to the doubt whether this is
constitutional. One judge is so indignant that he has refused to pay his
super-tax and challenged the revenue people to sue him for it. The latter
appealed to Sankey who, on my advice, replied that as a judge he could
not advise on whether a prosecution should be instituted or no; that was
a matter for the Attorney General as the legal adviser to the government.
So there the matter stands, about as curious a position, I think, as has ever
turned up under our system of government.2 I was interested also when
I went to our Royal Commission on legal education and examined Lord
Justice Greer to drive him into admitting that there was no serious legal
education attempted by the Inns of Court. When I suggested that their
vast funds might not unjustifiably be used to create jointly with the
universities law schools which might rival Harvard he said that he had
often thought this might be a good thing to do but the Inns were terribly
conservative and would resent the suggestion that the time for change
had come. Practically he said in terms that the time for change had come
but that one must force it on the lawyers if one wanted to do anything.
A queer position to take up, which I think made his fellow-lawyers there
pretty uncomfortable.
In the way of reading two things have interested me. A book by my
colleague Jennings The Law and the Constitution is, I think, the ablest
criticism of Dicey 's essential position so far written; and Galsworthy's
last novel3 has one excellent thing in it — a perfect picture of the
cruelty and hypocrisy of the English divorce law. But die rest of the
novel is a pretty sad business, no firmness of outline and a perfect bliz-
zard of sentiment.
Our love to you, dear Justice. Please keep fit and well for I want to
come over to see you next year,
Ever affectionately yours, Harold J. Laski
* The reduction of salaries had been voted in 1931; in July 1933 the judges
had filed a memorandum with the House of Lords urging that their salaries
should be restored. When their petition came before the Lords in November,
Sankey, the Lord Chancellor, opposed the judges' petition, citing numerous
prior instances on which the salaries of judges had been reduced. The Cha.n-
cellor's position prevailed.
8 One More River (1933).
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1457
Devon Lodge, 28.X.33
My dear Justice; I have been veiy driven these last weeks. A big by-
election in my own constituency here (which we won with a resounding
majority) and the endless process of German refugees — a pitiful tale)
has taken up all my time. But I have managed to see something of Felix,
and the first thing I want to tell you is that he and Marion are both well,
and that, (as was to be expected) he is a resounding success at Oxford.
Not only has he a great crowd to his lectures, but he has made a very
real impression on the dons; and I hear from all quarters the kind of
accounts of him that warm a friend's heart. You and I, of course, knew
that it would be so in a civilised place. But the unanimity and depth of
conviction is a pleasant thing to hear. And I find him (need I tell you?)
as electric as ever. In a grim and angry world it is good to have him alive.
I have been doing so much that I hardly know what to pick out to
amuse you. But I think you would like most to hear of a very jolly lunch
I had with Lady Oxford the other day. First let me say that she en-
quired with great warmth after you: "an old love of mine." Then we
agreed on many things worth recording. First that Arthur Balfour
masked a passionate love of power beneath a mask of nonchalance.
We agreed that Lloyd-George was incapable of common honesty but
that he was certainly the cleverest politician that this country has known
since Disraeli. We scrapped pleasantly about America. For the most part
the Americans she admires — like Theodore Roosevelt — I regard as
tinkling cymbals; and though I admire Henry Adams's History of the
United States I think his Autobiography a sophomore performance, full
of the false profundities of which one ought to cease to be capable at
twenty-five; but she thinks it a really great book which, mirabile dictu,
she puts among the great autobiographies. For a woman of nearly
seventy, she is an amazing creature — vivid, absolutely fearless, and
with a pungency of utterance that is quite unforgettable. I had also a very
interesting dinner with the German dramatist (now a refugee) Ernst
Toller. He, too, is an unforgettable person, exquisitely simple, and, in
the best sense, a free spirit. It was grand to meet a man who has my view
of Heine as the finest soul in German letters. We agreed that though
Goethe was the profounder man you cannot love him as you love Heine;
not least because the latter knew how to hate his enemies. It was won-
derful to see the complete absence of bitterness in Toller though he has
been two years in prison and twice sentenced to death. He takes all this
as the incidents of a career in much the same kind of way that one might
take a poor reception for a book. I heard him tell of his experiences in
prison and especially of the warden's slow conversion to the idea that
he was not a criminal, but a man who happened to think differently from
1458 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
the existing regime, and the awkward realisation that differences in ideas
ought not to involve cruelty of treatment. He pleased me too by his vehe-
ment denunciation of Shaw as a man who was never concerned to respect
personality. That, after all, is the secret of a respect for freedom. For
if, as Toller said, you are willing, as Shaw is willing, to impose your
ideas on the world you take the right to persecute in your stride; and at
that point it is clear that you lack sufficient confidence in the claim
of personality to respect to be willing to argue with it. Once that is your
position the line between your outlook and the Inquisition becomes ter-
ribly thin.
Of books the main thing I must do is to urge you at least to look at
Three Cities by Sholem Asch — a translation from the Yiddish. I think
it belongs naturally to the class of Dostoievsky and Tolstoy — the
account of the Revolution, especially its pictures of bewildered adjust-
ment to the unknown are, I think, not unworthy of the battle pieces of
War and Peace. Then I read Winston's first volume on Marlborough —
a really brilliant piece of special pleading, too special, I believe, as you
can't make any statesman of that period into the saintly statesman for
the simple but sufficient reason that no one is saintly in an age when men
are gambling for their heads. I also read an old book — Tyler's History
of the Literature of the American Revolution with great pleasure. There
were Kings before Agamemnon Parrington.
My love to you dear Justice. Keep well. I shall send Felix back to you
refreshed and eager. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. Laski
Devon Lodge, 17.XII.33
My dear Justice: I am afraid you have put me among the damned. But
the truth is that I have been so drowned in work that I have hardly
known where to turn. I have had a vast and difficult report to write for
a government committee to which I belong; and what with German
refugees, the Industrial Court, an article for the Atlantic,1 and the
normal academic work, I have only just been able to meet the problem
of time. However, term is over; the worst pressure has relaxed; and I turn
to you at once with the assurance of pardon for my sins.
I must give you news of Felix first. There is no doubt that he has made
a profound impression. I hear that alike from dons and students in
Oxford; and the others he meets, here and elsewhere, are all captured
at once by his personality. And I think it has done him good. He looks
rested and peaceful. He has a sense of perspective about things born
of distance; and I think we shall return him to you in the summer with,
so to say, increased horsepower. I need not tell you what a joy it is to me
14<The Roosevelt Experiment," 153 Atlantic Monthly 143 (February 1934).
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1459
to have him here. We manage to see each other about once in ten days;
and I get from him the old electric stimulus in a fully satisfying way.
And I observe with special pleasure that he has the same effect on the
best of my colleagues.
Things political are pretty bad with us; no one is deceived by the
temporary turn in trade. And the new Germany is a terrifying portent —
brutal, beastly, and belligerent. Some of the men who have come to me
for help are figures of world- wide distinction now almost destitute. Others
for whom I have been seeking help are in concentration camps; one
man, for instance, is a specialist in ancient Chinese history and is there
for having expressed sympathy with Chinese communism as the way of
life most suitable to their historic conditions. The whole thing, not least
the Reichstag trial,2 is a perpetual nightmare; and the sense of helpless-
ness one has as chaos comes ever more near is a grim experience. I have
never seen a whole continent before drift with open eyes into a dark age.
Your secretary sent me a charming letter the other week with an
emphatic request for books. There are a few I want to urge on you which
combine pleasure with instruction. First and foremost I put the Age of
Johnson edited by Turberville (Oxford Press). I think you will find the
chapters on travel, art, architecture, lawyers, booksellers and authors not
less enchanting than I did. I have also enjoyed the new Lytton Strachey
essays.3 With one exception I don't think they are of the calibre of his
first books; but they are an expression of a first-class mind working with
first-class material. Then I enjoyed Brinton's English Political Thought
in the XlXth Century — clear-headed, very well written, and with a (to
me) pleasing ironic power; he is particularly good on Coleridge, Bagehot,
Kingsley, Newman and T. H. Green. Of novels I have had little experi-
ence these last weeks, though I read on a night-train to Newcastle a good
detective-story (I almost feel your secretary's shudder) by Agatha
Christie called The Death of Lord Egerton* And I emphasise again the
quality of Sholom Asch's Three Cities which I believe belongs with the
stuff to which quite permanent quality attaches.
1 have had no chance to hunt books; and catalogues, for the most part,
have been either too expensive or barren. I did find a very nice set of the
editio princeps of Descartes; and a rather rare volume of old Dean
Tucker's tracts; but they can't be put in the first class. My chief experi-
ence is a different one. There was a famous early English socialist named
2 The trial of Van der Liibbe and the four Communists, Torgler, Dimitroff,
Popoff, and Taneff was currently in process before the Leipzig High Court,
ending in the conviction of Van der Liibbe.
8 Lytton Strachey, Characters and Commentaries ( 1933 ) .
4 This title has not been identified; perhaps the reference was to Lord Edg-
ware Dies (1933).
1460 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
Bray who, in the 'thirties, published a Labour's Wrongs and Labours
Remedies which is a classic of its kind. Nothing is known of him save
that book. But last week but one I was doing an industrial arbitration in
Leeds and wandered into the public library. I found there a mass
of papers relating to him which had remained untouched for nearly
forty years. It appears that about 1840 he got sick of failure and migrated
to Boston where he had a brother who was comfortably off. The brother
wrote home regularly to his mother in England and from these letters
one can reconstruct nearly fifty years of the socialist brother's life. The
letters were left to the library by some donor and as the librarian had
never heard of Bray he did not, of course, know anything of his signifi-
cance in the history of Marxian socialism. But at least he catalogued the
collection under the name, and now we have made a grant to a clever
young student of mine to go and see what he can do with the manu-
scripts.
One other tale I must tell. A poor German scholar came over, a man
who had written good, if not first-rate books, and is about 75 years of
age. He explained that for years he had wanted to write a history of Eng-
lish political economy before A. Smith; he had lost everything; did I
think I could get him a grant to cover his living costs for two years
while he slaved at its completion. With the caution of experience I asked
him how much he wanted to be comfortable. He said if he could have
thirty shillings a week he could manage very well. I got him two pounds
and had difficulty in persuading him that he would not be extragavant in
taking it.
This should arrive by the New Year. It brings you my love, dear
Justice, and warm good wishes. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 26.XIL3S
My dear Justice: I have had two days real holiday, and I almost begin
to feel that I know what the quiet peace of scholarship is again. For
I turned to 17th century French political thought and worked at a little
book published anonymously in 1657 and called Le politique du temps.
It is usually attributed to a writer under the Fronde named Davenne
and all the pundits ascribe it to him like a flock of sheep. When I read
it, I thought it seemed familiar, and after a morning's digging I dis-
covered that it was a reprint of a pamphlet written about 1573 and
published in the famous collection of Simon Goulart called Memoires
d'etat sous Charles IX. Alas! the pleasure of original discovery isn't mine
as Moreau the bibliographer noticed this in 1849.1 But it is an interesting
comment on the habits of historians that a book which is clearly sixteenth
1C. Moreau, Bibliographie des Mazarinades (vol. 2, 1850), p. 361.
1933] LASKI TO HOLMES 1461
century in character should have taken them in. Obviously each copies
the other's footnotes eagerly and embellishes them. The last of them de-
scribes it as the "ablest and most typical of the Mazarinades." I think
it is really a good example of the vice of specialism. The modern people
know their own little period and nothing else, so that the most elementary
deception, even when it is a deception on its face, takes them in.
Then I have had a week of early bed with a huge dose of Gibbon; it
is, I think, about seven years since I took a good look at him. He seems
to me greater than ever — and Chapters XV and XVI 2 are greater in
their power of erosion by irony than anything Voltaire or Holbach ever
did. I am a little baffled as to how a man as selfish, as pompous, and as
self-satisfied as Gibbon could have written so great a book. Incidentally,
it seems to me that the clue to his whole atmosphere is partly in Bayle
(who still needs the book to be written on his influence) and partly in
Hume's essay on Enthusiasm which is surely the basis of the temper
of those two chapters. I thought, too, that chapter 44 remains the supreme
general account of Roman law.
1 had also one good book hunt which was grand. Imagine a shop in a
cellar in a slum near Houndsditch. The books were without order in ver-
tical columns on the floor. The man might have been the offspring of a
marriage between Fagin and Mrs. Gamp; for he was in a kind of perpet-
ual moisture from gin, and he constantly shot round corners of the shop
as though on guard to see that one stole no books. I found all the con-
temporary pamphlets on the general warrants case, three of them being
the personal copies of Lord Camden and though they are not annotated,
they are underlined so that one can almost see the path his mind travelled
in writing Entick v. Carrington.B I also found three contemporary re-
plies to Rousseau, and a nice little lot of anti-philosophic pamphlets of
the 18th century; but best of all I got for seven shillings the complete
set of Freron's Annee litteraire, much the best of the anti-Voltaire
journals of the age of Louis XV. Altogether I suppose I spent thirty
shillings, and the effect produced on the bookseller was as though he had
been visited by J. P. Morgan. I was so dirty when I left that I asked him
if I could wash my hands. He took me down to his bedroom which con-
sisted of (a) a chair loaded with old novels (b) a camp-bed covered
with early nineteenth century plays and (c) a chest containing a vast
collection of scrap-books and keepsakes mostly of the time of George III.
From under the bed he produced what I first thought was a soup-tureen
2 "The Progress of the Christian Religion" and "The Conduct of the Roman
Government towards the Christians."
8 19 State Trials 1030 (1765); Lord Camden held in that case that seizure
of books and papers taken while a defendant charged with sedition was being
arrested, was unlawful at common law.
1462 LASKI TO HOLMES [1933
but which was in fact a utensil for more private purposes. This he filled
with water from a tap in the yard, then from his waistcoat pocket he
brought out a small piece of soap, and, as a kind of climax to the whole,
he took the pillowslip off the pillow to provide me with a towel. Why
go to the Gobi desert or to Tibet for adventures? Is it not invariably true
that they lie at one's door? I knew exactly what the lower reaches of
Grub Street were like in the 18th century. I add that I do not need
to assure you how thoroughly I enjoyed myself.
By the time this comes out the January number of Harper's should be
out. Will you ask Mr. Howe to get you a copy and read you a piece
of mine there on Brandeis? I am anxious to know what you think of it
as it represents a real effort to paint the inside of a really interesting
character.
Felix and Marion came down for the night last Wednesday — both
well and very happy. I have never seen him look so well or so peaceful.
Oxford clearly gives him a real rest and he will be physically a different
person on his return to you.
I read the other day an interesting little book which is worth noting —
Burke and Coleridge by Alfred Cobban. It is the best discussion I know
of the lines of thought out of which conservatism as a real philosophy
developed. You can see in it where Hegel, Savigny and Maine all came
from. And in a very different line I read a Xmas present Six Elizabethan
Tragedies by Webster, Marlowe et al. which has a good critical introduc-
tion by the editor George Rylands. His tracing of the line of descent
of Tennyson's best passage in "Maud" is a beautiful piece of criticism,
and the comment, in the last sentence of the introduction, is really quite
masterly.4 I also re-read Matthew Arnold's Friendship's Garland with
infinite amusement and very considerable admiration, I gather that it is
the fashion nowadays to decry Arnold as a critic; but I must say with
emphasis that I know no one writing who has quite his body of ideas
or his power of social insight. On the whole I think the Victorians did
as good a job as any other age; and the present tendency to think them
stuffy and complacent misses, I think, somewhere about two-thirds of the
story.
My love to you as always, Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
Devon Lodge, 6J.S4
My dear Justice: Your secretary's note was very welcome. As I told him,
it looks as though I can get over to America in January of 1935; so please
4 "The authors I have chosen are the six trails into a pathless jungle where
sooner or later every reader loses his way." George Rylands, Elizabethan Trag-
edy: Six Representative Plays (Excluding Shakespeare) (1933), xix.
1934] LASKI TO HOLMES 1463
keep really fit for then. And I need not tell you how glad I was to know
you liked my piece on Brandeis. It took much time, and I was not with-
out anxiety about the result.
We have just got back from a week's holiday in Antwerp — good talk,
good food, and an exhibition of Rops' etchings which was quite marvel-
lous. I never realised how fine an artist he was until I saw this massive
coherency really well arranged. I had an interesting evening there with
a lawyer named Dabin1 who professes at Louvain and has some ac-
quaintance with American law. He was very eulogistic of Morris Cohen,
which pleased me; and very critical of Pound, which pleased me hardly
less. On Pound he made the very good points (I) that he is more inter-
ested in his categories than in his facts (II) that he has no sense of the
proportionate value of his authorities and (III) that underlying all his
talk is a simple Hegelian metaphysic of the significance of which Pound
himself is wholly unaware. He spoke with great admiration of Cardozo.
I felt, as I always feel with these continental jurists, that they are much
more aware than we of problems of form, and much less aware of prob-
lems of substance.
In the way of reading, I have some pleasant things to report. I warmly
recommend Alain's Propos de litterature which has just appeared. It
has some really illuminating things, above all in his comments on Sten-
dhal and his really devastating criticism of Flaubert. And I thought there
was real substance in a distinction he drew between remorse, which
leaves a sense of bitterness behind it, and repentance which has a
cathartic effect. Then I got real pleasure from Croce's Short History of
the 19th Century — a really brilliant performance in which, for the first
time in my knowledge, the canon of the age is set in adequate perspec-
tive. I also read with interest the unpublished letters of Coleridge edited
by an American scholar named Griggs. It was a good piece of work; and
though there is a good deal of desert, the oases make the journey well
worth while. His flashes are sometimes supreme. What he lacks is co-
hesiveness. And he makes out a good case for himself about the accusa-
tions of plagiarism. This took me on to his Shakesperian lectures and here
I must say he is quite definitely the master of them all. On lago, Lear,
Macbeth and Falstaff he saw things more exquisitely than anyone else;
and it is remarkable how constantly he has established the angle of vision
on which we ourselves depend. I read also the Lucas Life of Lamb which
was wholly charming; and I emerged with the sense that he is quite
definitely the most loveable character in English letters. Which reminds
me of a good remark made to me the other day by a literary friend.
When Shelley met Mary Godwin the famous greeting "Mary"! "Shelley"!
^ean Dabin (1889- ); author of La philosophic de Tordre juridique
positif (1929), Theorie generate du droit (1944).
1464 LASKI TO HOLMES [1934
has a colour and beauty one never forgets; but had she said "Percy"! in
reply the bathos of association which somehow clings to the name would
have deprived it of all its peculiar tang. Incidentally the Lamb strength-
ened all my dislikes of Wordsworth as a person — an unctuous egoist
if ever there was one. One day I must write a piece on his political
opinions and show that he never thought a single thought that was not
commonplace after 1794, The last book on which I want to comment
you may know, if not I think you will get from it at least as much pleasure
as I. It is J. M. Robertson's Short History of Freethought which from
1600 onwards seemed to me a really masterly piece of work, independent
in its judgments and full of really new apergus. I was specially interested
in the problem of the impact of new doctrine, not least in England. It is
curious, for instance, to note how much in advance of the scholars the
gifted amateurs are, and how little influence the latter exert until the
professionals begin to take them up without undue acknowledgment.
And Robertson, by the way, is particularly good on the deistic controversy
of the 18th century which I have always thought was one of Leslie
Stephen's less happy discussions.
We see Felix and Marion pretty continuously. There isn't much doubt
that this adventure is doing Felix a world of good. He has lost the sense
of strain he had when I was in America in the spring, and is getting a
new perspective and peace of mind which are very good for him. And he
is doing a very good job in making the elect realise the importance
of America and the inner significance of the Roosevelt experiment. I need
not tell you what a joy it is to have him on hand.
Our love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 28.1.34
My dear Justice: A long tale of work! and I don't see hope of a real
leisure period until some of my lectures end in about a month from now.
However I have finished one vast government committee and got out
its report,1 and a labour party committee on constitutional change seems
also to be within sight of its goal. But it is hard work and I really long
for the leisure to do some of my own writing.
Everything, however, goes well. I manage to see Felix about once a
week, and to draw the refreshment you would expect from him. He is
very fit and happy, and the change, clearly, is doing him a world of good,
And as his house has become a kind of Mecca for the people doing law
1 The ref eren.ce is probably to the Report to the Minister of Health by the
Departmental Committee on Qualifications, Recruitment, Training, and Pro-
motion of Local Government Officers (32-306), dated January 10, 1934, of
which Laski was a member.
1934] LASKI TO HOLMES 1465
at Oxford I think he is really exercising some influence there — a real
achievement as that is no easy thing in a place so self-sufficient as Oxford.
There are some books I want to recommend to you. First a French
one — Propos de litterature by Alain. It has detached brief essays on
Montaigne, Pascal and the like, and a remarkable power of hitting the
jugular which would please you. Then an admirable book of critical
essays by F. L. Lucas, a Cambridge don. He is specially good on Proust,
and on modern criticism. One of the essays in which, inter alios, he tilts
at T. S. Eliot and Herbert Read, the high-priests of the moderns seems
to me done in the grand style or pretty near it. I also greatly enjoyed
a little Life of Milton by Rose Macaulay, somewhat in the Lytton Stra-
chey manner but built on a very real knowledge and full of apergus.
And, above all, I recommend J. E. Neale's Queen Elizabeth which is not
only a work of great scholarship but also of real art. If I were reviewing
it, I should say that the view taken is too simple, too much a study in
blacks and whites, that the case against Mary Stuart isn't so clear, and
that the Essex episode is far from being as simple as he makes it. But
all in all it is a grand piece of portraiture a hundred times better than
any other, and the proof that the real scholar can do the popular book
on the big theme very much better than the elegant trifler who sits down
to do a Freudian analysis upon the basis of a recovery of his schoolboy
knowledge.
I have read other things without emotion. Eustace Percy's solemn
pronouncement2 seemed to me pontifical mysticism without power to
distinguish between the essential and the unimportant; and I really
don't believe, despite his persuasiveness, that Mussolini has discovered
a new discipline which, by scotching political ambitions in the masses,
enables them to devote their leisure to the discovery of their souls. Nor
was I greatly impressed by Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse which sells
here, as with you, by the thousand. It seemed to me lacking in tautness,
to be merely a series of incidents without any principle of growth. And
Sinclair Lewis's new novel 3 was a disappointment — a piece of mechan-
ical bookmaking born of an illegitimate union between the method of
Arnold Bennett and the spirit of H. G. Wells. There was never a time,
I think, when there was so much competent book-making and so little
that is final in value. The time has come to make a real effort to establish
a canon for the age.
The atmosphere here is very grim. Hitler grows worse; and it is evi-
dent enough that the long-term prospects for peace are bad. He has
shown that persecution, ardently enough pursued, can in fact break the
spirit of a people, and all its consequences are those pointed out by
aLord Eustace Percy, Government in Transition (1934).
3 Work of Art (1934).
1466 LASKI TO HOLMES [1934
Aristotle in the fifth book of the Politics. Roosevelt and Russia seem
to me the only two countries in the world where something is being done
about which men are entitled to hope. We are in a bad way. There is no
energy and no clarity of purpose. The government has nothing to say and
its opponents lack the courage to say the things that need to be said. It
is a tragedy, because among the masses is a confused stirring of spirit
which could be turned to great ends under adequate leadership. As it
is one feels drift, complacency and apathy. Great things do not,
Micawber-like, turn up in civilisations; you have to go out and ^search
for them in the high-ways and bye-ways. But I do not see the politicians
who are making the search.
My love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, S.I1.S4
My dear Justice: The main thing of which to tell you this week is Felix's
address to the Institute of International Affairs — a body half-eminent,
half -expert to which it is far from easy to speak. It was a discussion of
the Roosevelt experiment and the Constitution, and I thought it about
as masterly a job as I have ever heard. He had great clarity, simplicity,
and directness. But, even more, in the discussion, in which there was
much criticism and no little hostility, he really scored a triumph. He
knew, of course, infinitely more than his critics; Sut to keep the audience
in a mood where its sympathy was always on his side, and to show tact,
and charm, and discretion in keeping the ball rolling always to your
opponents' goal isn't easy; but Felix did it like a great artist and I sat
there, as you would have done, bubbling with pride. It's not everybody
who can make an audience feel that e.g. poor Bernard Shaw is, of course
very bright and brilliant as a rule, but that this is one of his off-days, and
the lecturer, who is a very kind person, is letting him off nicely because
he is an old man. I wish you could have heard it and rejoiced with me
in its consummate mastery and artistic excellence. . . .
Other things are small by comparison. But I must not omit the visit
from a really high-brow critic who laid down the propositions (I) that
there are no important English novelists. There are pleasing story-tellers,
like Fielding but they are not important. (II) There have been no critics
in the English literary tradition except Dryden and T. S. Eliot. (Ill)
Hamlet is a terrible dramatic failure redeemed only by some good lines
of poetry. All this emerged in an interview he came for with me on the
political situation. So when he came to the general part I told him (I)
that my favourite poet was Longfellow (II) my favourite novelist was
P. G. Wodehouse and (III) that I thought James Russell Lowell the
1934] LASKI TO HOLMES 1467
supreme critic in the nineteenth century. He swallowed it all with com-
plete simplicity and explained as he left that he could not understand
why in the realm of affairs I was a radical while in the realm of literature
I had a "typically literary society mind/* I said with blithe innocence
that suburban literary societies surely did for the English tradition what
the Academy did for France — they fixed the standard of taste, and he
fled bewildered and baffled without a thought that I was pulling his leg.
Of reading there is not much to tell. I have been busy with politics
since I wrote last for causes with which you would emotionally agree and
intellectually disapprove. The most interesting part of it has been arrang-
ing a private discussion between the Russians and Lord Cecil to see
whether common ground for common action cannot be discovered to
ward off the very real danger of a European conflict. I don't know yet
where it will lead; but at least it is effort in a very good cause. And then
I have been busy trying to raise money for some German academic
exiles, and in persuading our never-to-be-sufficiently damned emigration
people not to put obstacles in the way of some of the poor devils trying
to earn a living. My own feeling is that the kind of diplomacy this type
of effort involves is a fascinating combination of persuasion and black-
mail. You tell the minister he is a great man in one breath, while, in the
other, you explain that if he does not think your way you are going to
make his name stink in the nostrils of all decent-minded people. He did
give way and so five of them have jobs which will at least keep body
and soul together for them. I hope this will be accounted unto me for
righteousness on the day of judgment!
My love to you. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 1111.84
My dear Justice: First of all, and above all, a very happy birthday, I wish
that I could have dropped in for lunch. There is so much to tell that
needs talk rather than the written word that the insulation of distance
is unpardonable.
Life is terribly hectic. But oases like Howe's very kind last letter are
welcome indeed. I'm glad you liked my article on Roosevelt. Whether
he wins or loses I think it is one of the essential pieces of political
courage in modern times; and it is absence of courage in democracies
that is proving their destruction. And I am glad you liked my friend
Neale's book on Elizabeth. I thought it was a pretty good example of the
professional proving that, at least now and again, there is something to
be said for knowing a subject before you write about it.
There seems no limit to the things I have been doing. Meetings
1468 LASKI TO HOLMES [1934
to secure the release of Dimitroff (the world seems a cleaner place now
that he is free)1 meetings to protest against the wickedness of Austrian
fascism and its massacre, the electoral campaign over the London County
Council,2 beside the endless stream of academic work. It is a grim time
to live in with values all confused and doubtful, and most people afraid
to speak forthrightly about anything. I fear we are in for an iron age in
which the chances of decency will be small; and it is not going to be easy
for those of us who think that the claims of reason against passion are
paramount. But I suppose no civilisation can confront its most basic
problems without uncovering the naked savage in man. Decency seems
to be a very thin and fragile covering at best.
In the way of reading there are several things I want to recommend.
Ernst Toller's autobiography I Was a German is a beautiful book the
charm of which will, I am sure, capture you as it did me. I was impressed
also by Charles Beard's Idea of National Interest which I thought a most
useful disentanglement of a complex notion. I also enjoyed a volume of
critical essays by G. W. Stonier called Gog and Magog, and another very
amusing collection by Ivor Brown called I Commit to the Flames. These,
I think, all have the right mixture of light and idea which you require.
More solid but illuminating is Alexander's Beauty which would I think
interest you for its account of the artistic process and the relation of
value to beauty.
Felix and Marion flourish. He goes ahead like a house on fire and I
think makes an impact everywhere such as you and I would wish. Of
his Cambridge lectures a colleague wrote me "that quite unquestionably
they were the most distinguished performance in Cambridge in years/*
and a talk on the wireless enchanted Diana not less than Frida, both of
them grimly critical judges.
I must not omit my pet discovery of the moment; one day, if I get
a fortnight of real leisure, I will write it all out in detail. I have found
that Sieyes's constitution was built almost wholly on Spinoza's Tractatus
politicus? I have found 26 separate institutions so identical down to
minutiae that the resemblance must be born of influence. Of course
I can't prove it in the full sense. But I think I can show that the identities
are too great to be capable of explanation on grounds of chance. And
another curiosity has come my way. The conspiracy of Rohan against
^eorgi Dimitrov (1882-1949), following his acquittal of the charge of fir-
ing the Reichstag, went to Russia.
2Laski was elected Alderman of the Metropolitan Borough Council of
Fulham.
3 Abbe Joseph Emmanuel Sieyes (1748-1836); his first contribution to con-
stitutional theory was in his pamphlet, Quest-ce que le tiers-etat? (1789); his
greatest, was his draft of a perfect constitution after the coup d'etat of Bru-
1934] LASKI TO HOLMES 1469
Louis XIV for which the former was executed 4 produced a plan of con-
stitutional reorganisation for France which also has many resemblances
to Spinoza's ideas. Now I find that Rohan's adviser was Van den Ende
who taught Spinoza Latin and I wonder if (a) that is the source of the
connection and (b) if Spinoza who corresponded with V. der E. to the
end of his life was cogniscant of the plot. It is a pretty mystery story,
unworked out, so far as I know.
Well — again a happy birthday, and my love as always.
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
Devon Lodge, 16.XII.34
My dear Justice: I will not apologise for my long silence. I merely ask
a generous man to forgive. I now resume in the old style and with un-
dimmished affection.
It is a terribly busy year. Academic business apart, I am trying my hand
at being an alderman on our local borough council. Partly I am trying
to make its public libraries be what they ought to be; and, partly, I am
trying to reorganise the local civil service on lines which will give it some
drive and efficiency. It's a dog's work; but I think it is worth while. And
I have written a book which I hope to publish in April,1 which won't,
I fear, be popular with the eminent but is at least as realistic an account
of what the state is like as I can get down on paper. It all takes time;
and as I am drowned amid students, especially the poor devils of
emigres from Germany, I do not always know how to avoid being over-
whelmed.
It is a bad Europe just now. I don't agree with the alarmists who see
war just round the corner. But the seeds of war are there, and they are
sprouting. And I don't think it can seriously be denied that Fascism
grows. One sees it gaining ground month by month in France, and
Hitler's grip on Germany is at present unbreakable. Our government
is a bad show, with no real foreign policy, no power to co-operate with
America (the one thing that should be the pivot of any sane British
policy) and with no mind to embark on any creative domestic adventures.
I think myself that we shall have a general election next July, and I hope
then that there will be a better House of Commons.2 But as things are
the case for representative government goes by default. People learn from
inaction to doubt Parliament's power to tackle things decisively, and you
* Louis de Rohan (1635-1674), the scandalous Chevalier de Rohan, after
his conspiracy with tie Dutch was beheaded by Louis XIV. Franz van den
Ende was also executed for his participation in the same conspiracy.
1 The State in Theory and Practice (1935).
* The next General Election did not occur until November 1935.
1470 LASKI TO HOLMES [1934
find, too widely and too unnecessarily, a temper of apathy that bodes ill
for a political democracy. We need leadership and we are not getting it.
That, I think, is always a bad state of affairs. I feel as I travel around
that I understand the epoch which led to the French Revolution. We
need a remaking of foundations, and that is an adventure which the
guardians of the old order are not prepared to attempt. The great consola-
tion, of course, is reading and work. Some books have recently appeared
which I should like very warmly to recommend. Have you read Crane
Brinton's Decade of Revolution (Harper)? I think it a brilliant panorama,
scholarly, detached, imaginative. I hope you will persuade your secretary
to embark upon it. And I enjoyed Croce's History of Europe in the 19th
Century (Harcourt). It is a little too "liberal" for me; but is a profound
book, with style and colour in it. And I do beg you to read H. G. Wells's
Autobiography. I don't put it in the class of S. Augustine or Rousseau.
But it is not much below them — a really truthful picture of an extraor-
dinarily fertile mind. It is terribly interesting, too, as a picture of the
inherent weaknesses of the intellectual, his vanity, his inability to co-
operate, his lack of the power of endurance and persistency which alone
gets things done. Wells is like a butterfly which flits from one flower to
another, never staying long enough at any to sense its beauty. But it is the
tale of a big man who has had his insights into the universe. In the way
of fiction I can only recommend the new Wodehouse Right Ho, Jeeves
which is in the supreme tradition. A really good detective story has not
come my way for months.
All your friends are well. Pollock I have not seen, but I have met those
who have and they give a picture of unfailing vigour. I did meet Leslie
Scott, busy and well. I have seen a little of Bertrand Russell. . . .
I miss Felix greatly, as you can imagine; he lent a special charm to
Oxford and almost galvanised it into life. He appears to retain deep
faith in the New Deal — more, I imagine, than I can permit myself. But
he cant outdo me in admiration for Roosevelt as a person even though
I don't believe he can succeed. America excites us all as never in my
lifetime. Even at this distance one has a sense of something big being
tried; and the superiority of effort to our policy of do-nothingism is im-
measureable. I was glad to see that Harvard's new President did not
shrink from making clear his attitude to Pound. There is one of your
real victories, for I remember that as far back as 1916, when Felix and
I were still under the spell of his learning, you were sceptical of its sig-
nificance. You were right and we wrong ... I hear occasionally from
Brandeis, and he never fails to give me news of you.
I must not omit to tell you that one of my great pleasures in these
last months has been J, B. Atlay's Victorian Chancellors. Have you ever
1934] LASKI TO HOLMES 1471
read it? The chapters on Brougham, Campbell, and Westbury are superb.
And the story of the latter meeting Mme. de Genlis who informs him
that she keeps all her male books in one bookcase and her female books in
another, to which he replies "Ah, madame, you do not then propose
to add to your library" is alone worth the price of admission.3
I give you warning now that early in April I hope to descend on you,
I propose to take off a month in America and I needn't say that a visit
to 1720 is an essential object of my programme.
Our love to you. This letter ought to arrive about Xmas. I hope it will
bring you peace and energy for the new year,
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. Laski
Devon Lodge, 24.XIL34
My dear Justice: This is one of those grim weeks in which you do an
accumulation of irritating nothings, which keep you busy with no results
to show. I have been buying Xmas presents, examining Ph.D/s, trying to
persuade the Lord Chancellor to abolish imprisonment for debt,1 cor-
recting the proofs of my book, and doing a chapter on committee govern-
ment for a volume to celebrate the centenary of the Municipal Corpora-
tions Act next year.2
1 have found some nice books, if rather out of the way. They are more
or less contemporary criticisms of Grotius, works of the natural law
school which culminated in Thomasius in the 18th century. I found them
in Edinburgh where I had gone to give a lecture. And at four shillings
a volume I thought them cheap and interesting. Also I picked up a very
nice letter, seven pages long, of old Jeremy Bentham. It is a draft of a
petition to the Prime Minister about Panopticon, a preparation on his
part to try and get his money back. The old man sputters sparks admi-
rably, with hints at a conspiracy of the great to prevent him from receiv-
ing compensation. Evidently he did not send it. But it is pleasant to see
how human he was.
In the way of reading a number of things worth comment. You will
not read the selected Correspondence of Marx and Engels. But they are
8 The editor has not found the anecdote in Atlay's volumes.
*In July 1934, the Home Department had submitted its Departmental Re-
port on Imprisonment by Courts of Summary Jurisdiction in Default of Pay-
ment of Fines and Other Sums of Money (Command Papers #4649). In 1935
legislation was adopted, along the lines recommended in the Departmental Re-
port, curtailing substantially the power of courts to imprison debtors; 25 & 26
Geo.' V, c. 46.
2 "The Committee System in Local Government/' A Century of Municipal
Progress, 1835-1935 (Laski, Jennings, and Robson eds., 1935), 82.
1472 LASKI TO HOLMES [1934
very interesting letters. The two are unpleasant — acrid, contemptuous,
harsh. They are not very good (who is?) at short-term political prophe-
cies, But in long-term diagnosis they deserve a medal; and there is a
letter from Engels on the basis of social change to one Schmidt which
deserves to be called really masterly.3 Then I have read a book by an
American scholar, Miss Whitney, on Primitivism and the Idea of Progress
in the 18th Century which deserves high marks. She is a little simpliste
as (forgive me!) some of the Americans tend to me [sic]. If a man like
Adam Ferguson,4 for instance, runs the ideas she is looking for her critical
faculty deserts her, and she shouts a eulogy instead of recognising him
for the pinchbeck Montesquieu he was. But she has dug up well a mass
of to me unknown stuff, some of it really significant. Then a charming
book on Condorcet by one Schapiro of New York. Even he cannot make
him more than very good second-rate. But he has painted his picture well,
and the book sustains interest all the way through. All this, say you, is
very highbrow stuff, suitable only to those relentless academic people
who spend their lives in that state of resentful coma they too easily
regard as research. Like Ireton, you demand more blood, and, by God,
sir, you shall have it. I commend to you two shockers and one "straight"
novel. The first are (I) The Sittaford Mtjstery by Agatha Christie, good
at least in the sense that my villain was a blameless innocent at the end;
and (II) He Laughed at Murder by Richard Keverne, which is the
thriller rather than the detective story proper, but well-written and with
those breathtaking moments wholly appropriate to quiet lives like yours
and mine. The straight novel is Elizabeth by Frank Swinnerton which
both Frida and I thought charming — characters alive, no damned
Joyceism or Eliotism or any of those new modern patterns which I find so
abhorrent. And I commend a volume of short stories by Winifred Holtby
called Truth is not Sober as the ideal accompaniment for solitaire. They
are not only witty: they are also malicious. I take it that you will find an
invitation in the emphasis of those adjectives.
Of people there is not much to tell. I had lunch with Lady Oxford, who
enquired eagerly after you. She is as brilliant as ever, with a certain
mellowness which is attractive. I find Elizabeth (Bibesco) a little trying.
She is so full of what she said to eminent men in far-off places about
nothing in particular that you can't help feeling that you are listening to
extracts from a velvet-bound diary of a highly artificial society to which
you have no desire to belong. Mackenzie King, the Canadian liberal
8 Engels to Conrad Schmidt, October 27, 1890, Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels: Selected Correspondence 1846-1895 (Torr, ed., 1934), 477.
4 Adam Ferguson (1726-1816), Scottish historian and philosopher; author of
Principles of Moral and Political Sciences (1792), Essay on the History of
Civil Society (1762).
1935] LASKI TO HOLMES 1473
leader, was there.5 I thought him dull and unctuous, continually emitting
truisms with a heavy air of profundity e.g. "on the American continent
Mr. Roosevelt is undoubtedly a popular figure." There were moments,
my dear Justice, when I felt it quite difficult to be polite. I went also
to a dinner at the Russian Embassy where I met the aviators who had
rescued Schmidt and his colleagues from the ice-floes by which they
were imprisoned.6 They told one of those heroic stories in the face of
which one is simply silent because words are meaningless in relation
to adventures of that kind. I had the same emotion that one has in reading
the diaries of Captain Scott on his last expedition. And I must record the
visit of a Chinese who came to ask me to lecture in Pekin. He was un-
certain of his English and therefore asked permission to read what he
wished to say. He began **O most eminent professor" in superb oriental
style, compared me with Hegel, Marx, Proudhom, F. H. Bradley, Bosan-
quet and Lester Ward, and ended by saying that, "were you to come
generations of Chinese students yet unborn would greet you as their
father." Now what do you make of that? I could not tell him that it was
a direct invitation to break the sixth commandment, and I could not
make my secretary (who is terribly young) refrain from giggles. But at
least you will admit that this is one of the minor compensations for the
pursuit of an academic career.
My love to you as always, dear Justice. Please keep fit and well.
Ever affectionately yours, H. /. L.
3.1.35
My dear Justice: Your telegram warmed my heart. And I found it on re-
turning from Antwerp to an empty house sixteen hours late through fog
in the Schildt. That was a real welcome.
I wish you could have been with us in Antwerp. First there was a
marvellous exhibition of Brueghel and James Ensor (please get from the
Library of Congress the Catalogue raisonee of his etchings) which was a
feast. Then I met an old Jesuit there who was a trump. He had been
forty years out in China and had come home at eighty five to finish a
grammar of Chinese dialects in comfort. I hope I explain myself when I
say that he was one of those Jesuits who had ceased to be interested in
dogma and was simply a civilised gentleman. His consolations in China
were (I) Seneca — the most human, he thought, of all philosophers; (II)
5 William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950); Prime Minister of Canada,
1921-1930, 1935-1948.
8 In March and April Russian planes had rescued Professor Otto Schmidt and
Ms 101 companions who had been stranded on an ice pack northwest of the
Bering Strait for some two months after the sinking of the Soviet ice-breaker,
Chelyuskin.
1474 LASKI TO HOLMES [1935
Tacitus who saw more deeply into the habits of rulers than any other
writer, and (III) Gibbon (in a Flemish translation) because Gibbon
belonged to "the best of all centuries when men still hoped to make
reason triumph over passion," He told marvellous tales of heroism among
simple people — the peasant who carries his wife fifteen miles to a
hospital to be confined; a doctor who walks all night through the snow
to attend a village stricken with fever; a village of poor folk who all
subscribe to send a bright lad to Pekin because he showed aptitude for
letters and maybe would become a sage bringing honour to the village.
I saw in him that kind of wisdom which is born of infinite loneliness and
infinite understanding. He said that what impresses him in the Europe
he has recovered is that it expresses so exactly Goethe s word Sehnsucht,
which I translate by the Scottish "wearying" — a sense of longing for
things it knows to be good yet does not know how to attain. He said fine
things like his belief that the best type of human being is he who con-
sciously surrenders power over other beings lest he be poisoned by pride
of authority. I have rarely met anything so impressive as the old fellow,
and he was as physically beautiful as he was spiritually exquisite.
In the way of reading, I have not much to tell. I reread Zimmern's
Greek Commonwealth there and thought it better than ever before, with a
sigh in remembering that he will never write such a book again. I read
Brandeis's new volume,1 powerful and the expression of a noble passion,
but, to me, unsatisfying because it was like the pronouncement of a
believer in the Ptolemaic astronomy that the new Copernican world will
not do. There's nothing at all in this desire to return to the simple verities
of Jeffersonian Democracy. Then I read the new translation of Engels's
Feuerbach, which you will not read, but which is, especially in its treat-
ment of the social sciences masterly, not least in its emphasis (which
O.W.H. will consider sympathetically) that the clue to legal doctrine
lies in its economic context. And I re-read Vanity Fair which I thought
nearly A-l though I resented some of the not quite open moralising, and
Trollope's The Way We Live Now which I thought definitely remarkable,
even, in its way, on the level of all but the very best of Balzac. (There is
no higher praise.) Frida, I add, read for the first time Zola's Germinal
and ordered me to put in a special word that it was immensely impressive.
I did not think so ten years ago; but I might revise my view today. I also
read on the boat After Strange Gods by T. S. Eliot which I thought
artificial and snobbish and devoid of any real insight even though I know
I ought not to speak of so eminent a minor prophet in this way.
I combed Antwerp for books, but in vain. But tomorrow I go to Paris
for the week-end, and I hope for victories over the monstrous regiment of
1 The Curse of Bigness; Miscellaneous Papers of Louis D. Brandeis ( Fraen-
kel, ed., 1934).
1935] LASKI TO HOLMES 1475
bouquinistes who will not bring down their prices even in this time of
crisis. It breaks one's heart to get a catalogue which contains an unpub-
lished letter of Voltaire all about Hume and D'Alembert and Rousseau,
seven pages long. I am in favour of a state right of eminent domain in
these matters. And I noticed in a sale that a collection made by Lanson of
those imaginary voyages I collect so assiduously was bought by a Greek
millionaire who specialises in the manufacture of date boxes. Sir, that
makes for Bolshevism! He has from a scholar's energy the fruits of a life-
time's collection which he buys to have a social cachet. It will not do!
I am having an amusing time with the Lord Chancellor just now trying
to prevent him putting an age-retirement for judges into his new Bill. I
note with amused pleasure that some of the best work in the law is done
after 75; that as a rule the younger English judges have not been the
most successful; that the older judges are not a whit less radical than the
young. (It isn't so with statesmen.) But it is good for Sankey to be hot
and bothered.
My love and every sort of good wish.
Ever affectionately yours, H. }. L.
20.1.35
My dear Justice: At least my brother's visit to America brought me per-
sonal news of you. I was grateful for that. And I was pleased to find that
he emerged therefrom with a healthy respect for all those in Washington
to whom my affection is vowed.
The first week of a new term is always irritating. You are at half-cock
instead of in the middle of a routine. But this week has been notable for at
least one thing. A German student of mine read in my seminar a paper
on Ames1 which I thought a masterpiece. I don't know what you would
have made of it, as I, curiously, have never heard your view of Ames. I
am an anti, on the ground that though, clearly, he had real learning, he
had no general principles by which that learning was informed. This lad,
an emigre, took on the job in his stride, and speaking from notes, did as
clear and concise a piece of demolition, as I have ever heard in a seminar.
I don't expect it would have pleased Felix, to whom Ames is still a hero;
but I thought it among the two or three best academic experiences I
have ever had.
Otherwise it has been the usual kind of week, enlivened only by a
political meeting at Canterbury in which I had the unusual experience
of having the Dean for my chairman. He was so kind about me in his
opening remarks that I told him it only remained for me to speak with the
1 James Barr Ames (1846-1910), legal historian and Dean of the Harvard
Law School, 1895-1910.
1476 LASKI TO HOLMES [1935
archbishop in the chair for my critics to detect the sprouting of my wings.
And I went to dinner with Sankey to hear the long tale of his woes.
Lawyers are bad people who don't show an appropriate interest in law
reform. I told him to introduce his reforms first and consult the profession
afterwards. And it was amusing to hear his account, for it showed that
there are just the same evils at our Bar as in yours only that we manage
to gloss them over with a subtlety from which you are (wisely or un-
wisely) wholly free. I think Sankey not wholly happy; and I should guess
that he finds his seat in the cabinet less and less satisfactory. It is his own
fault; for he should have had the courage to resign when the P.M. began
to side-track his activities.
In the way of reading I have some strong recommendations. First of
all, Vinogradov, The Black Consul I re-read it (a great compliment to a
modern novel) and except for Les dieux ont soif I think it conveys the
atmosphere of a revolution as hardly anything I have ever read. Then a
Trollope I did not even know by name called Ayah's Angel which I think
is entitled to go among his best — a heroine whom you are bound to like
and a hero whom you know you would have cut out any day you hap-
pened along; what more can you ask for in a novel? Then a History of
the French Commune by Laronze which is full of new stuff and im-
mensely exciting. Lastly an excellent book on Rousseau by one Hendel
of McGill — a little long but full of good things well said. I have also
been helping a friend to find aphorisms for a collection he is making. He
sent me what he had from J. S. Mill and asked me for additions. I set out
on a tour of the collected essays and found some which pleased me im-
mensely. "As often/' wrote Mill, "as a study is cultivated by narrow minds,
they will draw from it narrow conclusions/* And isn't this admirable,
especially in politics, "The gratitude of men is for things unusual and
unexpected"; and this "when Society requires to be rebuilt, there is no use
in attempting to rebuild it on the old plan? I found that I gathered some
six folio pages of this kind all with apergus admirably phrased, and some
as striking as any in the usual anthologies. The best, in some ways, was
tucked away in the Representative Government. "Let a person have
nothing to do for his country and he will not care for it." I would like to
give lectures on that to die zealots for dictatorship who are so fashionable
just now. The last thing I read (finished in bed this morning) was
Ecclesiastes which I incline to think among the three or four supreme
prose poems in the world. I wish you would reread it and tell me what
you think.
I haven't bought a book this week, but I have bought a drawing. A
dealer in Bond Street has started the instalment system. I was attracted
by his advertisement and looked in. I bought a drawing for twenty pounds
of a line of troops returning from battle which is superb. Your own limbs
1935] LASKI TO HOLMES 1477
ache with the men's fatigue. It is by Nevinson's son, and the whole of
modern war is in it, unspoken courage, dull hardship stoically endured,
the inarticulate emotions of men to whom words are difficult, the sense
of relief that there is an intermission to danger. I wish you could see it, for
all the history of 1914 is there. And at three pounds a month I feel rich
and the lordly patron — pleasant feelings indeed. I think the idea an
admirable one, for it is the first time I have ever ventured into these
pastures or felt able to do so within the strict confines of an academic
purse.
One other tale I must tell. A colleague of mine was speaking with
some sharpness of Ramsay MacDonald's new passion for the rich which
expresses itself especially in a friendship for Lord Londonderry, "Ah!"
he said, "MacDonald has still to learn that you cannot sing the Inter-
nationale to the Londonderry air." I wish I had said that.
My love to you as always. Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
29.1.35
My dear Justice: It was good to have news of you from your young man.1
I hope he will not mind every few weeks sending me a word. I value it
greatly.
I have had a busy week. A visit to Swansea, where I had to make a
speech, A mass of committee meetings, all of them necessary, but (I
think) most of them insignificant. And students! On the average my
secretary tells me that I interview fifteen each day and the variety of need,
from a simple bibliography to a request for a subject for a book is a grim
business. Add to that lectures, and the need to get some real work done,
and I think on the whole I am entitled to my holiday in America.
I had one meeting last week that would have amused you. In the
public libraries of the borough I am having special rooms constructed as
special reading rooms for children. I put forward my estimate which was
fiercely attacked by the opposition. A bluff real estate deal [sic] explained
that he must oppose it as he thought separate rooms for children wanton
extravagance. I pointed out that this was now standard library practice:
26 out of 28 London boroughs had them already. Then a gallant rear-
admiral said that he observed from the figures that I proposed to spend
three thousand pounds on rebuilding and six hundred pounds on equip-
ment. This was an unpardonable waste of the ratepayers' money. He
must, in his conscience, make his protest against it. I thereupon inter-
jected that if the gallant admiral would be so kind as to refer to the
1 James Henry Howe, Jr., had come to Holmes as his secretary in October
1934.
1478 LASKI TO HOLMES [1935
estimate again I thought he would agree that the three thousand and the
six hundred to which he referred were square feet and not pounds. After
that my estimate (which was in fact for four hundred pounds) went
through without any further criticism!
In the way of reading one or two things are worth recording. A (to
me) unknown P. G, Wodehouse called Uneasy Money which I thought
in the classic tradition. A very good and very short hook called Morals
and Politics by E. F. Canitt which puts the general problem with point
and acuteness. A symposium called The Meaning of Marx edited by
Sidney Hook which contains a brilliant essay by him for most of which I
would go bail and one by Morris Cohen upon which I would be prepared
to attack him for very nearly every sentence.2 Then a quite marvellous
attack on Russia by one of these economists whose writings are really an
account of the mental limitations of the expert.3 He defines economics
as the alternative choice between scarce means to achieve maximum
satisfaction. He seeks to explain marginal utility (he is a German) . The
English workman, he says, with an air intended to show you what a finely
realistic observer he is, gladly gives up his third or fourth glass of beer to
buy himself a frock coat or an evening dress for his wife. I suppose there
are still people who have inherited a frock coat from their Nonconformist
grandfathers, but they must be marvellously few. And the book is intro-
duced by my eminent colleague Hayek (of whom Keynes admirably said
that he has the most distinguished muddlehead in Europe) with a preface
explaining that the great value of the book is its author's special knowl-
edge of the habits of the working class! Oh God, oh Montreal! I don't
wonder that the public does not take the economists very seriously. For
lectures I must add that I have re-read Rousseau's Confessions, once
again with infinite admiration for its art and its general truthfulness. With
all his frailties he was a supreme artist. The description of meeting the
girls in the cherry-orchard is surely among the dozen most exquisite idylls
in literature.
I have bought nothing, though there have been one or two things in
catalogues that have made my mouth water. A set of the U.S. Supreme
Court Reports for sixty pounds; it seemed almost a crime to let it go, and
bound in half pigskin at that. It belonged to McCardie, J. who died 18
months ago. I can't quite imagine why he had it as except for references
to Ex parte Milligan I can't find that he ever quoted them. I rejoiced to
see that my Bentham has now gone up to thirty pounds; and Fitz
Herbert's Graunde Abridgement in the 1565 edition has gone up to
2 "Why I Am Not a Communist," The Meaning of Marx (Hook, ed., 1934),
91.
3 Boris Davidovich Brutskus, Economic Planning in Soviet Russia (with a
Foreword by F. A. Hayek, 1935).
1935] LASKI TO HOLMES 1479
fifteen. Isn't there an especial satisfaction when the books you have un-
justifiably bought repay you in that way?
I end with a story that is a real climax. A Japanese some years ago
asked me to write a preface to a book he had written. Weakly I did. Last
month he re-appeared with a new book and said that his publisher had
suggested I write a preface to that. I declined and told him that he ought
now that he had published a book to stand on his own feet and that he
should tell his publisher so from me. Today I met the publisher who told
me that the Jap had said that "Mr. Laski would not write the preface as
he felt strongly that I should float on my own bladder." Isn't that really
superb.
We all send our love. As an incident I add that I thought Cardozo had
much the best of the argument in the oil case.4
Ever affectionately yours, H. J. L.
17.11.35
My dear Justice: I have been over half England since I last wrote to you,
speaking at Bristol, Swansea, Burnley and Durham for a cause you would
not bless to audiences you would have found exciting. Imagine near
Durham speaking to 300 Dalesmen who come in from the hills with their
storm-lanterns and their sheep-dogs and sit there grim and gnarled asking
one questions for two hours with never even a grunt to display their
feelings. Or the old man at Bristol who asked me what I thought of
Carlyle. I expressed a qualified admiration. He struck his stick on the
ground and exclaimed with a vigour I cannot convey, "Sir, he teaches a
man the glory of self-respect."
In the way of reading I have some recommendations. If you have not
read it, I think you would enjoy The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery
Queen; at least it baffled me completely as neither of my candidates was
finally arrested. Then a superb little book Ethics and Politics by E. F.
Carritt (Oxford) which analyses the main theories of their relation from
Hobbes onwards with a clarity and skill which leave me envious. And I
have had joy beyond words in the three volumes of Diderot's letters to
Sophie Volland. There is one of the half-dozen most attractive human
beings in the record — all the qualities one wants from hatred of un-
necessary pain, through fire in the belly, to that penumbra of decent
'Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388 (Jan. 7, 1935). A majority of
the Court, over the dissent of Cardozo, J., determined that there was an exces-
sive delegation of power in those sections of the National Industrial Recovery
Act under which the President had prohibited the transportation in interstate
and foreign commerce of petroleum products produced in excess of state
quotas.
1480 LASKI TO HOLMES [1935
vulgarity that is a necessary part of the whole man, His descriptions of
the dinners at Holbach's are simply enchanting. I have also read with
profit, not unmixed with pain, Commons' Institutional Economics. His
own theory seems to me bunk; but his accounts of Locke, Turgot, and
Adam Smith do, I think, throw genuinely new light on the ideas of each
by the manner of his approach to them. Finally I beg to recommend a
novel about contemporary Italy called Fontamara by one Silone which is
superb. The ability to make a farcical comedy the vehicle of simply first-
rate political satire is rare indeed; and this comes off with a vigour and
gusto that will delight you. Please do not fail to have it as your accom-
paniment to solitaire,
I must tell you, too, of a night in Oxford. Imagine the high table at
Christ Church in which the guest is flanked by the professor of pastoral
theology. . . . The guest asks what exactly pastoral theology is: before
he can reply, a young don across the table defines it as "the study of foot
and mouth disease in the clergy." Then a discussion of the government
and the queer relations of MacDonald to the Tories. "Ah," said my young
don, "he cannot go on trying to sing the Red Flag to the tune of the
Londonderry Air." A little later the talk turned to the sins of a youth in
the college named Price who, being drunk in charge of a car, when
charged at the police station agreed that he was drunk and with great
vehemence offered to fight any constable who thought him sober. "In
fact," said my young don, "Price ceased to pay to virtue the homage of
hypocrisy." And all this in one evening from a lad whose specialty is
vector analysis. I did not previously believe the young mathematician
had so much blood in him.
In the way of book-hunting I have not much to record. I found some
nice sixteenth century criticisms of Machiavelli which I was glad to
have, and a small collection of pamphlets on the law of libel in the 18th
century — the issues which led up to Fox's libel act. But at present the
depression has led to a lull in the book world and apart from the obvious
rarities things are not being bought and sold. All this reminds me of a
pleasant book I do not think I have ever mentioned to you — Confes-
sions of a Bankrupt Bookseller. It is a good picture of an attractive type
which I enjoyed greatly. After all a good bookseller, even though he only
pays five shillings in the pound, is pretty nearly the noblest work of God.
We are at the moment in one of those minor crises in politics which
always emerge when the sands of a government are beginning to run
out. I don't think it means a general election just yet. But it is most in-
teresting to see the men who hope for a return begin to burnish their
armour and prepare the ground for fighting alliances. Eustace Percy for
instance is beginning to announce his claims and it is good fun to watch
his anxiety to be in the light sufficiently to prevent the danger of his
1935] LASKI TO HOLMES 1481
being overlooked once more.1 But he is not alone. Politicians who have
been silent ever since 1931 begin to whisper that they have done enough
to warrant consideration. I can't help feeling that exhibitionism is an
integral part of the politician's equipment. That and the power to im-
provise sincerely are the essence of the breed. Lord Horder, the physician,
said, I thought, a good thing the other day when he remarked that the
politician who succeeds is the man who convinces himself by his own
perorations.
I have booked my passage on March 20th — so I shall be in Washing-
ton sometime in the first part of April. I have promised to be in Illinois on
April 10-11 and in New York on Mondays. But I am going to leave 3 or
4 days for a sight of the New Deal and I shall assume that I may come
along to see you on each of them.2
Our love to you as always. I do not need to tell you that the book you
will get next week brings you all and more of the old affection.
yours devotedly, Harold J. Laski
1 When MacDonald resigned in June 1935, Lord Eustace Percy became Min-
ister Without Portfolio in Baldwin's Cabinet.
2 Holmes died on March 6, 1935.
Biographical Appendix
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
Adams, Brooks (1848-1927), de-
scendant of Presidents. His forebod-
ings of doom found justification in
a cyclical and cynical interpretation
of history which he formulated in
The Law of Civilization and Decay
(1895). He was as distinctively a
Bostonian and as uncompromisingly
an Adams as his better-known brother,
Henry, whom he idolized — in that
devotion rising above the rebellious
skepticism which sharpened his judg-
ment of his own world and its aspira-
tions.
Alcott, Amos Bronson (1799-1888),
Concord visionary, whose transcen-
dentalism, being as much a way of
life as a philosophy, led him into a
series of high-minded and unsuccess-
ful educational experiments. His best-
known failure was the community of
Fruitlands; his closest association with
success, his daughter's Little Women.
Alexander, Samuel (1859-1938), be-
loved Professor of Philosophy at Man-
chester from 1893 to 1924. Save for
his one large work, Space, Time, and
Deity (2 vok, 1920), Alexander's
distinguished contributions to philos-
ophy were principally in essays and
lectures. His metaphysical affiliations
were with Spinoza, with the realists
and theists; in his ethics he was an
evolutionist, and in aesthetics he was
greatly concerned with the psychol-
ogy of artistry.
Althusms, Johannes ( 1557-1638 ) ,
Calvmist author of Politica methodica
digesta atque exemplis sacris et pro-
fanis illustrata (1603). His answer to
Bodin's thesis that sovereignty is the
absolute and indivisible prerogative
of the state emphasized the multi-
plicity of groups in all societies, the
natural rights of those groups and of
individuals, and the contractual ori-
gins and limitations of governmental
power.
Alverstone, Viscount. See Webster,
Richard Everard.
Ames, James Barr (1846-1910), be-
loved Dean and Professor of the Har-
vard Law School. As teacher he made
of the case method of instruction a
success which its founder, Langdell,
never achieved. As scholar he is best
known for his numerous essays on
English legal history and his many
case-books on various branches of the
law.
Amos, Sir Maurice Sheldon (1872-
1940). Following his years of judi-
cial service in Egypt, Amos became a
frequent adviser to the British govern-
ment in matters of foreign law and
international affairs. After the publi-
cation of his principal work, The Eng-
lish Constitution (1930), he became
Quain Professor of Comparative Law
at University College, London.
Anson, Sir William (1843-1914).
While serving as Warden of All Souls
College, Oxford, with considerable
success, Anson endeavored through
writing and teaching to make the
study of law an educational and not
simply a professional enterprise. His
1486
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
chief published works, The Princi-
ples of the English Law of Contract
(1879) and The Law and Custom of
the Constitution (1886, 1892), con-
tributed substantially to that purpose.
Neither was a book of distinguished
originality yet each has proved itself
a lucid aid to legal education.
Argenson, Rene Louis, Marquis d'
(1694-1757), for years in the serv-
ice of Louis XV. His association with
Voltaire and the philosophes con-
verted him to the cause of reform and
the dream of a European Republic.
In retirement during the last ten
years of his life, he revised his un-
published writings. The most impor-
tant of these works, published post-
humously, were Considerations sur le
gouvernement de la France (1764)
and Memoires (5 vols., 1857 et seq.).
Arnauld, Antoine (1612-1694), mem-
ber of a distinguished family of law-
yers. Antoine, known as le grand
Arnauld, was a frequent victim of
persecution but was a prolific pam-
phleteer in the Jansenist cause and a
vigorous foe of the Jesuits and Cal-
vinists. His energy was expressed in
his response to a friend's suggestion
that it was time to go to bed: "Vous
reposer? Eh! naurez-vous pas pour
cela Feternite' entiere?"
Astor, Nancy (1879- ), Viscount-
ess. American zest, Virginian charm,
and marriage to Lord Astor facilitated
an energetic career as suffragette, con-
servative member of Parliament, ex-
plosive friend of the great, and intem-
perate enemy of intemperance. With
humor and pride she has told her own
story under the somewhat possessive
title My Two Countries (1923).
Atkin, James Richard (1867-1944),
Baron Atkin; Judge of the High
Court, 1913-1919; Lord Justice of
Appeal, 1919-1928; Lord of Appeal
in Ordinary, 1928-1944. Of his many
opinions none is better known than
that in which, writing of snails in
bottles, he broadened the scope of the
manufacturer's liability for negligence
(Donoghue v. Stevenson [1932] A.C.
453). In constitutional law his inde-
pendent courage led him to dissent
in Liveridge v. Anderson [1942] A.C.
206, wherein he urged, as a matter
of statutory interpretation and consti-
tutional policy, that the Home Secre-
tary's determination that there was
reasonable cause to detain a suspect,
was reviewable by the judiciary.
Laski wrote of Lord Atkin's dissent
in 22 The New Statesman ( N.S. ) 421
(Nov. 15, 1941). Atkin's ardent de-
sire to bring about reforms in legal
education and to have law taught as
a branch of the humanities was
shown with some frequency while he
was Chairman of the Council on
Legal Education from 1919 to 1934
and in his work as Chairman of the
Lord Chancellor's Committee on Le-
gal Education in 1934.
Atkinson, John (1844-1932), Baron
Atkinson. As Irish barrister, Attorney
General of Ireland, and member of
parliament from North Londonderry
he played an important part in the
legal and political events of the last
decade of the nineteenth century. Be-
coming Lord of Appeal in Ordinary
in 1905 he remained on the bench
until 1928, when he was succeeded
by Lord Atkin.
Aulard, Alphonse ( 1849-1928 ) ,
founder of the Societe de I'histoire de
la Revolution and masterful editor of
forgotten records of the Revolution.
His own interpretations of the Revo-
lution, though frankly partisan, were
so infused with enthusiasm and so
firmly grounded in scholarship that
they commenced a new era in the
historiography of the Revolution. His
greatest single work was the Histoire
politique de la Revolution francaise
(1901). His passionate disagreement
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1487
with Taine's despairing interpretation
of the Revolution was most fully ex-
pressed in his Taine: Historien de la
Revolution frangaise (1907).
Austin, John (1790-1859), follower
of Bentham and father of the modern
school of analytical jurisprudence. In
The Province of Jurisprudence Deter-
mined ( 1832 ) he sought to define the
boundaries between "law strictly so-
called" and "law by analogy." By his
process of definition he determined
that his province of jurisprudence
should be that of "law strictly so-
called," wherein every positive law
may be seen to be a direct or circui-
tous command of a sovereign. This
discarding of morality and the law
of nature was, needless to say? a re-
pudiation which critics of the analyti-
cal school have been unwilling to
accept.
Babeuf, Francois (1760-1797), agita-
tor and socialist critic of the Revolu-
tion. His violent protests against ine-
quality during the Directory led to his
arrest, condemnation, and execution
for having conspired to bring about
an armed rising. His greatest influence
was not on his own time but on the
doctrines which inspired the revolu-
tions of 1848 and 1871.
Bagehot, Walter (1826-1877), econ-
omist, whose training in the law and
intimate relations with leaders in po-
litical and intellectual affairs gave to
his writing in political science (The
English Constitution and Physics and
Politics] and economics (Lombard
Street) an effective vitality. Admiring
the deferential strain in British char-
acter and seeing the social value of
dullness as contrasted with originality,
he was no radical in his politics and
was an ardent and able spokesman
for that political liberalism and insti-
tutional conservatism which marked
the age of Victoria.
Bailhache, Sir Clement Meacher
(1856-1924). Both at the bar and on
the High Court, to which he was
nominated by Lord Haldane in 1912,
his extraordinary competence was in
commercial matters. The alacrity of
his judgment, while notable and ad-
mirable as utilized in the field of his
specialty, on occasion impeded his ad-
ministration of the criminal law.
Bain, Alexander (1818-1903), Scot-
tish logician and psychologist who, as
friend and biographer of John Stuart
Mill, was faithful to the utilitarian
tradition in ethics and to Mill's prin-
ciples of logic. He was a founder of
the philosophical journal, Mind. His
principal contributions to the intel-
lectual history of his time were in
psychology. Though he made no ma-
jor additions to psychological theory,
his insistence that the methods of psy-
chology should be scientific influenced
the direction of later psychological
research, particularly that of William
James. It has been suggested that he
was the grandfather of pragmatism.
Baldus, Petrus (1327-1406), pupil
and disciple of Bartolus who followed
his master in the belief that the gloss
on Roman law was more important
than the text itself. In political theory
he gave special emphasis to the force-
of local custom and the obligation of
the prince to respect that custom.
Though willing to concede large pow-
ers to kings he considered that they
were bound by their contracts with
the people.
Barbier, Edmond (1689-1771), law-
yer and diarist whose Journal histo-
rique et anecdotique du regne de
Louis XV (1847-1849) records the
political and other events of Paris
from 1718 to 1762.
Barclay, William (1546-1608). Scot-
tish by birth, Catholic in faith, Bar-
clay from France defended the au-
1488
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
thority of James I to exact the oath
of allegiance from English Catholics.
In the concept of the divine right of
kings he found society's security from
anarchy and royal immunity from ec-
clesiastical power. His principal works '
were De Regno et Regale Potentate
(1600) and De Potentate Papae
(1609).
Barker, Sir Ernest (1874- ), po-
litical scientist and historian. Laski's
first association with him was when
Barker was Fellow and Tutor at New
College, Oxford, during Laski's under-
graduate days.
Bartolus of Sassoferrato (1314-1357),
Professor of Law at Perugia and
greatest of the Post-Glossators. His
stature as commentator was such that
later centuries and other nations in
receiving Roman law accepted his
version in preference to the Corpus
Juris. In doing so, they received from
his pen not only law but political
theory as well. That theory, construct-
ing a hierarchy of sovereignties, put
the Pope above the Emperor and con-
fined the power of kings within ter-
ritorial limits.
Bayle, Pierre (1647-1706), French
philosopher who turned from Calvin-
ism to Catholicism and returned again
from whence he started. His Diction-
naire historique et critique (1696)
became the model of Diderot's En-
cyclopedie in an age of enlightenment
for which Bayle might have had small
sympathy. Though he rejected the
all-sufficiency of reason, considered
that man's nature is essentially evil,
and in politics was timidly conserva-
tive, in his Dictionnaire he indulged
an ingenious talent for irreverent par-
adox which was the admiration of the
philosophes of the eighteenth century.
Voltaire spoke fairly of him: "Bayle
is the first of logicians and sceptics.
His greatest enemies must confess that
there is not a line in his works which
contains an open aspersion of Chris-
tianity; but his warmest apologists
must acknowledge that there is not
a page in his controversial writings
which does not lead the reader to
doubt, and often to scepticism." See,
herein, Jurieu, Pierre.
Beck, James Montgomery ( 1861-
1936), lawyer and politician whose
service as Solicitor General of the
United States in the Harding admin-
istration was followed by a career in
Congress from 1927 to 1934. His most
pretentious work, The Constitution of
the United States (1922), stimulated
Thomas Reed Powell's devastating
sketch of constitutional pontification
in 33 New Republic 297 (Feb. 7,
1923).
Becker, Carl (1873-1945), Professor
of History at Cornell. His greatest
contributions to the history of ideas
were The Declaration of Independ-
ence (1922) and The Heavenly City
of the Eighteenth Century Philoso-
phers (1932).
Behrman, S. N. (1893- ), Amer-
ican author, best known for his plays
The Second Man (1927), Brief Mo-
ment (1932), and Biography (1933)..
Bell, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian
(1868-1926), traveler, renowned let-
ter-writer, and expert on the antiqui-
ties and immediacies of the Middle
East. Through scholarship and devo-
tion she did much to interpret and
direct the course of history in Meso-
potamia in the years following the
First World War. The Letters of Ger-
trude Bell (2 vok, 1927; Lady Bell,
ed.), edited with great discretion if
not excessive prudence, were pub-
lished shortly after her death.
BeUarmine, Roberto (1542-1621),
Jesuit Cardinal and forceful contro-
versialist. Temperate in manner and
conciliatory in form, his writings
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1489
claimed for the Pope a divine, though
indirect authority over secular mat-
ters sufBcient to satisfy all but the
most aspiring of papal claims. His
views, however, met with the disap-
proval of Sixtus V and Paul V. His
Tractatus de potestate summi pontifi-
cis in rebus temporalibus (1610), was
published in reply to the thesis of a
fellow Catholic, William Barclay, that
James I was justified, after the Gun-
powder Plot, in demanding of Catho-
lics an oath of allegiance.
Benda, Julien (1867- ), novelist
and essayist. His forceful criticism
of Bergson and his followers was
inspired by the conviction that the
rational is to be preferred to the emo-
tional and that intelligence is some-
tiling more than feeling and must be
recognized as thought in action. In
fiction his most important work was
L 'Ordination (1912); in philosophi-
cal criticism, Le Bergsonisme (1912)
and La trahison des clercs (1927).
Ber.enson, Bernard (1865- ),
American-born art critic, whose life
in Italy has contributed to the dis-
tinction of his many works on the
Italian painters. He has told the story
of his life in art in Sketch for a Self
Portrait (1949).
Bethell, Richard (1800-1873), Baron
Westbury; sharp-tongued Chancellor
who sat on the woolsack from 1861
to 1865. Contemptuous of the infe-
rior abilities of others, and peculiarly
hostile to the clergy in general and
to Bishop Wilberforce in particular,
he was forced to resign the chancel-
lorship when laxities in administra-
tion for which he was technically
responsible were uncovered by Parlia-
ment.
Beveridge, Albert J. (1862-1927).
Following his energetic career as Sen-
ator from Indiana and leader of the
Progressive Republicans, he profes-
sionalized an aptitude for history and
wrote his monumental Life of John
Marshall (4 vok, 1918-19). There-
after he turned to the task of writing
a four-volume biography of Lincoln,
but died when his work was but half
completed. Holmes's association with
him was as a summer neighbor on the
North Shore of Massachusetts.
Beveridge, Sir William (1879- ),
later first Baron Beveridge; economist,
civil servant and, from 1919 to 1937,'
Director of the London School of
Economics. His lifelong concern with
problems of unemployment led to his
most famous achievement — the Bev-
eridge Report of 1942, in which he
set forth proposals for a scheme of
social insurance, a plan which in
many of its essentials was adopted by
the Labor Government between 1945
and 1947.
Beza, Theodore (1519-1609), Cal-
vinist author of De haeriticis a civili
magistratu puniendis (1554) and suc-
cessor to the Genevan authority of
Calvin. He was as vigorous an oppo-
nent of toleration and defender of
the faith (as he and Calvin saw it)
as the most ardent inquisitor.
Birrell, Augustine (1850-1933), law-
yer, statesman, and essayist. In pub-
lic life he was a loyal supporter of
Gladstone and held the presidency
of the Board of Education in the
Campbell-Bannerman government. As
Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907
to 1916 he followed the succession
of Morley and Bryce, doing his duties
charmingly but so casually that he
failed entirely to foresee the Easter
rebellion. His political career ended,
he returned to a quiet life of letters
in Chelsea, He told his own story in
Things Past Redress (1937).
Blackburn, Colin (1813-1896), Baron
Blackburn. Before his appointment as
puisne Justice of the Queen's Bench
1490
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
in 1859, his one distinction, and that
considerable, was as author of a
Treatise on the Contract of Sale
(1845). On the Queen's Bench he
proved himself a judge of such ca-
pacity that his designation as Lord
of Appeal in Ordinary in 1876 met
with that enthusiastic approval which
was so notably lacking when he had
first been chosen for judicial duties.
Blanc, Jean Joseph Louis (1813-
1882), teacher and journalist whose
Socialism gave predominant emphasis
to the influence of competition in
producing inequality and who urged
that the people would secure equal-
ity only when they had made the
State their instrument. Holding office
in the First Revolutionary Govern-
ment of 1848, he was able to see his
plan of State workshops put briefly
into effect. Author of Histoire de dix
ans, 1830-1840 (1841-44).
Blanqui, Louis Auguste (1805-1881),
intellectual and political leader of
revolutionary movements. His largest
contribution to socialist theory was
the concept of the proletarian dictator-
ship, and his principal achievement in
revolutionary action the organization
of armed and secret societies which
played a significant part in the course
of events of 1848 and 1870.
Blunden, Edmund (1896- ),
critic, poet, and scholar. He was
Fellow and Tutor in English Litera-
ture at Merton College, Oxford, from
1931 to 1943.
Boileau, Nicolas (1636-1711), poet,
critic, and literary dictator of the age
of Louis XIV who defended the
classical tradition against its Cartesian
critics. His L'Art poetique (1674) on
the theory of verse, translated by Sir
William Soame with the aid of Dry-
den, and his Satires ( 1666 ) had such
a large influence on English letters
that Pope was known to his contem-
poraries as "the English Boileau."
Boissier, Gaston (1823-1908), Latin-
ist, critic, and archaeologist who was
Sainte-Beuve's successor at the Col-
lege of France. His principal histori-
cal works were La religion romaine
d* Auguste aux Antonins (2 vols., 1874)
and La fin du paganisme (1891), In
literary criticism his most important
volumes were Ciceron et ses amis
(1865) and Madame de Sevigne
(1887).
Bolingbroke, Viscount. See St. John,
Henry.
Bonald, Vicomte de (1754-1840),
described by Emile Faguet as the last
of the scholastics. His faith in deduc-
tive reason was coupled with unbend-
ing hostility to Rousseau and all as-
pects of the Age of Reason, utter
distrust of the traditions of the Revo-
lution, and consuming confidence that
the salvation of France was to be
found in a restoration of the ancien
regime, and of mankind in the au-
thority of the Papacy. The lifeblood
of history, he believed, was to be
found in books and ideas, not in men
and their passions. Societies were
more important centers of life and
thought than individuals. Laskf s most
complete discussion of Bonald is in
Chapter II of his Authority in the
Modern State (1919).
Bosanquet, Bernard ( 1848-1923 ) ,
philosopher and political theorist who
gave a Hegelian interpretation to
Rousseau's * general will." Through
metaphysical inquiry he discovered
the moral person of the state and
assigned to it an unlimited authority
by which it compelled the individual
to realize his freedom. In coloring the
supremacy of a state's authority with
the virtue of moral truth he believed
that he had not taken from the indi-
vidual liberties which he might legiti-
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1491
mately seek to retain. His most im-
portant work in political theory was
The Philosophical Theory of the State
(1899).
Bossuet, Jacques Benigne (1627-
1704), Catholic theologian who be-
lieved that the drift of his age toward
rationalism must be stopped by re-
storing the philosophical credit of
Providence and of miracle, and by the
reconversion of Protestants. In his po-
litical writing, while denying to Louis
XIV the special grace of arbitrary
power and to the people any natural
rights, he acknowledged that the
Ring's authority was as absolute as
were his rights divine. As theological
controversialist he succeeded in ef-
fecting the Papal condemnation of
Fenelon's quietism. His fame as
preacher rests principally on the mag-
niloquence of his funeral orations.
Bourdaloue, Louis (1632-1704), Jes-
uit preacher whose reputation for elo-
quence was second only to that of
Bossuet. His genius being more that
of a moralist than of a theologian, he
came somewhat closer to success than
did Bossuet in achieving the difficult
task of bringing morality to the court
of Louis XIV.
Bowen, Charles (1835-1894), Baron
Bowen. At the bar and on the bench
he retained the graceful literary talent
which marked his early contributions
to the Saturday Review. His subtle
and sensitive genius was largely
wasted on the jurymen of the Queen's
Bench, on which he sat from 1879 to
1882, but refreshed and vivified the
Court of Appeal, to which he was ad-
vanced in 1882. The opinions which
perhaps most fully reveal the quality
of his mind and of his style were
those which he delivered in Mogul
Steamship Company v. McGregor, 23
Q.B.D. 598 (1889) and Maxim Nor-
denfeldt Gas and Ammunition Co. v.
Nordenfeldt [1893] Ch. 630.
Bradlaugh, Charles (1833-1891),
self-made atheist and missionary of
doubt who saw a natural alliance be-
tween political republicanism and
theological radicalism. He succeeded
in his effort to force a respectable so-
ciety to make itself ridiculous by pros-
ecuting and persecuting him. Elected
to Parliament in 1880 he finally pre-
vailed, five years later, in his effort
to be seated despite his atheism.
Bradley, Francis Herbert (1846-
1924), principal figure in the English
philosophical movement away from
empiricism and utilitarianism towards
an idealism largely Kantian and He-
gelian in inspiration. In metaphysics
his inquiries led him to the Absolute,
a superrelational reality beyond the
reach of experience yet imperfectly
manifested in the appearance with
which experience is concerned. His
metaphysics and his distrust of an op-
timistic empiricism led him in politi-
cal theory to the belief that the in-
dividual must recognize his social
station and find his freedom in par-
ticipation in the life of the moral
organism known as the state.
Brailsford, H. N. (1873- ), dis-
tinguished journalist whose contribu-
tions to the Manchester Guardian,
The Nation, The New Republic, and
other English and American periodi-
cals have given many generations of
readers an informed understanding of
the liberal point of view towards po-
litical affairs. H. W. Nevinson has
written of Brailsford's qualities as
journalist in his Fire of Life (1935),
passirr.
Bramwell, George William Wilshere
(1808-1892), Baron Bramwell. He has
been characterized as one of "the
strongest judges" to sit on a British
Court. His years of most distinguished
service were in the Court of Exchequer.
Before going on the Bench he had
played an important part on a num-
1492
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
ber of Commissions in changing the
law of England; as judge, however,
he never sought to change the law
but merely to clarify its principles
and enforce it as so clarified.
Brandeis, Louis Dembitz (1856-
1941). His service on the bench of
the Supreme Court of the United
States from 1916 to 1939 followed a
distinguished, successful, and vigorous
career at the Boston bar. The high
morality of his mind and his deep
concern that the state's efforts to im-
prove the lot of man should not be
frustrated by constitutional abstrac-
tions made him an influence of pro-
found importance. Frequently asso-
ciated in dissent from the views of a
majority of their brethren, Holmes
and Brandeis differed greatly in their
temperaments, their political convic-
tions, and their basic interests, yet
were devoted friends and allies in
their search for truth.
Brewer, David Josiah (1837-1910).
A judicial career in the State of Kan-
sas covering twenty-five years pre-
ceded his service on the Supreme
Court of the United States, from 1889
to 1910. The nephew of Mr. Justice
Stephen A. Field, he was heir to and
advocate of his uncle's vigorous con-
servatism, a conservatism which made
the constitution a binding code of
laissez-faire principle and led him to
announce from the bench that "the
paternal theory of government is to
me odious," Budd v. New Yorfc, 143
U.S. 517, 551 (1892), and to con-
sider a progressive rate of taxation
unconstitutional, Knotolton v. Moore,
178 U.S, 41, 110 (1900).
• Brissaud, Jean-Baptiste (1854-1904),
Professor of Law at Toulouse. Bris-
saud's greatest work of historical
scholarship was Cours d'histoire gene-
rale du droit francais (1904). His
philosophic inclinations were utilita-
rian and scientific, and his concern as
legal historian was with the institu-
tions which surround and shape the
law, rather than with its content. His
perspective was European, not merely
French, and he did much to further
the comparative method in the study
of legal history,
Brunetiere, Ferdinand (1849-1906),
militant critic, historian of ideas in
French literature, and champion of
the classical tradition. Brunetiere dis-
covered the sources of modern pollu-
tion in the Enlightenment, and made
it his special responsibility to assault
its progeny, the scientific naturalism
of Zola and Anatole France. His ulti-
mate conversion to Catholicism con-
cluded a lifelong search for the secu-
rity of a disciplined tradition. His
greatest work was Etudes critiques sur
Thistoire de la litterature jrancaise
(8 vols., 1880-1907). Laski included
a telling summary of Brunetiere's tra-
ditionalism in Authority in the Mod-
ern State (1919) 171 et $eq.
Brunner, Heinrich (1840-1915), his-
torian of the legal institutions of the
Franks. As teacher and scholar at Ber-
lin he had international influence on
the methods of research in legal his-
tory. His largest single contribution
to the history of English law was his
tracing of the history of trial by jury
to its Frankish origins.
Buchanan, George (1506-1562).
Scottish by birth, he was so French
in the humanistic bias of his thought
and mood that he has been described
as the Scots Rabelais. His principal
work, De jure regni apud Scotos
( 1578 ) , was a dialogue in which, over
somewhat flabby opposition, he was
able to develop the thesis that royal
authority is limited by a body of law
made by the majority of the people,
and, in doing this, to justify the de-
thronement of Mary, Queen of Scots.
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1493
Burlingham, Charles Gulp (1858-
), urbane and cultivated lawyer
of the New York bar whose profes-
sional career has largely been in the
Caird, Edward (1835-1908). Succes-
sor to Jowett as Master of Balliol, he
followed in the neo-Hegelian wake of
T. H. Green, and in his Critical Phi-
court of Admiralty and whose influ- losophy of Kant (1889) and Essays
ence on public affairs has been
through his wise and humorous coun-
sel to distinguished men of affairs.
Burns, John (1858-1943). His early
energies were given to militant social-
ism. In the London County Council
he worked effectively and energeti-
cally on behalf of labor and in 1889
played a leading part in the strike of
the London dockers. In the House of
Commons, to which he was first
elected from Battersea in 1892, he
was an independent radical until his
inclusion in the Liberal ministry of
Campbell-Bannerman. Thereafter his
radicalism noticeably diminished and
his independence took the form of a
refusal to join the Labour Party. His
library was large, his vanity colossal.
Butler, Joseph (1692-1752), Bishop
of Durham and author of The Anal-
ogy of Religion, Natural and Re-
vealed, to the Course and Constitu-
tion of Nature (1733), in which the
effort was made to refute the specula-
tions of deism by showing that the
limitations of the human mind make
our knowledge of nature as incom-
plete as our knowledge of God. This
effort to answer the deists and to re-
store the diminishing credit of revela-
tion had even greater influence in the
nineteenth century than it did in the
Bishop's own day.
Bynkershoek, Cornelius van (1673-
1743), Dutch judge and jurist whose
De domino maris dissertatio (1702)
became one of the classics of inter-
national law. Less philosophically in-
clined than Grotius, he gave larger
emphasis to such positive sources of
international law as custom, treaties,
and Roman law than to the law of
nature.
on Literature and Phibsophy (1892)
made substantial contributions to the
English literature of idealism,
Caird, John (1820-1898), Principal
of Glasgow University, theologian,
and philosopher. In his most impor-
tant work, Introduction to the Phi-
losophy of Religion (1880), he used
a Hegelian metaphysics as a means
of establishing the rationality of Chris-
tianity. He greatly influenced the
thought of his more renowned
brother, Edward Caird.
Cairns, Hugh McCalmont (1819-
1885), first Earl Cairns. Ulsterman by
birth, he became a leader of the
equity bar in London and Conserva-
tive M.P. from Belfast. His "terrible
lucidity" made him a formidable ad-
vocate as lawyer and politician and
led him to become Solicitor General
and Attorney General. In 1868 he
served briefly as Lord Chancellor in
the Disraeli government, returning to
the woolsack in 1874 for a term
which lasted for four years. Lord
Bryce, though disagreeing with Cairns
in politics, considered him the great-
est judge of the Victorian era, if not
of the nineteenth century. Another
admirer has found the secret of
Cairns's greatness in his capacity to
balance acuteness of perception with
breadth of judgment. Off the Bench,
Cairns applied his professional energy
and intelligence with signal success to
the reform of the law, both in its
procedural and its substantive as-
pects, and his evangelical convictions
to the advancement of a gloomy ver-
sion of Puritan piety.
Cardozo, Benjamin N. (1870-1938),
one of the greatest of American com-
mon-law judges. He sat on the New
1494
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
York Court of Appeals from 1914 to
1932, when lie was named Holmes's
successor on the Supreme Court of
the United States by President Hoo-
ver. The sensitivity of his tempera-
ment, the delicacy of his mind, and
his profound concern with the phi-
losophy of law and the responsibility
of judges were shown not only in his
judicial opinions but in his extra-
judicial writings, such as The Nature
of the Judicial Process (1922) and
The Paradoxes of Legal Science
(1928).
Carey, Henry Charles (1793-1879),
American publisher, journalist, and
economist whose sanguine views of
what individual freedom could do for
American destiny led him to deny the
applicability of Ricardian and Mal-
thusian principles to American con-
ditions. An ardent protectionist and
supporter of general incorporation
statutes, he secured a large following
both at home and abroad. His most
important works were Past, Present,
and Future (184*8) and The Princi-
ples of Social Science (3 vols., 1858-
59).
Casaubon, Isaac (1559-1614), clas-
sical scholar whose academic career
in Geneva and France was followed
by a scholar's life in England, under
the admiring auspices of James I.
Though personally more enthusiastic
in Ms pursuit of theological studies
than in his classical research the im-
mensity of his learning in the field of
his secondary interest is the quality
for which he is remembered.
Cecil, Lord Robert (1864- ), first
Viscount Cecil of Chalwood; conserv-
ative statesman whose greatest efforts
were in the cause of world peace and
the League of Nations. In 1937 he
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Charmont, Joseph (1859-1922), Pro-
fessor of Civil Law at Montpellier. He
considered that Duguifs principle of
solidarity was an inadequate substi-
tute for more traditional theories of
justice and supported the tendency in
contemporary thought which encour-
aged the revival of theories of natural
law but, with Stammler, urged that
the law of nature was of variable con-
tent. His plea for a renascence of
idealism in legal philosophy bespoke
a deep concern for the rights of indi-
viduals and a fear that state power
was tending towards omnipotence. His
principal works were La renaissance
du droit naturel (1910) and Les trans-
formations du droit civil (1912).
Chevalley, Abel (1868-1934), French
statesman and man of letters. He com-
piled the Oxford French Dictionary
and was the author of studies of Eng-
lish literature, including The Modern
English Novel (Redwan, tr., 1925)
and Thomas Deloneij: le roman des
metiers au temps de Shakespeare
(2nd ed., 1926).
Clarke, John Hessin (1857-1945).
Following a career at the Ohio bar
he was appointed United States Dis-
trict Judge for the Northern District
of Ohio by Woodrow Wilson in 1914.
In 1916 President Wilson elevated
him to the Supreme Court of the
United States to fill the vacancy re-
sulting from the resignation of Charles
Evans Hughes. Mr. Justice Clarke re-
signed from the Court in 1922 in
order to devote his energies to the
cause of world peace and the League
of Nations.
Clifford, William Kingdon (1845-
1879), mathematician and philoso-
pher whose many-sided brilliance was
a strong influence on his large circle
of distinguished friends. His wife,
Lucy Clifford, the novelist, was an
intimate friend of Holmes's. Sir Fred-
erick Pollock wrote of Clifford with
affectionate admiration in his Intro-
duction to Clifford's Lectures and
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1495
Essays (Pollock & Stephen, eds.,
1879).
Cockburn, Sir Alexander James Ed-
mund (1802-1880), Lord Chief Jus-
tice of England from 1859 until his
death. His great capacities were more
of character than of intellect and
showed themselves in an energetic
spirit, a vigorous memory, and a stren-
uous eagerness to dispose efficiently
of the largest and most difficult cases
to come before his Court.
Cohen, Morris Raphael (1880-1947),
American philosopher whose devoted
friends Holmes, Laski, and Felix
Frankfurter found in him the same
qualities which made him a pro-
foundly influential teacher of many
generations of students at City Col-
lege, New York. His skeptical bent in
metaphysics did not destroy a pas-
sionate conviction that man's ultimate
reliance must be on reason or qualify
the conviction {hat logical and mathe-
matical relations have reality. His Law
and the Social Order ( 1933 ) contained
his essays on legal philosophy, a group
of writings which had greatly in-
fluenced the thinking of American
judges and lawyers. The story of his
personal and intellectual life is told
in his autobiography, A Dreamer's
Journey (1949).
Cole, G. D. H. (1889- ), econo-
mist and political scientist whose in-
numerable writings on economic and
political problems have had a signifi-
cant influence on socialist thought and
the policies of the Labour Party in
the last thirty years. Neither these
works nor his teaching at Oxford pre-
vented him from collaborating with
his wife, Margaret, in the writing of
a five-foot shelf of mystery stories.
Conde, Prince of (1621-1686), whose
accomplishments as a general for
many masters were considerable. As
the friend of men of letters and of
science he is a somewhat dim figure
in intellectual history. La Bruyere
spoke shrewdly in saying of the Prince
that "nothing is wanting to him but
the minor virtues."
Coquille, Guy (1523-1603), provin-
cial lawyer whose provincialism nour-
ished the conviction that the local
and customary law derived from the
people was beyond the reach of royal
prerogative. Fundamental to his legal
and political philosophy was the be-
lief that there was a delicate balance
between the rights of kings and the
rights of people.
Covarrubias y Leiva, Diego (1512-
1577), jurist and theologian. In legal
philosophy his emphasis on the tradi-
tions of the Roman law tended to en-
courage absolute monarchy, and his
lip-service to the scholastic tradition
which recognized the interest of the
people did not prevent Philip II from
finding in the work of Covarrubias
support for his high claims.
Cujas, Jacques (1520-1590), Profes-
sor of Law at Bourges and leading fig-
ure in the humanistic revolt against
Bartolus, whom he described as ver-
bosi in re facili, in difficili muti, in
angusta diffusi, and the Post-Glossa-
tors. Cujas demanded that legal schol-
arship should return to the Roman
law itself, see it in its own context,
and abandon the distracting task of
discovering historical relationships be-
tween the law of medieval France and
that of Rome.
Curzon, George Nathaniel (1859-
1925), Marquess Curzon of Kedles-
ton. His arrogant conservatism com-
bined with political ambition made
him see British imperialism as a "ma-
jestic responsibility." As Viceroy of
India he took the vision seriously and
exercised his responsibilities with such
majestic luxury and administrative ca-
pacity that he antagonized nearly all
1496
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
with whom he had dealings. Foreign
Secretary in the Coalition Govern-
ment of Lloyd George and in Bonar
Law's cabinet, he ended his career
having, in the words of Harold Nicol-
son, "achieved successes rather than
success."
Darling, Charles John (1849-1936),
first Baron Darling; Judge of the High
Court from 1897 until 1923. His ap-
pointment to the bench by Lord Hals-
bury caused considerable indignation
at the bar, which saw no reason to
have confidence in the judicial ca-
pacities of a humorist whose talents
had been shown more frequently in
journalism than at the bar. The prot-
estations proved not unjustified, for
Darling's judicial talents were moder-
ate. His wit and an exuberant desire
to exercise it from the bench made
him, however, a well-known figure in
his day. His fame was increased by
the fact that he presided over a num-
ber of sensational criminal cases.
Davey, Horace (1833-1907), Lord
Davey. Following a notably success-
ful career at the equity bar, he went
first to the Court of Appeal and, in
1894, to the House of Lords as Lord
of Appeal in Ordinary. On the Judi-
cial Committee his extensive knowl-
edge of foreign law made his services
peculiarly useful, and in the House
of Lords his opposition to the con-
servatism of Lord Halsbury was made
strikingly effective in important cases
concerning labor unions.
Davidson, Thomas (1840-1900), ra-
diant teacher, reformer, and wan-
dering philosopher of Scottish birth,
whose personal influence on intellec-
tual leaders of his time was notable.
William James's reminiscences of
Davidson are found in Knight, Me-
morials of Thomas Davidson (1907)
107-109. See also Morris Cohen, A
Dreamers Journey (1949), passim.
Demogue, Rene (1872- ). Best
known for his Notions fondamentales
du droit prive (1911), Demogue was
Professor of Civil Law and Criminal
Law at Lille. Philosophically he was
affiliated with the pluralistic school of
which Hauriou and Duguit were the
best known spokesmen. Impatient of
abstractions, he demanded of positiv-
ists a larger concern with ends of law
than they had previously shown; sym-
pathetic with the efforts of rational-
ism he was willing to recognize the
law of nature if it was seen to be an
ideal rather than a positive body of
law.
Dicey, Albert Venn (1835-1922),
Vinerian Professor of English Law at
Oxford. Through his Stephen blood
and personal friendship he was closely
associated with the intellectual and
political leaders of his day. His nota-
ble contributions to law and juris-
prudence include his Introduction to
the Study of the Law of the Consti-
tution (1885) and Lectures on the
Relation between Law and Public
Opinion in England during the Nine-
teenth Century (1905).
Dickinson, G. Lowes (1862-1932),
historian, political scientist, and phi-
losopher whose academic post at
Cambridge was the center from which
his humane and sensitive intelligence
made its influence felt throughout the
world of letters. He was intimately
associated with the London School of
Economics as lecturer on political sci-
ence from 1896 until 1920. E. M.
Forster has painted an unforgettable
portrait of his friend in Goldsworthy
Lowes Dickinson (1934).
Dilke, Sir Charles Wentworth ( 1843-
1911), Second Baronet; politician and
author, whose political loyalties em-
braced both radicalism and imperial-
ism. As President of the Local Gov-
ernment Board from 1882 to 1885
he rendered invaluable service to
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1497
Gladstone, but his effective public ca-
reer was brought to an end by a
notorious divorce case in which he,
without justice, was implicated.
Dollinger, Johann von (1799-1890),
theologian and historian of the Ro-
man Church whose desire for a recon-
ciliation of a doomed Protestantism
and a triumphant Catholicism led
him to reject a union of the ortho-
doxies of his Church and resulted
finally in his excommunication. His
politically most important works were
Kirche und Kirchen (1861), in which
he denied that temporal power was
essential to the Papacy, and Der
Papst und das Konzil (1869), in
which he opposed the doctrine, soon
to become dogma, of Papal infalli-
bility. Lord Acton's great tribute to
Dollinger is reprinted in his History
of Freedom and Other Essays ( 1907),
301-435.
Domat, Jean (1625-1696), Jansenist
lawyer, whose Lois civiles dans leur
ordre naturel (1689) provided the
Parlements with a theory concerning
the eternal principles behind all law
which they used in their struggle with
the King.
Duguit, Leon (1859-1928), Professor
of Constitutional Law- at Bordeaux.
In a series of volumes on public law
and jurisprudence Duguit developed
the thesis that the state is beneath
the law, has no claim to sovereignty,
and lacks the personality attributed to
it by classical legal theory. On the
basis of these principles Duguit as-
serted that the state is legally respon-
sible for its wrongful acts and that
the stuff of law is to be found not in
rights but in duties. He found that
the requirement of social solidarity
was the driving influence in modern
law by means of which the interests
of state and individual were recon-
ciled and adjusted. In 1919 Laski and
his wife published a translation of
Duguit's Les transformations du droit
public (1913) under the title, Law
in the Modem State. Laski's later,
somewhat more critical estimate of
Duguifs philosophy of law is to be
found in Modern Theories of Law
(Jennings, ed.5 1933) 52.
Dunedin, Viscount. See, Murray, An-
drew Graham.
Du Vergier de Hauranne, Jean (1581-
1643), learned abbot of St. Cyran,
advocate of church reform, and bitter
critic of the Jesuits. It was in large
part owing to him that Port-Royal
became the center of Jansenism.
Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944),
Cambridge astronomer whose large
contributions to a science for the ex-
perts was followed by a series of
works in which its mysteries were
made comprehensible to laymen. His
efforts to reconcile science and re-
ligion and to justify his belief that
the realm of physical science is sub-
jective are to be found in his Nature
of the Physical World (1928), Sci-
ence and the Unseen World (1929),
and The Philosophy of Physical Sci-
ence (1939).
Ehrlich, Eugen (1862-1922), Profes-
sor of Roman Law at the University
of Czernowitz. Ehrlich was the Euro-
pean leader of the modem sociological
movement in jurisprudence. His most
influential books were Grundelttng der
Soziologie des Rechts (1913) and Die
juristiche Logik (1918). He found in
the inner order of such social institu-
tions as the family, the corporation,
and the labor union the basic facts of
law which, through the state's legisla-
tion and the decisions of courts, takes
on the form of legal propositions. His
emphasis upon the dichotomy between
the living law, created by society, and
the rules established by statute or de-
cision for deciding lawsuits had con-
1498
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
siderable influence on English and
American jurisprudence and methods
of legal study. Ehrlich's philosophy of
law was related, of course, both in
fact and in theory, to the pluralistic
strain in modern political uieory as
represented by Hauriou in France and
Lasld in England. The Grundelung
was published in tranlation as Funda-
mental Principles of the Sociology of
Law (Moll, tr., 1936).
Einstein, Lewis (1877- ), Ameri-
can diplomat and scholar. His most
important foreign post was that of
Minister to Czechoslovakia from 1921
to 1930. His principal historical works
are Tudor Ideals (1920) and Divided
Loyalties (1933). His intimate friend-
ship with Holmes is recorded in their
extensive unpublished correspondence.
Eldon, Lord. See Scott, John.
Esmein, Adhemar (1848-1913), French
legal historian and jurist whose early
works on the history of Roman and
French law were followed by his Ele-
ments de droit constitutionnel frangais
et compare (1896), in which he vig-
orously criticized Duguit's thesis that
the state can claim neither sovereignty
nor personality.
Faguet, Emile (1847-1916), critic and
literary historian whose sympathies
were those of a cool-headed liberal
and whose insights into the character
of the great writers of France made
his criticism as useful to the historians
of ideas as to the historians of letters.
His great works of criticism were his
Histoire de la litterature francaise (2
vok, 1900-1901) and Politiques et
moralities du XIX6 siecle (3 vok,
1890-1899). In his later years his
concern was principally with the po-
litical and intellectual problems of his
own day, as in his Le liberalisme
(1902) and L'anticUricalisme (1906),
in which he sought to defend the mid-
dle way between Traditionalism and
Jacobinism.
Fenelon, Frangois de Salignac de La
Mothe (1651-1715), Archbishop of
Cambrai, eloquent preacher, and tutor
of the Duke of Burgundy. His most
memorable literary work was his Te-
lemaque (1699), written for the polit-
ical education of his pupil, in which
the picture of a better world revealed
the shortcomings of Versailles. His fall
from royal favor came when Bossuet
discovered heretical tendencies in the
Quietism of Madame Guyon to which
Fenelon had been converted. Papal
condemnation of his Maxims of the
Saints (1697) followed, and thereafter
Fenelon devoted his energies to episco-
pal affairs and denunciation of Jan-
senism.
Figgis, John Neville (1866-1919),
churchman and historian. Concerned
primarily with assuring churches ade-
quate freedom, Figgis insisted, with
Gierke, that each group in society
has a personality of its own and
an inherent liberty of growth. He had
great influence on the movement in
English political theory towards plu-
ralism. His most important works were
From Gerson to Grotius (1907) and
Churches in the Modern State (1913).
Filmer, Sir Robert (P-1653). In his
lifetime he published a series of pam-
phlets defending in the broadest terms
the divine right of kings. His extreme
views were most systematically pre-
sented in his posthumously published
Patriarcha (1680) and have impor-
tance principally because they stimu-
lated Locke to formulate a refutation
and because they dismissed as unre-
alistic and fictitious the theory of the
social contract
Fisher, H. A. L. (1865-1940), War-
den of New College, Oxford, historian,
and statesman. In politics his most
important services were rendered as
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1499
President of the Board of Education
in the Lloyd George ministry from
1916 to 1922. Of his many historical
works his most important was his His-
tory of Europe (3 vols., 1935). His
principal biography was James Bryce
(2 vols., 1927).
Fletcher Moulton. See Moulton, John
Fletcher.
Flexner, Abraham (1866-^ ),
teacher and constructive critic of
American education whose industry
did much to persuade the great phi-
lanthropists to be far-sighted in their
generosity, particularly to the advance-
ment of medical education. He has told
his own story in I Remember ( 1940 )
Fontenelle, Bernard Le Boyer de
(1657-1757), nephew of Corneille.
He failed as a dramatist but had a
considerable success with his Nou-
veaux dialogues des morts (1683),
which combined the pessimism of the
seventeenth century with the indeli-
cacy of the eighteenth. Later, turning
with enthusiasm to science, he wrote
his most popular work, Les entretiens
sur la pluralite des mondes (1686).
His spirit was stubbornly that of a
rationalist who distrusted all tradition.
In poetry his chief work was Poesies
pastorales (1688). Of all his writings
the most distinguished were his eloges
of deceased Academicians.
Fourier, Charles (1772-1837), Uto-
pian rationalist who drew blueprints
for a decent society but in doing so
overlooked the fact that the individual
might find no greater happiness within
a phalanx of sixteen hundred people,
each fulfilling his natural duties, than
in the clumsy world which much in-
ertia and considerable energy have
unscientifically and wastefully estab-
lished.
Frank, Jerome N. (1889- ). He
was appointed to the bench of the
United States Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit in 1941. His previous
career had been at the Bars of Chi-
cago and New York and in important
Federal posts under Franklin D. Roo-
sevelt. His most provocative book,
Law and the Modern Mind (1930),
was an effort to formulate a "realistic"
jurisprudence and has frequently been
referred to by judges and lawyers, no-
where more regularly than in opinions
delivered from the bench of the Court
of Appeals of the Second Circuit and
in the lively writings of one of its
judges.
Fraser, Sii Hugh (1860-1927), prac-
titioner, teacher, and judge. Prior to
his appointment to the King's Bench
Division of the High Court in 1924,
he had been Lecturer in equity to the
Incorporated Law Society and Reader
in Common Law to the Inns of Court.
His most important treatises were The
Law of Torts ( 1888) and The Law of
Libel and Slander (1893).
Freeman, Edward Augustus (1823-
1892), the first English historian to
write fully of the political history of
the Norman Conquest. Despite a zeal-
ous tendency to find his own enthusi-
asm for political liberty confirmed in
an Anglo-Norman past, his History of
the Norman Conquest ( 1867-79 ) was
a work of permanent importance. He
was successor to Bishop Stubbs as
Regius Professor of Modern History at
Oxford.
Freron, Elie (1719-1776), critic and
journalist, whose ruling passion was
enmity towards Voltaire. He used the
pages of his TAnnee litteraire to at-
tack the Encyclopedists with defama-
tory zest and notably small success.
His son, Stanislas, became an ardent
revolutionist, a principal figure of the
jeunesse doree, and leader of the Ther-
midorian reaction.
Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis
(1830-1889), whose earliest distrnc-
1500
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
tion was achieved as historian of an-
tiquity in his La cite antique ( 1864 ) .
Later his interest turned to the medi-
eval period and, seeking to follow a
strictly Cartesian method in historiog-
raphy, he gave his life to writing and
revising his Histoire des institutions
politiques de Tancienne France, Its re-
sult was the conviction that Germanic
contributions to the institutions of me-
dieval Europe had been grossly exag-
gerated.
Garvin, J. L. (1868-1947), thunder-
ous editor of the London Observer and
a forceful influence on British con-
servatism. His achievements, outside
journalism, were principally those of
writing the official biography of Joseph
Chamberlain and editing the four-
teenth edition of the Encyclopaedia
Brittanica.
Gary, Elbert H. (1846-1927), whose
early successes at the bar and undis-
tinguished services on a county court
in Illinois gave him the proud title of
"Judge." His early career, however,
has been forgotten in the richer glo-
ries of his subsequent service as Chair-
man of the Board and moving spirit
of the United States Steel Corpora-
tion. His sumptuous dinners for com-
petitors took some of the sting from
competition, and for years his ruthless
efforts to defeat unionization met with
tragic success.
Gentz, Friedrich von (1764-1832).
Prussian by birth, his earliest enthu-
siasm was for English institutions, his
earliest hatred was for France and its
revolution. Too liberal for preferment
in Prussia he transferred his allegiance
to Austria and forgot his first princi-
ples to become the faithful henchman
of Metternich and a considerable force
in European politics. His effective pen
revealed its greatest talent in Uber den
Ursprung und Charakter des Krieges
gegen die franzosische Revolution
(1801).
Geny, Francois (1861- ), author
of Methode ^interpretation et sources
en droit prive positif (1899) and Sci-
ence et technique en droit prwe posi-
tif (4 vols., 1913-24). A realist to
some and a neoscholastic to others,
Geny attacked the assumption that
logic was a sufficient instrument of
interpreting the code, insisted that
the solution of legal questions requires
"free scientific research/' and urged
that the creative responsibility of
judges necessitates frequent reference
to the law of nature and to standards
of justice and utility.
Gerson, John (1363-1429), Chancel-
lor of the University of Paris whose
intellectual and political leadership of
the Conciliar movement produced the
decree of the Council of Constance —
"probably the most revolutionary offi-
cial document in the history of the
world." Gerson's effort to introduce
the principles of a limited monarchy
into church government failed in its
immediate objective, but so effectively
preserved and freshened constitutional
traditions that his work is as signif-
icant a chapter in the history of polit-
ical thought as it is in that of church
government. See Figgis, Studies of
Political Thought from Gerson to Gro-
tius (1907), Lecture II,
Gierke, Otto von (1844-1921). His
great concept of Genossenschaft, as a
Germanic principle of cooperative as-
sociation, was at the foundation of his
theory that the corporate body is not,
as the Roman law considered it to be,
a persona ficta but a real group per-
son, created not by the state but by
social action. Made familiar to Eng-
lish and American scholars by M ait-
land, Gierke had great influence on
pluralistic theories of the state, though
those who admired the depth of his
scholarship and the massiveness of his
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1501
Genossenschafts theorie did not accept
his ultimately Hegelian view that all
groups in a society are subordinate to
the will of the state.
Giffard, Hardinge Stanley (1823-1921),
first Earl of Halsbury. A pugnacious
Tory among conservatives, Halsbury,
between 1885 and 1905, was thrice
Lord Chancellor. His most famous
judgments were, perhaps, those in
Quinn v. Leatham and the case of the
Free Church of Scotland.
Girard, Paul Frederic (1852-1926),
Professor of Law at Paris. He was a
great Romanist who did much to en-
courage the study of Roman law in
France and to introduce to that study
the methods of German scholarship.
His most important work was his
Manuel de droit romain (1895), one
of Holmes's favorites among Conti-
nental studies of law.
Gray, John Chipman (1839-1915),
Professor of Law at the Harvard Law
School from 1869 to 1913. A master
of the law of property and an active
practitioner, Gray concerned himself,
somewhat impatiently, with the larger
problems of jurisprudence in his Na-
ture and Sources of the Law (1909).
He there insisted that all theories of
sovereignty are inadequate which deny
or do not recognize that judges are
makers of the law and as such exer-
cise a larger share of sovereign power
than do legislators. "The law of a
great nation," he said, "means the
opinions of half-a-dozen old gentle-
men . . /*; a proposition which played
a significant part in initiating the
American movement towards a so-
called "realist" school of jurisprudence.
Green, John Richard (1837-1883).
From the ministry Green moved to
the more congenial world of history.
His Short History of the English Peo-
ple (1874) was a landmark in histo-
riography, for it was more concerned
with social history than with political
events and institutional change. His
Irish wife, Alice Stopford Green (1847-
1929), a close friend of Holmes's, be-
came a distinguished historian in her
own right. In time, finding that her
loyalties were more and more with the
Irish cause, she left England, returned
to Ireland, and there wrote of its his-
tory.
Green, Thomas Hill (1836-1882).
Rebel against English empiricism, he
taught a doubting generation that
idealism in philosophy does not, of
necessity, mean conservatism in poli-
tics. His political theory emphasized
the dependence of the individual upon
the whole and found that the ideal of
freedom may be achieved only in ful-
fillment of the general will as ex-
pressed in the authority of the state,
and, so expressed, sanctioned by the
inherited tradition of morality. His
most important work in political the-
ory was The Principles of Moral Obli-
gation (1888).
Greer, Frederick Arthur (1863-1945),
judge of the King's Bench Division of
the High Court from 1919 to 1927.
He was then promoted to the Court
of Appeal, where he sat until his re-
tirement in 1938. In 1939 he was
raised to the peerage as First Baron
Fairfield.
Gregory, Theodore (1890- ).
Knighted in 1942, he was Dean of
the Faculty of Economics at London
University from 1927 to 1930, and has
held many other academic posts. He
is the author and editor of many works
on economics.
Grimm, Friedrich Melchior (1723-
1807). By birth a German, he became
a contented Parisian and the intimate
friend, for a time, of Rousseau and,
for many years, of Diderot and the
Encyclopedists. His principal literary
achievement was as the Kiplinger of
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1502
culture. His letters to the crowned
heads of Europe, who became sub-
scribers to his shrewd gazette of in-
tellectual news, was published after
his death as Correspondance litteraire,
philosophique et critique (6 vols.,
1812). Rousseau's portrait of Grirnrn
in his Confessions distorts the truth
and for many years unfairly affected
the judgment of posterity.
Grote, George (1794-1871), banker,
philosopher, radical, and Whig M.P.,
who in 1843 abandoned affairs for
history and published his History of
Greece (8 vols., 1846-56). His enthu-
siasm for democracy, his understand-
ing of philosophy, and liis experience
in affairs made his History one of the
classics of modem historical writing
and did much to make the traditions
of Athenian democracy a creative force
in nineteenth-century thought.
Guizot, Frangois (1787-1874), poli-
tician and historian. His Histoire de
la revolution d'Angleterre (2 vols.,
1826-27) reflected its author's life-
long conviction that the path of
rational liberalism followed by the
English radicals who sought political
and not social equality was preferable
to the path which the Jacobins had
chosen for France. His greatest work
was his Histoire de la civilization fran-
caise (4 vols., 1830). His fault as
historian was a passion for symmetry
and a faith that the story of the past
can be made to fit the mold of logic.
Gutteridge, Harold Cooke (1876-
), for many years Professor of
Law at the University of London.
His most important contributions to
scholarship have been in the fields of
comparative and international law,
the editorial board of The New Re-
public in its early years. Since 1922
he has been a free-lance writer. He
has written of certain aspects of his
Me in I Chose Denmark (1940).
Halevy, Elie (1870-1937), Professor
of History at the Ecole Libre des Sci-
ences Politiques in Paris. His principal
works were in the field of English
social history. La formation du radi-
calisme philosophique (3 vols., 1900-
03) was a brilliant study of the
Benthamite school. His uncompleted
Histoire du peuple anglais aux XIX6
siecle (6 vols., 1900-46) covers the
periods from 1815 to 1852 and 1895
to 1915.
Halsbury, Lord. See Giffard, Hardinge
Stanley,
Hamilton, John Andrew ( 1859-1934),
Viscount Sumner. Judge, successively,
of the King's Bench Division and of
the Court of Appeal from 1908 to
1913, he became Lord of Appeal in
Ordinary in 1913. One of the great
judges of his time, he will be remem-
bered as much for the style of his
opinions, salted with touches of cyni-
cism, as for the wisdom of his judg-
ments.
Hammond, John Lawrence (1872-
1949), journalist, biographer, and
historian. With his wife, Barbara
Hammond (1873- ), he told the
tragic history of the industrial revolu-
tion in a notable trilogy, The Village
Labourer, 1760-1832 (1911), The
Town Labourer, 1760-1832 (1917),
and The Skilled Labourer, 1760-1832
(1919). In journalism his most mem-
orable writing was for the Manchester
Guardian, to which for many years he
contributed unsigned leaders.
Hackett, Francis (1883- ). Irish Hand, Augustus N. (1869- ),
by birth and education, he came to Federal judge who sat first on the
the United States in 1901, where he District Court in New York from
drifted into journalism. He was on 1914 to 1927 and was then advanced
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1503
to the Circuit Court of Appeals. He
and his cousin Learned Hand made
that Court one of the strongest, if not
the strongest court in the United
States.
Hand, Learned (1872- ), Federal
District Judge from 1909 to 1924 and
Circuit Judge in the Second Circuit
from 1924 to 1951. One of the great
figures in American law, his special
distinctions have been not dissimilar
to those of Holmes, in their graceful
mingling of literary gifts with a philo-
sophical if skeptical enthusiasm.
Harcourt, Sir William George Gran-
ville Venables Vernon (1827-1904),
Liberal statesman, parliamentarian,
and twice Chancellor of the Exchequer
in Gladstone's ministries. When Lord
Rosebery's Liberal Imperialism domi-
nated the party's policy Sir William
resigned the Liberal leadership and,
with Morley, stood apart in opposition.
Hardie, James Keir (1856-1915),
Scottish miner who moved from lib-
eralism to socialism and became one
of the great leaders of British labor.
He was largely responsible for estab-
lishing the Independent Labour Party
of which he became Chairman in 1893
and for which he spoke while a vigor-
ous member of Parliament. No man
did more than Hardie to establish the
political labour movement and bring
it to effective maturity. Margaret Cole
has written of the man and his career
in her Makers of the Labour Move-
ment (1948), 203 etseq.
Harmsworth, Alfred Charles William
( 1865-1922 ) , Viscount Northcliffe.
With his brother, Harold (later Lord
Rothemere), he began a phenome-
nally successful career in journalism in
1896 with the foundation of the Daily
Mail, and was largely responsible for
a resulting revolution in the manners,
control, and power of the British press.
Harrison, Frederic (1831-1923), critic
and man of letters. The Positivism of
Comte became his religion and he its
leading British missionary. His active
pen and multifarious interests produced
a series of short biographies; a histori-
cal romance, Theophano: The Crusade
of the Tenth Century (1904); and a
volume of critical essays, Studies in
Early Victorian Literature (1895).
Hauriou, Maurice (1856-1929), Pro-
fessor of Public Law at Toulouse.
Mixing the preconceptions of Catholi-
cism with the premises of pluralistic
sociology, he contributed largely to the
institutional theory of law which he
first suggested in his Precis de droit
administratif ( 1910 ) and more fully
developed in his Principes de droit
public (1916) and in his essay "La
theorie de Institution et de la fonda-
tion" (Cahiers de la journee, No. 4,
1925). That theory conceived of so-
ciety as an aggregate of institutions
of which the State was but one, lack-
ing any legitimate claim to supremacy
over other institutions.
Hazeltine, Harold Dexter (1871- ),
legal historian of American birth who
was Downing Professor of the Laws
of England at Cambridge from 1919
to 1942.
Helvetius, Claude Adrien (1715-
1771), renowned host and philosophe
whose principal hedonistic work, De
T esprit (1758), developed a sensa-
tionalist theory of consciousness and
was condemned by the Pope and
burned in Paris by the public execu-
tioner. Even friends among the phi-
losophes found its thesis extreme,
though the source of that thesis could
fairly be traced to the Encyclop£die.
Henderson, Arthur (1863-1935), la-
bour leader and statesman. In his
early years Henderson played a criti-
cal part in the formation of the Labour
1504
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
Party, and later became Home Secre-
tary in MacDonalcfs first government.
His greatest concern then and there-
after was with international affairs and
led to his becoming MacDonald's For-
eign Secretary in 1929. When the
National government was formed in
1931, Henderson joined the opposi-
tion. In 1934 he was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize.
Heusler, Andreas (1834-1921), Swiss
jurist and legal historian. His most
important works were a study of pos-
session, Die Geivere (1873), and In-
stitutionen des Deutschen Privatrechts
(2 vols., 1885-86), in which the
strength and persistent force of medi-
eval German law, vis a vis the law of
Rome, was emphasized.
Higgins, Henry Bournes (1851-1929),
Justice of the High Court of Australia
from 1906 to 1929. His opinions in
constitutional matters were of great
moment in Australia. The problems
with which he was concerned on the
Australian Court of Conciliation and
Arbitration were of international im-
portance and were discussed in his
book A New Province of Law and
Order ( 1923 ) . Several of Laskf s com-
ments on Higgins are printed in Pal-
mer, Henry Bournes Higgins (1931),
254, 273.
Hill, James J. (1838-1916), efficient
organizer and voracious purchaser of
railroads. The first great result of his
acquisitions was the Great Northern
Railway. Hill's later efforts to uti-
lize the holding company as a means
of making monopoly effective were
brought to a halt by the decision of
the Supreme Court (with Holmes dis-
senting) that the Northern Securities
Company had been organized in vio-
lation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Hill's program for creative capitalism
was described in his Highways of
Progress (1910).
Hill, Sir Maurice (1862-1934), Judge
of the Probate, Divorce, and Admi-
ralty Division of the High Court from
1917 until 1930. He is remembered
principally for his decisions in Ad-
miralty, which were concerned with
the many and important problems of
maritime law arising during the First
World War.
Hirst, Francis W. (1873- ), pub-
licist and economist, long associated
with the London School of Econom-
ics. His enthusiastic Liberalism is re-
corded in his Early Life and Letters
of John Morley (2 vols., 1927). His
recollections o£ his friendships and
youthful association are found in his
volume of reminiscences, In the
Golden Days (1947).
Holderlin, Friedrich ( 1770-1843 ) ,
lyric poet and leading figure of the
neo-Hellenic movement in German
letters,
Holbach, Baron von (1723-1789),
German-born contributor of scientific
articles to the Encyclopedie. His most
vigorous philosophical energies, in Le
sy steme de la nature (1770) and
Christianisme devoile (1767), were
devoted to attacking not only Chris-
tianity but the natural religion of Vol-
taire. It was not surprising, perhaps,
that Voltaire described Le systeme de
la nature as exqcrable in morality and
absurd in physics.
Holland, Sir Thomas Erskine (1836-
1926), Professor of International Law
at Oxford from 1874 until 1910. His
contributions to international law were
colored, if not distorted, by patriotism,
and his most successful book, Ele-
ments of Jurisprudence (1880), was
rigorously loyal to the English tradi-
tions of the analytical school.
Homer, Sir John (1842-1927). He
and his wife, Lady Homer, were the
intimate friends of many of the lead-
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1505
ing figures in British political and in-
tellectual affairs, and members of that
elect circle known as "The Souls."
Their daughter Katherine in 1907
married Raymond Asquith. There are
frequent references to Sir John and
Lady Horner in Spender and Asquith,
Life of Lord Oxford and Asquith (2
vols., 1932) and Richard Bendon Hal-
dane, an Autobiography (1929).
Hotman, Frangois (1524-1590), Hu-
guenot jurist and political theorist. In
jurisprudence he is best known for
his L'anti-Tribonian (1603), in which
he urged the abandonment of research
in the aridities of Roman law. In
political theory his great work was
Franco-Gallia (1573), in which a pa-
triotic interpretation of constitutional
history supported the conviction that
royal power must be subjected to lim-
itations. Laski discussed the political
theory of Hotman at some length in
his Introduction to the Vindiciae con-
tra Tyrannos (Laski, ed., 1924).
Hough, Charles Merrill (1858-1927),
Federal judge, first on the District
then on the Circuit Court in New
York, His special competence was in
Admiralty.
House, Edward M. ( 1858-1938). Car-
rying the Texan title of Colonel, he
became the intimate adviser to Wood-
row Wilson in all matters, both do-
mestic and foreign. His greatest fame
is for the part which he played in
Europe in the postwar settlements
after the First World War. His efforts
to persuade Wilson to secure confir-
mation of the Versailles Treaty by
compromise with the Senate failed
and led to a final breach between him
and the President.
Hughes, Charles Evans (1862-1948).
After serving with distinction as Gov-
ernor of New York, he became an
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States in 1910. In 1916
he resigned from the Court to become
Republican nominee for the Presi-
dency, being defeated by a narrow
margin when Wilson was reflected.
In 1930 he was named Chief Justice
of the United States by President
Hoover, retiring in 1941. A great
judge, and among the greatest of
Chief Justices, his strength of char-
acter and intellect made an indelible
impression on his times and on the
institutions with which he was asso-
ciated.
Hunt, WiUiam Morris (1824-1879).
Born in Vermont, he nurtured his
artistic spirit in Europe, where he
became a disciple of Millet. Return-
ing to the United States in 1855, he
became the Newport teacher and
friend of William and Henry James
and of Holmes. His later years in
Boston found him the inspiring teacher
of the young and the ardent supporter
of modernism in art.
Hutcheson, Francis ( 1694-1746 ) ,
Scottish economist and philosopher,
Professor of Moral Philosophy at
Glasgow. In the course of his efforts
to discover the moral sense in human
nature he formulated a phrase — "the
greatest happiness of the greatest num-
bers" — which was destined to have
a long and varied Me. As teacher and
as thinker he contributed much to the
minds of Adam Smith and Hume.
Inge, William Ralph (1860- ),
Dean of St. Paul's, 1911-1934,
teacher, scholar, and essayist. In 1911
Asquith, then Prime Minister, per-
suaded Inge to move from his aca-
demic post as Professor of Divinity
at Cambridge to the Deanship of St.
Paul's Cathedral. Thereafter his pithy
observations on affairs brought upon
him, and perhaps earned for him the
title of "the gloomy Dean." His stud-
ies of mysticism and of Plotmus were
1506
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
his greatest achievements in scholar-
ship.
Jeans, Sir James Hopwood (1877-
1946), physicist, astronomer, and
mathematician. His name, like Ed-
dington's, is generally known not only
for his skillful efforts to make science
comprehensible to laymen, but for his
formulation of a philosophy which
found a place for religion in a scien-
tist's view of the universe.
Jenks, Edward (1861-1939), teacher
and historian of law. His academic
career began at the University of
Melbourne and took him successively
to Liverpool, Oxford, and London.
From 1903 to 1924 he was Principal
and Director of Legal Studies of the
Law Society and from 1924 to 1929
held the chair of English Law at the
University of London. His most useful
book was A Short History of English
Law (1912).
Jessel, Sir George (1824-1883), Mas-
ter of the Rolls from 1873 until his
death. Never one to underrate his own
talents, he considered that there were
but two men who were greater equity
judges than he. His great passion for
prompt efficiency and his sympathy
for efforts to improve the administra-
tion of justice made his part in the
carrying out of the reforms prescribed
by the Judicature Acts extraordinarily
valuable.
Jese, Gaston (1869- ), Professor
of Law at Paris. His theory of law,
as developed in Les principes gene-
raux du droit administratif (1904)
and numerous other works, was cen-
tered on the conviction that the law
of nature is a fiction and that law,
which must be distinguished from pol-
itics, is the compendium of rules which
at a given time and in a given place
are in fact enforced by the practition-
ers and the courts.
Jowett, Benjamin (1817-1893), Mas-
ter of Balliol College, Oxford. His
influence on his students gave him a
standing in the intellectual history of
his times which, if Leslie Stephen was
right, was scarcely justified. His re-
luctance to face the ultimate problems
of religion and philosophy, and his
eager desire that his students should
achieve a somewhat complacent suc-
cess justified Stephen's critical judg-
ment of his character, but did not
prevent his becoming a great teacher
and a considerable scholar. Nowhere
are the complexities of his character
and belief more subtly indicated than
in Annan's Leslie Stephen (1951).
Joyce, Sir Matthew Ingle (1839-
1930), Judge of the High Court from
1900 to 1915. His opinions have left
no significant traces in the law of
England, but he is remembered, like
others, as "a just and upright judge."
Jurieu, Pierre (1637-1713), Protes-
tant theologian, controversialist, and
defender of the Huguenots. His early
friendship with Bayle ended in bitter
disagreement. Jurieu, believing that
Bayle was the author of the anony-
mous Avis important aux refugies sur
leur prochain retour en France (1690),
in which Protestant proclivities for
intolerance were vigorously attacked,
replied in his Examen aun libelle
contre la religion, contre letat et con-
tre la revolution d'Angleterre (1690).
Modern scholarship is generally per-
suaded that Bayle, while not the au-
thor of the Avis, could not escape
responsibility for its publication. ( See
Tilley, The Decline of the Age of Louis
XIV, 1929, 378-379). Jurieu's later
attacks on Bayle led to Bayle's dismis-
sal from his professorship at Rotter-
dam.
Jusserand, Jean Jules (1855-1932),
diplomat and scholar who was French
Ambassador to the United States from
1902 to 1915. His principal works of
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1507
literary criticism concerned English
literature.
Kantorowicz, Hermann (1877-1940),
German jurist who was forced to leave
his professorship of criminal law at
Kiel University in 1933. Thereafter he
taught at the New School for Social
Research in New York and conducted
seminars at London University, Gam-
bridge, Oxford, and Glasgow. As
historian his great achievements con-
cerned the medieval period; as stu-
dent of the criminal law he is best
known for his Tat und Schuld (1913);
and in legal philosophy his name is
associated with the "free-law" theory,
developed in his Rechtswissenschaft
und Soziologie (1911).
Kelsen, Hans (1881- ), father of
the so-called Vienna School of juris-
prudence. He has been Professor of
Law at Vienna and many other Euro-
pean universities and is presently
lecturer on International Law and
Jurisprudence in the Department of
Political Science at the University of
California. His "pure science of law"
makes the analytical method omni-
competent in jurisprudence, insists
that the legal rule is concerned with
what shall be, not with what ought
to be, yet makes law a normative sci-
ence. The State, in Kelsen's eyes, is
an expression for the unity of the legal
system, and is ultimately superior to
the law. The essential elements of his
philosophy are found in his Allge-
meine Staatslehre (1925).
Ker, William Paton (1855-1923),
Professor of English Literature at
University College, London, from
1889 to 1922, and Fellow of All Souls
from 1879 until his death. Ker's learn-
ing in comparative literature was ex-
traordinarily wide and his relatively
short list of published works only sug-
gests the breadth of scholarship of
which innumerable students were the
beneficiaries. Author, inter alia, of
Epic and Romance (1897) and Col-
lected Essays of W. P. Ker (Whibley,
ed., 1925).
Kidd, Benjamin (1858-1916), ama-
teur sociologist and author of Social
Evolution (1894). His effort to make
religion rather than reason the key to
progress antagonized the scientists as
greatly as his assumption that religion
is irrational did the churchmen. The
general public, however, found much
comfort in his facile reconciliation of
science and religion.
Kohler, Josef (1849-1919), German
jurist whose contributions to a Hege-
lian philosophy of law gave fruitful
emphasis to the ethnological elements
in law. His chief works in the field
of jurisprudence were Lehrbuch der
Rechtsphiksophie ( 1908 ) translated
as Philosophy of Law (Albrecht, tr.,
1914), and Moderne Rechtsprobleme
(1913). His many contributions to
legal history have been considered
more intuitive than scientific.
Korkunov, Nikolay Mikhaylovich
(1853-1904), Russian jurist and so-
ciologist. He found it impossible to
see the state as a juridical person,
urged that law proceeds not from the
public power of the state but from a
collective consciousness of society, yet
insisted that the state must, in order
to secure the individual's liberty, con-
trol society. His most important work
has been translated into English as
General Theory of Law (Hastings,
tr., 1921).
La Bruyere, Jean de (1645-1696),
essayist and defender of the ancients
whose barbed portraits of his contem-
poraries in his Caracteres (1688)
gave pain to the subjects as intense
as the pleasure which it gave to the
audience. Master of style, he pre-
served in his method and his mood
1508
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
the tradition of the seventeenth cen-
tury and satisfied the taste of the
eighteenth.
La Fontaine, Jean de (1621-1695),
poet and fabulist whose Contes and
Fables have given him a firm place in
the history of French literature. In
the great quarrel of the ancients and
moderns he joined Boileau in oppos-
ing the modernism of Charles Perrault
and the precieux and in defending the
classical tradition.
Lamennais, Felicite de (1782-1854).
His earliest distinctions were achieved
as leader of the Ultramontane party,
when he claimed total freedom for the
Roman church and insisted that toler-
ation was blasphemy. His great works
of this period were De Tetat et I'eglise
au 18 e siecle et a Theure actuelle
(1808) and De I'indifference en ma-
Here de religion (1817-24). Bitter
experience with a state which had
secured the vigorous support of a Gal-
lican hierarchy led him to believe that
religious liberty could be found only
in a society which saw freedom as
the source of truth and the people as
the custodians of liberty. The Church's
answer to his plea for freedom was
excommunication and disgrace for
Liberal Catholicism, of which Lam-
rnenais had come, through the pages
of L'avenir, to be the leader. Laski
wrote of Lamennais in Chapter III of
Authority in the Modern State (1919).
Lang, Andrew (1844-1912), knowl-
edgeable journalist and man of letters
whose archaeological wanderings were
more those of a folklorist than of a
scientist. His talent for fugitive verse
grew into a fugitive competence in
many fields — fiction, history, psychi-
cal research, and sport all engaged his
versatile enthusiasm.
Langdell, Christopher Columbus
(1826-1906), Dean of the Harvard
Law School, 1870-1895. His convic-
tion that the life of the law was logic,
not experience, led him to his great
discovery — the case-method of legal
education. In the hands of his succes-
sors the method contributed strength
to the conviction of Holmes that the
Me of the law has not been logic; it
has been experience.
Lanson, Gustave (1857-1934), liter-
ary historian; author of studies of
Boileau (1892) and Bossuet (1891)
and of Histoire de la litterature fran-
gaise (1894).
LaPradelle, Albert Geouffre de (1871-
), Professor of International Law
at Paris. His principal contributions to
the literature of international law have
been his Les principes generaux du
droit Internationale ( 1929 ) and La
justice Internationale ( 1933 ) . He was
the founder and director of the Revue
de droit international.
Larnaude, Ferdinand (1853- ),
French jurist whose principal work,
while on the faculty at Paris, was
concerned with international law, the
public law of France, and with com-
parative constitutional law.
Le Bret, Henri (1630-1708), church-
man and historian, best known, per-
haps, for his Histoire de la mile de
Montauban (1668).
Lemaitre, Jules (1853-1914), teacher,
critic, dramatist, and politician of
many, but somewhat pallid talents. In
criticism, where his name is likeliest
to survive, his chief works were Les
contemporains (1886-96), Impres-
sions de theatre (1888), and La co-
medie apres Moliere et le theatre de
Dancourt (2nd ed., 1903).
Leroy, Maxime (1873- ), sociolo-
gist and historian of French socialism.
His important works include La loi,
essai sur le theorie de I'autorite' dans
la democratie (1908) and Histoire des
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
idees sociales en France (2 vols.,
1946, 1949).
Levy-Bruhl, Lucien (1857-1939), eth-
nologist and Professor of Philosophy
at the Sorbonne; author of La phi-
losophe d'Auguste Comte (1900), La
mentalite primitive (1922), and La
mythologie primitive (1935).
L'Hopital, Michel de (1505-1573),
humanistic Chancellor of France and
spokesman for Catherine de' Medici.
His pleas for toleration on grounds
of political necessity, if not of justice,
had important documentary conse-
quences, as in the Colloquy of Poissy
(1561) and the Edict of Saint-Ger-
man (1562), but were shortly for-
gotten in the Wars of Religion. His
constitutional doctrine, developed in
a number of important speeches, put
the King beneath God and the cus-
toms of the realm, but denied to the
people the right of revolution.
Lindley, Nathaniel ( 1828-1921 ) ,
Baron Lindley; Judge of the Com-
mon Pleas, 1875-1881. He became
Lord of Appeal in 1881 and Lord of
Appeal in Ordinary in 1900, and re-
tired from the Bench in 1905. His
treatise, The Law of Partnership
(1860), marked him, while at the
bar, as a lawyer of considerable learn-
ing. On the Bench he excelled in in-
dustry, simplicity, and solid versatility.
Linguet, Simon (1736-1794), lawyer
and pamphleteer. His bete noire was
the Enlightenment and its ideal of
political equality. His insistence that
the sole object of the state was the
preservation of property was the ex-
pression of a hardheaded pessimism
and bespoke a concern for the eco-
nomic facts of life which had some
influence on Marxian socialism. The
story of his two years in the Bastille
as the defender of despotism was told
in Memoirs sur la Bastille (1783). In
1794 he was guillotined for having
1509
served and flattered the tyrants of
London and Vienna.
Llewellyn, Karl N. ( 1893- ), Pro-
fessor of Law at Yale, Columbia, and
Chicago. He has made many pungent
contributions to the substance and the
lingo of the "realistic" jurisprudence
of the 1920's and 1930's. His special
competence is in the field of commer-
cial law.
Loyseau, Charles (1566-1627), French
jurist and legal historian. His Trait6
des seigneuries ( 1608 ) dealt not only
with the history of feudalism but with
the evils of its survival. His learning
with respect to Roman law and the
customary law of medieval France was
shown in his Traite du deguerpisse-
ment (1597).
Mably, Gabriel Bonnot, Abbe de
(1709-1785), historian and political
theorist who saw equality as the basic
principle of natural law and inequality
the tragic result of German institu-
tions. His sentiment, if not his thought,
became a significant factor in the so-
cialism of the nineteenth century.
McCardie, Sir Henry Alfred (1869-
1933), Judge of the King's Bench
Division of the High Court from 1916
until his death. The qualities which
he revealed in the trial of O'Dwyer
v. Nair, supra, p. 612, reflected a con-
viction which colored his whole judicial
career — that judges must form their
own opinions on questions of policy
and make them explicit in the dispo-
sition of cases. The efforts of George
Lansbury to have McCardie removed
from the Bench for his conduct in the
O'Dwyer case were unsuccessful. See
George Pollock, Mr. Justice McCardie
(1934), chapter XIE.
Mack, Julian W. (1866-1943), Fed-
eral judge whose distinguished serv-
ices on the District Courts and Circuit
1510
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
Courts of Appeal covered the thirty
years between 1911 and 1941. For
many years he was an active leader of
American Zionism, and in numerous
public offices advanced the cause of
civil liberty and the public's welfare.
McKenna, Joseph (1843-1926), As-
sociate Justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States, 1898-1926. A
Catholic, he came to the Court after
a political career in Congress, a Fed-
eral circuit judgeship, and a brief
term as President McKinley's Attor-
ney General. If settled conviction
which may form the basis for predict-
ing a judge's decision is a fault in the
judicial temperament McKenna could
escape that criticism, for his consti-
tutional opinions, though frequently
strong, were constantly variable. The
occasional flowering of his conserva-
tism into an effulgent fear of change
— as when he determined that the
Federal Employers' Liability Act was
unconstitutional — did not prevent an
independent mind from showing
statesmanship.
McKenna, Reginald ( 1863-1943 ) ,
English statesman and banker. Until
1919 his career was in politics, tak-
ing him into a number of ministries
when the Liberals were in office.
Thereafter he served for twenty-two
years as Chairman of the Midland
Bank.
MacKinnon, Sir Frank Douglas (1871-
1946). Appointed to the King's Bench
Division in 1924 by Lord Haldane, he
was the sole appointee to the High
Court during tie first Labour gov-
ernment. In 1937 he was advanced to
the Court of Appeal, where he served
until his death. His recollections of
the King's Bench are published in his
On Circuit (1940), and his telling
comments on the law and its judges
are scattered in the pages of the Law
Quarterly Review.
Macmillan, Hugh Pattison (1873-
1952), Baron Macmillan, whose emi-
nently successful career at the Scot-
tish bar was followed by notable
achievements in England. He became
Lord Advocate of Scotland in Mac-
Donald's first government and from
1930 to 1939 and from 1941 to 1947
was Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. He
was England's first Minister of In-
formation, from 1939 to 1940. The
quality of his judicial opinions is well
summarized in 63 Law Quarterly Re-
view 259 (July 1947). As Chairman
of the Court of the University of
London from 1929 to 1943 he was
intimately associated with the Uni-
versity's affairs.
Macnaghten, Sir Edward (1830-
1913), Baron Macnaghten. Irish by
birth, he became Lord of Appeal in
Ordinary in 1887 and left on the law
of England the indelible impression
of his trenchant mind and literary
gift. Perhaps the greatest, and surely
the most eloquent opinion which he
ever delivered was his dissent in the
case of the Free Church of Scotland.
Macnaghten, Sir Malcolm (1869-
), son of Lord Macnaghten. He
was Judge of the King's Bench Divi-
sion of the High Court from 1928 to
1947.
McReynolds, James C. (1862-1941).
Appointed to the Supreme Court of
the United States by Wilson in 1914,
he contributed little wisdom, much
conservatism, and unparalleled ill
temper to the deliberations of the
Court. Holmes, however, found lov-
able qualities behind the jagged and
irascible surface.
McTaggart, J. M. E. (1866-1925),
Hegelian philosopher, atheist and ar-
dent Churchman; author, inter alia, of
Commentary on Hegel's Logic (1910)
and The Nature of Existence (1921).
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1511
Maistre, Joseph de (1753-1821),
learned diplomat whose philosophical
energies were devoted to establishing
the primacy of Papal authority and
discrediting the aspirations of the
Revolution. His ultramontane zeal led
him to condemn all aspects of liber-
tarian belief and to develop a malig-
nant hatred of Voltaire and Rousseau.
His brand of Catholicism has not un-
fairly been described as "terrorist
Christianity/' His principal works
were Considerations sur la France
(1796), Du Pape (1821), and De
I'Eglise Gallicane (1821-22). Laski
wrote most fully of him in The Prob-
lem of Sovereignty ( 1917), chapter V.
Maitland, Frederic William (1850-
1906). Trained in the law, Maitland
in 1884 abandoned his career as con-
veyancer to become Reader in the
History of English Law at Cambridge,
and four years later Downing Pro-
fessor. His contributions to the legal
and institutional history of England
were of un equaled brilliance, min-
gling literary style, philosophic in-
sight, and detailed learning with such
graceful ease that few of his readers
have failed to fall victims to his
charm. He influenced Laski's political
thought principally through his Intro-
duction to a substantial portion of
Gierke's Political Theories of the Mid-
dle Age (1900).
Mariana, Juan de (1536-1623), Jes-
uit historian and political theorist.
Though orthodox in belief, he was
less concerned than other Jesuits of
his age with problems of church and
state, and directed his inquiries prin-
cipally to issues of the civil com-
monwealth. In his De rege et regis
institutione (1599) he defended the
principle of tyrannicide and urged
that when the tyrant's government
destroys the welfare of the common-
wealth the sole recourse, and that
legitimate, is assassination. His work
has suggested to many that he rec-
ognized the sovereignty of the people.
He was not, however, the champion
of democracy and considered that
monarchy is the least evil form of
government.
Marmontel, Jean Frangois (1723-
1799), dramatist and man of letters.
He was a contributor to the Ency-
clopedie and in his Contes moraux
(1761-86) and Memoires d'un pere
(4 vols., 1804) painted charming
portraits of his age,
Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275-1343),
at least coauthor, and possibly author
of Defensor Pads (1324), a work
which in its first part contained a
formal treatise on government and in
its second a commentary on Church
and State. Frequently misinterpreted
as a tract fot democracy, the work
had profound importance in the de-
velopment of political theory. In so
far as it dealt with problems of civil
government it laid the foundations of
the concepts inherent in the modern
institutions of a limited monarchy. In
its examination of the relationships
between State and Church it repu-
diated the claim of the latter to su-
premacy and in fact put ultimate
authority in the hands of secular gov-
ernment.
Martin, Kingsley (1897- ), politi-
cal scientist, teacher, and journalist;
author of French Liberal Thought in
the Eighteenth Century (1929). He
was an intimate associate of Laskfs
at the London School of Economics,
and since 1931 has been editor of
The New Statesman and Nation.
Massillon, Jean-Baptiste (1663-1742),
Professor of Rhetoric, and Bishop who
as preacher practiced what he had
taught. His eloquence put him in the
tradition of his predecessors, Bossuet
and Bourdaloue, and justified the de-
scription which his admirers have
1512
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
given him — the last of the great
preachers.
Massingham, H. W. (1860-1924),
journalist and critic, who edited The
Nation from 1907 until 1923 and in
doing so made it a powerful journal
of liberal opinion. His notable qual-
ities as a journalist are described by
his associates in H.W.M.: A Selection
from the Writings of H. W, Massing-
ham (H. J. Massingham, ed., 1926).
Masterman, C. F. G. (1874-1927),
journalist and liberal politician. He
successively was literary editor of
The Speaker and of The Nation, and
held important posts in the govern-
ment before the First World War.
Mathiez, Albert (1874-1932), learned
disciple of Aulard and sympathetic
historian of the Revolution, In his
principal work, La revolution fran-
gaise (3 vols., 1922-27), he devel-
oped a socialistic interpretation of the
Revolution.
Maupeou, Rene (1714-1792), Chan-
cellor of France under Louis XV. His
energy in suppressing the parlements
and establishing in their place coun-
cils of magistrates named by the King
was an act of tyranny which despite
that fact secured the approval of Vol-
taire as a reform which eliminated an
hereditary magistracy.
Maurice, Frederick Denison (1805-
1872), leading Anglican theologian of
the nineteenth century. In 1866 he
became Professor of Casuistry, Moral
Theology, and Moral Philosophy at
Cambridge. As the spiritual leader of
the Christian Socialists he was for
years involved in bitter theological
controversy which distracted his tal-
ents from more critical issues. The
quality of his thought in contrast with
that of Leslie Stephen is brilliantly
delineated in Annan, Leslie Stephen
(1951) 179-185.
Meslier, Jean (1664-1729), apostate
priest. In his lifetime he attracted the
nobility and the hierarchy, and at bis
death left behind him his Testament,
in which he endeavored to prove the
falsity of religion in general and of
Christianity in particular. The work
was greatly admired by Voltaire and
was probably one of the influences in
forming his religious philosophy. See
Moorehouse, Voltaire and Jean Mes-
lier (1936).
Meyerson, Emile (1859-1933), French
scientist who turned to philosophy
and whose inquiries in epistemology
and search for a theory of explana-
tion resulted in his Identite et realite
(1908) and De I'explication dans les
sciences (1921).
Michoud, Leon (1855-1916), French
jurist who for many years was Pro-
fessor of Administrative Law on the
Law Faculty at Grenoble. His cen-
tral concern was with problems of
moral personality and the account-
ability of the state for tLe wrongs of
its agents. His principal work was La
theorie de la personality morale et son
application au droit francais (2 vols.,
1906).
Milner, Alfred (1854-1925), first Vis-
count; statesman and Colonial admin-
istrator, who left the stamp of Balliol
upon imperial affairs. The forcefulness
of his administration in South Africa
before, during, and after the Boer
War matched his enthusiasm for Brit-
ain's imperial destiny and made him
an invaluable member of Lloyd
Georges War Cabinet in 1916.
Molina, Luis de ( 1535-1600), Spanish
Jesuit, whose De justitia et jure
(1592) emphasized the limitations
with which the Commonwealth tra-
ditionally has confined the powers of
the monarch. An enemy of absolute
power in kings, to whom he was un-
willing to concede any divine rights,
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1513
he was quite willing to acknowledge
the absolute power of the Pope, the
vicar of Christ.
Monimsen, Theodor (1817-1903), his-
torian of ancient Rome, active liberal
politician, and Professor of Ancient
History at Berlin. All of a scholar's
learning and much of a journalist's
enthusiasm combined to make his
Roman History a great achievement.
His later works, even more monumen-
tal in their scholarly dimensions, were
a vast edition of the Corpus inscrip-
tionum latinarum and his Romischen
Staatsrechts (a part of the Handbook
of Roman Antiquities, written with
Joachim Marquardt, 1812-1882). The
latter work has been described as "the
greatest historical treatise on political
institutions ever written.*'
Moore, George Edward (1873- ),
Cambridge philosopher, labeled a
neo-realist, who discarded many of
the assumptions of utilitarianism, in-
cluding its hedonism, but retained the
conviction that Tightness of conduct
is not a primary but derivative con-
cept depending on the ultimate,
though indefinable, good which it
brings about. His most important
work was Principia Ethica (1903). His
influence on the young men of Cam-
bridge in the early years of this cen-
tury is described in Harrod, The Life
of John Maynard Keynes (1951) 75
et seq., and by Keynes himself in his
essay "My Early Beliefs" in Two
Memoirs (1949).
Morellet, Abbe Andre (1727-1819).
In form a churchman, in spirit a
philosophe, the Abbe Morellet, whose
pen was of a sharpness which de-
lighted Voltaire, was a collaborator in
the Encyclopedie and a faithful ad-
mirer of Turgot. His economic prin-
ciples were built around the convic-
tion that trade and commerce should
be free; his political views made him
an enemy of the Revolution. His
Memoires sur le XVIII* siecle et la
Revolution (2 vols., 1821) is an im-
portant source book for his times.
Morelly, philosophe of the eighteenth
century of whose Me nothing is
known, ^save that he may have been
an abbe and lived at Vitrey-le-Fran-
cois. His most important work, Le
code de la nature (1755), described
a Utopian society in which the com-
munism decreed by the law of nature
should prevail.
Moulton, John Fletcher (1844-1921),
Baron Moulton. Unusual scientific ap-
titude contributed greatly to his suc-
cessful career as patent lawyer. He
was appointed to the Court of Appeal
in 1906, and in 1912 became Lord
of Appeal in Ordinary. His judicial
career was marked by energy, inde-
pendence, and pertinacious compe-
tence. He made large contributions
to Britain's efforts in the First World
War when he was Director of Ex-
plosive Supplies in the Ministry of
Munitions.
Murray, Andrew Graham (1849-1942),
first Viscount Dunedin; Scottish lawyer
who, in 1913, was advanced from the
post of Lord President of the Court
of Session in Scotland to become a
Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, an office
which he filled until 1932.
Nevinson, Henry Woodd (1856-
1941), traveler, man of letters, and
journalist. His talents as war corre-
spondent were far greater than those
of a mere reporter and made him a
military historian of considerable stat-
ure. The record of his life in journal-
ism and pursuit of lost causes is found
in his trilogy of Changes and Chances.
Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), Ger-
man theologian and philosopher. An
active leader of the Conciliar move-
ment, he subsequently accepted Papal
authority. His many-sided genius and
1514
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
a skeptical revulsion from scholasti-
cism made him a forerunner of the
renaissance and a prophet of the mod-
ern age.
Northcliffe, Lord. See Harmsworth,
Alfred Charles Williams.
Norton, Charles Eliot (1827-1908),
editor, author, and professor of the
humanities at Harvard. Nicknamed,
somewhat irreverently, "Goose" Nor-
ton by Carlyle, he was a man of
broad if somewhat arrogant cultiva-
tion, of free-thinking inclinations in
religion and liberal tendencies in poli-
tics. His intimacy with the great fig-
ures on both sides of the Atlantic
added a telling flavor to his teaching.
Parke, Sir James (1782-1868), Baron
Wensleydale; judge of the Court of
Exchequer from 1834 until 1855. His
peculiar competence in the intricacies
of common-law pleading seemed to
have become a superfluous talent
when the reforms of 1854 and 1855
were adopted, and he resigned from
the Bench, leaving behind a reputa-
tion for that brand of legal intelli-
gence which, no longer being a neces-
sity, had been elevated to the dignity
of a tradition.
Parker, Robert John (1857-1918),
Baron Parker; judge of the Chancery
Division from 1906 until 1913, Lord
of Appeal from 1913 to 1918, and
one of the greatest judges of his time.
The distinctive qualities of his mind
were straightforward clarity and un-
ostentatious simplicity.
Parsons, Robert (1546-1610). In
1580 he became a Jesuit missionary
to England and as such was busily
engaged in polemic writing. His po-
litical thesis, not unrelated to nis
ecclesiastical mission, included the
principle that the unrighteous mon-
arch may not claim the loyalty or
obedience of his subjects. Parsons,
with some success, undertook the for-
midable task of revealing the errors
of Sir Edward Coke's endeavor to find
legal justification for the Reformation.
Pasquier, Etienne (1529-1615), law-
yer and jurist. Stirred by the lectures
of Hotman, he came to see that mon-
archs must serve their people. His
principal political writings were Re-
cherches de la France (1560), Cate-
chisme des jemistes (1593), and
Four parler du prince (1594). The
Lettres de Pasquier (1586) possess
great literary charm and considerable
historical interest.
Pattison, Mark (1813-1884), un-
happy Oxford scholar of extensive
learning whose misery flourished in
the meddlesome mediocrity of Uni-
versity politics and who saw in the
scholarship of Scaliger and Casaubon
an inspiring but no longer attainable
ideal. The self -deprecatory gloom and
the search for a sustaining ideal sug-
gest a similarity, perhaps superficial,
to the qualities of Henry Adams. The
tragic injustices which Pattison did
himself are recorded in his Memoirs
(1885). His greatest work, his Life
of Casaubon (1875), has been de-
scribed as "one of the gems of English
literature."
Pitney, Mahlon (1858-1924), Asso-
ciate Justice of the Supreme Court of
the United States, 1912-1922, ap-
pointed by Taft. The Presidential ex-
pectations that Pitney would prove
himself on the Federal bench the
conservative which his practice, po-
litical career, and chancellorship in
New Jersey had indicated him to be
were not disappointed.
Planck, Max (1858-1947), German
physicist and father of the quantum
theory. In 1918 he was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics.
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1515
Poincare, Henri (1854-1912), physi- war against the supporters of the
cist and mathematician. He was King and the friends of the Papacy.
cousin of the statesman Raymond In nonpolitical matters he induged his
Poincare and is best known to the non- Puritanism in fanatic condemnation of
specialists for his popular work, The the stage — as in his tract The Un-
Foundations of Science (Halsted, tr.,
1913).
Power, Eileen (1889-1940), distin-
guished teacher, medievalist, and eco-
nomic historian. From 1921 until her
death she taught economic history at
the London School of Economics.
Among her most important writings
are Medieval English Nunneries
(1922) and The Wool Trade in Eng-
lish Medieval History (1941).
Primrose, Archibald Philip (1847-
1927), fifth Earl of Rosebery; states-
man who was Gladstone's Foreign
Secretary and briefly succeeded his
chief as Prime Minister in 1894.
Thereafter he became the leader of
the imperialist wing of the Liberal
Party, but when the policies of that
wing were overridden and Campbell-
Bannerman became Prime Minister in
1905 he retired from politics. There-
after he gave his energies to public
addresses and to the pursuits of a
cultivated leisure.
Proudhon, Pierre Joseph (1809-1865),
French socialist who stirred Marx
with his declaration that "property is
theft** and antagonized him by re-
pudiating the dictatorship of the pro-
letariat. His conviction that federal-
ism would be the greatest instrument
for achieving justice was the reflection
of his dislike of strong state author-
ity. His theories became an impor-
tant element in the dogma of the
syndicalists of a later generation.
Prynne, William (1600-1669), bel-
ligerent Puritan and champion of Par-
liament whose scattered and explo-
sive learning made The Sovereign
Power of Parliaments and Kingdoms
(1643) a frightening weapon in the
loveliness of Lovelocks (1628) and
his Histriomastix (1633).
Pufendorf, Samuel (1632-1694). In
his efforts to formulate a theory of the
law of nature he so skillfully mixed
the divergent views of Grotius and
Hobbes that a view of his own was
the result. He pictured the world with
which the law is concerned as peo-
pled with moral beings acting not
only in response to the instinct of
self-preservation but by reason of so-
ciability, and emphasized the rights
of the individual against the state.
The source of international law he
discovered neither in treaties nor in
custom, but in a law of nature more
rational than divine.
Radbruch, Gustav (1878-1949), Pro-
fessor of Law in many German uni-
versities. He also served as Minister
of Justice in the Weimar Republic.
His legal philosophy emphasized the
relativity of values with which the
law is concerned and the importance
of certainty in any legal system. His
most important work, Rechtsphilo-
sophie (3rd ed., 1932), is published
in translation in The Legal Philoso-
phies of Lask, Radbruch, and Dabin
(Wilk, tr., 1950).
Rayleigh, Baron. See Strutt, John Wil-
liam.
Redlich, Josef (1869-1936), Profes-
sor of Public Law at the University
of Vienna, statesman, and learned
student of the English government.
His greatest contributions to scholar-
ship were The Procedure of the House
of Commons (1908) and Local Gov-
ernment in England (Hirst, tr., 1907)*
In 1925 he came to the Harvard Law
1516
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
School as Professor of Comparative
Public Law. His qualities as teacher
and scholar are described by Felix
Frankfurter and Charles C. Burling-
ham in 50 Hare. L. Rev. 389, 392
(January 1937).
Rice, Richard A. (1846-1924), Pro-
fessor of Art at Williams College un-
til 1911. He then moved to Washing-
ton and in 1912 became Chief of the
Division of Prints in the Library of
Congress.
Rivers, William Halse Rivers (1864-
1922), experimental psychologist and
ethnologist long associated with Cam-
bridge University. In ethnology his
most important work was a History
of Melanesian Society (1914) and in
psychology, Instinct and the Uncon-
scious (1920) and Social Organiza-
tion (1924). Arnold Bennett wrote
with feeling of him in "W. H. R. Riv-
ers: Some Recollections," 19 New
Statesman 290 (June 17, 1922).
Robertson, George Croom (1842-
1892), philosopher who held the
chair of mental philosophy and logic
at University College, London, from
1866 until 1892, and who was the
first editor of Mind. His philosophical
sympathies were with his friend Bain
and the utilitarians. His extensive re-
search in the Hobbes manuscripts
resulted in his monograph, Hobbes
(1886), and an article in the Ency-
clopaedia Brittanica.
Robertson, John Mackinnon (1856-
1933), radical freethinker, politician,
and academically unaccredited scholar
of the humanities. His "militant un-
orthodoxy" was expressed in many
journals but was shown to be but-
tressed by extensive learning in his
History of Free Thought (2 vols.,
1936), and A Short History of Chris-
tianity (1902). Laski contributed a
short biographical sketch of Robert-
son to The Dictionary of National
Biography, 1931-1940 (Legg, ed.,
1949) 736.
Root, Elihu (1845-1937), lawyer and
statesman. He was Secretary of War
and Secretary of State under Theo-
dore Roosevelt and Republican Sena-
tor from New York from 1909 to
1915. In his later years his great pre-
occupation was with problems of
world peace.
Rosebery, Lord. See Primrose, Archi-
bald Philip.
Royer-Collard, Pierre Paul (1763-
1845), statesman and philosopher
whose liberalism led him to assert
that to acknowledge sovereignty was
to admit despotism, and whose con-
servatism led him to support the
cause of constitutional monarchy. The
fruit of revolution he believed to be
an absolute sovereignty of the people,
and his effort was to support a mon-
archy founded in constitutional tra-
dition which, being so founded, could
never be absolute and never wholly
despotic. His concern with basic lib-
erties of the press and of religion,
with the independence of the judi-
ciary, and with parliamentary gov-
ernment was passionate and intense.
Chapter IV of Laskfs Authority in
the Modern State (1919) deals with
Royer-Collard.
Rutherford, Ernest ( 1871-1937 ) ,
Baron Rutherford. Born and educated
in New Zealand he became one of the
great physicists of his times. His aca-
demic career was at McGill, Man-
chester, and Cambridge. His great
discoveries in physics concerned ra-
dioactivity and the structure of atoms.
Saint-Evremond, Charles de Margue-
tel de Saint-Denis (1610-1703), sol-
dier and skeptical man of letters
whose witticisms and doubts sent
him, an exile, to England.
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1517
St. John, Henry (1678-1751), Vis-
count Bolingbroke; organizer, leader,
and theorist of the Tory Party. His
philosophical inclinations and asso-
ciations affiliated him with rational-
ism. Not an original thinker, he none
the less had considerable influence on
the political theory of his times and
in his Idea of a Patriot King (1738)
produced a pattern for the conduct
of monarchs to which George III
sought to conform.
Saint-Pierre, Abbe Charles Irenee
Castel de (1658-1743), political mor-
alist and enemy of intolerance. The
complex structure of the Utopia which
he proposed in his Discours sur la
poly synodic (1718) was not designed
to give the political power to the
people or despotic power to kings,
but a balanced government controlled
by an academy of experts. His inter-
nationalism inspired his Projet pour
rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe
(3 vols., 1713-17).
Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, Due
de (1675-1755), political theorist and
diarist. The enemy of centralized ab-
solutism, he believed that political
power should be vested in the second
estate. It is more as historian than as
theorist, however, that he is remem-
bered, for in his Memoires he pre-
sented an incisive if somewhat inac-
curate and embittered picture of his
times.
Saleilles, Raymond (1855-1912), Pro-
fessor in the Faculties of Law at Dijon
and Paris. His principal labors were
in the field of comparative law, but
his notable contribution to criminal
law, The Individualization of Punish-
ment (Jastrow, tr., 1911), was an
important addition to the literature
of penology. Philosophically, Saleilles
was allied with those like Gierke,
Demogue, and Hauriou who believed
in the reality of collective personality
and saw in the theory that the per-
sonality of groups is a fiction of the
law, danger that private lights would
be swallowed by public authority. He
was quick to acknowledge, however,
that the institutions of private law
must find their justification in public
policy. These problems he dealt with
in his most famous work, De la per-
sonalite juridique, histoire et theories
(1910).
Salmond, Sir John William (1862-
1924), Professor of Law and Justice
of the Supreme Court of New Zea-
land. His Jurisprudence (1902) and
his treatise on The Law of Torts
( 1907 ) became standard textbooks of
the English law.
Samuel, Herbert Louis (1870- ),
first Viscount Samuel; Liberal states-
man who has held innumerable high
offices, none more important, perhaps,
than that of High Commissioner in
Palestine from 1920 to 1925. The
story of his public life is told in his
Memoirs (1945).
Sanford, Edward Terry (1865-1930),
Advanced by President Harding to
the Supreme Court of the United
States from the Federal District Court
in Tennessee, Sanford was a colorless
colleague of Holmes's from 1923 to
1930. His tranquil inclinations were
conservative, yet he joined with
Holmes and Brandeis in a number of
their important opinions on free
speech.
Sankey, John (1866-1948), first Vis-
count Sankey; successively Judge of
the King's Bench and of the Court of
Appeal between 1914 and 1929; and
Lord Chancellor from 1929 to 1935.
At the bar he had been a master in
the field of workmen's compensation
and by his distinguished service as
Chairman the Coal Mining Commis-
sion of 1919 had shown the capacity
to make an acute intelligence the in-
strument of progress. It was no sur-
1518
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
prise, therefore, when he became
Chancellor in the Labour Govern-
ment of 1929.
Sassoon, Sir Philip (1888-1939), pol-
itician, and art connoisseur whose
graceful mind and personality made
him an important link between the
world of affairs and the world of art.
Scaliger, Joseph Justus (1540-1609),
French classicist of monumental learn-
ing who laid the foundations of mod-
ern historical criticism. His greatest
achievement was to upset the pre-
vailing falsities of ancient chronology
and to reveal the significance of an-
tiquity before Greece. One of the
tragedies of modern scholarship was
that Mark Pattison did not live to
complete his projected biography of
Scaliger.
Scherer, Wilhelm (1841-1886), Ger-
man philologist and historian of lit-
erature. His greatest works in the two
fields of his interest were Zur Ge-
schichte der deutschen Sprache ( 1868 )
and Geschichte der deutschen Litera-
tur (1883).
Scott, James Brown (1866-1943),
Professor of Law at Illinois, Colum-
bia, and Chicago, and authority on
international law. He held many gov-
ernmental posts in connection with
foreign affairs, and from 1907 to 1924
was editor of the American Journal
of International Law.
Scott, John (1751-1838), Lord El-
don; twice Lord Chancellor of Eng-
land (1801-1806, 1807-1827), His
name has become the symbol of judi-
cial caution, conservatism, and inde-
cision. In politics he was an ener-
getic and effective defender of the
status quo and opponent of Catholic
emancipation and legal reform. His
brother William, Lord Stowell, ex-
celled him in all capacities — even in
Lord Eldon's considerable capacity to
enjoy and to consume port wine.
Scott, Sir Leslie (1869-1950), Lord
Justice of Appeal from 1935 to 1948.
His life was devoted more to profes-
sional than to political affairs, but his
professional services to the state were
many. He and Lady Scott were in-
timate friends of Holmes.
Scrutton, Thomas Edward (1856-
1934), Justice of the King's Bench,
1910-1916, and of the Court of Ap-
peal, 1916 to 1934. His genius as
practitioner and as judge was in the
field of commercial law; an irascible,
ill-mannered temperament was some-
what softened with the years and at
no time was so dominant as to pre-
vent his being a great lawyer and a
great judge.
Selden, John (1584-1654), lawyer
and historian. Like Coke, he put his
immense learning to the service of
constitutional government, but, unlike
Coke did so with gracious discretion.
His numerous contributions to legal
history were of such substantial im-
portance that Maitland, the greatest
of legal historians, named the Selden
Society in his honor.
Seydel, Max von (1846-1901), Pro-
fessor of Public Law at Munich. The
Calhoun of Germany, he argued for
the rights of the German states and,
with Germanic logic, insisted that no
intermediate between a unitary state
and an alliance of sovereign states
was juristically possible. His doctrine
of federalism as applied to Germany
and his denial to the Reich of that
all-sufficient power known, somewhat
redundantly, as Kornpetenz-Kompe-
tenz, was fully developed in his Kom-
mentar zur Verfassungsurkunde -fur
das Deutsche Reich ( 1873 )
Shaw, Thomas (1850-1937), Baron
Shaw of Dunfermline, later First
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1519
Baron Craigmyle. Ambition played a
greater part than genius in securing
his appointment as Lord of Appeal
in Ordinary in 1909. His most famous
opinion was his dissent in Rex v.
Ealliday in which he condemned as
illegal the regulation permitting in-
ternment during the First World War.
He told the story of his life in two
books: Letters to Isabel (1921) and
The Other Bundle (1927).
Sidgwick, Henry (1838-1900), gentle
Cambridge philosopher who antago-
nized the agnostics by clinging to the
possibility of faith and distressed the
orthodox by indicating doubt. His
principal philosophical work was
Methods of Ethics (1874).
Siegfried, Andre ( 1875- ) , French
economist and publicist who has writ-
ten with frequency and discernment
of other countries than his own.
Simon, Sir John (1873- ), first
Viscount Simon; conservative Liberal,
who has held many high offices of
state and served as Lord Chancellor
from 1940 to 1945. His legal capaci-
ties have been acknowledged by all;
his political judgment was mistrusted
by those who thought appeasement
of Hitler a mistake and doubted
whether the rearmament of Germany
would make for peace.
Sismondi, Simonde de (1773-1842),
Swiss historian and economist. As a
historian of literature he emphasized
the institutional forces which mold
the forms and affect the content of a
nation's literature. In his economic
writing he attacked the presupposi-
tions of the classical economists and
saw periodic crises as inevitable in a
capitalist society. Though not him-
self a radical, his Nouveaux principes
d'economie politiques (2 vols., 1819)
became a classic text in the library of
socialism.
Slesser, Sir Henry (1883- ), Lord
Justice of Appeal, 1929-1940. At
the bar his principal interest was in
the law of trade unions and he was the
coauthor of an important treatise on
the subject — Slesser and Baker, The
Law of Trade Unions (1921). He has
written of his life in the law in Judg-
ment Reserved (1942).
Smuts, Jan Christiaan (1870-1951),
South African soldier, statesman, and
philosopher. His youth was spent in
the military service of the Boers, his
maturity in the service both of Great
Britain and of his own people, with
the public's gratitude for these latter
services more prevalent abroad than
at home. Following the First World
War he put his hopes in the League
of Nations. His lifelong interest in
philosophy produced one piece of
work of some importance — Holism
and Evolution (1926).
Snowden, Philip (1864-1937), Vis-
count Snowden; Chancellor of the
Exchequer in each of the MacDonald
governments. His socialism, which
came to him more from study than
from experience, being of a different
brand than that of the trade union-
ists, did not always fit with theirs,
and made it comparatively easy for
him to remain with MacDonald's Na-
tional Government in 1931, when the
Trade Unions refused to do so.
Sohm, Rudolf (1841-1917), German
jurist and legal historian. The central
thesis of his historical work was that
the Prankish law had played a part
in the development of the law of
Europe scarcely less important than
that played by Roman law. Holmes,
in The Common Law (1882) and in
his earlier writing, made considerable
use of Sohm's writings.
Sorel, Georges (1847-1922), most
famous for his Reflections on Violence
(1908) and for his espousal of syn-
1520
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
dicalism. His lifelong search was for
an ethical principle which would
guarantee the development of moral-
ity. The search led him down many
divergent paths. He accepted the
leadership of Proudhon and of Marx,
identified democracy with mediocrity,
and ultimately hailed, in succession,
Fascism and Bolshevism as preferable
to socialism.
Soto, Domingo de (1494-1560),
Spanish jurist, who sought, in his
most important work, De justicia et
jure (2 vols., 1553-54), to translate
Thomistic ethics into principles of the
legal order.
Stammler, Rudolf ( 1856-1938), whose
neo-Kantian philosophy of law, em-
phasized the collective interests in a
community of free-willing men and
accepted as absolute "the principles
of just law." If, as Geny charged, he
failed to inform us what law is "just"
and showed a greater skill in jug-
gling abstractions than in establish-
ing criteria of judgment, he did, de-
spite the sterility of his basic effort,
succeed in reminding judges of their
creative responsibilities in guiding the
judicial process. He also persuasively
supported the thesis that the content
of the law of nature is variable and
changing. His most important works
were Lehre von dem richtigen Recht
(1902), (published in an English
translation under the title The Theory
of Justice, Husik, tr., 1925), Wirt-
schaft und Recht (1896), and Lehr-
buch der Rechtsphilosophie (1922).
Stephen, Sir James Fitzjames (1829-
1894). Lawyer, judge, and publicist,
he was the forceful brother of Sir
Leslie Stephen. In affairs his greatest
achievement was as successor to Sir
Henry Maine as legal member of the
Council in India. That experience
converted him to the cause of codi-
fication and nourished the doubt
whether the optimism of Mill, in so
far as it affected political principles,
was acceptable. The result was the
publication of his Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity (1873). That work, to-
gether with his History of the Crim-
inal Law (3 vols., 1883), reveal more
fully than any other of his writings
the vigor of his mind and the breadtli
of his scholarship.
Story, Joseph (1779-1845), Associate
Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States from 1811 to 1845. Ap-
pointed to the Court by Madison he
became as ardent a defender of na-
tional power as his Chief, John Mar-
shall. His extraordinary energies were
such that while serving on the Court
he was also a member of the law fac-
ulty at Harvard and the author of
ten large treatises on various subjects
in the law. The utility of these vol-
umes as reasoned, if somewhat un-
critical compendia of cases and prin-
ciples, was enormous and they had an
influence equal to if not greater than
Story's judicial opinions.
Strutt, John William (1842-1919),
third Baron Rayleigh; physicist and
mathematician who held the Caven-
dish professorship of physics at Cam-
bridge from 1879 to 1884. His genius
was not that of discovery but of eluci-
dation,
Stubbs, William (1825-1901), histo-
rian and churchman who resigned the
Regius Professorship of Modern His-
tory at Oxford to become Bishop of
Chester and, later, Bishop of Oxford.
Learned editor of many volumes in
the Rolls series, his greatest piece of
historical writing was his Constitu-
tional History of England in Its Ori-
gin and Development (4 vols., 1874-
78). With extraordinary care he kept
the clerical and conservative princi-
ples which dominated him as a man
from affecting his judgment as his-
torian. He so skillfully used the meth-
ods of German scholarship that his
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1521
English successors found them a part
of the English tradition of historiog-
raphy.
Suarez, Francisco (1548-1617). In
answering such Protestant theorists of
the Reformation as Althusius, he re-
vivified the Thomistic version of the
law of nature and made the last great
contributions to scholastic philosophy.
His political theory reemphasized the
medieval doctrine of popular sover-
eignty as a limitation on the power
of kings.
Sumner, Charles (1811-1874), Abo-
litionist Senator from Massachusetts.
A man of considerable capacity, ex-
tensive cultivation, and impeccable
New England connections, he allowed
his one passion — emancipation — to
dominate his political destiny and by
the arrogance of his righteousness an-
tagonized those whom he might by
other means have persuaded. The
most dramatic incident of his political
career occurred in 1856 when he was
attacked and seriously injured by a
hotheaded Congressman from South
Carolina, whose relative, Senator But-
ler, had been vigorously insulted by
Sumner in an address on the Senate
floor two days before.
Sumner, Lord. See Hamilton, John
Andrew.
Taine, Hippolyte (1828-1893), critic
and historian whose misanthropic pos-
itivism led him to see man as a "dis-
mal gorilla*' and whose respect for
the fruitfulness of inequality led him
to condemn the objectives and the
achievements of the French Revolu-
tion. In his chief historical work, Les
engines de la France contemporaine
(6 vols., 1876-94), he was immersed
in the tragedies of a modern France
which had not enjoyed the buoyant
successes of Victorian England, and
became, in the words of Professor
Gooch, "a pessimist in a passion."
The greatest influence of Taine as his-
torian was on the conservatives who,
abandoning his positivism, shared his
regret that the Revolution had oc-
curred.
Taney, Roger Brooke (1774-1864),
Chief Justice of the United States
from 1836 to 1864. Coming to the
Supreme Court as Marshall's succes-
sor, he showed himself to be a judge
of extraordinary competence well
qualified for the succession. The per-
spective of time has made his one
great error — his opinion in the Dred
Scott case — seem less significant than
it did to earlier generations, which
saw it as a primary cause of the
Civil War.
Tarde, Gabriel (1843-1904), French
social psychologist. In his best known
work, Les lois de limitation (1890),
he sought to uncover the laws of repe-
tition, by which he conceived that
most actions of most men are deter-
mined. In all his work he was more
concerned with concrete instances
than with large abstractions.
Tawney, R. H. (1880- ), eco-
nomic historian and publicist, long
associated with London University
and frequently called to the public
service. Of his many works the best
known, perhaps, are Religion and the
Rise of Capitalism (1926) and The
Acquisitive Society (1920).
Thayer, James Bradley (1831-1902),
Professor of Law at the Harvard Law
School from 1874 until his death.
Thayer's great contributions to legal
history and to the law of evidence
are preserved in his Preliminary Trea-
tise on the Law of Evidence at Com-
mon Law (1898). His short essay,
"The Origin and Scope of the Amer-
ican Doctrine of Constitutional Law,"
1522
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
7 Harv. L. Reo. 129 (1893), was a
work of profound wisdom having
since its publication a large influence
on constitutional theory and, from
time to time, a salutary effect on judi-
cial decisions.
Thibaudet, Albert (1874-1936), lit-
erary critic, and teacher whose per-
ception was always telling and never
simply academic. Of his many studies
of particular authors none excels his
Flaubert (1922).
Toller, Ernst (1893-1939), German
playwright. Imprisoned for five years
for participation in the Bavarian revo-
lution of 1919, he wrote a number of
his most important plays of protest
while imprisoned. Of the plays trans-
lated into English the best known
were Man ana the Masses (1924),
The Machine-Wreckers (1923), and
Pastor Hall (1939). He left Germany
in 1932 and committed suicide in
New York in 1936.
Trevelyan, Sir George Otto (1838-
1928), historian and statesman. His
most famous work was his biography
of his uncle, The Life and Letters of
Lord Macaulay (1876), His son,
George Macaulay Trevelyan, was
Regius Professor of Modern History
at Cambridge.
Turner, Frederick Jackson (1861-
1932), American historian. In 1893,
while teaching at Wisconsin, he pub-
lished a short paper, "The Signifi-
cance of the Frontier in American
History," which opened new vistas of
history. The hypothesis there sug-
gested, that the American character
was molded more by frontier condi-
tions than by inherited traditions, has
profoundly affected American histo-
riography. Turner's later Me, which
took him to Harvard between 1910
and 1924, was largely given to the
exploration of his own hypothesis.
Unamuno, Miguel de (1864-1937),
author, philosopher, and Professor of
Greek and Rector of the University
of Salamanca. His philosophy (or his
religion) made man's supreme capac-
ity his faith. The liberalism implicit
in that conviction made him an exile
from Spain during the dictatorship
of Rivera and brought him back to
disappointment during the Republic.
His first hope during the days of the
rebellion, that Franco would bring his
country salvation, was, by the time of
his death, somewhat shaken. His best-
known works, outside Spain, were
The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and
in Peoples (Flitch, tr., 1928) and The
Life of Don Quixote and Sancho
(Earle, tr., 1927).
Vattel, Emmerich de (1714-1767),
Swiss jurist. His great work on inter-
national law, Le droit des gens (2
vols., 1758), found the basis of inter-
national law in principles of utility
which were the postulates of reason.
He sought to find legal doctrine which
would make war unlawful, but was
compelled to acknowledge its legality
when it was waged for the enforce-
ment of customary duties and treaty
obligations.
Vauvenargues, Marquis de (1715-
1747), soldier, moralist, and epigram-
matist. It was largely owing to the
friendship of Voltaire that the Mar-
quis, becoming an invalid, turned to
letters as his occupation. The most
important result was his Introduction
a la connaissance de Fesprit humain
(1746) with its accompanying max-
ims.
Victoria, Franciscus de (1480-1546),
Dominican theologian and Professor
at Salamanca. In his Relationes de
potestate civile (1565) he developed
the thesis that the king is subject to
the law. In his writing on the law of
nature and the law of nations he em-
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
1523
phasized, with Grotius and Suarez,
the creative role of reason.
Vinogradoff, Sir Paul (1854-1925),
legal historian of Russian birth who
became Professor of Jurisprudence at
Oxford in 1903, succeeding Sir Fred-
erick Pollock. His greatest discovery
was the manuscript of Bracton's Note-
book and his most important piece of
historical writing was Villainage in
England (1892). His Oxford seminar
produced the Oxford Studies in So-
cial and Legal History (9 vols.,
1908-27), under his editorship.
Viollet, Paul (1840-1914), legal his-
torian whose major work was his
Droit public: Histoire des institutions
politiques et administrates de la
France (3 vok, 1889-1903).
Wallas, Graham (1858-1932), In his
early years Wallas was intimately as-
sociated with Shaw and Webb in the
Fabian Society. Later he became one
of the organizers of and early lec-
turers at the London School of Eco-
nomics and Political Science, filling its
first chair of political science from
1914 to 1923. His earliest book, The
Life of Francis Place (1898), was an
important addition to knowledge of
the history of the British labor move-
ment. In his later works he endeav-
ored to build a science of social psy-
chology in the hope that political
theory might be freed from the grip
of intellectualism. The Great Society
(1914) was a book of enormous in-
fluence in revealing the relationships
between psychology and political sci-
ence and in suggesting how fruitful
the scientific temper might be when
applied to the problems of political
theory.
Ward, Lester Frank (1841-1913),
American sociologist whose most im-
portant work, Dynamic Sociology (2
vols., 1883), was written while he
was a civil servant in Washington
engaged in scientific research and be-
fore his appointment as Professor of
Sociology at Brown University. His
sociological theory emphasized the ca-
pacity of man by conscious effort to
improve the human lot and through
that emphasis served effectively to re-
fute the evolutionary determinism of
Spencer. From an early date Holmes
was an admirer of Ward's writing.
Watson, William (1827-1899), Baron
Watson; Scottish lawyer who became
Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 1880
and left the imprint of his massive
intelligence on all the important cases
to come before the House of Lords
before his death. "In later life he was
reputed the profoundest lawyer in the
three kingdoms."
Webster, Richard Everard (1842-
1915), Viscount Alverstone. The
forceful manner and bearing which
brought him enormous successes at
the bar were not the traits which
make great judges. Lacking other dis-
tinguishing qualities he made no sig-
nificant contributions to the law while
serving briefly as Master of the Rolls
and from 1900 to 1913 as Lord Chief
Justice of England. His most famous
action as judge was his concurrence
with the American members of the
Alaska Boundary Tribunal in 1903.
Westbury, Lord. See Bethell, Richard,
Wigmore, John Henry (1863-1943),
learned Dean of the Law School of
Northwestern University. His monu-
mental treatise on The Law of Evi-
dence (3rd ed., 10 vols., 1940) is one
of the great classics of Anglo-Ameri-
can law. His close friendship with
Holmes survived the strain to which
it was subjected by Wigmore's petu-
lant postwar patriotism which found
Holmes's tolerant views on free speech
intolerable.
1524
BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
Wilberf orce, Samuel ( 1 805-1873 ) ,
successively Bishop of Oxford and
Winchester, The nickname "Soapy
Sam" was justified in the public's
mind by his aptitude for evasion. The
fear of many that he would follow
Newman into the Church of Rome
proved mistaken and at the end of
his life he was recognized as one of
the strongest churchmen of his times.
WiUiston, Samuel (1861- ), Pro-
fessor of Law at Harvard from 1890
until his retirement in 1938. Willis-
ton's greatest written work was his
Law of Contracts (1st ed., 1920) but
his supreme achievement was as a
masterful teacher in whose hands the
case method of instruction became a
fine art.
Winfield, Sir Percy (1878- ), legal
historian and scholar, who for many
years was Rouse Ball Professor of
English Law at Cambridge.
Wister, Owen (1860-1938), lawyer,
novelist, grandson of Fanny Kemble,
and, above all, Philadelphian. A vig-
orous admirer of Theodore Roosevelt's
vigor, he was best known, perhaps,
for his novel The Virginian (1902).
His friendship with Holmes began
when Holmes was on the Massachu-
setts bench and Wister was a law
student at Harvard.
Wolff, Christian von (1679-1754),
philosopher, mathematician, and dis-
ciple of Leibniz. His rationalism was
that of the Enlightenment, and
though he made no large creative
contributions to the philosophy of his
time and place his influence as ex-
positor was considerable. His politi-
cal theory was grounded on the as-
sumption that in his state of nature
man was not at war with his neigh-
bor but enjoyed a freedom regulated
by natural law. In modern society,
however, he conceived that the will
of the ruler might properly be su-
preme.
Wright, Chauncey ( 1830-1875 ),
American mathematician and philoso-
pher, friend of Holmes and of William
James. Wright's influence on his Cam-
bridge contemporaries was evidently
considerable and justifies the state-
ment that he was "the precursor of
the empiricistic and pluralistic varie-
ties of pragmatism." To Henry James
he was one of "the great intending
and unproducing (in anything like
the right degree) bachelors of phi-
losophy, bachelors of attitude and of
life." See Wiener, Evolution and the
Founders of Pragmatism ( 1949), 207-
212.
Wu, John C. H. (1899- ), jurist,
judge, and intimate friend of Holmes.
The original story of their intimacy is
revealed in the letters of Holmes to
Wu, first published in the Tien Hsia
Monthly for October 1935, later re-
printed in Shriver, Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes, His Book Notices
and Uncollected Letters and Papers
(1936), 151 et seq. Dr. Wu has writ-
ten of his own life, of his friendship
with Holmes, and of his conversion to
Roman Catholicism in Beyond East
and West (1951).
Young, Allyn Abbott (1876-1929),
American economist, whose last aca-
demic post in the United States was
at Harvard, from 1920 to 1927, when
he became professor of Political Econ-
omy at the University of London.
Author of Economic Problems, Old
and New (1927).
Zimmern, Sir Alfred (1879- ),
historian, classicist, and student of
foreign affairs. He has held many
academic posts in Great Britain and
the United States, and has written of
and participated in such international
enterprises as the League of Nations
and UNESCO. His most important
piece of scholarship is The Greek
Commonwealth (1911),
Index:
Index
Abbadie, •
-, Les vies des hommes
de lettres illustres, (L) 1013-14
Abbott, Henry L., (H) 712
Abel, Niels, (L) 1074
Abelard, controversy with William of
Champeaux, (L) 361
Abercrombie, Lascelles, Romanticism,
(1926), (L) 1207
Aberystwyth, University of, (L) 309-
10
Abolitionists, (H) 164, 689, 772, 893,
942, 948, 1265, 1291
Abrams v. U.S., (L) 220, 222, 223,
(H) 229, (L) 231, 257, 265, 270,
310, 535, 585, 799, 802, 824, 1201,
1219
Abstraction, capacity for, (L) 1385-
86
Academic freedom, (L) 970
Academic mind, its faults, (L) 716,
1391
Accountancy, as subject for university
study, (L) 632, (H) 634
Acheson, Dean, (H) 224, (L) 446,
450, (H) 473-74
Acland, Eleanor, Dark Side Out
(1921), (L) 365
Action, men of: (L) 399, (H) 405;
Holmes's admiration for, (H) 373-
74; contrasted with thinkers, (L)
550, 696, (H) 704, (L) 1040-41,
(H) 1044; Churchill's admiration
for, (L) 696, 1037; their compe-
tence as judges, (H) 797. See also
Morley, John; Business men
Acton, Lord, (L) 49, 65, 98, (H) 162,
(L) 278, 355, 677, 760, 1084, 1190,
1251; on DuVergier de Hauranne,
(L) 604; his library, (L) 627; Hal-
dane's recollections of, (L) 673; on
Fenelon, (L) 851; his admiration
for Gladstone, (L) 916; on Bryce,
(L) 1042; The History of Freedom
and Other Essays, (H) 162, (L)
1369; Lectures on the French Revo-
lution (1910), (L) 936, 977, 1048;
Letters of Lord Acton to Mary
Gladstone (1904), (L) 576
Actors and actresses, (L) 376, (H)
378, 855-56, (L) 1182, 1379
Adairv. U.S., (L) 7, 73, 99-100, 121,
257, 584, 678, 1219, 1348
Adam, Robert, (L) 876, 907
Adams, Bill, Fenceless Meadows, (H)
556
Adams, Brooks, (L) 326, (H) 327,
(L) 1407, 1445; quoted, (H) 530
Adams, Charles Francis (1807-1886),
(L) 330
Adams, Charles Francis (1835-1915),
(H) 164, (L) 330; Charles Francis
Adams, 1835-1915; An Autobiogra-
phy (1916), (H) 1031, 1040
Adams, Charles Francis (1866- ),
(H) 1421
Adams, Edward Brinley, (H) 83, (L)
179, 185, 196, 417, 418
Adams, George Burton, Constitutional
History of England (1921), (L)
429
Adams, Henry, (H) 84, (L) 138, 145,
(H) 224, (L) 330, (H) 332, (L)
956, (H) 1020, 1031, (L) 1086,
(H) 1208, (L) 1430-31; The Deg-
radation of the Democratic Dogma
(1919), (L) 231, 326, (H) 328;
The Education of Henry Adams
(1918), (L) 169, 452, 1457; His-
tory of the United States during the
Administrations of Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison (9 vols., 1889),
(L) 1430-31, 1457
Adams, James Truslow, The Adams
Family (1930), (H) 1272-73; The
Epic of America (1931), (H) 1395,
(L) 1398
Adams, John, (H) 166, (L) 261, 296,
981; "A Defence of the Constitu-
tions of Government of the United
States of America," (L) 245, 472,
586, 1449; Letters of Novanglus,
(L) 616; Works, (L) 586, 1006
Adams, John (1813-1848), Principles
of Equity (1849), (H) 182
Adams, John Couch, (L) 1186
Adams, John Quincy, (L) 231, (H)
1528
INDEX
Adams, John Quincy (Continued)
327; Memoirs of John Quincy
Adams (Adams, ed., 12 vok, 1874-
77), (L) 261, 326, 1315
Adams' Letters, see Cycle of Adams
Letters, A
Adams, Randolph Greenfield, Political
Ideas of the American Revolution
(1922), (L) 446
Adams, Samuel, (L) 222, 475, (H)
478
Adams, Thomas Sewall, (L) 1111
Adamson Law, (L) 14, 14-15, 18, 52,
(H) 55, (L) 116. See also Wilson
v. New
Addams, Jane, (H) 1146
Addington, Henry, 1st Viscount Sid-
mouth, (L) 803, 1340
Addison, Joseph, (L) 179, 671, 697
Ade, George, (H) 240, (L) 241;
Fables in Slang, (H) 242
Adkins v, Children's Hospital, (L)
484, 492, (H) 495, (L) 496, 552,
(H) 800, note 1
Adler, Felix, (L) 756; An Ethical Phi-
losophy of Life (1918), (H) 157-
58
Administration, its critical importance
to a theory of the state, (L) 648
Administrative agencies, (L) 19-20,
107, 110, 113, 127, 146, 379-80,
1264
Administrative law, (L) 93, 1223,
1352; in France, (L) 103, 113,
1223
Adult education, (L) 228, 432, 451,
467, 545, 662, 703, 879-80; Laski's
concern for, (L) 282; Lord Hal-
dane's concern for, see Haldane,
Lord, interest in adult education
Advertising, (L) 1123, (H) 1124
Aeschylus, (H) 8, (L) 10, (H) 194,
273, (L) 563; compared with Eu-
ripides and Sophocles, (L) 1316;
Agamemnon, (H) 273, (L) 622-
23; Choephcroe, (L) 10; Persae,
(H) 624, (L) 1316; Prometheus
Bound, (H) 273, 275, 564-65, (L)
570, 633, (H) 642
Aesthetics; relativism in, (H) 474,
609, 692, 706, 769, 862^-63, 990-91,
1238; its relation to morality, (L)
1294-95
Aga Khan, (L) 1301, 1338
Agassiz, Louis, (H) 8, 115, (L) 735,
(H) 762, (L) 848
Age: its effect on passing of time, (H)
360, 1283; Holmes reluctantly rec-
ognizes its coming, (H) 590; pro-
duces doubt on self-satisfaction, ( H)
1105, 1197; breeds egotism, (H)
1141; sadness in, (H) 1253
Agency, see Vicarious Liability
Agnosticism, nature of Laski's, (L)
575
Aguesseau, Henri Frangois d', (L)
607, 1017
Airplane, Laski's flight by, (L) 1309
Aiyar, Sir Sivaswamy, Indian Consti-
tutional Problems (1928), (H)
1103
Alain, [fimile Chartier], Elements
d'une doctrine radicale (1925), (L)
1033; Propos de litterature (1934),
(L) 1463, 1465
Alaska Fish Co. v. Smith, (H) 307
Albert, Francois, (L) 731
Albert, Paul, La litterature francaise
auXVlir siecle (1874), (L) 1053,
127$-77
Alcoholism, (L) 55
Alcott, Amos Bronson, (H) 1024
Alcott, Louisa May, (L) 1328
Alembert, Jean le Rond, Due d*, (L)
532, 870; Oeuvres (5 vols., 1821-
22), (L) 505, 514
Alengry, Franck, Condorcet; guide de
la revolution frangaise (1903), (L)
528, 536
Alexander, Albert V., Viscount Alex-
ander, (L) 1200, 1299
Alexander, Samuel, (L) 467, 475,
538-39, 612, 661-62, 729, 756, 979,
1327-28; anecdote concerning, (L)
717; his opinion of certain contem-
porary philosophers, (L) 729, 1429;
his philosophical biography, (L)
898; on Whitehead, (L) 1218,
1221, 1284, 1429, (H) 1288; on
Dewey, (L) 1284, 1429, 1452; on
Hegel, (L) 1407; his theory of
ethics, (L) 1407; his recollections
and estimate of Leslie Stephen, (L)
1408; Beauty and Other Forms of
Value (1933), (L) 1468; Moral
Order and Progress (1889), (L)
INDEX
1529
1164-65; Space, Time and Deity
(2 vols., 1920), (L) 661
Alexandria, Virginia, Confederate
statue at, (H) 781
Alexis, Grand Duke, his visit to Amer-
ica, 1871-72, (H) 624
Alfonso, King of Spain, (L) 1376
Aliens, exclusion of , (H) 164
All Souls College, Oxford, (L) 853,
922
Allbutt, Sir T. Clifford, Greek Medi-
cine in Rome, (L) 736
Allen, Carleton Kemp, Law in the
Making (2nded., 1930), (L) 1229;
Legal Duties and Other Essays in
Jurisprudence (1931), (L) 1352,
1357
Allen, Frederick Lewis, Only Yester-
day (1931), (L) 1363, 1369
Allen, Hervey, Anthony Adverse
(1933), (L) 1465
AUen, J. W., (L) 1286; English Po-
litical Thought, 1603-1660, (L)
1286; A History of Political Thought
in the Sixteenth Century (1928),
(L) 1097, (H) 1119, (L) 1177,
1182, (H) 1183, (L) 1195, 1286
Allen Philip Schuyler, Medieval Latin
Lyrics (1931), (H) 1345
Allen, Mr. Justice William, (H) 961
Allenby, General, (H) 615
Allibone, Samuel Austin, A Critical
Dictionary of English Literature,
, (H) 594
A T ombre de la croix (1917), by
Jerome and Jean Tharaud, (H)
1133, 1141
Alps, Holmes's recollection of, (H)
541
Althusius, (L) 393, 567, 682, 698,
795; Politica methodice digesta
(1603), (L) 682, 1032; Politica
methodice digesta (Friedrich, ed.,
1932), (L) 1377, 1395
Alva, Duke of, (L) 873
Alverstone, Viscount, see Webster,
Richard Everard
Alvord, Clarence Walworth, (L) 867
Amalgamated Society of Railway Serv-
ants v. Osborne, (L) 691
Ambition, character of Holmes's, (H)
339, 719, 911, 1224-25, 1227
Ambrose, Saint, (L) 679
Amendments, constitutional, (L) 721,
(H) 723
America: as picnic not a country, (L)
665, 678; Oxford's ignorance of,
(L) 1029, 1077
American Bank and Trust Co. v. Fed-
eral Reserve Bank, (H) 331, 335
American Bar Association: meeting in
England, 1924, (L) 631, 636, 637-
38; awards annual medal to Holmes,
(H) 1334
American Caravan (Kreymborg and
Mumford, ed., 1928), (L) 1120
American characteristics, (L) 45
American Column Co. v. United
States, (H) 389
American government, English mis-
conceptions of, (L) 234
American Historical Association, (L)
119, 123
American Law Institute: organization
and purposes of, (H) 482; meeting
of, (H) 486
American Law Review, (H) 6
American Railway Express v. Levee,
(H) 554
American Revolution: American apol-
ogies for, (L) 452; causes of, (L)
573; legality of, (L) 616-17, 986-
87; Adam Smith's fairness towards,
(L) 826
American scholars, their literary style,
(L) 1341-42
American statesmen, character of (ca.
1800), (L) 261
American Steel Foundries v. Tri-City
Central Trades Council, (H) 374,
389, 398
American Trade Union Delegation to
the Soviet Union, Russia after Ten
tears (1928), (H) 1071
Americans in Belgium, anecdote con-
cerning, (L) 444
American visitors in London, (L)
355-56, 512
Amery, Leopold Stennett, (L) 922
Ames, Fisher, Works of Fisher Ames
(Kirkland, ed., 1809), (L) 839,
1108
Ames, James Barr, (H) 200, (L) 691,
(H) 692,727, (L) 1475
Amesius (William Ames), Bellarminus
Enervatus (1629), (L) 366
1530
INDEX
Amherst College, (L) 142, (H) 427,
431, 434, 597, (L) 602
Amiel, Henri-Frederic, Journal intime
(2 vols.5 1883), (L) 600
Amos, Sir Maurice, (L) 809, 811-12,
819, 897-98, (H) 901, (L) 1156,
1396; The English Constitution
(1930), (L) 1256
Amos, Sheldon, (L) 809, 811
Ampere, Andre, (L) 639, 666
Amsterdam, Laski's visits to, (L) 442,
818, 1078
Amundsen, Roald, (H) 841
Anagram, Lasld devises Greek, (L)
622-23, (H) 624
Anarchists, Laskfs encounter with,
(L) 673-74. See also Goldman,
Emma
Anatole France en pantoufles (1924),
by Jean Jacques Brousson, (H) 719
Ancien regime, causes of its moral de-
cline, (L) 533
Anderson, Benjamin M., Jr., essay on
the Effects of War on Credit in
France and the United States, (H)
232; The Value of Money (1917),
(H) 91, 92
Anderson, Sherwood, (L) 708
Andler, Charles, Le manifeste com-
muniste (2 vols., 1901, 1906), (L)
476-77
Anecdotes concerning Laskfs students,
visiting Americans, scholars, and
missionaries, (L) 435, 512, 520,
543, 551, 623, 637, 640, 664, 710-
11, 713-14, 720, 742-43, 766, 788,
791, 829, 854, 858, 881, 913, 923-
24, 936, 956-57, 969, 983-84, 1004,
1035-36, 1054, 1069, 1073-74,
1093-94, 1096, 1107-1108, 1115,
1117-18, 1123-24, 1137, 1142-43,
1148-49, 1161-62, 1164, 1167,
1185, 1191, 1194-95, 1220, 1234,
1240, 1251, 1270-71, 1290-91,
1293, 1297-98, 1331, 1338, 1355,
1357, 1380, 1383-84, 1392, 1410,
1414, 1450-51, 1466-67, 1473,
1479
Angell, Norman, (L) 43; Must Britain
Travel the Moscow Road? (1926),
(L) 857, (H) 859
Anglo-American relationship: in 1918,
(L) 148; in 1924, Laski discusses
with MacDonald, (L) 588; in 1929,
(L) 1154, 1156, 1166, 1169-70; in
1933, (L) 1432
Anglo-French relations, (L) 401
Anglo-Indian relations, (L) 1167,
1197-98, 1261, 1264, 1285, 1292,
1297, 1301, 1302-1303, 1304, 1330,
1332, 1335-36, 1337-38, 1348-49,
1396, 1421. See also India
Anglo-Saxon peoples, qualities of, (L)
199
Anne of Beaujeu, (L) 402
Anson, Sir William, (L) 260, 1374;
A Memoir of Sir William Anson.,
(L) 275, 316
Anthropology, its relationships to mod-
era law, (L) 691, 787-88
Anticlericalism, (L) 574-75, 936-37,
(H) 942, 1030-31, (L) 1130, (H)
1134, (L) 1184
Antietam, (H) 463, 875-76
Anti-intellectualism, (H) 95-96, (L)
96-97, 977-78, 1048
Antitrust laws, see Sherman Act
Antonelli, fitienne, Bolshevist Russia,
(H) 258
Antwerp, Laskfs visits to: (L) 443
(August 1922), (L) 1122 (Decem-
ber 1928), (L) 1125 (January
1929), (L) 1356-57 (Janu-
ary 1932), (L) 1427-28 (January
1933), (L) 1473-74 (January
1935)
Anzilotti, Dionision, (L) 1138; Cours
de droit international (Gidel, tr.?
1929), (L) 1326
Aphorists, French and English corn-
pared, (L) 1122
Apologie pour Jesus Christ, (L)
1207
Appleton, Thomas G., (H) 872; quip
on statue of Horace Mann, (H)
1193
Aquinas, Saint Thomas, (L) 106,
379, 469, (H) 685, 689, (L) 775,
1017, (H) 1183, (L) 1190, 1249,
1371
Archer, William, (L) 740; India and
the Future, (L) 209, (H) 210
Archer-Hind, R. D., (H) 360, 364,
(L) 367
Architecture: American, (L) 1070; as
the key to history, (L) 1125; history
INDEX
1531
of, (H) 1204, 1209; Dutch, (L)
1217-18; German, (L) 1273-74
Argenson, Rene cT, ( L ) 737, Memoires
et journal (5 vok, 1857-58), (L)
525, 1341, 1343
Argument, oral, desirability of limiting
in time, (H) 579, (L) 601
Argyll, Duke of, The Reign of Law
(1866), (L) 1234
Ariel., ou La vie de Shelley ( 1923 ) by
Andre Maurois, (H) 568, (L) 1048
Aristocracy, English, (L) 143, 992,
995-96, 1004, (H) 1006
Aristophanes, (L) 652, 885, 889, (H)
891, 1090
Aristotelian Society, (L) 1059, 1076
Aristotle, (L) 68, 83, 127, (H) 166,
187, 194, 202, (L) 349, (H) 374,
(L) 460, 647, 649, 696, (H) 704,
1265; greatness of, (H) 357;
Holmes's estimate of, (L) 877,
(H) 878; Laski's estimate of, (L)
885, 1245; Metaphysics, (H) 357,
360, (L) 364; Nicomachean Ethics,
(L) 209, 735, (H) 1288; Politics,
(L) 132, 225, 449, 454, 922, 1005,
1017, 1466; Rhetoric, (L) 585;
Rhetoric, with commentary by Ed-
ward Meredith Cope (Sandys re-
vision, 3 vols., 1877), (L) 236, 361;
Rhetoric (tr. by Sir R. C. Tebb,
1909), (L) 236
Arizona Employers' Liability Cases,
(L) 225
Arkansas v. Tennessee, (H) 136
Arlen, Michael, (L) 1181; The Green
Eat (1924), (H) 684, (L) 693
Arlington cemetery, Holmes's lot at,
(H) 561, 893, 1158, 1192-43
Armaingaud, Arthur, Montaigne, pam-
phletaire (1910), (L) 1282
Armstrong, Martin, Saint Christophers
Day (1928), (L) 1098
Army officers, their qualities, (L)
1142, 1202
Arnauld, Antoine, (L) 718, 758, (H)
761, (L) 801, 931
Arnirn, Countess von, ["Elizabeth,"
pseud.], Love (1925), (L) 736-37
Arnisaeus, Henning, Doctrina politica
in genuinam methodum, quae est
Aristotelis (1630), (L) 461
Arnold. Matthew. (EH 180-81. 199.
309, 580, (L) 586, (H) 645, 856,
(L) 925, 1258, 1353; on Coleridge,
(L) 35; Morley's opinion of, (L)
349; compared with Sainte-Beuve
(L) 473, 489, 516; Biirell's recol-
lection's of, (L) 576; his philistme
dogmatism, (H) 580; his illustration
of supreme poetry, (H) 618; Laskfs
estimate of, (L) 650, 765, 1462;
Chevalley's estimate of, (L) 895;
his estimate of Thackeray, (L)
1329; Birrell's estimate of, (L)
1374; Culture and Anarchy, (L) 788;
Empedocles on Aetna, ( L ) 14; Es-
says in Criticism, (L) 760, 1281;
Friendship's Garland, (L) 1405,
1409, 1462; Mixed Essays, (L) 750,
765; "The Scholar Gypsy," (L) 14,
586, 788; "Sohrab and Rustum,"
(L) 788; "Thyrsis," (L) 586, 788
Arnold, Sidney, 1st Baron Arnold, (L)
1186, 1189, (H) 1192, (L) 1200,
1368-69
Arnold-Forster, Hugh Oakeley, (L)
789-90
Aron, Robert and Arnaud Daudieu,
Decadence de la nation francaise
(1931), (H) 1319
Art, exhibitions of, (H) 499
Art museums, (H) 538
Arthur, Chester A., (L) 1234
Artists: their political and social opin-
ions, (L) 14; as discoverers of truth,
(H) 315, 350; Belgian, their view
of the world, (L) 440-41, 527-28,
1013, 1078-79, 1217-18; their con-
tentment in receiving impressions,
(H) 958
Arts and letters in a democratic so-
ciety, (L) 227-28
Artsybashev, Michael, Tales of the
Revolution (tr., Pinkerton, 1917),
(L) 92
Asch, Sholem, Three Cities, (L) 1458,
1459
Ascham, Roger, (H) 373
Ashley, Sir William James, (L) 968;
The Adjustment of Wages, (H) 93;
The Economic Organization of Eng-
land (1914), (L) 93, (H) 94
Askwith, George Ranken, 1st Baron
Askwith, (H) 327
Askwith. Ladv Ellen, (H) 214 327
1532
INDEX
Aspinwall, Arthur, Lord Brougham
and the Whig Party (1927), (L)
960
Asquith, Anthony, (L) 299, 365
Asquith, Elizabeth, see Bibesco, Eliza-
beth Asquith
Asquith, Herbert, Lord Oxford and
Asquith, (H) 148, (L) 151, 210,
271, 276, 292, 305-306, 311, 312-
13, 317-18, 329, 340-41, (H) 342,
(L) 411, 468, 513, (H) 579; re-
signs as Prime Minister, ( L ) 40-41,
1414-15; Morle/s relations with,
(L) 278-79, 282; in Campbell-Ban-
nerman government, 1905-1906,
(L) 305-306; criticisms of Lloyd
George, (L) 313; opinion of Sir
William Anson, (L) 316; on Lord
Bolingbroke, ( L ) 329; position with
respect to Coal Strike of 1921, (L)
333, 343-44; relations with Hal-
dane, (L) 340; Laslcfs attitude
toward, (L) 341, 343-44, 348,
1095; Haldane's, Birrell's, and Mas-
singham's views of, (L) 347; lunch
for Dominion Prime Ministers, (L)
348; on the future of Oxford Uni-
versity, (L) 380; as an admirer of
Peacock, (H) 397; inaugurates cam-
paign against Lloyd George, 1922,
(L) 403; his report on Oxford and
Cambridge Universities, (L) 416;
ineffectiveness as Party leader,
1922, (L) 428, 449-50; on Vergil,
(L) 470; provincialism of his con-
versation, (L) 533; seeks Laskfs
aid in arranging collaboration be-
tween liberals and labor, November
1923, (L) 562; attitude toward
Labour successes, 1923, (L) 570-
71, 583; speech at time of establish-
ment of Labour government, 1924,
(L) 584; accepts peerage, (L) 709;
contemplates serving on Judicial
Committee, (L) 724-25, (H) 727,
(L) 733; his religious beliefs, (L)
725; as possible Chancellor of Ox-
ford, (L) 747, 759-60; on Birrell
as politician, (L) 784; as Prime
Minister, (L) 784; anecdote con-
cerning his Macrobius, (L) 784;
as speaker, (L) 827; breach with
Lloyd George, 1926, (L) 843; re-
signs Liberal leadership, (L) 885;
his life in political retirement, (L)
1024-25; his death, (L) 1028; his
early ambition for Chancellorship,
(L) 1231; his qualities, (L) 1411;
Memories and Reflections (2 vols.,
1928), (L) 1095. See also Spender,
J. A.
Asquith, M argot, Lady Oxford and
Asquith, (L) 311, (H) 332, (L)
340-41, 468, 470, 640, 724, 941,
1024-25, 1064, 1092, 1234, 1414,
1457, 1472; Holmes's affectionate
recollections of, (H) 294, 315, 323,
342, 1091-92; Laskfs impressions
of, (L) 313, 341, 343, 348, 365,
1086-87, 1457; meeting with John
Burns, (L) 320; lecture tour in
United States (1922), (L) 400,
403; Holmes lunches with, (H) 410,
414; her desire to return to political
power, (L) 562, 694, 1024-25; her
response to the Labour victory
(1923), (L) 570-71; her charac-
terization of contemporary British
statesmen, (L) 695; on Sir John
Simon, (L) 784; on Balfour, (L)
1415, 1457; The Autobiography of
Mar got Asquith (2 vols., 1920-22),
(L) 250, 292-93, 299, (H) 300,
(L) 313, (H) 315, (L) 463, 468;
Octavia (1928), (H) 1081, (L)
1086-87, (H) 1091-92
Asquith, Violet, (L) 359, 584:
Assize of Novel Disseisin, (L)
26-27
Association, right of, in France and
England, (L) 494
Astell, Mary, (L) 1155
Astor, Lady, (L) 319, 325, (H) 327,
(L)1242; Holmes's recollections of,
(H) 322
Astor, Waldorf, 2nd Viscount Astor,
(L) 1194
Athanasian creed, (H) 605
Atheism, need for a gospel of, (L)
199; as an enthusiastic creed, (H)
1153, 1158
Atkin, Lord, (L) 408, 501, 502, 546-
47, 550, 736, 763, 1026, 1368, 1390
Atkinson, Charles Milner, Jeremy Ben-
tham, His Life and Work (1905),
(L) 141
INDEX
1533
Atkinson, John, Baron Atkinson, (L)
490, 683, 1026
Atlay, J. B., The Victorian Chancellors
(2 vols., 1906-1908), (L) 902,
1470-71
Attorney-General of Australia v. Aus-
tralian Sugar Refining Co., (L) 392
Attorney-General v. De Keysers Ho-
tel, see Case of Requisition
Atwater v. Guernsey, (H) 300
Aubertin, Charles, L'esprit public au
XVIII9 siecle (2nd ed., 1873), (L)
500-501, 525, 677
Aubrey, John, Brief Lives, (H) 556,
579, 587, (L) 630, (H) 645, (L)
1038
Augustine, Saint, (L) 325, 449, 476,
( H ) 478; as precursor of Calvinism,
(H) 478; Laski's estimate of, (L)
1002; De civitate Dei, (L) 433,
568, (H) 569; Confessions, (H)
300, 305, 307-308, 1003, (L) 1005
Augustinus Triumphus, (L) 682
Aulard, Francois, (L) 419, 424, (H)
426, (L) 497, 724, 731, 951, 977,
1306, 1454
Austen, Jane, (L) 407, 433, 443, 449,
503, 596, 695, 737, 860, 869-70,
(H) 950, 994, (L) 1021, 1322,
1409; Laski's admiration for, (L)
325, 344, 530, 573, 625, 1175;
Holmes's estimate of, (H) 519, 701,
862-63, 1270; BiirelTs MS of an un-
published work of, ( L ) 756; Emma,
(L) 860, (H) 1168-69, 1172, (L)
1175, 1178; Mansfield Park, (L)
860, 1175; Pride and Prejudice,
(L) 449, 517-18, (H) 519, 522-23,
(L) 860, 1175
Austin, Charles, (L) 420
Austin, John, (L) 68, 156, (H) 180,
(L) 181-82, (H) 182, (L) 525,
539, 575, 676, 691, 775, 847, (H)
886, 974, (L) 1229, (H) 1274;
Leslie Stephen's comments on, (L)
258; Holmes's early criticism of,
(H) 824
Australia; anecdote of Baptist from,
(L) 819; its universities, (L) 1203
Australians, their qualities, (L) 509
Austria, (L) 1468
Avarice, a virtue in the old, (H) 668,
911, 949, 966
Avis important aux refugies (1690),
(L) 571, 581, 732, 1021, 1223. See
also Bayle, Pierre
Awdelay, John, The 'Fraternity of Vag-
abonds (1575), (L) 948
Axioms, Holmes's, (H) 485
Aydelotte, Frank, Elizabethan Rogues
and Vagabonds (1913), (L) 948
Azana, Manuel, (L) 1446
Azay-le-Rideau, chateau at, (L)
1323
Azo, Portius, Summa institutionum
(1563), (L) 461, (H) 462-63
Babbitt, Irving, (L) 1243; Democracy
and Leadership (1924), (L) 665
Babeuf, Francois, (L) 880, 998, 1021,
1212, 1213, 1220, 1427
Bach, Johann Sebastian, (L) 608, 696,
(H) 702, (L) 1238
Bachaumont, Louis Petit de, Memoires
secrets de Bachaumont (36 vols.,
1777-89), (L) 527
Bacon, Francis, (L) 670, 678, 699,
820, (H) 897, (L) 1454
Bacon, Roger, (H) 354, (L) 360
Bagehot, Walter, (L) 23-24, 105, 182,
285, 321, 402, (H) 410, (L) 539,
1400, 1458; on Sir G. C. Lewis, (L)
220, 539, 649; as influence on
Woodrow Wilson, (L) 242; his lim-
itations, (L) 472; on the American
Constitution, (L) 494, (H) 529,
(L) 535; The English Constitution
(Isted., 1867), (L) 213, 674; The
English Constitution (Introduction
by Lord Balfour, 1928), (L) 1074;
Literary Studies (1879), (L) 543;
Physics and Politics (1869), (L)
540
Bagnold, Enid, Serena Blandish
(1925), (L) 698
Baildon, William Paley, editor, Les
Reportes del Cases in Camera Stel-
lata, 1593-1609, (1894), (L) 858,
861
Bailhache, Sir Clement Meacher, (L)
1360
Bain, Alexander, (L) 471, 673, (H)
675, (L) 675; John Stuart Mill
(1882), (L) 228
Baird, Henry Martin, (L) 1449-50
Baker, George Pierce, (L) 780
Baker, Newton D., (L) 98, 132
1534
INDEX
Baker, Ray Stannard, Woodroto Wil-
son., Life and Letters ( 8 vols., 1927-
39), (L) 1025
Bakke, Edward Wight, The Unem-
ployed Man (1933), (L) 1454
Bakunin, Mikhail, (L) 673
Baldus, Petrus, (H) 6, (L) 775
Baldwin, George William, (H) 518,
519
Baldwin, Simeon, (H) 519
Baldwin, Stanley, (L) 506, 531, 551,
673, 1007, 1041, 1095, 1117, 1150,
1154, 1271; his pretension of sim-
plicity, (L) 566; speech at time of
formation of Labour government
(1924), (L) 584; dreads Premier-
ship (October 1924), (L) 665;
Laskfs estimate of, (L) 665, 736,
827, 908-909, 1167; Margot As-
quith's characterization of, ( L ) 695;
on Lloyd George, Asquith, and
Bonar Law, (L) 827; his handling
of the general strike and coal strike
(1926), (L) 838-39, 840, (H) 841,
(L) 843, 852, (H) 856, (L) 881;
his Trade Disputes Act of 1927,
(L) 935; offers Laski secretaryship
of Cabinet's research committee,
(L) 1104
Baldwin v. Missouri, (H) 1253, 1258-
59
Balfour, Arthur J., 1st Earl of Balfour,
(L) 79, (H) 87, (L) 125, 400,
627-28, 736, 741, 756, 882, 1056;
Morley's respect for, (L) 282; pre-
sides at meeting of Sociological So-
ciety, (L) 311; at Disarmament
Conference (1921), (H) 385, 390;
on Sidgwick, (L) 648; on Birken-
head, (L) 655; his insignificance as
philosopher, (L) 912, (H) 917; on
Lloyd George, (L) 1064; his di-
vided loyalties to Asquith and Lloyd
George, (L) 1414-15; Margot As-
quith's estimate of, (L) 1415, 1457;
Chapters of Autobiography (1930),
(L) 1290; Foundations of Belief,
(H) 87; his Introduction to Bage-
hot's English Constitution (1928),
(L) 1074
Balfour, Lady Frances, Ne oblivis-
caris: Dinna Forget (2 vok, 1930),
(L) 1234, 1235
Balguy, John, (L) 752
Ball, W. W. Rouse, A Short Account
of the History of Mathematics (5th
ed., 1912), (L) 1074
Balliol College, Oxford; BirrelFs defi-
nition of its graduates, (L) 521,
829; Calverley's quip concerning its
architecture, (L) 778; Holmes's
recollections of in 1866, (H) 856
Ball's Bluff, (H) 457, 949
Balzac, Honore" de, (L) 56, (H) 78,
(L) 97, 285, 368, 522, 573, 640,
650, 687, (H) 879, (L) 908, 992,
1474; Chouans, (H) 879; Contes
drolatiques, (H) 875; Le cousin
Pons, (L) 756; Un grand homme
de province a Paris, (H) 879; La
peau de chagrin, (H) 1072; P&re
Goriot, (H) 364, 872, 879
Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez, sieur de,
Aristippe (1658), (L) 852; Le
prince (1631), (L) 801
Bancroft, Richard, Dangerous Posi-
tions and Proceedings (1593), (L)
316
Bangorian controversy, (L) 174,456
Banking, (L) 125
Barber of Seville, (L) 497
Barbier, Antoine Alexandre, Diction-
naire des outrages anonymes, (L)
1025
Barbier, Edmond Jean Frangois, (L)
611, 980; Journal de Barbier (8
vok, 1866), (L) 518, 525, 611
Barbour, Thomas, (H) 111, 112, 176,
274, 917, 938, 971, 1159, 1420-21
Barbusse, Henri, Le feu (1917), (H)
107, (L) 108, 110, 113, (H) 281
Barclay, William, De potestate papae
(1609), (L) 289,321
Bardoux, Agenor, Guizot (1894), (L)
79, 84
Barere, Bertrand, Memoirs, (H) 561
Bargeman, Belgian, Laskfs conversa-
tion with, (L) 1079-80
Barker Painting Co. v. Local No. 734,
(H) 1247
Barker, Sir Ernest, (L) 141, 193, 236,
(H) 237, (L) 253, 890, 1248;
Church, State, and Study (1930),
(L) 1272
Barlow, Robert Shaw, (L) 92, (H)
372, 447, 860, 879, 1162, 1166
INDEX
1535
Barlow, Thomas, Brutum fulmen: or
The Bull of Pope Pius V concerning
the Damnation, Excommunication
and Deposition of Q. Elizabeth
(1681), (L) 289-90
Barnes, Albert Coombs, (L) 1315
Barnes, William, Jr., (L) 362
Baron Munchausen, (H) 229
Barrett Wendell and his Letters
(1924), by M. A. DeWolfe Howe,
(L) 690. See also Wendell, Barrett
Barrie, Sir James, (L) 562, 570, 664,
694 980, 1024, 1032, 1157, 1200,
1419; suggestion that he be awarded
Order of Merit, (L) 400; discusses
theater with Shaw, (L) 683, 740,
1419; anecdote of his book pur-
chase, (L) 725; Holmes's estimate
of, (H) 741; Wells's estimate of,
(L) 997; A Window in Thrums
(1889), (H) 1000
Barristers and solicitors compared, (L)
1202
Barristers, English, their provincialism,
(L) 923
Bartels v. Iowa, (L) 507
Barthelemy, Joseph, La crise de la
democratie contemporaine (1931),
(L) 1400; Les institutions poli-
tiques de lAllemagne contemporaine
(1915), (L) 15
Bartlett, Sidney, (H) 1081
Bartolozzi, Francesco, (L) 778
Bartolus of Sassoferrato, (L) 7, 274,
775, 1295
Barton, William E., The Life of Abra-
ham Lincoln (2 vols., 1925), (L)
802, (H) 804
Bataille, Albert, (H) 1238-39
Bate, John, The Portraiture of Hypoc-
risy, (L) 412
Bates v. Dresser, (H) 240, 248
Bateson, Mary, (L) 47
Baudelaire, Pierre, (L) 61, 472, 690,
777
Baxter, Richard, (L) 1148
Bayle, Pierre, (L) 514, 533, 539, 715,
720, (H) 727, (L) 744,766, 792,
798, 928, 977, 1021, 1025, 1087,
1226, 1307, 1341, 1354, 1461; Laski
given his Works, (L) 265, 371; the
character of his genius, (L) 726,
732, 1223; his correspondence, (L)
740; Commentaire philosophique
sur ces paroles de I'Evangile de
saint Luc: 'Contrains-les dentrer*
(L) 732; Critique generate de I'his-
toire du Calvinisme de M. Maim-
bourg (1682), (L) 732; Diction-
naire historique et critique, (L)
732; Nouvelles de la republique des
lettres, (L) 1356; Oeuvres diverses,
(L) 734, 982; Pensees diverses sur
la comete de 1680 (1682), (L)
1087
Beadnell, Maria, (H) 1119
Beaglehole, Ernest, Property; A Study
of Social Psychology (1931), (L)
1335
Beale, Joseph Henry, (L) 330, (H)
332, 335, (L) 1254; Bartolus on the
Conflict of Laws, (H) 181
Beales, Hugh Lancelot, (L) 1111
Beard, Charles A., (L) 592; An Eco-
nomic Interpretation of the Consti-
tution (1913), (H) 4, (L) 4, (H)
1109; The Idea of National Interest
(1934), (L) 1468; reviews Political
Thought in England from Locke to
Bentham, (L) 295
Beard, Charles A. and Mary, The Rise
of American Civilization, (L) 953,
956, (H) 961, (L) 963, 1029, 1145,
(H) 1395, (L) 1398
Beard, Charles A. and William, The
American Leviathan (1930), (L)
1310
Beardsley, Aubrey, (L) 852, (H) 855
Beatty, Lord, (L) 502
Beaverbrook, Lord, (L) 995
Becanus, John, Serenissimi Jacobi An-
tliae regis apologias (1609), (L)
45
Beccaria, (L) 536,962
Beck, James M., (H) 430, (L) 452,
513, (H) 569, 579, (L) 583, 700,
(H) 733, (L) 818, (H) 998-99,
(L) 1002, (H) 1003, 1015, 1045;
Holmes's estimate of, (H) 515, 719,
823; Brandeis's estimate of, see
Brandeis, estimate of Beck; The
Constitution of the United States,
(L) 485, 732; A Diary of Armistice
Days, (H) 579
Becker, Carl, (L) 694, (H) 701, (L)
1317, 1341-42; The Declaration of
1536
INDEX
Becker, Carl (Continued)
Independence (1922), (L) 483;
The Eve of the Revolution (1918),
(L) 222, (H) 224; The Heavenly
City of the Eighteenth Century
Philosophers (1932), (L) 1412-13
Beckford, William (1709-1770), (L)
276-77
Beckford, William (1759-1844), (L)
276-77
Bede de la Gormadiere, Jean, Le droit
des roys centre le cardinal Bellar-
min, (L) 1204
'Bedford Cut Stone Co. v. Journeymen
Stone Cutters' Association, (L) 937
Bedier, Joseph, Le roman de Tristan
etYseult, (H) 541
Beebe, William, Galapagos, World's
End (1924), (H) 598
Beer, Max, (L) 608, 610
Beer, Thomas, Hanna (1929), (L)
1431
Beerbohm, Sir Max, (L) 667, 698; on
Andrew Lang, (L) 1061; And Even
Now (1920), (H) 1277; Seven
Men, (L) 698; Zuleika Dobson
(1911), (H) 1260
Beethoven, Ludwig von (H) 161, (L)
608, 657, 695-96, (H) 702
Behaviorism, (H) 1067, 1110, 1113,
1128
Behmen, Jacob, (L) 929
Behn, Mrs. Aphra, (L) 484
Behrman, S. N., (L) 1022, 1024, 1379
Bekinsau, John, (L) 367
Belasco, Philip S., Authority in Church
and State (1928), (L) 1108, 1112
Belgion, Montgomery, Our Present
Philosophy of Life (1929), (L)
1206
Belgium, Laski's impressions of: (L)
440-41, 469 (1922); (L) 582-
83 (January 1924); (L) 1013-
14 (January 1928); (L) 1078-79
(July 1928); (L) 1217-18 (Janu-
ary 1930)
Belief, its grounding in preference and
mood, (H) 955,958, 1019
Bell, Clive, An Account of French
Painting (1931), (H) 1387
Bell, Gertrude, (H) 857, 1055; The
Letters of Gertrude Bell (2 vols.,
1927), (H) 1023, (L) 1030
Bellarmine, Robert, (L) 923; De
potestate summi pontificis in rebus
temporalibus adversus Gulielmum
Bardaium (1610), (L) 1042, 1057
Belloc, Hilaire, (L) 250, 964; The
Elements of the Great War: The Sec-
ond Phase (1916), (H) 18; The
House of Commons and Monarchy
(1920), (L) 307; Richelieu (1929),
(L) 1245
Below, Georg von, (L) 1279-80
Benda, Julien, ( L ) 1048; Mon premier
testament (1910), (L) 1143; Les
sentiments de Critias, (H) 142; La
trahison des clercs, (L) 1033, 1048
Benedict XIV, Pope, (L) 532
Benedict XV, Pope, (L) 80, 109
Benes, Eduard, (L) 1452; My War
Memoirs (Server, tr., 1928), (L)
1108
Benet, Stephen Vincent (1827-1895),
A Treatise on Military Law ( 1862),
(H) 363
Benet, Stephen Vincent, John Brown's
Body (1928), (H) 1133
Benjamin, Judah P.? (L) 730
Benjamin, Lewis Saul, The Life and
Letters of William Beckford, (L)
277; The Life and Letters of Wil-
liam Cobbett (2 vols., 1913), (L)
244-45
Benjamin, Robert M., (H) 457, 458,
(L) 461-62, (H) 463, (L) 465,
508, 512, (H) 515, (L) 836, (H)
1172
Benn, Alfred William, The Greek Phi-
losophers (1882), (L) 206; The
History of English Rationalism in
the Nineteenth Century (2 vols.,
1906), (L) 209, 436, 1268
Benn, Wedgwood, (L) 1197-98
Bennett, Arnold, (L) 491, 520, 982,
1190, 1231, 1299; Laski's first meet-
ing with, (L) 292; his atheism, (L)
475; on Marcel Proust, (L) 479-80,
1099; on Goethe, (L) 520-21; his
estimate of Sainte-Beuve, (L) 521;
on Joyce's Ulysses, (L) 553; dis-
cusses novelists' craft with Wells,
(L) 783, (H) 785; on American
fiction, (L) 1099, 1170; on Dostoi-
evski, (L) 1099; on Aldous Huxley,
(L) 1167; Laski dines with (July
INDEX
1537
1929), (L) 1170-71; his death, (L)
1313-14; his faults and virtues, (L)
1419-20; Journal, 1929 (1930),
(L) 1261-62; The Journals of Ar-
nold Bennett (Flower, ed., 3 vols.,
1932-33), (L) 1388, 1419-20,
1439; The Old Wives' Tale, (L)
441, 480, 559, 1154; The Pretty
Lady (1918), (L) 170; The Regent
(4th ed., 1913), (L) 151; Ricey-
man Steps (1923), (L) 559
Bennett, Richard Bedford, 1st Vis-
count Bennett, (L) 1289
Benson, Arthur Christopher, (L) 552
Bent, Silas, Mr. Justice Holmes: A
Biography, (L) 1318
Bentham, Jeremy, (L) 50, 105, 138,
141, 155, (H) 180, (L) 220, 237,
247, 464, 476, 661, 664, 683, 691,
707, 847, 868, (H) 886, (L) 962,
998, 1305, 1363-64; Laskfs admi-
ration for, (L) 179, 236; Laskfs
search for his Works, (L) 248, 401,
429, 465, 629, (H) 631, (L) 767,
(H) 769, (L) 852, 947, 1055,
1245-46, 1359, 1478; his manu-
scripts at University College, (L)
388; his confidence in Parliamentary
government, (L) 441-42; possible
influence of Baron Holbach on, (L)
488, 489; his style, (L) 639; con-
trasted with Rousseau, (L) 655;
Hazlitt on, (L) 792; on bicameral-
ism, (L) 1040; his love affair, (L)
1050-51, his copy of Hume's Es-
says, (L) 1168; Laski acquires a
MS of, (L) 1340-41, 1363, 1471;
A Comment on the Commentaries
(Everett, ed., 1928), (L) 825,
1050-51, 1061, (H) 1102; Consti-
tutional Code for the Use of All
Nations, (L) 228, 388, 568, 957;
Essay on Political Tactics (1816),
(L) 179, 412, (H) 414; "Pauper
Management Improved," (L) 1343
Bentinck, Lord George, (L) 226
Bentinck, Lord William, (L) 184
Bentley, Richard, (L) 1002; Disser-
tation on Phalaris, (L) 371
Berenson, Bernard, (L) 125, (H) 128,
(L) 992; calls on Holmes, (H) 319;
The Study and Criticism of Italian
Art, (L) 193
Bergerv. United States, (H) 208, (L)
310
Bergson, Henri, (H) 3, (L) 5, (H)
6, 63, 95, (L) 120, 364, 507, 574,
(H) 625, (L) 661, 729, 977-78,
1048, 1095, (H) 1266; Holmes's
low regard for, (H) 580; Alexan-
der's opinion of, (L) 661, 979, 1284,
1429; Wyndham Lewis's criticism
of, (L) 1074; Meyerson's opinion
of, (L) 1237, (H) 1239, (L) 1376;
Creative Evolution, (H) 357, 360
Berkeley, Bishop, (L) 627, 696, 771,
1354; The Querist, (L) 771
Bernard, Samuel, Comte de Coubert,
(L) 582
Bernays, Jakob, Joseph Justus Scali-
ger (1855), (L) 571
Bernhardi, Friedrich von, (L) 149
Bernhardt, Sarah, (L) 352, 1357
Bernouffli, Jean, (L) 639, (H) 645
Bernstorff, Count Albrecht von, (L)
516
Berth, Edouard, (L) 103; Les mefaits
des intellectuels, (H) 95, (L) 96,
(H) 108
Berthelemy, Henri, (L) 102
Berthelot, Gilles, (L) 1323
Berthollet, Claude Louis, (L) 969
Besant, Mrs. Annie, (L) 851
Beseler, Karl Georg Christof, (L)
237
Bethell, Richard, Baron Westbury,
(L) 295, 1385, 1471
"Bettabilitarian," Holmes as, (H) 131,
(L) 1282, (H) 1314-15
Bevan v. Nixon's Navigation Co., (L)
1167
Beveridge, Albert J., (L) 172, 179,
(H) 346-47, 355, (L) 443, 462,
711, (H) 753-54, 757, (L) 760,
(H) 1406, (L) 1409; choice be-
tween political and literary career,
(H) 372, (L) 375; defeat in cam-
paign for Senate, (H) 459; plans
for and progress on his Lincoln,
(H) 642, 660, 754, 757, 761, 773,
804, 846, 850, (L) 854, (H) 855,
857, (L) 858-59, (H) 859, (L)
865, (H) 892, 893, (L) 896; his
death, (H) 938, (L) 941, (H)
943; Life of John Marshall (4 vols.,
1916-19), (H) 46, (L) 47, (H)
1538
INDEX
Beveridge, Albert J. (Continued)
49, (L) 152, (H) 153, 233, (L)
241, (H) 459, (L) 859
Beveridge, Mrs. Albert J., (H) 1159,
1163, 1166, 1177, 1277, (L) 1319,
(H) 1406
Beveridge, Sir William, (L) 270, 345,
454, 788, 890, 1117, 1145, 1147
Bevin, Ernest, (L) 595
Beza, Theodore, De haereticis a civili
magistratu puniendis libellus adver-
sus Martini Bellii (1554), (L) 461
Bibesco, Elizabeth Asquith, (L) 313,
(H) 339,386,390, (L) 1472
Bible, its modernities, (H) 1061
Biblical criticism, (L) 150, 480-81,
1262
Bicameralism, (L) 475, (H) 478, (L)
554, 676, 696, 1040
Biddle, Francis, (L) 636, 638
Biddle, Lydia, (H) 227
Bigelow, Melville M., Placita Anglo-
Normannica (1881), (L) 138
Biggs, Josiah, Newton s Geometry not
Fatal to the Incarnation, (L) 1066
Bigham, John Charles, 1st Viscount
Mersey, (L) 1202
Bill of Rights, (H) 203, 529-30, (L)
535. See also Rights of Man; Free-
dom of Speech
Billy, Andre, Diderot (1932), (L)
1376
Bilson, Thomas, The True Difference
betweene Christian Subiection and
Unchristian Rebellion (1585), (L)
285
Binstead, Arthur M., Works (2 vols.,
1927), (L) 1043-44
Binyon, Laurence, ( L ) 715-16
Biographies: (L) 154-55, 506, (H)
753, 810; the best, (L) 847, 1165,
1413, 1422, 1470; Holmes's small
interest in, (H) 892, 1127, 1263
Birge-Forbes Co. v. Heye, (H) 229
Birkenhead, Lord, (L) 362, 408, 410,
566, (H) 579, (L) 583, 669, (H)
672, (L) 732, 764, 855, 963, 995,
1018, (H) 1023, (L) 1058, 1231;
as after-dinner speaker, (L) 351;
Holmes's recollection of, (H) 354,
417, 666; his faults, (L) 403;
Laskfs estimate of, (L) 415, 664-
65, 669; his effectiveness during
general strike, 1926, (L) 840; Fa-
mous Trials of History ( 1926 ) , ( H )
1336; Points of View (1922), (L)
1018; The World in 2030, (L) 1249
Birmingham, G. A. [pseudonym of
J, O. Hannay], Inisheeny (1920),
(L) 1082-83; Spanish Gold ( 1913),
(H) 659
Birrell, Augustine, (L) 347-48, 352,
455, 533, 573, 606, 626-27, 637,
654, (H) 658, 668, (L) 670, 725,
751, 756, 789-90, 820, 833, 844,
896, 934-35, 980, 1044, (H) 1189,
( L ) 1268; Laskfs first meeting with,
(L) 306; on Herman Melville, (H)
323; Laski's admiration for, (L)
347-48; as conversationalist, (L)
352, 475, 533, 696, 1065; on Bryce,
(L) 375, 1042, 1268; on Thomas
Love Peacock, (L) 391; on Milton's
prose style, (L) 391; on William
Hazlitt, (L) 403, 475, 493, 1374;
on Hobbes, (L) 408, 442; impres-
sions of Taft, (L) 437; his critical
acumen, ( L ) 437; on "toilet books,"
(L) 448-49; on religion, (L) 475;
as after-dinner speaker, (L) 476,
521; on Lamb, (L) 493; on Berg-
son, (L) 507; his attitude toward
scholarship, (L) 575-76; recollec-
tions of Matthew Arnold, (L) 576,
(H) 580; on Morley's Compromise,
(L) 593; on Morle/s Diderot, (L)
593; on Crabbe, (L) 602; on
Goethe, (L) 602; on Carlyle, (L)
603; on Kant and Byron, (L) 620;
on L. Stephen, (L) 626-27; his
imagined dinner party, (L) 633; on
openings in great books, (L) 633;
on Macaulay, ( L ) 656; on publish-
ing series of small books, (L) 658;
on the appointment of judges, (L)
740, 1005; Asquith on his political
career, (L) 784; his appetite as
reader, (L) 802; on Swift, (L) 847;
his rating of conversationalists, (L)
902; his anecdote of Stephen and
Sedan, (L) 937; his definition of a
gentleman, (L) 1008; on Birken-
head, (L) 1018; his reason for ag-
nosticism, (L) 1022; on Emily
Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell, and Gosse,
(L) 1065; on the great 19th-century
INDEX
1539
judges, (L) 1191; Holmes's esti-
mate of, (H) 1260; on Roosevelt,
(L) 1268; on Tennyson, Arnold,
and Anson, (L) 1374; Essays about
Men, Women, and Books (1899),
(H) 1260, 1269; Obiter Dicta, (H)
1189, 1259, 1269; Res judicatae
(1892), (H) 1260, 1269; William
Hazlitt (1902), (L) 13, (H) 653,
(L) 657
Birth control: (H) 207, 385, (L) 399,
(H) 523, 597, 761, (L) 770, (H)
888, 942; anecdote concerning meet-
ing to discuss, (L) 963; Laski lec-
tures on, (L) 1343
Bismarck, (L) 9, 40, 132, 547, 1040,
1336
Bissell, Louis G., (H) 318
Black and White Taxi Co. v. Brown
and Yellow Taxi Co., (H) 1027,
1045, (L) 1050
Blackburn, Colin, Baron Blackburn,
(L) 509, 691, 726, 765, 795, 1005,
1065, 1099, 1142, 1191
Blackstone, (L) 172; Commentaries
on the Laws of England, (H) 430,
704, (L) 825,830, 1255
Blackwood, Adam, Apologia pro regi-
bus adversus Georgii Buchanani
(1581), (L) 401
Blaine, James G.? Lodge's position
concerning his nomination, 1894,
(H) 680
Blake, William, (H) 496, (L) 779,
1244, 1245
Blanc, Louis, (L) 472, 493, 675-76
Blankenship, Russell, American Litera-
ture as an Expression of the Na-
tional Mind (1931), (L) 1361
Blanqui, Louis Auguste, (L) 1212,
1410, 1413; Critique sociale (1885),
(L) 1445; La patrie en danger
(1871), (L) 1442
Blasphemy laws, repeal of, (L) 1198,
1219
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, (L) 1388
Blennerhassett, Lady, Madame de
Stael, Her Friends and Her Jn/Zw-
ence(3vols., 1889), (L) 1190
Bloch, Jean Richard, La nuit kurde
(1925), (H) 958
Block v. Hirsch, (H) 331-32
Bkdgett v. Holden, (H) 994
Blois, (L) 1321
Blum, Leon, his aphorism on revolu-
tions, (L) 1371
Blunden, Edmund, (L) 1238; Leigh
Hunt (1930), (L) 1255-56; Pas-
torals, (L) 283; Votive Tablets
(1931), (L) 1344
Bluntschli, Johann Kasper, (L) 237
Boccaccio, Decameron, (H) 888
Bodin, Jean, (H) 6, (L) 246, 371,
435, 480, 697-98, (H) 918, (L)
1014, 1025, 1097, 1098, 1321, 1366,
1397; common misconceptions of
his political theory, (L) 847-48,
(H) 849; his influence on Montes-
quieu, (L) 1025, 1168, 1298; Apol-
ogie 'de Rene Herpin pour la
republique de J. Bodin (1594), (L)
1119-20, 1148; La response de Jean
Bodin a M. de Ualestroit (1568),
( H ) 727; The Six Bookes of a Com-
monweale (Richard Knolles, tr.,
1606), (L) 271, 480, 962, 1313,
1339, (H) 1345, (L) 1410; Les six
limes de la republique, (L) 242,
(H) 727, (L) 1162, 1322
Boehmer, Heinrich, Luther and the
Reformation in -the Light of Mod-
ern Research (Porter, tr., 1930),
(L) 1293
Boer War, (H) 474
Boetie, Etienne de la, (L) 496; Dis-
cours de la servitude volontaire, ou
Le contre-un (1577), (L) 428, 451
Bogomoloff, Dimitri, (L) 1226
Bohm von Bawerk, Eugen, Capital
and Interest (1890), (L) 553
Bohning v. Ohio, (H) 508
Boileau, Nicolas, (L) 715, 1236,
1341
Boissier, Gaston, Ciceron et ses amis,
(L) 52; La fin du paganisme (6th
ed., 1908), (L) 66, 109
Bolingbroke, Lord, (L) 172, 216, 329,
532, 1187, 1284; Works (5 vols.),
(L) 141
Bolitho, Hector, Albert the Good and
the Victorian Reign (1932), (L)
1386
Bolland, William Craddock, (L) 667;
The General Eyre ( 1922), (L) 412,
(H) 414; A Manual of Jear Book
Studies (1925), (H) 803
1540
INDEX
Bolshevism: Kautsky's analysis of, (L)
252; its psychology as shown by
Trotsky, (L) 829-30; the faith of
its followers, (L) 871
Bonald, Vicomte de, (L) 16, 20, 83;
Works, (L) 392
Bonar, James, (L) 600, 1005; his in-
troduction to catalogue of Adam
Smith's library, (L) 465; Malthus
and His Work (1885), (L) 277,
680, 1294; Moral Sense (1930),
(L) 1294-95; Philosophy and Po-
litical Economy (1893), (H) 431
Bonbright, James C., (L) 858
Bone, Muirhead, (L) 1079
Bonhams case, (L) 239
Bonn, Moritz J., Prosperity (Ray, tr.,
1931), (L) 1348
Bonnecase, Julien, Science du droit et
romantisme (1928), (L) 1171
Book collectors, Japanese, ( L ) 446
Book dealers: Laski's favorites among,
(L) 779, 805-806, 861, 923, 952;
in Paris, (L) 1049, 1378, 1404-
1405, 1461-62
Book of Oliver, The, by Laski, (L)
71-74
Borah, William E., (L) 976-77
Borchard, Edwin M., (H) 897, 964-
65, (L) 1148, 1233
Borden, Sir Robert, (L) 236
Boredom, as an unpardonable mood,
(L) 908, (H) 914
Borel, Eugene, (L) 1138
Bores, (H) 1071, (L) 1287
Borglum, Gutzon, (H) 845
Borrow, George, his possible influence
on Herman Melville, (H) 323-24,
(L) 334-35, (H) 336; Lavengro,
(L) 160, (H) 327, (L) 334, (H)
1320; Romany Rye, (H) 1320;
Wild Wales, (L) 334
Bosanquet, Bernard, (L) 131-32, 156,
247, 283, 387, 454, 821; his ideal-
ism, (L) 475; his death, (L) 484;
Holmes's estimate of, (H) 485;
Logic, or, The Morphology of
Knowledge (2 vok, 1888), (H)
710; The Philosophical Theory of
the State (1899), (L) 127; The
Philosophical Theory of the State
(3rd ed., 1920), (L) 283; Social
and International Ideals (1917),
(L) 98
Bossuet, Jacques Benigne, (L) 53, 71,
476, 540, 623, 703, (H) 713, (L)
714, 715, 726, 732, 907, 931, 1002,
(H) 1003, (L) 1116-17, 1151,
1236, 1301, 1317, 1356; his funeral
orations, (L) 612, 627; Laskfs esti-
mate of, (L) 710, 798; the influ-
ence of Hobbes on, (L) 798, (H)
800, (L) 848, 977, 1110; his com-
pliant trimming, (L) 984; the Eng-
lish canon's plagiarism of, ( L ) 1381
Boston: its attitudes towards Felix
Frankfurter and Laski, (L) 185,
(H) 193-94, 491; its view of Amer-
ican literature, (L) 690
Boston Police Strike, (L) 213, (H)
217, (L) 218, (H) 529, (L) 535-
36, (H) 681; Harvard's "inquisi-
tion" of Laski after, (L) 952
Boston Sand and Gravel Co. v. United
States, (H) 1106
Boswell, James: his journals and per-
sonal papers, (L) 1232; Life of
Samuel Johnson, (L) 36, (H) 38,
(L) 39, 151, 435, 498, 749, 802,
(H) 803, (L) 847,907
Boucher, Francois, (L) 864
Boucher, Jean, (L) 419; Apologie
pour Jehan Chastel (1595), (L)
379; De fusta Henrici Tertii abdica-
tione (1691), (L) 442; Sermons de
la simulee conversion et nullite de
la pretende absolution de Henri
de Bourbon (1593), (L) 686, 697
Boudin, Louis, Government by Judi-
ciary (2 vols., 1932), (L) 1371
Bougie, Celestin, Essais sur le regime
des castes, (L) 60, (H) 60, (L)
61; La sociologie de Proudhon
(1911), (L) 80, 81-82
Boulainvilliers, Henri, comte de, (L)
922, 969
Bourdaloue, Louis, (L) 540, 1356
Bourdelle, Antoine, (L) 1319
Bourgeoisie, its responsibility for crea-
tion of ideas, (H) 945-46
Bourget, Paul, (L) 79, 83, 84, (H)
187, (L) 440,711, (H) 911; Ana-
tole France's opinion of, (L) 497;
Thibaudet's comment on, ( L ) 1048;
INDEX
1541
Essais de psychologie contempo-
raine (1883), (H) 79; L'etape
(1902), (L) 83; Sociologie et lit-
terature (L) 79
Bourgin, Hubert, Fourier (1905), (L)
585
Bourne, Henry Richard Fox, The Life
of. John Locke (1876), (L) 123
Bourne, Randolph, History of a Lit-
erary Radical and Other Essays,
(L) 263, (H) 264
Bousson, , work on religion in
France in 17th century, (L) 1441
Boutmy, fimile, The English People;
a Study of Their Political Psychol-
ogy (English, tr. 1904), (L) 57
Boutroux, Emile, The Contingency of
the Laws of Nature (Rothwell, tr.,
1916), (H) 377
Bowen, Lord, (L) 172, 257, 517, 691,
694, 759, 765, 795, 1005, 1008,
1038, 1099, 1142, 1191, 1271, 1433;
Bryce's respect for, (L) 301; on the
signs of age among Law Lords, (L)
799; his reluctance to discuss serious
questions, (H) 849
Bowers, Claude G., Beveridge and the
Progressive Era (1932), (H) 1184,
1225, 1406, (L) 1409; Jefferson and
Hamilton (1926), (L) 837; The
Tragic Era (1929), (H) 1183-84,
(L) 1198, 1220, (H) 1225, 1406
Bowley, Sir Arthur Lyon, (L) 716,
790-91
Boy Scout movement, (L) 585
Boxer, anecdote concerning, (L) 637—
38
Bracton, (L) 58; Note Book (3 vok,
Maitland, ed., 1887), (L) 899, 1255
Bradby, G. F., Mrs. D. (1928), (L)
1030
Bradby, M. K., Psycho-analysis and
its Place in Life (1919), (L) 220
Bradlaugh, Charles, (L) 160, 1383,
1454, 1455
Bradley, A. C., Shakespearean Trag-
edy (1904), (L) 364-65, (H) 368,
372, (L) 375
Bradley, F. H., (L) 23, (H) 24, (L)
400, 467, 661-62, 686, (H) 689,
705-706, 710, (L) 827, 1394;
Laskfs estimate of, (L) 717-18,
729; Essays on Truth and Reality
(1914), (H) 705, 705-706; Ethical
Studies (1876), (L) 718; The Prin-
ciples of Logic (1st ed., 1883), (L)
484, (H) 485
Bradstreet, Anne, (H) 645
Brailsford, H. N., (L) 270; The Rus-
sian Workers* Republic (1921),
(L) 341
Bramhall, John, Castigations of Mr.
Hobbes (1657), (L) 480; A De-
fence of True Liberty (1655), (L)
480
Brampton, C. K., The Defensor Minor
of Marsilius of Padua (1922), (L)
467
Bramwell, Baron, (H) 1208, (L)
1372, 1408
Brandeis, Louis D., (L) 30, (H) 31,
(L) 50, (H) 52, 68, (L) 76, (H)
85, 114, 139, 148, 153, 157, (L)
193, (H) 194, 198, 210, (L) 219,
(H) 224, 249, 268, 290-91, 294,
300, (L) 301, 312, (H) 319, 336,
339, 354, (L) 372, 548, (H) 557,
560, 579, 581, (L) 583, (H) 590,
593, (L) 594, (H) 597, 598, (L)
599, 612, 628, 670, 672, 678, (H)
681, 705, 723, 730, 737-38, 742,
755, (L) 804, (H) 806, (L) 811,
(H) 831, 833, (L) 836, (H) 842,
878, 892, (L) 937, (H) 938, (L)
940, (H) 988, (L) 996, (H) 1006,
(L) 1007, (H) 1019, 1023, 1045,
(L) 1049, (H) 1055, 1061, 1105,
1106, 1118, 1124, 1127, 1146,
1152, 1166, (L) 1194, (H) 1196,
(L) 1235, 1257, (H) 1291, 1340,
1346, 1367, (L) 1372; character
and form of his judicial opinions,
(L) 127, (H) 128, (L) 130, (H)
389, (L) 552, (H) 556, (L) 672,
(H) 675, (L) 780, (H) 1066;
urges Holmes to dissent, (H) 176,
1192, 1347; on the oriental mind,
(H) 180; nomination to Supreme
Court, (L) 196, (H) 200, (L)
1393, 1397; his concern for and
knowledge of facts, (H) 204-205,
(L) 205, (H) 212, 430, 485, 810;
response to European trip, 1919,
(H) 212, (L) 213; visit to England
1542
INDEX
Brandeis, Louis D. (Continued)
in 1920, (L) 271, (H) 272, (L)
276; dinner with Haldane, Sankey,
and Laski, (L) 273; condition after
1920 visit to England, (H) 284; as
comfort to Holmes, (H) 297, 374,
485, 555; his qualities, (H) 304,
(L) 552, 836, 1448; Taft's criticism
of in October 1920, (L) 347; dis-
sent in Truax v. Corrigan, (H) 389;
his disagreement with Holmes, ( H )
398, 1027; Holmes consults with
concerning dissent in Leach v.
Carlile, (H) 406; relations with
McReynolds, J., (H) 413; estimate
of Albert J. Beveridge, (H) 459;
dissent in Pennsylvania Coal Com-
pany v, Mahon, (H) 462, 466, 473-
74; his criticism of the present social
order, (H) 469, (L) 475, (H) 478;
on the American Law Institute's
restatement of the law, (H) 486;
on Kropotkin's history of the French
Revolution, (H) 503; estimate of
James M. Beck, (H) 579, (L) 583,
(H) 1045; his dependence on
Holmes, (L) 612, 627, 1059-60;
his possible political aspirations,
(H) 631, (L) 636; his organizing
mind, (L) 687, (H) 688, (L)
1344; his opinion of the Sherman
Act, ( H ) 719; on French trial prac-
tice, (H) 804; his attitude towards
Harvard Law School, (H) 887; re-
lation to the Sacco-Vanzetti case,
(H) 976; Hapgood's article on,
(H) 985; frequency with which he
and Holmes concur in dissent, (H)
1027, 1055, 1060; on importance
of Felix Frankfurter, (L) 1121; his
familiarity with business and affairs,
(H) 1135; elements in his greatness,
(H) 1172; his attitude towards
declaratory judgments, (L) 1233;
his efforts with respect to Palestine,
(L) 1261, 1296, 1298-99, 1301-
1302, 1302; his 75th birthday, (H)
1337; his confident self-sufficiency,
(H) 1337; Holmes's foreword to Mr.
Justice Brandeis, (H) 1387, (L)
1389-90; advises Frankfurter against
accepting seat on Massachusetts
court, (H) 1395, (L) 1397, (H)
1406; his view concerning Frank-
furter as Solicitor General, (H)
1421; Laski's essay on, 1933, (L)
1448; The Curse of Bigness, (L)
1473
Brandeis, Mrs. Louis D,, (H) 236,
(L) 276, (H) 284,738
Brandt, Frithiof, Thomas Hobbes's
Mechanical Conception of Nature
(1928), (L) 1108
Brangwyn, Frank, (L) 146
Bray, John Francis, (L) 201; Labour's
Wrongs and Labours Remedy
(1839), (L) 1460; his letters, (L)
1460
Brehier, fimile, Histoire de la philoso-
phie (Tome II, Philosophic mo-
derne, fascicule 1 et 2, 1929, 1930),
(L) 1293
Bre"mond, Henri, (L) 989; Apologie
pourFenelon (1910), (L) 1151
Brentano, Lujo, (L) 699; Eine Ge-
schichte der Wirtschaftlichen Ent-
wicklung Englands, (L) 980
Breughel, Peter, (L) 1084, 1281,
1285, (H) 1295-96, (L) 1297,
1356, 1446, 1473
Breviare des princes, Le, ( L ) 285
Brewer, David Josiah, (L) 130, 149,
686, 1007; T. Roosevelt on, (L)
428, (H) 1270
Briand, Aristide, (L) 93-1, 977; at Dis-
armament Conference, 1921, (H)
385; Laski dines with (December
1922), (L) 468; anecdote concern-
ing him and Herriot, (L) 658; his
first response to American peace
proposals, 1928, (L) 1048; his per-
sonal qualities, (L) 1222, 1233,
1300
Bridge, John S. C., A History of
France from the Death of Louis XI
(1921), (L) 401-402
Bridges, Robert, (L) 1058-59, 1244;
The Testament of Beauty, (H) 1250
Bright, John, (L) 226, 626, 670, 730,
908; compared with Gladstone, (L)
716; on fault of great thinkers, (L)
1379; The Diaries of John Bright
(P. Bright, ed., 1930), (L) 1316
Brinton, Crane, (L) 1062-63; A Dec-
ade of Revolution, 1789-1799
(1934), (L) 1470; English Political
INDEX
1543
Thought in the Nineteenth Century
(1933), (L) 1459; The Jacobins
(1930), (L) 1306
Brissaud, Jean, (L) 1213; Cours d'his-
toire generate du droit francais pub-
lic et prive, (H) 31, (L) 43, (H)
726, (L) 847, 854, (H) 856, (L)
1199; A History of French Public
Law (Garner, tr., 1915), (L) 1431
Brissot de Warville, Jacques Pierre,
(L) 1378
British Academy, (L) 1407
Broad, C. D., Five Types of Ethical
Theory (1930), (L) 1226; The
Mind and its Place in Nature
(1925), (H) 1370
Brodie, Sir Benjamin, (L) 662
Brodrick, George Charles, (L) 827
Brogan, Denis W., Government of the
People, (L) 1439
Broglie, Emmanuel de, Mabillon et la
societe de I'abbaye de Saint-Ger-
main des Pres (2 vols., 1888), (L)
951
Broglie, Prince de, (L) 1229
Bromfield, Louis, The Strange Case of
Miss Annie Spragg (1928), (L)
1108, 1112
Bronte, Charlotte, Shirley, (L) 1195
Bronte, Emily, (L) 1065
Brooke, Rupert, (H) 444, (L) 667,
1403
Brougham, Henry Peter, Lord
Brougham and Vaux, (L) 279, (H)
281, (L) 415, 665, 912, 993, 1471;
Lord Jeffrey's anecdote concerning,
(L) 821; Aspin wall's biography of,
(L) 960
Brown, Dorothy Kirch wey, (H) 194,
(L) 959, (H) 1118
Brown, Ford K., The Life of William
Godwin (1926), (L) 833, 1156
Brown, Ivor, English Political Theory
(1920), (L) 283; I Commit to the
Flames (1934), (L) 1468
Brown, John, Estimate of the Manners
and Principles of the Times, (L)
173-74, 366
Brown, La Rue, (H) 319
Brown, Mrs. La Rue, see Brown, Doro-
thy Kirchwey
Brown, P. Hume, Life of Goethe (2
vols., 1920), (L) 314, 600, 903
Brown University, (L) 1171
Brown v. Thome, (H) 459
Brown v. United States, (H) 331, 335
Brown, William Jethro, (L) 526
Browne, Charles T., Life of Robert
Southey, (L) 156
Browne, Sir Thomas, (L) 1219
Browne, Waldo R., Man or the State?,
(L) 238
BrowneU, H. H., "The Bay Fight,"
(H) 785, 1197
Browning, Robert, (H) 198, (L) 201,
780, (H) 782; quoted, (H) 430,
893; "The Ring and the Book/* (L)
777
Bruce, Andrew A., Property and So-
ciety, (L) 48, (H) 49, (L) 50
Bruce, Stanley Melbourne, Viscount
Bruce of Melbourne, (L) 509
Brunei, Lucien, Les philosophes et
YAcademie francaise au dix-huitieme
siecle (1884), (L) 517, 574, 585
Brunetiere, Ferdinand, (L) 17, 53, 71,
83, 92-93, 703, 710, 715, 747;^ essay
on Montesquieu, (H) 93; Etudes
critiques sur I'histoire de la littera-
ture francaise, (H) 93, (L) 746,
(H)753
Brunner, Heinrich, (L) 18, 1279
Bruno, Giordano, (L) 216, 979
Brunschvicg, Leon, Le progres de la
conscience dans la philosophie occi-
dentale (2 vols., 1927), (L) 1131;
Spinoza (1894), (L) 920
Brussels, (L) 443
Brutskus, B. D., Economic Planning in
Soviet Russia, (L) 1478
Bryan, William Jennings, (L) 40, 771
Bryce, James, (L) 240-41, (H) 243,
(L) 283, 286, (H) 291, (L) 380,
531, 575, 1268, 1360; Laski's con-
versation with, 1920, (L) 301, 304;
limitations of, (L) 306; meeting
with Theodore Roosevelt in London
(1913), (L) 313; speaks to Laski
of plans to do work on Justinian,
(L) 325, 400; excessive industry
and learning of, (H) 327, 930; con-
templated visit to Beverly Farms,
(H) 369; visits to Holmes (Sep-
tember 1921), (H) 372; Laski's
estimate of, (L) 375, 644, 933;
Morley's, Haldane's, and BirreH's
1544
INDEX
Bryce, James (Continued)
opinions of, (L) 375, 1042; as Sec-
retary o£ State for India, 1906, (L)
375-76; anecdotes concerning, while
in Cabinet (1906), (L) 375-76,
(H) 378, (L) 558; his death, (L)
400, 403; quoted concerning quali-
ties of Presidents and Prime Minis-
ters, (L) 547-48; The American
Commonwealth (1888), (L) 40,
325, 329, 563, 1306; essay on flexi-
ble and rigid constitutions, (L)
644; The Holy Roman Empire
(1864), (L) 325, 329, 400, 644,
760; Modern Democracies, (L) 325,
(H) 327, (L) 329, 450, 563, 644,
1083
Bryce, Lady, (H) 418, 976
Buchan, John, (L) 41; The Battle of
the Somme (1917), (H) 142, (L)
143; The Blanket of the Dark
(1931), (H) 1340, 1345, 1346, (L)
1348; The Dancing Floor (1926),
(L) 1401; Greenmantle (1916),
(L) 43, 57; Hwtingtower (1922),
(H) 481; The Power House, (L)
37, (H) 38, (L) 39; The Thirty-
Nine Steps (1915), (L) 37, (H)
38, (L) 907; The Three Hostages
(1924), (L) 907
Buchanan, George, De Jure Regni
apud Scotos (1606), (L) 271, 341,
(H) 343; works of, (L) 341
Buchez, P. J. B. and P. C. Roux, His-
toire parlementaire de la revolution
frangaise (40 vols., 1834-38), (L)
572
Buck v. Bell, (H) 937-38, 938-39,
(L) 940, (H) 942, 964
Buckeye Powder Co. v. Du Pont Pow-
der Co., (H) 172-73
Buckingham, Duke of, The Rehearsal,
(H) 1259-60
Buckland, W. W;, (L) 763-64; Ele-
mentary Principles of the Roman
Private Law (1912), (L) 376, 380
Buckle, G. E., Life of Disraeli, (H)
36. See also Moneypenny, W. F.
Buckle, Henry Thomas, (L) 1184-85,
(H) 1188, (L) 1350
Buckley, Henry Burton, Lord Wren-
bury, (L) 935
Buckmaster, Stanley Owen, 1st Vis-
count Buclcmaster, (L) 292, 305,
437; rating of the Justices of the
Supreme Court of the United States,
(L) 292, (H) 294
Budget, Congressional Committee on,
(L) 222
Buisson, Ferdinand, Sebastian Castel-
lion (2 vols., 1892), (L) 489
Bunting v. Oregon, (L) 25, 31, 55
Bunyan, John, (L) 799
Buonarroti, Filippo, Histoire de la con-
spiration pour I'egalite dite de Ba~
beuf (1828), (L) 880,984
Burckhardt, Jacob Christopher, (L)
1185, (H) 1188; The Civilization
of the Period of the Renaissance in
Italy (Middlemore, tr., 1878), (L)
1268
Burdick, Charles K., (L) 638, 699
Bureaucracy, its habits, (L) 619
Buret, Eugene, De la misere des
classes laborieuses en Angleterre et
en France (1840), (L) 1440
Burgess, Gelett, War: The Creator
(1916), (H) 8
Burgess, John W., (L) 120; Political
Science and Comparative Constitu-
tional Law (2 vols., 1902), (L) 120
Burke, Edmund, (L) 130, 137, 156,
160, 172, 278, 317, 402, 407, 507,
573, 640, 749, 813, 882, 925, 957,
962-63, 1065, (H) 1259, (L) 1360;
on Dr. Johnson, (L) 36; on Brown's
Estimate, (L) 174; quoted, (L)
228, 566; as influence on Woodrow
Wilson, (L) 242; Laskfs plan to
edit his letters, (L) 317; Laskfs
search for his letters, (L) 320, 326;
Laskfs admiration for, (L) 435,
655, 1120, 1218; compared with
De Tocqueville, (L) 471; his quali-
ties as a young man, (L) 553; com-
pared with Gladstone, (L) 576; his
aid to George Crabbe, (L) 596; his
need for some of Voltaire's qualities,
(L) 611-12; Laskfs bicentennial
tribute to, (L) 1120, 1125; his un-
published letters and papers, (L)
1131, 1194-95; as first to appreciate
significance of nation, (L) 1198;
Reflections on the French Revolu-
tion (1790), (L) 564, 620, 1404,
1449
INDEX
1545
Burke, Thomas, (L) 126; Limehouse
Nights (1917), (L) 168, 172, 196
Burleson, Albert S., (L) 146; his con-
trol of mailing privileges, ( H ) 202-
203
Burlingham, Charles Q, (L) 1318,
1319
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, (L) 60S,
(H) 605, (L) 683, 1328
Burnet, Gilbert, (L) 321; coUected
works of, (L) 341
Burney, Fanny, (L) 296; Cecilia, (L)
980; The Diary and Letters of
Frances Burney, Madame D'Arblay,
(L) 980, 1316; Evelina, (L) 980,
1241, 1281
Burns, C. Delisle, Greek Ideals ( 1917),
(L) 98, 100; Political Ideals (3rd
ed., 1919), (L) 265; The Principles
of Revolution (1920), (L) 283
Burns, John, (L) 1068, (H) 1071;
meeting with M argot Asquith, (L)
320; his library, (L) 697; his anec-
dote of Cave, J., (L) 812
Burns National Bank v. Duncan, (H)
608
Burns, Robert, (L) 333
Burr, Aaron, (L) 241, 1431
Burton, John Hill, Benthamiana
(1843), (L) 141
Burton, Robert, Anatomy of Melan-
choly, (L) 779, 820
Burtt, Edwin Arthur, The Metaphysi-
cal Foundations of Modern Physical
Science (1925), (L) 1104
Bury, J. B., his edition of Gibbon,
(L) 951, 998; The Idea of Progress
(1920), (L) 267
Business, importance of judges' famil-
iarity with, (H) 1135
Business men: Laski's view of, (L)
53, 120, 123-24, 221, 387, 527, (H)
534, (L) 632, 1184, 1206, 1365,
1409; Holmes's view of, (H) 121-
22, (L) 123-24, (H) 128-29, 534,
704, 1208; they suceed because
competition is with each other, ( L )
1365, 1404. See also Action, men of
Business schools, (L) 711. See also
Harvard Business School
Buswell, Leslie, (H) 965, 966
Bute, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute,
(L) 1287
Butler, Eliza Marian, The Saint-Simo-
nian Religion in Germany (1926)
(L) 913
Butler, Henry Montague, (L) 902-
903, 1350
Butler, Bishop Joseph, Analogy of
Religion, (H) 218-19, (L) 388;
Sermons, (H) 218-19
Butler, Nicholas Murray, (L) 53, 120,
543, 674, 1029, 1096, 1279, 1325;
characterized by Laski, (L) 1182
Butler, Pierce, (L) 470, 548, (H) 555,
737, 1045, (L) 1050, (H) 1101,
1102; his knowledge of business,
(H) 1135
Butler, Samuel, (L) 237-38, 640, (H)
652, (L) 656, (H) 659, (L) 717;
The Way of All Flesh, (L) 237-38,
(H) 651-52, 652, (L) 656, (H)
659, (L) 877
Butler, William M., (L) 677
Butt, Archibald, The Letters of Archie
Butt (Abbott, ed., 1924), (H) 666
Buxton, Charles Roden and Dorothy
F. Buxton, The World after the
War (1920), (H) 280-81
Bynkershoek, Cornelius van, (L)
1085, 1182, 1223, 1284, 1287, 1290
Byrne, Donn, Hangman's House
(1926), (H) 849
Byron, Lord, (L) 80, (H) 139, (L)
276, 600, (H) 601, (L) 929, 967,
(H) 1023, (L) 1234; John Stuart
Mill's attack on, (L) 420; his cen-
tenary, (L) 620, (H) 624, (L)
632; Laskfs estimate of, (L) 632,
912, 925; Don Juan, (L) 632; his
letters, (H) 369
Bywater, Ingram, (L) 724, (H) 727,
(L) 732, 1255. See also Jackson,
W. W.
Cabell, James Branch, (L) 1361
Cabinet, British: structure of, (L)
282; varying types in, (L) 628;
theory and practice of collective re-
sponsibility in, (L) 1173, 1361;
Labour Executive considers consti-
tutional changes in, (L) 1385
Caesar, Julius, (L) 1040
Cagliostro, Count Alessandro, (L)
929
Cahen, Georges, (L) 62; Lesfonction-
naires, (L) 86
1546
INDEX
Cahen, Leon, Condorcet et la revolu-
tion francaise (1904), (L) 487,
1021
Caillaux, Joseph, (L) 419
Caine, Sir Thomas Hall, (L) 690,
1330-31
Caird, Edward, (L) 820-21
Caird, John, (L) 820-21
Cairnes, John Elliot, (H) 1208
Cairns, Hugh McCalmont, 1st Earl
Cairns, his alleged greatness, (L)
306, 471, 981, 1190-91, 1271
Cajot, Joseph, Les plagiats de M.
J.-J. R. de Geneve, (L) 1227
Calhoim, John C., (L) 147
Callimachus, (L) 553
Callot, Jacques, (H) 609, (L) 1302,
1356, 1377
Calmette, Joseph, La societe feodale
(1923), (L) 1054
Calverley, Charles Stuart, (L) 778
Calvin, John, (L) 679; his insufferable
qualities, (L) 489, 1293; Works,
(L) 442
Calvinism, its relationship to capital-
ism, (L) 1284
Campbell, John, Baron Campbell, (L)
1471
Cambridge University: compared with
Oxford, (L) 253, 273, 293, 662,
676-77, 1058; Laski's impressions
of, 1922, (L) 460; Laskfs lecture-
ship at, (L) 437, 460, 488, 507,
552-53; Winstanley's history of,
(L) 464; Laski visits Trinity Col-
lege (1928), (L) 1096; Laskfs im-
pressions o£ (1932), (L) 1363
Cambronne, Vicomte, (H) 140
Camden, Lord, (L) 420, 1461
Cameron, David Young, (L) 1079
Cameron, Julia Margaret, her photo-
graph of Leslie Stephen, (L) 909
Caminetti v. United States, (H) 42
Campan, Mme., (L) 525
Campanella, Tommaso, Ciuitas soli,
(L) 170; De monarchia Hispanica
(1686), (L) 261
Campbell-Barmerman, Sir Henry, (L)
558; letters of, and their anecdotes,
(L) 513; his estimate of Morley,
(L) 513
Campbell-Bannerman government
(1905-1906), events during, (L)
305-306
Canada, federalism in, (L) 558-59
"Canary' Murder Case (1927), by
5. S. Van Dine, (H) 988
Cannan, Edwin, A Review of Eco-
nomic Theory (1929), (L) 1182
Canne, John, A Twofold Shaking of
the Earth (1653), (L) 467
Canning, George, (L) 330; Hazlitt on,
(L) 792
Canterbury Cathedral, (L) 927
Cape Ann, Holmes's pleasure in, (H)
849-50, 1067
Capital and labor, changing relations
between, (H) 930
Capitalism: its influence on state,
(L) 76; Holmes's belief in, (H)
846, 855, 856, 945, 1384; its tyran-
nies, ( H ) 945; its prospects in Eng-
land and the United States, (L)
946; its fatal aspects, (L) 1408-
1409
Caraccioli, Louis Antoine de, Voyage
de la Raison en Europe (1788),
(L) 544
Carcassonne, Slie, Montesquieu et le
probleme de la Constitution fran-
caise au XVIIIs siecle (1927), (L)
960, 969, 1316
Cardozo, Benjamin N., (L) 241, (H)
243, (L) 450, (H) 758, 837, (L)
926, 1005, 1202-1203, 1235, (H)
1274, (L) 1358, 1385, 1397, 1412,
1463, 1479; as possible member of
Supreme Court, (H) 555, (L) 557,
699, 748, 1362; Pound's estimate of,
(L) 643; Laski meets, (L) 836,
837, 1318; Holmes meets, (H)
1272; appointment to Supreme
Court, (L) 1363, (H) 1367;
lunches with Holmes, (H) 1382;
Law and Literature (1931), (L)
1313; The Nature of the judicial
Process, (L) 447, 637, 928, (H)
930; Paradoxes of Legal Science,
(H) 1070
Carey, Henry Charles, (L) 1280,
1378
Carino v. Insular Government, (H)
6, 67
Carletoii, George, lurisdiction Regall,
Episcopall, Papall (1610), (L) 345,
1057
Carlyle, A. J., (L) 1248
Carlyle, Sir Robert Warrand, (L) 435
INDEX
1547
Carlyle, R. W. and A. J., A History of
Mediaeval Political Theory in the
West (6 vok, 1909-36), (L) 172,
415-16, 1053, 1057, 1083
Carlyle, Thomas, (H) 8, (L) 16, 160,
285, 393, 400, 471, 576, 953, (H)
1253, 1283, (L) 1445; Morley's
opinion of, (L) 349; as poet rather
than philosopher, (H) 474, 533,
605, 891, 926, 988; contrasted with
Sainte-Beuve, (L) 516; his literary
incontinence, (L) 535; on Oliver
Cromwell, (L) 539; Laskfs estimate
of, (L) 603, 620, 908, 925, 986;
BirrelFs estimate of, (L) 603; on
Lamb, (L) 620, (H) 1023, 1102;
his aphorism on education, (L) 661;
on the greatest Americans, (L)
729-30; bookdealer's anecdote of,
(L) 805-806; on J. S. Mill, (L)
884, (H) 891; Nevinson's defense
of, (L) 1403; Chartism, (L) 625,
(H) 631, (L) 661, 676; Cromwell,
(L) 333-34, 1369; his essay on Dr.
Johnson, (L) 539; his essays, (L)
625, (H) 631; The French Revolu-
tion, (H) 288, 530, 533, (L) 535,
(H) 537, 544, (H) 605, (L) 625,
1403, 1423; History of Frederick the
Great (1858-65), (L) 544; Past
and Present, (L) 676
Carnegie, Andrew, (L) 627
Carney v. Chapman, ( H ) 157
Carpenter, W. S., The Development
of American Political Thought
(1930), (L) 1272
Carr, C. T., Delegated Legislation
(1921), (L) 379-80, 391
Carr, John Dickson, The Lost Gallows
(1931), (L) 1344, (H) 1346, 1375,
1416
Carr-Saunders, A. M., The Professions
(1933), (L) 1441
Carre, Henri, La noblesse de France et
I'opinion publique au XVIIIs siecle
(1920), (L) 562
Carre, Jean Raoul, La philosophie de
Fontenelle (1932), (L) 1378
Carritt, E. F.y Morals and Politics;
Theories of their Relation from
Hobbes and Spinoza to Marx and
Bosanquet (1935), (L) 1476, 1479
Carroll, Lewis, on swashbucklers, (L)
526
Carroll v. Greenwich Insurance Co
(H) 119
Carson, Edward Henry, Baron Carson,
(L) 415, 733, 1197
Cartwright, Julia (Mrs. Henry Ady),
(L) 1348; Isabella d'Este (2 vols.,
1903), (H) 1345, 1346
Carver, Thomas Nixon, The Present
Economic Revolution in the United
States (1925), (H) 845-46, (L)
854, (H) 856
Casanova, (H) 950, 1019, (L) 1025,
(H) 1236
Casaubon, Isaac, (L) 155, 724, 774,
865; Epistolae (1709), (L) 442,
469. See also Pattison, Mark
Case of Requisition, (L) 299
Case system, Laskfs estimate of, (L)
26, 32, 1097. See also Legal Educa-
tion
Casey v. United States, (H) 1018,
1027, 1045
Cassatt, Mary, (L) 440, 1079
Cassel, Gustav, The Theory of Social
Economy (1923), (L) 558
Castellio, Sebastian, (L) 461, 489
Castiglione, Baldassare, II Cortegiano
(Hoby, tr., 1561), (L) 502
Castlereagh, Viscount, (L) 1154
Castletown, Lady, (H) 782, 938, (L)
941
Catalogues, book, Holmes's guilty
liking for, (H) 382, (L) 384, (H)
496, 688, (L) 699
Gather, Willa, (L) 1170, 1237, (H)
1239, (L) 1411; A Lost Lady
(1923), (L) 1316; My Antonia
(1926), (H) 1269
Catherine de Medici, (L) 449
Catholic revival in France, (L) 83-84,
(H) 187
Catlin, G. E. G., The Science and
Method of Politics (1927), (L)
903; A Study of the Principles of
Politics, (L) 1226, 1229
CatuUus, (L) 570, 637, 789
Cauchy, Baron Augustin Louis, (L)
574
Causation in nature, (H) 139, (L)
140, (H) 634, 693. See also Neces-
sity
Cave, Sir Lewis William, (L)
819
Cavet Lord, (L) 747, 759, 1043
1548
INDEX
Caveirac, Abbe Jean Novi de, (L)
1199; Apologie de Louis XIV et de
son conseil sur la revocation de I' edit
de Nantes (1758), (L) 1377
Cecil, Lady Edward, (H) 234, 323,
(L) 415, (H) 417
Cecil, Lord Hugh, (L) 894; Con-
servatism, (L) 603-604
Cecil, Robert, 1st Earl of Salisbury,
(L) 735
Cecil, Lord Robert, (L) 276, (H)
417, (L) 427-28, (L) 432, 588;
effort to have him join the Liberals,
(L) 305; Laskfs estimate of, (L)
415; anecdotes of concerning Lloyd
George, (L) 427; talks on tactics of
Parliamentary warfare, (L) 438;
his peace talks with Russians (Janu-
ary 1934), (L) 1467
Cecil, William, Lord Burleigh, The
Execution of Justice in England
(1584), (L) 316-17
Cellini, Benvenuto, The Autobiogra-
phy of Benvenuto Cellini (John
Addington Symonds, tr., 1910),
(H) 831; Memoirs (Thomas Ros-
coe, tr., 1823), (H) 831
Cement Manufacturers Protective As-
sociation v. United States, (H)
719
Censorship, in Massachusetts, (H)
1160
Central of Georgia Ry. Co. v. Wright,
(H) 197
Certiorari, Holmes's attitude towards
petitions for, (H) 453
Cervantes, Don Quixote, (L) 64, 71,
(H) 754, (L) 786, 934, 1182, 1446
Cestre, Charles, (L) 103, 110
Cezanne, Paul, (L) 536, 802, 932,
(H) 1113, 1209, (L) 1315, 1326
Chafee, Zechariah, Jr., (L) 312, 412,
, 700, 708, 859, 944, 946, (H) 1102-
1103, (L) 1121, 1281; Freedom of
Speech (1920), (H) 297, (L) 310;
The Inquiring Mind, (L) 1053
Chailley, Joseph, Administrative Prob-
lems of British India (Meyer, tr.,
1910), (L) 103, 134
Chaliapin, Feodor (H) 893
Challis, Henry W., (L) 379; The
Law of Real Property (1887), (L)
1374
Chalmers, Robert, Baron Chalmers of
Northiam, (L) 288
Chamberlain, Austen, (L) 271, 298,
584, (H) 921, (L) 977, 1014, 1022,
(H) 1047, (L) 1142; Laski dines
with, (L) 302, 843, 919-20; Margot
Asquith's characterization of, (L)
695; Laski's impression of, 1929,
(L) 1138-39, 1294; on prospects of
National Government (June 1932),
(L) 1392
Chamberlain, Beatrice, (L) 256, 513,
(H) 914, 921, (L) 1139, 1294,
1392
Chamberlain, Joseph, (L) 916, 995,
1017, 1290; Moiiey's admiration for,
(L) 282, 349; the cruelty of his
expression, (L) 910, (H) 914;
Laskfs estimate of, (L) 1419
Chambers, Robert W., (L) 100
Chamfort, Sebastien, (L) 826, 1371
Champion, Edme, Voltaire (1893),
(L) 487
Champion, Pierre, (L) 867-68
Channel Islands, their constitutional
position, (L) 616-17
Channing, Edward, A History of the
United States (Vol. VI, 1925), (L)
802, 825
Channing, Lord, Midland Memories,
(H) 165, 166
Chanson de Roland, (H) 618
Chaplin, Charlie, (L) 371-72, (H)
374, 378; Laskfs meeting with, (L)
376
Chapman, R. W., The Portrait of a
Scholar and Other Essays, (L) 718,
724, (H) 726, (L) 732
Character and intellect, relative im-
portance of, (H) 194
Chardin, Sir John, Travels in Persia
(Eng. tr., 2 vols., 1720), (L) 1341
Charity, (H) 538. See also Founda-
tions, charitable
Charm, compared with intellect, (H)
165
Charmont, Joseph, (L) 39; La renais-
sance du droit naturel (1910), (L)
105
Charnwood, Lord, Abraham Lincoln,
(L) 148, (H) 169, (L) 171
Charpentier, John, Rousseau, the Child
of Nature, (L) 1353
INDEX
1549
Charteris, Evan, John Sargent ( 1927 ) ,
(H) 965
Cliartres, (L) 1321
Chase, Salmon P., (H) 796-97, 848
Chassin, Charles Louis, Le genie de la
revolution (2 vols., 1863-65), (L)
880, 882, 1374, 1435
Chastelet, Hay du, (L) 746-47
Chastelton Corporation v. Sinclair,
(H) 602, 608
Chateaubriand, (L) 626, 1017, 1025,
1179; Chevalley's aphorism concern-
ing, (L) 895
Chateaux, French, (L) 1088
Chatham, 1st Earl of, see Pitt, William
Cheke, Sir John, How Sedition doth
Hurt a Commonwealth (1565),
(L) 306
Chenonceaux, cathedral at, (L) 1321
Cherel, Albert, Fenelon au XVIII6
siecle en France (1917), (L)
567
Chesterfield, Lord, (L) 532; his Let-
ters, (H) 965
Chesterton, G. K., Laski's opinion of,
(L) 250, 1014; introduction to
Dickens's novels, (L) 388; Holmes's
estimate of, (H) 1019; Irish Im-
pressions (1919), (L) 250; The
Victorian Age in Literature (1913),
(H) 165
Chevalier, Jacques, Pascal (1922),
(L) 1097
Chevalley, Abel, (L) 895, 977, 1324,
1376; Thomas Deloney; le roman
des metiers au temps de Shake-
speare (2nd ed., 1926), (L) 895
Chevrillon, Andre, Taine (1932), (L)
1381
Chiapelli, L., Le idee politiche del
Bartolo (1881), (L) 752
Chicago Junction Case, The, (H) 597,
598
Chicago Life Insurance Co. v. Cherry,
(H) 82
Chicago, R. L and Pac. Ry. Co. v.
Cole, (H) 224
Chicago, University of, (L) 1242
Chief Justices of United States, (L)
479, (H) 1227-28
Child Labor Amendment to United
States Constitution, (L) 721
Childers, Erskine, The Framework of
Home Rule (1911), (L) 137, (L)
155
Children, conservatism as shown in
their rhymes, (H) 1278
Chinard, Gilbert, Thomas Jefferson;
the Apostle of Americanism ( 1929 ) „
(L) 1220
Chinese, their qualities as students,
(L) 399; their good manners, (H)
1260
Choate, Charles Francis, Jr., (L) 249,
(H) 319
Choate, Rufus, quoted, (H) 264
Choiseul, Due de, (L) 509
Choix de rapports, opinions et discours
pronounces a la tribune nationale
(30 vols., 1818-22; Lallernent, ed.),
(L) 604
Chopin, Frederic (L) 695
Christian Science, (L) 160, 199, (H)
1075
Christian Socialism, (L) 279, 286
Christianity: its influence on our civili-
zation, (H) 51, (L) 1284, 1394; its
indebtedness to Rome, (L) 52, (II)
164, (L) 170, (H) 604, (L) 1083;
its acceptance by rational men, ( E )
131, 153-54, (L) 575, (H) 5&0,
(L) 1145, (H) 1146; as a historical
problem, (L) 150, 480-81, (H)
580; its alleged mission, (L) 247;
belief in, (L) 575; possibility and
reasons for belief in, (H) 580;
Holmes asked to write introduction
to book on, (H) 653-54; free dis-
cussion of disbelief in, (H) 823-24;
its condemnation of self-importance,
(H) 887; its doctrine of equality,
(L) 1083
Christie, Agatha, The Big Four (1927),
(L) 920; Lord Edgeware Dies, (L)
1459; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
(1926), (L) 848, 885, 1044, 1176;
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
(1920), (L) 744; The Mystery of
the Blue Tram (1924), (L) 1074;
The Sittaford Mystery (1934), (L)
1472
Christie, Loring, (L) 43, 58, 236, 495,
1289
Christie, Richard Copley, Etienne Do-
let, the Martyr of the Renaissance
(1880), (L) 441
1550
INDEX
Church, Dean, (L) 902, (H) 905
Church of England, (L) 150, 747,
1106; Birrell's comment concerning,
(L) 626
Churches: excessive respect for, (L)
150; their present utility and ulti-
mate doom, (H) 1134; their inher-
ent rights, (L) 1248; their necessary
compromises and conservatism, (L)
1335
Churchill, Lord Randolph, (L) 151-
52
Churchill, Winston, The Dwelling
Place of Light (1917), (L) 526
Churchill, Winston S., (L) 562, 676,
855, 1058, 1117, 1242, 1392; As-
quith's remarks concerning, (L)
341; Laski's estimate of, (L) 365,
928, 995; personal and political
characteristics of, (L) 383, 391,
696, 940-41, 1417; views towards
Russia, 1921, (L) 383; utilizes
Laskfs aid in negotiation of Irish
Treaty, 1921, (L) 386-87; on lib-
eral aristocrats and Labour Party,
(L) 611; Margot Asquith's charac-
terization of, (L) 695; Holmes's
recollection of, (H) 704; his role
during the general strike and coal
strike (1926), (L) 843, 881; Bald-
win's estimate of, (L) 908; Laski
introduces to his colleagues, (L)
940-41; his estimate of the great
American statesmen, (L) 982; his
views on the gold standard, (L)
995; the limits of his learning,
(L) 1037-38; Laski dines with, (L)
1042-43, 1136; on maritime rights,
(L) 1136; his similarity to Theodore
Roosevelt, (L) 1294, 1417; Marl-
borough, His Life and Times (Vol.
I, 1933), (L) 1458; My Early Life;
a Roving Commission (1930), (L)
1294; Thoughts and Adventures
(1932), (L) 1417; The World Cri-
sis, (L) 563, 925, (H) 926, (L)
1143
Cicero, (H) 51, (L) 52, (H) 164,
(L) 908, 1002
Cimber, M. L. [pseudonym of L. La-
faiste]. Archives curieuses, (L)
1241
Civil Liberties, see Rights of man
Civil servants, character of English,
(L) 428
Civil service: policy and administra-
tion in, (L) 288-89, 628; education
for, (L) 530-31
Civil Service, Royal Commission's re-
port on, (L) 260
Civil War, American: its purposes,
(L) 592; staff and line duties in,
compared, (H) 615; Confederate
boasts concerning, (H) 671-72; its
lesson to Holmes, (H) 905; South-
ern interpretations of, (L) 1220
Civil War, English, Laski acquires
pamphlets of, for London Univer-
sity, (L) 1369-70
Civil wars: their horror, (L) 592; in
France and England in the 17th
century compared, (L) 1049, (H)
1055, (L) 1386
Civilization, as an instrument of law
reform, (H) 1159, 1163
Civilization in America (H. E. Stearns,
ed., 1922), (L) 412
Clare, John, (L) 1151
Clarendon, 1st Earl of, (L) 625, 829;
Haldane's view of him as historian,
(L) 434; A Brief View and Survey
of the Dangerous Errors to Church
and State in Mr. Hobbess Book
Entitled Leviathan (1676), (L)
325, (H) 327; The History of the
Rebellion and Civil Wars in Eng-
land (3 vok, 1706-1707), (L)
434
Claridge, W. Walton, A History of the
Gold Coast and Ashanti (1916),
(H)24
Clark, Austin H., (L) 98, (H) 1128,
1134; The New Evolution: Zoogene-
sis (1930), (H) 1250
Clark, Bennett Champ, John Quincy
Adams: "Old Man Eloquent"
(1932), (H) 1420
Clark Distilling Company v. Western
Maryland Railroad Co., (L) 53-54,
(H) 54-55, (L) 55
Clarke, John Hessin, (L) 30, (H)
85, (L) 127, 146, 222, 252, (H)
291, 335, 398, 413, 418, 445, (L)
446, 450, (H) 1039; opinion in
Abrams case, (H) 229; relationships
with McReynolds, (H) 554-55
INDEX
1551
Classics, see Literature of past and
present
Classicists, unfortunate separation into
Grecians and Latinists, (L) 724
Claude, see Lorrain
Claudel, Paul, (H) 688
Clauson, Sir Charles, (L) 886
Cleon, (L) 40
Clergy, (L) 1001, 1268, 1350, 1402
Clericalism, (L) 80, 436; at Oxford,
(L) 1029
Clerk Maxwell, see Maxwell, James
Clerk
Cleveland, Grover, (L) 547, (H) 797
Clifford, Lucy, Miss Fingal, (H) 214
Clifford, William Kingdon, (L) 1383
Clothing Workers of Chicago (Wol-
man et al., editors, 1922), (L) 429,
(H) 430
Clouston, J. Storer, The Lunatic in
Charge (1926), (H) 1346
Coal Industry Commission: Reports
and Minutes of Evidence (1919),
(L) 257-58
Coal, possible exhaustion of Britain's,
(H) 841, 1208; crisis in British
mining (1929), (L) 1206
Coal miners, Laski's talks with, at
Ashington, (L) 786-87
Coal miners, strikes of: in England
(1921), (L) 324, 328-29; efforts
towards settlement, (L) 332-33,
335, 340, 343; Sir Leslie Scott's
views of, (H) 342; in England
(1925), (L) 772; in England
(1926), (L) 881, 890. See also
General strike (1926)
Coar, John Firman, The Old and the
New Germany (1924), (H) 587
Coatman, John, (L) 1308
Cobban, Alfred, Edmund Burke and
the Revolt against the 18th Century
(1929), (L) 1198, 1462
Cobbett, William, (L) 245, 749; Haz-
litt on, (L) 792; Cobbett' s Legacy
to Parsons (1835), (L) 286. See
also Cole, G. D. H., Life of William
Cobbett
Cobden, Richard, (L) 226, 730, 916
Coca-Cola Co. v. Koke Co., (L) 316,
322
Cockburn, Sir Alexander, (H) 1026
Cockburn, Lord, (H) 254, (L) 795,
821; An Examination of the Trials
for Sedition which Have hitherto
Occurred in Scotland (2 vols.,
1888), (L) 252
Code, French, (L) 1369
Codman, Mrs. Russell, (H) 496, 1166,
1177
Cohen, Felix S., Ethical Systems and
Legal Ideas, (L) 1438
Cohen, Morris Raphael, (H) 187, (L)
216, (H) 277, 305, (L) 309, (H)
318, 377, (L) 545, 548, 563, (H)
618, 624, 652, 685, 689, (L) 703,
(H) 705, (L) 735, 809, (H) 811,
(L) 836, 953, 1007, (H) 1027, (L)
1029, 1033, (H) 1039, (L) 1048,
1077, 1082, 1097, 1100, (H) 1109,
(L) 1161, (H) 1183, (L) 1201,
1242, 1276, 1302, 1318, 1371, 1463;
on Laskfs political pluralism, (L)
223; appointed full professor, (H)
301; views on Wells's Outline of
History, (H) 315; Bertrand Rus-
sell's estimate of, (L) 483, (H) 485,
(L) 698, 801, 809; his estimate of
Charles Peirce, (L) 571; his faults,
(L) 698; Alexander's estimate of,
(L) 729, 979, 1221, 1429, 1452;
Laskfs affectionate estimate of, ( L )
837-38, 1309, 1311; his belief in
natural rights, (H) 1045; 25th an-
niversary dinner, (H) 1075; dis-
cusses Sadducees and Pharisees, (H)
1092; as a legal theorist, (L) 1100,
(H) 1103; Meyerson's estimate of,
(L) 1129, 1237, (H) 1239, (L)
1422; visit to England, 1930, (L)
1282, 1283-84; his parents,
(L) 1311; Kelsen's estimate of, (L)
1376; his essay "On the Logic of
Fiction," (H) 565; his essay on
Marx, (L) 1478; "The Faith of a
Logician," (L) 1245^1249; his
introduction to Peirce's Chance,
Love and Logic, (H) 537; Law
and the Social Order (1933), (L)
1438; his papers on Reason, (L)
780; Reason and Nature (1931),
(H) 1039, 1045, (L) 1311, (H)
1314, (L) 1316; his review of
Holmes's Collected Legal Papers,
(H) 307, (L) 321
Cohn, Alfred, (L) 836, 1327, 1362
1552
INDEX
Coining o£ words, (H) 197, 515, 916
Coke, Sir Edward, (H) 251, 259, (L)
371, 678, (H) 704, 875, (L) 899,
978, 1255; Third Institute, (L) 726
Colbert, Jean Baptiste, (L) 801; Tes-
tament politique de Jean-Baptiste
Colbert (1694), (L) 957
Colby, Bainbridge, (H) 312, 914
Colby, Nathalie Sedgwick, Green For-
est (1927), (H) 914
Cole, G. D. H., (L) 289, (H) 323;
The Life of William Colbert
(1924), (L) 746, (H) 753; Self-
Government in Industry (1917),
(L) 123; Social Theory (1920),
(L) 263, (H) 269, 278
Coleman v. United States, (H) 202
Colenso, John William, (L) 436
Coleridge, Sir John, (L) 1184, 1350
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, (L) 141,
451, 476, 861, 1330, 1353, 1402,
1459; his plagiarisms, (L) 790,
1463; Hazlitt on, (L) 792; his
Shakespearean criticism, (L) 1463;
Aids to Re-flection (1825), (L) 35;
The Friend (1809-10), (L) 35;
Table-Talk, (L) 455; Unpublished
Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Griggs, ed., 2 vols., 1933), (L)
1463
Colleagues, loyalty to as a virtue, (L)
902
Collectors, their absorbed enthusiasm,
(L) 767
Collier, Jeremy, see Seller, Abednego
Collins, John Churton, Voltaire, Mon-
tesquieu and Rosseau in England
(1908), (L) 150
Collins, Michael, (L) 387, 444
Collins, Samuel, Eppha'a to F. T.
(1511), (L) 438
Collins, Wilkie, The Moonstone, (L)
19, 494, (H) 863, (L) 1335, (H)
1375; No Name, (L) 576; The
Woman in White, (H) 18, (L) 19,
415
Columbia University, (L) 1242
Columbus, Christopher, (L) 932
Colverv. Skeffington, (L) 261
Commines, Philippe de, (H) 511
Committees: organizing work of, (L)
200; their methods of doing busi-
ness, (L) 230; of faculties, (L) 370,
716, 1016; their function, (H) 486;
the English penchant for, (L) 517;
academic, (L) 664; the flatness
of their resolutions, (L) 1259
Common law: virtues of, (H) 119;
of the United States, (H) 822-23;
the 17th-century concept of its
source, (H) 875
Commons, John R., Institutional Eco-
nomics (1934), (L) 1480
Commonweal, The (London), (H)
955
Commonwealth, law reform during,
(L) 765
Communism: as a religion entitled to
tolerance, (H) 945; Laski doubts
inevitability of its victory, ( L ) 1443
Communistic ideas: sources of their
fallacies, (L) 428-29; their failings,
(L) 883, (H) 888
Communists: Laskfs attitude toward,
(L) 316,334, (H) 335, (L) 1373;
their attitude towards Laski's pam-
phlet on Marx, (L) 435-36; trial of
in England, 1925, (L) 794, 798-99,
802-803, 807; their cocksureness,
(H) 1291-92, (L) 1429
Compania General de Tabacos v. Col-
lector, (H) 990
Comstock, Anthony, (L) 1175
Comte, Auguste, (L) 110, 151, 403,
522, 1085; indebtedness to Saint-
Simon, ( L ) 429; Morley regrets his
early enthusiasm for, ( L ) 438
Conant, James Bryant, (L) 1470
Conchologist, Laskfs anecdote con-
cerning, (L) 599-600, (H) 601
Conciliar Movement, (L) 777, 1386
Conde, Prince of (1621-1686), (L)
805, 1359
Condorcet, Marquis de, (L) 365, 487,
528, 536, 539, 1165, 1211, 1472;
Lasld purchases his Works, (L)
502; Pr ogres de I' esprit humain, (L)
592; Works, (L) 490; Vie de Mon-
sieur Turgot (1786), (L) 562, 576
Confederate veterans, reunion of, ( H )
89-90
Confessions of a Bankrupt Bookseller,
see Darling, William Young
Confucius, (L) 550, 716, (H) 1265
Congress: H. J. Ford's interpretation
of, (L) 228; parliamentary proce-
INDEX
1553
dures in, (L) 230; need for book
on, (L) 563
Congressional government, Laskfs lec-
tures on, (L) 261
Congreve, Richard (1818-1899), (L)
403
Congreve, William, (H) 1259
Connington, J. J. (pseud, of A. W.
Stewart), The Case with Nine Solu-
tions, (L) 1171
Conrad, Joseph, (L) 613, 650, (H)
684; Arrow of Gold (1919), (L)
201; Letters from Joseph Conrad,
1895-1924 (E. Garnett, ed., 1928),
(L) 1423, 1439; The Rescue (1920),
(H) 269, (L) 283; Romance, (L)
526; The Rover (1923), (H) 606
"Conscious knowledge of effortless
superiority," (L) 509, 521, 788, 792,
829
Consciousness: as a possible ultimate,
(H) 350-51; the behaviorists' view
of, (H) 1113, 1128; as the illumina-
tion of cosmic currents, (H) 1189,
(H) 1266
Conservatism, its intellectual roots,
(L) 925-26, (H) 927
Constable, John, (L) 1427
Constant Nymph, The (1925), by
Margaret Kennedy, (H) 761, 828,
(L) 912
Constant, Benjamin, Adolphe (1816),
(H) 828; Cours de politique con-
stitutionelle (2 vols., 1836), (L)
611
Constitution, British, (L) 143, 1198-
99, 1286, 1289, 1292, 1352. See also
Crown
Constitution, Canadian, (L) 476, 558-
59
Constitution, United States: economic
interpretation of, (H) 4, (L) 4,
(H) 1109; faults of, (L) 475, (H)
478, (L) 494, 524, (H) 529, (L)
535; reasons for Laskfs dislike of,
( H ) 529-30; judicial review as pro-
vided in, (L) 1371-72
Constitutional freedom, its relation to
taxation and religion, (L) 371
Constitutional government, its basis
in moral tradition, (L) 531
Constitutional Law, as political sci-
ence, (L) 621
Consumers* Cooperatives, (L) 661
Contemporary American Philosophy,
(L) 1245, 1249
Contempt of court, (L) 1030, (H)
1032, (L) 1037
Contract, liberty of, (H) 495
Conventions, their relations to ideals,
(H) 131
Conversation, its usual quality, (H)
422, (L) 533
Conversationalists: the Webbs* and
BirrelTs rating of the best, (L) 902;
Holmes's rating of, (H) 905
Conveyancers, their literary style, (L)
1374
Conway, Robert Seymour, (L) 662
Cooking, English, (L) 818
Coolidge, Archibald Gary, (L) 521,
545, 862
Coolidge, Calvin, (L) 213, note 1,
678, (H) 742, (L) 845, (H) 1000,
1118, (L) 1213; conduct in Boston
Police Strike, (L) 218, 535-36; in-
vites Holmes to Amherst to receive
honorary degree, (H) 426; Laski's
low regard for, (L) 524, 535-36,
670, 673, 678; Holmes reserves
judgment on, (H) 529, 541;
Holmes's estimate of, (H) 671, 675;
his wit, (H) 824; Holmes's conver-
sation with, (H) 985; The Auto-
biography of Calvin Coolidge
(1929), (L) 1213; Have Faith in
Massachusetts, (L) 536
Coppage v. Kansas, (L) 11, 73, 76,
116, 592, 678
Coppier, Andre Charles, Les eaux-
fortes authentiques de Rembrandt
(1917), (H) 187
Coquille, Guy, (L) 848, 932
Corcoran, Thomas G., (H) 893, 918,
985
Corelli, Marie, (L) 228
Corneille, Pierre, (L) 472, 510, (H)
606, 609, (L) 690, (H) 692, (L)
715, 1084, 1243, 1341, 1361; The
Cid, (H) 586
Cornell University, (L) 1315-16, (L)
1317
Cornford, Francis MacDonald, Micro-
cosmographia academica, (L) 591,
(H) 596
Cornwall, (L) 1400, 1449
1554
INDEX
Cornwall, Barry, (H) 1023
Corot, Jean-Baptiste, (H) 168
Corporations, theories of, (H) 4, 6,
(L) 25, 27, (H) 28-29, (L) 32,
39, 220, 1298; article on, by Indian
"scholar," (L) 903
Correggio, Antonio, (L) 607
Corsica, (H) 520
Cortez, Hernando, (H) 917
Cosway, Richard, (L) 530
Courier, Paul Louis, (L) 1324
Cournot, Antoine Augustin, (L) 1378
Cousin, Victor, Madame de Longue-
ville (3rd ed, 1855), (L) 146
Covarrubias y Leiva, Diego, (L) 1394;
Opera (1573), (L) 1366, 1397
Covell, William, A Just and Temperate
Defence of the Five Books of Ec-
clesiastical Policy (1611), (L)
477
Coventry, Laski's visit to, (L) 898
Covered Wagon, The, (H) 507
Cowell, John, The Interpreter (1637),
(L) 376
Cowper, Henry, (H) 323, 824
Cowper, William, (H) 533
Cox, James M., (H) 508
Coyer, Gabriel Francois, (L) 867;
Bagatelles morales et dissertations
(1746), (L) 1207; Plan d' educa-
tion publique (1770), (L) 1211
Crabbe, George, (L) 437, 602; The
Borough (1810), (L) 596
Crabbe Robinson, Henry, (L) 455,
480
Craig, Thomas, Jus feudale tribus libris
comprehensum, (L) 293, (L) 299;
The Right of Succession to the
Kingdom of England, (L) 293
Craig v. Hecht, (H) 560, 564, (L)
572
Cranford, see Gaskell, Mrs.
Crank letters, (L) 174, (H) 264,496,
(H) 635, (L) 643-44, (H) 646,
964, 971, 974, 1091, 1127, 1166,
1209, (L) 1428-29
Cranmer, Thomas, (L) 784
Craske, Leonard, (H) 781, 785, 872
Craven, Thomas, Men of Art (1931),
(H) 1337, 1340, (L) 1397
Credulity, human, (L) 629
Creighton, Mandell, (L) 45, 48; A
History of the Papacy from the
Great Schism to the Sack of Rome
(6 vols., 1903-1905), (L) 760, 777
Cresson, Andre, Les courants de la
pensee philosophique francaise
(1927), (L) 1074
Crevier, Jean Baptiste Louis, Observa-
tions sur le livre de I'esprit des loix,
(L) 1326
Crewe, Marquess of, (L) 977; Lord
Rosebery (1931), (L) 1339
Criminal Justice in Cleveland, ( Pound
and Frankfurter, eds.), (H) 431
Criminal law, Frenchman's lecture on
its future, (L) 589
Criminal lawyers, their humor, (L)
1374
Cripps, Sir Stafford, (L) 1439
Criticism, relativity of, (L) 715
Croce, Benedetto, (H) 580, 646, (L)
661, 729; Aesthetic as Science of
Expression and General Linguistic
(Ainslie, tr,, 1908), (H) 357, 568;
Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille,
(L) 356-57, (H) 357, (L) 364-65,
(H) 368; Goethe (1923), (L) 567,
(H) 568; History, Its Theory and
Practice, (L) 854; History of Eu-
rope in the Nineteenth Century
(1933), (L) 1463, 1470
Crofts, Freeman Wills, The Cask
(1920), (L) 1415; Inspector
French's Greatest Case ( 1925 ) , ( L )
726; The Starvel Hollow Tragedy
(1927), (L) 1005
Croker, John Wilson, Memoirs, Diaries
and Correspondence (1884), (L)
226, (H) 227, (L) 433
Croly, David Goodman, Seymour and
Blair, (L) 147
Croly, Herbert, (L) 7, (H) 17, (L)
17, (H) 21, (L) 125, 179,222, 231,
238, 348-49, 351, 362, 629, 658,
813, 1057, (H) 1101, 1124; Holmes's
letter to, (H) 202-204; on Abraham
Lincoln, (L) 242; economic falla-
cies of, (H) 272; visit to England
(1921), (L) 345; on Presidential
campaign, 1924, (H) 671; Laskfs
estimate of, (L) 836, 838, 861-62,
1050; Holmes's estimate of, (H)
837, 1055; his final illness, (L)
1132, (H) 1135; his death, (L)
1272
INDEX
1555
Cromer, Earl of, (L) 59, 143; Ancient
and Modern Imperialism., (L) 48,
59; Modern Egypt (2 vols., 1908),
(L) 143; Political and Literary Es-
says, (L) 48
Cromwell, Oliver, (L) 10, 39, 295,
333-34, 349, 361, 408, 506, 539,
543, 707, 1049, 1245, 1286, 1386;
as law reformer, (L) 392, (H) 398,
(L) 1286; similarity to Lincoln,
(L) 506; quoted, (H) 948
Cross, Richard, 1st Viscount Cross,
(L) 152
Crown, its constitutional powers, (L)
1286, 1409, 1418-19, 1430
Cru, R. Loyalty, Diderot as a Disciple
of English Thought (1913), (L)
860
Cruce, fimeric, Le nouuelle Cynee
(1623), (L) 1105,1108, 1343
Cruet, Jean, La vie du droit et Tim-
puissance des lois (1908), (L) 101,
1171, (H) 1172
Cruppi, Jean, Un auocat journaliste au
XVIIP siecle: Linguet (1895), (L)
536, 1059
Cujas, (L) 607, 978, 1324
Cumont, Franz, Les mysteres de
Mithra, (L) 52; The Oriental Re-
ligions in Roman Paganism (1916),
(L) 85, (H) 86, 89
Cuq, fidouard, Les institutions juri-
diques des Remains (2 vols., 1904-
1908), (L) 98, 109
Curran, J. P., (L) 1371
Curtis, Charles P., Jr., (H) 24, 275,
542, 783, 938, 1168
Curtis, Charles P., Jr., and Richard
Curtis, Hunting in Africa, East and
West (1925), (H) 796
Curtis, Mrs. Charles P., (H) 24, (L)
24, (H) 99, 166, 343, 347, 1075,
1166, 1168, 1177, 1278
Curtis, Edwin U., (L) 213, note 1,
(H) 217, (L) 218, (H) 529, (L)
535
Curtis, Laurence, (H) 1091
Curtis, Lionel, Papers relating to the
Application of the Principle of Dy-
wchy to the Government of India
(1920), (L) 299
Curtis, Richard C., (H) 1406
Curtius, Ernst Robert, The Civilization
of France (Wyon, tr., 1932), (L)
1361
Curzon, Lord, (L) 282, 320, 548, 566,
(H) 568, (L) 601, (H) 605, (L)
611, 672, 725, 1004, (H) 1006, (L)
1036-37, 1409, 1411; and Asquith
ministry, (L) 341, 1414-15; his
failure to become Prime Minis-
ter (May 1923), (H) 509; Holmes's
recollection of, (H) 605; Margot
Asquith's characterization of, (L)
695; Haldane's threat to, (L) 695;
The Life of Lord Curzon by the
Earl of Ronaldshay (3 vols., 1928),
(L) 1036-37, 1064, 1097
Cusanus, see Nicholas of Cusa
Custom, its relationship to law, (L)
1311-12
Cutting, Mrs. William Bayard, (H)
1259
Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861-1865,
A, (L) 330, (H) 332
Cyprian, Saint, (L) 1073
Cyran, Abbe de, see DuVergier de
Hauranne, Jean
Cyran, Saint, (H) 754, (L) 758,
801
Cyrano de Bergerac, (L) 867
D'Abernon, Viscount, see Vincent, Ed-
gar
Dabin, Jean, (L) 1463; La philoso-
phie de Tordre juridique positif
(1929), (L) 1218
Dabney, Virginius, Liberalism in the
South, (L) 1417
Daimler Co. v. Continental Tyre Co.,
(L)25
Dalton, Hugh, (L) 1155-56
Danby, Sir Thomas Osborne, 1st Earl
of Danby, (L) 625
Dane, Clemence, [pseud, of Winifred
Ashton], Broome Stages (1931),
(L) 1322
D'Annunzio, Gabriele, (L) 833
Dante, (L) 682, 1211; quoted, (H)
308, 769; De Monarchia, (H) 169,
(L) 170, 775, 777; The Divine
Comedy, (H) 165, (L) 532, 600,
(H) 781-82,904
Danton, (L) 951
d'Arblay, General, (L) 296
Dardanelles campaign, (L) 1051,
1059
1556
INDEX
Darling, Charles John, 1st Baron Dar-
ling, (L) 564, 593, 764, 789
Darling, William Young, The Private
Papers of a Bankrupt Bookseller
(1932), (L) 1480
Darrow, Clarence, (H) 1103
Darwin, Charles, (H) 4, (L) 22, 109,
138, (H) 281, (L) 330, 349, 476,
656, 819, 997, (H) 1128; Laski's
estimate of, (L) 1125, 1130, 1268;
Life and Letters of Darwin ( F. Dar-
win, ed., 3 vols., 1887), (L) 808,
1213
Darwin, Sir Charles Galton, (L) 820
Daryngton, Lord, (L) 1153-54
Dauden, , (L) 932
Daudet, Alphonse, (L) 1222
Daudet, Leon, (L) 1222
Davenne, Francois, Politique du temps
(1650), (L) 1249, 1255, 1460
Davey, Horace, Lord Davey, (H) 254,
692, (L) 749, 1063-64, 1142, 1368
Davey, Norman, Guinea Girl (1921),
(L) 392
David, (L) 687, (H) 689
Davidson, Thomas, (H) 580, (L)
1097; The Education of the Wage
Earners (1904), (H) 187
Davis, Admiral Charles Henry, (H)
227
Davis, Harvey, (L) 956
Davis, Jefferson, (L) 231, 253
Davis, John W., (L) 583, (H) 587,
(L) 665,670
Davis, Norman, (L) 1430
Davis v. Pringle, (H) 738
Davis v. Wechsler, (H) 554
Davy, Sir Humphry, (L) 639
Dawes, Charles G., (H) 719
Dawson, The Principle of Official In-
dependence (1922), (L) 455
Day, Clarence, This Simian World
(1920), (H) 268
Day, William Rufus, (L) 69, (H) 69,
230, 308-309, 413, (L) 470; pro-
spective resignation, (H) 445; as
editor of Holmes's opinion, (H)
486; his loyalty to, Stoift v. Tuson,
(H) 823
Day v. United States, (H) 111
Death as the basis of society, (H)
385, 431, 469, 966
Debidour, Antonin, Vegllse catholique
et I'etat sous la troisieme republique
(2 vols., 1906-1909), (L) 123
Debs, Eugene, (H) 197, (L) 198,
310; released from prison, (L) 391,
(H) 397
Debsv. United States, (L) 170, (H)
190, (L) 191, (H) 194, 199, 203-
204; Ernst Freund's comments on,
(L) 201-202, (H) 202, (H to
Croly) 203
Debt, imprisonment for, ( L ) 1471
De Chair, Somerset, The Impending
Storm (1930), (H) 1320
Declareuil, Joseph, Histoire generate
du droit pancais (1925), (L) 845,
847, (H) 849, (L) 854, (H) 855,
856, 859, 863, 866, (L) 867, (H)
868, (L) 874
Dedications, (L) 997
Dedieu, Joseph, Montesquieu (1913),
(L) 77, 82, 121, 614; Le rdle
politique des protestants francais
1685-1715 (1920), (L) 1021
Defence of the Realm Act, 1914, (L)
23, 238-39
Deffand, Madame du, (L) 524; her
correspondence, (L) 627, 907, 1329
Defoe, Daniel, Moll Flanders, (L) 502
Degas, Hilaire Germain, (L) 607,
981, 1018
Deism, 18th-century origins, (L) 798
De jure magistratum in subditos, by
Theodore Beze (1519-1605), (L)
365
De Keyser's Royal Hotel, In re, (L)
238-39
Delacroix, Eugene, (L) 977
De la Mare, Walter, Desert Islands
and Robinson Crusoe (1930), (L)
1256; Memoirs of a Midget ( 1921 ),
(L) 365
De La Warr, Lady, (L) 1123-24
Delbos, Victor, La philosophic pratique
deKant (1905), (L) 612
Deloney, Thomas, (L) 895, 907-908
Delvolve, Jean, Religion, critique et
philosophie positive chez Pierre
Bayle (1906), (L) 1025
Democracy: intelligentsia and gentle-
men in, (L) 16, (H) 16-17, 42,
(L) 42-43; faults of, (L) 40, (H)
42, (L) 42-43, 52-53, 57, 79;
Laskfs attitudes towards, (L) 501,
INDEX
1557
551-52, 750, (H) 762; as a histori-
cal episode, (L) 540-41; its prob-
lems in modern society, (L) 551-
52; in ancient Greece and modern
Britain contrasted, (L) 1007
Democrats, their bitterness, (H) 800,
803
Demogue, Rene, (L) 43, 642; Les
notions fondamentales du droit
prive (1911), (H) 1027, 1039,
1045
Demolins, Edmond, Les grandes
routes des peuples, (L) 169
De Morgan, William, Joseph Vance
(1906), (L) 1085
Demosthenes, (L) 908
Dernpsey, Jack, (L) 352
Dempsey v. Chambers, (H) 61
Denham, Sir James Stewart, An In-
quiry into the Principles of Political
Economy (2 vok, 1767), (L) 788
Deniken, Anton Ivanovich, (L) 280
Denman, Marion, see Frankfurter,
Mrs. Felix
Dennis, Geoffrey, Mary Lee (1922),
(L) 447
Dentists, Holmes's reflections on, (H)
734, 905
Denver v. Denver "Union Water Co.,
(H) 136
De Ouincey, Thomas, (L) 13, 285,
(H) 287-88, 793, 856, 1159, 1283;
his essays on political economy, ( L )
830; Levana, (L) 285; Murder as
One of the Fine Arts, (L) 285, (H)
287
Derby, 14th Earl of, (L) 898-99
Dernburg, Heinrich, (L) 1279
Derome, Nicolas Denis, (L) 1162
Desborough, Baroness, (H) 323, 397,
410, 474, (L) 479
Descartes, Rene, (H) 95, (L) 97,
120, 138, 216, 573, (H) 608, (L)
634, 694, 818, 978, 1013-14, 1017,
1087, 1125, 1190, 1232, 1350-51,
1377, 1459; his influence on political
science, (L) 718; his letters to
Huygens, (L) 825; his indebtedness
to scholastics, (H) 875, 985; his
delayed influence, (L) 1066; his
correspondence, (L) 1168; his in-
fluence on romanticism, (L) 1243;
Oeuvres de Descartes (Charles
Adam and Paul Tannery, ed., 12
vols., 1897-1910), (L) 1168
Desnoiresterres, Gustave, Voltaire et
la societe frangaise au XVIII* siecle
(8 vok, 1867-76), (L) 571,626
Destutt De Tracy, Antoine Louis
Claude, comte, (L) 877; Commen-
taire sur L'Esprit des lois de Mon-
tesquieu (1817), (L) 532
Determinism: Hardy's, (L) 690; and
criminal responsibility, (H) 806;
Russell's comments on free will, (L)
1404
Deutsche Bank Filiale v. Humphrey,
(H) 888, 896-97, (L) 903
Deutsche Gesellschaft filr Sociologie,
Lasld elected to, (L) 894
Devens, Charles, quoted, (H) 304
D'Ewes, Sir Simonds, (L) 956
Dewey, John, (H) 537, (L) 571, 703,
979, (H) 1102, 1109, 1135, (L)
1242, (H) 1269; Bertrand Russell's
estimate of, (L) 801, 809; Laski's
estimate of, (L) 801; Holmes's esti-
mates of, (H) 803, 901; Meyersons
estimate of, (L) 1376; his unfortu-
nate influence on educational theory,
(L) 1385; Alexander's estimate of,
(L) 1429, 1452; Essays in Experi-
mental Logic (1916), (L) 25; Ex-
perience and Nature (1925), (H)
901, 904-905, 910, 918, (L) 1120,
(H) 1121, 1141, 1144, (L) 1154-
55, 1284; Human Nature and Con-
duct, (H) 430, 431; Philosophy and
Civilization, (H) 1346-47
Dexter, Henry Martyn, The Congre-
gationalism of the Last Three Hun-
dred Jean (1880), (L) 370
Diaries, (L) 980,990,1316
Diaz v. Patterson, (H) 569
Dibelius, Wilhelm, England (Hamil-
ton, tr., 1929), (L) 1207, 1222-23
Dicey, Albert Venn, (L) 93, 113, 140,
146, (H) 175-76, (L) 283, (H)
291, (L) 400, 531, 731, 764, 771,
1176, 1454, 1456; on administrative
law, (L) 173, 1352; death of, (H)
418, (L) 421; Holmes's estimate of,
(H) 422, 712; Laski's estimate of,
(L) 429, 706-707; Law of the Con-
stitution, (L) 306-307, 553, 621,
707, 1223; Lectures on the Relation
1558
INDEX
Dicey, Albert Venn (Continued)
between Law and Public Opinion
(1st ed., 1905), (L) 429, 674, 707,
771; The Statesmanship of Words-
worth (1917), (H) 142, (L) 143.
See also Rait, Robert S.
Dickens, Charles, (L) 193, 225, 238,
344, 626, 640, 779, 834, 868, 908,
(H) 1119, (L) 1126, 1173, 1308;
his women characters, (L) 241;
compared to Thackeray, (L) 655,
677, (H) 681, (L) 685, 895; Bleak
House, (H) 481, (L) 868, 1255-
56; Charles Dickens and Maria
Beadnell (Baker, ed., 1908), (H)
1119; A Christmas Carol, (L) 868;
David Copperfield, (L) 134, (H)
1119; Hard Times, (L) 868; Little
Dorrit, (H) 1119; Martin Chuzzle-
wit, (L) 40, (H) 42; Nicholas
Nickleby, (H) 523, (L) 868, 954,
1333-34; The Old Curiosity Shop,
(L) 388; Oliver Twist, (L) 1427;
Our Mutual Friend, (L) 421, 787,
(H) 1320; Pickwick Papers, (L)
443, 585, 779, (H) 893, 921, (L)
1255, 1405; A Tale of Two Cities,
(L) 388
Dickinson, Edwin DeWitt, The Equal-
ity of States in International Law
(1920), (L) 1199
Dickinson, G. Lowes, (L) 273, 686-
87, 944, (H) 949, (L) 973, (H)
975; Religion (1905), (L) 637
Dickinson, John, Administrative Jus-
tice and the Supremacy of Law in
the United States (1927), (L) 960,
(H) 1044; "Working Theory of
Sovereignty," (H) 1044
Dickinson, Zenas Clark, Economic
Motives (1922), (L) 543, 596
Dickinson v. Stiles, (H) 152-53
Dictators, tactical limits on their pow-
ers, (L) 546, (H) 555
Dictionary of Modern English Usage
(1927), by H. W. Fowler, (H)
1015-16
Dictionary of National Biography,
The, (L) 433
Dictionnaire des livres 'jansenistes, by
Dominique de Colonia (1724), (L)
984
Diderot, Denis, (L) 24, 522, 527, 544,
612, 677, 860, 870, (H) 1019, (L)
1115, 1165, 1195, 1376; Laski ac-
quires his Works, (L) 505, 571,
572, 1131, 1162; Laski tempted to
purchase his Works, (L) 614, 1157;
Carlyle's essay on, ( L ) 625; Laski's
search for his unpublished papers,
(L) 1047; his correspondence with
Mile. Volland, (L) 1131; Lettres a
Sophie Volland (Babelon, ed., 3
vols., 1930), (L) 1303, 1479-80;
Pensees philosophiques (1746), (L)
1082; Pensees sur I* interpretation de
la nature (1754), (L) 922, 1281
Diehl, Charles, Figures byzantines
(1906), (H) 976
Digges, Dudley, The Unlawfulness of
Subjects Taking up Arms against
their Soveraigne (1648), (L) 467
Dilke, Sir Charles W., (1843-1911),
(L) 110, 120, (H) 129, (L) 317,
595-96, 833, 1017
Dill, Sir Samuel, (L) 50, 170; Roman
Society from Nero to Marcus
Aurelius (1905), (H) 1081, 1089,
1091, (L) 1093; Roman Society in
the Last Century of the Western
Empire (2 vols., 1899), (L) 45,
47-48
Dillon, John Forrest, (H) 301, 1246
Dimitrov, Georgi, (L) 1459, note 2,
1468
Dinner party of characters from fic-
tion, (L) 633
Disarmament conference: in 1921-22,
(H) 382, 406, (L) 409; in 1932-33,
(L) 1361, 1440
Discontinuity, see Causation in Nature
Disestablishment, (L) 1106, 1140
Disraeli, Benjamin, (L) 282, (H)
304, (L) 329, 626, (H) 931, (L)
997, (H) 1000, (L) 1457; his po-
litical novels, (L) 358-59; as nov-
elist, (L) 449, 725; anecdote con-
cerning, (L) 471-72; his pew at
Hughenden, (L) 697; Laski's esti-
mate of, (L) 1187; Coningsby, (L)
449, (H) 961; Contarini Fleming,
(L) 929; Endymion, (L) 640; The
Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford
and Lady Chesterfield (Marquis of
Zetland, ed., 2 vols., 1929), (L)
1187, 1190; Lothair, (L) 683
INDEX
1559
Disraeli, Isaac, Curiosities of Litera-
ture (3 vols., 1817), (H) 1046
Dissenting opinions: Holmes's practice
in preparing, (H) 68, 240, (L) 241;
factors determining whether to
write, (H) 266; proprieties in writ-
ing, (H) 560, 1027; advantages in
writing, (H) 646-47, 1258-59; fre-
quency of Holmes's, (H) 1060
Dobree, Bonamy, John Wesley (1933),
(L) 1433
Dobson, Austin, (L) 806, (H) 806
Docker's strike, 1924, (L) 595
Dodd, Charles (Tootel, Hugh), The
Church History of England ( 5 vols.,
Tierney, ed., 1939-43), (L) 303
Dodge, Robert G., (H) 758
Dodington, George Bubb, (L) 402
Doherty, James, (H) 1158
Dollinger, J. J. I, The Letters of
Janus, (L) 87-88
Domat, Jean, (L) 962, 978, 1324;
Les loix civiles dans leur ordre na-
turel (3 vols., 1689-94), (L)
750
Donatism, (L) 1001
Donne, John, (L) 627, 784; his Ser-
mons, (L) 638
Donnellan, Mary, (H) 1320, 1346,
(L) 1357, 1362, (H) 1367
Dons, (L) 454, 552-53, 735, 774, 847,
(H) 849, (L) 853, (H) 856, (L)
919, (H) 921, (L) 924, 944, (H)
949, (L) 1016, 1028-29, 1077,
1163-64, 1363, 1380; women as,
(L) 1034
Dopsch, Alfons, (L) 1279-80
Dor6, Gustave, (H) 229, 875
Dorsey, George A., Why We Behave
like Human beings (1925), (H)
810-11
Dos Passos, John, (L) 1237, (H)
1239, (L) 1411; 1919 (1932), (L)
1390-91
Dostoievski, Fyodor, (L) 992, 997,
1229, 1458; The Brothers Kara-
mazov, (L) 929, 970, 982; Crime
and Punishment, (H) 1144; The
Eternal Husband and Other Stories
(Garnett, tr., 1917), (L) 92; The
Idiot, (H) 994
Doughty, C. M., (H) 688; Arabia
Deserta, (H) 754
Douglas, C. H., Credit-power and
Democracy, with a commentary by
A. R, Orage (1920), (H) 462,
465-66
Douglas, Norman, South Wind ( 1925 ) ,
(H) 1122, (L) 1126; They Went
(1920), (L) 317
Doumerge, Emile, Jean Calvin (7 vols.,
1899-1927)%(L) 1119
Doumic, Rene, Saint Simon: La
France de Louis XIV (1919), (L)
980, 1052
Dow, Mrs., (H) 119
DowdaU, Harold Chaloner, (L) 1076
Dowden, Edward, Percy Bysshe
Shelley (1892), (L) 369
Downing Street, No. 10, (L) 599
Doyle, Arthur Conan, (L) 1267; His
Last Bow (1917), (L) 110-11. See
also Sherlock Holmes stories
Drake, , (L) 516
Drake, Sir Francis, (L) 505, 873
Drama, Greek and Roman compared,
(L) 648, (H) 651-52
Dream of John Ball, The, see Morris,
William, The Dream of John Ball
(1888)
Dred Scott v. Sandford, (L) 850
Dreiser, Theodore, An American Trag-
edy (1925), (H) 1416; Tragic
America (1931), (L) 1393; Twelve
Men (1919), (L) 1326
Drews, Arthur, Die Christusmythe
(1924), (H) 1224
Dreyfus case: Anatole France's inter-
pretation of, (L) 588; its similarity
to Sacco-Vanzerti case, (L) 972;
Russell's comment on, (L) 1404
Dreyfus-Brisac, Edmond, (L) 986
Drinkwater, John, (L) 1248; Oliver
Cromwell (1921), (L) 506
Drummond, Sir Eric, (L) 1325
Dryden, John, (L) 296, 785, (H)
860, 863, 1197; Dryden 's Dramatic
Works, (L) 1359, 1361
Dubois, Guillaume (1656-1723), (L)
558
Dubois, W. E. Burghardt, (L) 562;
Darkwater (1920), (L) 296
DuBois-Reymond, Emil, (H) 139
Dubos, Jean-Baptiste, (L) 969
Dubreuil, Hyacinthe, Robots or Men?,
(L) 1206
1560
INDEX
Duchesne, Monsignor Louis, Les pre-
miers temps de I'etat pontifical
(1898), (L) 56
Duck, Arthur, De usu et authoritate
juris civilis Romanorum, (L) 286
Duclos, Charles Pinot, (L) 532-33;
Considerations sur les moeurs de ce
siecle (7th ed. 1780), (L) 544
Ducros, Louis, Diderot, Thomme et
ecrivain (1894), (L) 960, 1277;
Les encyclopedist es (1900), (L)
517, 617, 1341; Jean-Jacques Rous-
seau (1908), (L) 945,947
Dueling, codes of honor in, (H)
1238-39
Duff, Robert A., Spinoza's Political
and Ethical Philosophy (1903), (L)
456, 1041
Dufour, Theophile, (L) 1230
Dufour Feronce, Albert, (L) 973
Duguid, Julian, Green Hell (1931),
(H) 1346
Duguit, Leon, (L) 39, 43, 56, 68, 90,
102, 109, (H) 112, 115-16, 118-19,
(L) 120, 127, (H) 248, 426, (L)
850-51, 1085, 1171, 1176, 1298,
1366, 1368, 1371; Laskfs impression
of (1922), (L) 424; Le droit social
et le droit individuel (1908), (L)
63; "The Law and the State," (L)
102, 109, (H) 115-16, 118-19,
248; Law in the Modern State
(translated by Frida and Harold
Laski), (H) 239, 243; Les trans-
formations du droit public (1913),
(L) 15, (H) 16, (L) 41
Duhamel, Georges, America: The
Menace, (L) 1333
Dumas, Alexandre, (L) 71, 977; his
picture of the Fronde, (L) 700;
compared to Scott, (L) 749; The
Count of Monte Cristo, (L) 760;
Crimes celebres, (H) 742; The
Forty-Five, (L) 77, (H) 77-78,
(L) 79; The Three Musketeers,
(L) 241; Twenty Years After, (L)
700
Dumaurier, George, (H) 319
Dumur, Louis, Dieu protege le tsar
(1928), (H) 1133, 1140-41
Duncan, Adam, (L) 1080
Duncan, Isadora, My Life (1927),
(H) 1159
Dundas, Henry, Viscount Melville, ( L )
137-38
Dunedin, Lord, see Murray, Andrew
Graham
Dunning, William Archibald, History
of Political Theories, (L) 337
Dunoyer, Charles, (L) 206, 1083
Dunraven, Earl of, see Wyndham-
Quin, Windham Thomas
Duns Scotus, (L) 364
Dunster House Bookshop, (L) 274,
277, 522
Dupin, Claude, Observations sur un
livre intitule: De I'esprit des lois
(3 vols., 1750-51), (L) 1356
Duplessis-Mornay, Philippe, probable
author of Vindiciae contra tyrannos,
(L) 443
Dupont, M., (L) 435
Dupriez, Leon, (L) 129
Dupuy, Pierre, Preuves des libertes de
I'eglise Gallicane (4 vols., 1731),
(L) 1442
Durant, Will, The Story of Philosophy
(1927), (H) 961, 999, 1040
Diirer, Albrecht, (L) 227, (H) 561,
609, 713, (L) 716; "Death's Head
Coat of Arms," (H) 495
Durham, Bishop of, (L) 1394
Durkheim, Smile, La division du
travail social (1893), (L) 540
Duse, Eleanora, (H) 569
Dutch: their eating habits, (L) 864,
1083-84; their provincialism, (L)
864-65; their achievements in paint-
ing, sculpture, and architecture, ( L )
1217-18
Duval, Claude, (H) 161-62
DuVergier de Hauranne, Jean, (H)
161, (L) 604; Question royalle et
sa decision, (L) 1301
Dyer, George, (L) 1407
Eady, Charles Swinfen, Lord Swinfen,
(L) 348
Earl of Kinnoul v. Ferguson, (H) 20,
(L) 22
East Africa, see Kenya
Ecclesiastes, (L) 593, 684, (H) 685,
(L) 1476
Eckermann, Johann Peter, Conversa-
tions with Goethe, (H) 1269, 1283
Eclipse of sun, (L) 541, (H) 1406
Economic general staff, (L) 1212
INDEX
1561
Economic laws, (L) 691, (H) 693
Economics, see Holmes, economic
theories of, and Laski, economic
theories of
Eddington, Sir Arthur, (L) 553, 1301,
1376, 1404, 1435, 1448, 1451; The
Nature of the Physical World
(1928), (L) 1116, (H) 1169, 1172
Eden, Emily, The Semi- Attached
Couple, (L) 1021; The Semi-De-
tached House (1928ed.), (L) 1064
Eden, Sir Frederic Morton, The State
of the Poor (3 vok, 1797), (L)
477
Edgeworth, Maria, (L) 433, 441, 490,
1145; Belinda, (L) 490, 1156; Har-
rington, (L) 490; Ormond (3 vols.,
1817), (L) 433; Patronage, (L)
490, 1156
Edinburgh, Laskfs visits to, (L) 751,
884, 1251
Education, American, (L) 41, 44-45,
(H) 46, (L) 48, 53, 56, 253, 514,
551, (H) 762, (L) 1174, 1242,
1257, 1309, 1313
Education, British Government's pol-
icy toward, (L) 302
Education, English, (L) 295, 747,
1363, 1385
Education, English and American
compared, (L) 17, 44, 53? (H) 55,
(L) 55-56, (H) 254, (L) 1163-
64, 1309, (H) 1310, (L) 1380
Education, faults of modern, (L)
1385-86
Education, secular and religious, (L)
88
Education, university, (L) 17, 1385
Edward VII, (L) 513, 995
Edwards, , (L) 510
Edwards, Jonathan, (L) 699, 786-87,
(H) 831-32, (L) 1066
Edwards, Thomas, Gangraena (1646),
(L) 629, 633, 861
Edwards v. Slocum, (H) 590, 601
Efficiency, as social ideal, ( H ) 8
Egoism: makes altruists and martyrs,
(H) 316, 832; Holmes's conundrum
concerning, (H) 1023
Egoism and egotism, (H) 1172, (L)
1195
Ehrlich, Eugen, (H) 16, (L) 18, 77,
121, 127, (H) 232, (L) 455, 610,
(H) 615, (L) 850-51, (H) 886,
(L) 970, 1042, 1171, 1276; Grunde-
lung der Soziologie des Rechts
(1913), (L) 109, 669, (H) 672,
(L) 1195, 1326; Die juristische
Logik (1918), (H) 224, 226, 230,
246, 615, (L) 669, (H) 672
Ehrlich, Ludwik, Proceedings against
the Crown (in VI Oxford Studies in
Legal History, 1921), (L) 380
Eighteenth century: Laskfs admiration
for, (L) 402; worldly wisdom of,
(L) 433; political theorists of, (L)
488
Einstein, Albert, (L) 289, 314, 468,
880, (H) 887, (L) 1129, 1435;
Relativity; The Special and the
General Theory, a Popular Exposi-
tion (Lawson, tr., 1920), (L) 276,
279
Einstein, Lewis, (H) 269, 803, (L)
821, (H) 823, (L) 1097, (H) 1109,
(L) 1240, 1241, 1254, 1271, 1302;
Divided Loyalties (1933), (L)
1443; Roosevelt, his Mind in Action
(1930), (L) 1299; Tudor Ideals,
(H) 359, 364, (L) 367, 435, (H)
1260
Eisner v. Macomber, (H) 251
El Greco, (L) 1427, 1446
Eldon, Lord, (L) 850, 1226, 1340
Elias v. Pasmore, (L) 1415, note 1
Eliason v. Wilborn, (H) 1247
Eliot, A. D., Life of Lord Goschen,
(L) 137
Eliot, Charles William, (L) 690, 723,
(H) 1000, (L) 1235; Holmes's esti-
mate of, (H) 930; Laskfs impres-
sions of, (L) 874-75, 935, 1305
Eliot, George, (L) 259, 306, 433, 447,
640, 749, 834, 908, 913, 992, 1022,
1258; Morley's anecdotes concern-
ing, ( L ) 476; as greatest woman of
19th century, (L) 912; Adam Bede,
(L) 993; Daniel Deronda, (L)
632-33, (H) 634, (L) 749, 929;
Felix Holt, (L) 909; Middlemarch,
(L) 296, 441, 544, 596, 632, 749,
929, 1330; Romola, (L) 929; Scenes
from Clerical Life, (L) 296
Eliot, John, (L) 366
Eliot, T. S., (H) 373, 1196, 1205, (L)
1465; After Strange Gods (1934),
1562
INDEX
Eliot, T. S. (Continued)
(L) 1474; Dante (1929), (L)
1210; The Sacred Wood (1920),
(L) 1245
"Elizabeth/' see Russell, Countess
Elizabeth, Queen, (L) 877
Ellenborough, Lord, (L) 850
Ellesmere, Lord, (L) 359, 1313, 1410
Elliot, Hugh, Herbert Spencer (1917),
(L) 84, 86; The Letters of John
Stuart Mill (2 vok, 1910), (L)
156
Ely, Joseph, (L) 1393, note 1, (H)
1395
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, (H) 918, (L)
1024, 1179, 1280, 1403; quoted,
(H) 398, 601; his influence on
English thinkers in the 1860's, (L)
471; Laskfs estimate of, (L) 471,
550, 1099, 1299; Holmes's estimate
of, (H) 474, 796; on Montaigne,
(H) 496; Carlyle's estimate of, (L)
729-30; "The American Scholar,"
(L) 1241; Essays (Henry Morley,
ed., 1886), (L) 951; Natural His-
tory of Intellect and Other Papers
(1893), (H) 796
Emery v. American Refrigerator Co.,
(H) 152-53
Emmet, Robert, (L) 1371
Emotion, the capacity of simple men
to stir, (H) 1027
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences,
Laskfs contributions to, (L) 1093,
1303
Encyclopedists, (L) 483-84, 952
Enden, Franz van den, (L) 1469
Engels, Friedrich, (L) 358, 1471-72;
The Condition of the Working Class
in England in 1844 (1892), (L)
1440; Feuerbach; the Roots of the
Socialist Philosophy (1903), (L)
1474
England and United States compared,
(H) 55, 232, 234, (L) 501, (H)
646, 755, (L) 770, 776, (H) 939,
(L) 946, (H) 1310. See also United
States
English political events: 1916-October
1922: (L) 40-41, 150-51,274, 276,
279-80, 305-306; election cam-
paign, (L) 403; (L) 411, 449-50;
the fall of the Lloyd George Coali-
tion government, (L) 458; October
1922-D ecember 1923: general elec-
tion (October 1922), (L) 459-60,
509; general election (November-
December 1923), (L) 561-62, 566;
(L) 569-70; formation of Labour
government (December 1923), (L)
572; January 1924-~November
1924: formation of Labour Cabinet
(1924), (L) 583, 584, 590; possi-
bilities of general election (April
1924), (L) 610; prospect of general
election (October 1924), (L) 664;
general election (October 1924),
(L) 667; November 192^-May
1929: general election (November
1924), (L) 669; character and struc-
ture of the Baldwin government, ( L )
672-73, 676; Labour victory in bye-
election (May 1926), (L) 843;
breach between Asquith and Lloyd
George (May 1926), (L) 843-44;
proposed reform of House of Lords,
1927, (L) 955-56, 959; cabinet
posts if Labour should gain office
(1928), (L) 1107; see also General
strike, 1926; May 1929-February
1935: general election (May 1929),
(L) 1150; formation of Labour
government (1929), (L) 1153-54,
1155-56; introduction of budget
(April 1930), (L) 1242; conditions
in England (summer 1931), (L)
1323; establishment of national gov-
ernment (August 1931), (L)
1326-27; unrest in navy (1931),
(L) 1329-30; political rumors and
confusion (November 1931), (L)
1332-33; election (October 1931),
(L) 1334-35; division in Cabinet
(January 1932), (L) 1361, 1429-
30; the critical prospects of 1932,
(L) 1389, 1408; the atmosphere of
May 1933, (L) 1440; the compla-
cent drift of 1934, (L) 1466, 1469-
70; prospects of a general election
(December 1934), (L) 1469; pros-
pects of a general election (Feb-
ruary 1935), (L) 1480-81
English traits and character, (H) 149,
214-15, (L) 271, (H) 272, (L)
303, 328-29, 501, 517, (H) 519,
(L) 544, (H) 663, (L) 707, (H)
INDEX
1563
763, (L) 1271, 1307-1308, 1329-30,
1330
English usage, problems of, ( H ) 227,
414
Ensor, James, (L) 527, 716, 865, 866,
873, 1217-18, 1302, 1427, 1473;
Laski's description of, ( L ) 1084-85
Ensor, R. C. K., Courts and Judges in
France, Germany., and England
(1933), (L) 1443
Enthusiasm, (H) 478, 772, (L) 936,
(H) 942, 1158
Entick v. Carrington, (L) 1461
Eos, see Jeans, Sir James Hopwood
Epigrams: Holmes's alleged penchant
for, (H) 601; the greatest in French,
(L) 1369, 1371
fipinay, Madame, see Galiani, Abbe
Equality, (L) 17, (H) 108, 194, (L)
592, 595, (H) 653, 660, 769, (L)
776, (H) 781, (L) 946, (H) 1035,
1089, 1101, 1246, 1272, (L) 1282;
passion for, as idealization of envy,
(H) 942, 1089; in England, United
States, and France, (L) 992; Chris-
tian and political doctrines of, com-
pared, (L) 1083; its relation to
liberty, (L) 1179; Tawney's book
on, (L) 1305; French concern for,
(L) 1322
Equitable Trust Co. v. First National
Bank, (H) 1003
Erasmus, Desiderius, (L) 434, 582,
670
Erie Railroad v. Hilt, (H) 157
Erie Railroad Co. v. Public Utility
Commission, (H) 300
Erigena, (L) 364
Ernie, Rowland Edmund Prothero,
Baron, The Psalms in Human Life
(1903), (H) 274-75
Ervine, St. John, (L) 1187
Escobar y Mendoza, Antonio, (L)
1066
Esmein, Adhemar, Elements de droit
constitutional (1896), (L) 57, 58,
648, 847; Le manage en droit cano-
nique (2 vok, 1891), (L) 109
Essay on Civil Government (1743),
(L) 433
Essays of Ella, see Lamb, Charles
Estienne, Henry, (L) 249
Etherege, Sir George, (L) 595
Ethics, see Morals
Eugenics, see Birth control
Euphues, its possible influence on
Shakespeare, (H) 1127
Euripides, (L) 10, 68, 563, (H)
564-65, (L) 567, (H) 605, (L)
621, 622-23, (H) 641, note 1, (L)
908, (H) 916, (L) 980; compared
with Aeschylus and Sophocles, (L)
1316; Bacchae, (H) 918; Eu-
menides, (L) 623; Medea, (H)
556, 560-61, (L) 633
Europe: political condition (fall 1922),
(L) 444; political condition (sum-
mer 1923), (L) 528; American at-
titude towards (1924), (L) 588;
its advantages vis a vis the United
States, (H) 943, 966; its gloomy
prospects (spring 1933), (L) 1443;
prospects of war or peace ( Decem-
ber 1934), (L) 1469
Evans, Sir Arthur, (L) 1451
Evans, Mr. and Mrs. Glendower, (H)
1027
Evans v. Gore, (H) 266, (L) 267, (H)
335
Evarts, William Maxwell, (H) 519,
1081
Everett, Charles Warren, (L) 825;
The Education of Jeremy Bentham
(1931), (L) 1363-64; The Letters
of Junius, (L) 1033-34
Everett, Edward, (L) 151. See also
Frothingham, P. R.
Evidence, documentary, (L) 619
Evil, problem of, (H) 866
Evolution, theory of, (H) 161; its
changing character, (H) 1006,1128,
(L) 1130, (H) 1134, (L) 1140,
(H) 1250
Executive power, Maine's prediction
of its expansion, (L) 1400
Expatriates, American and English,
(L) 319, (H) 322, (L) 325, 1129,
(H) 1133, (L) 1170-71
Experts, their place in government,
(L) 416, (H) 417-18, (L) 619;
their limitations, (L) 715, (H)
1300, (L) 1304, 1416-17
Exquisiteness, unearned, (H) 474,
646
Extremists, (H) 1265
Eyck, Jan van, (L) 574, 582
1564
INDEX
Fabian Society, (L) 141, 475, 590
Fable of the Bees, The, see Mande-
ville, Bernard
Fabre, Joseph, Les peres de la revolu-
tion: de Bayle a Condorcet (1910),
(L) 539
Facts: Holmes's lack of interest in,
(H) 128, 129, 205, (L) 205, (H)
212, 810, (L) 946, (H) 949-50;
as the real source of difficulties in
law, (H) 806-807
Faguet, fimile, (L) 58, 65, 92, 93,
(H) 108, (L) 710, 715, 931; as
critic, (L) 17, 19; on Gladstone, (L)
39; his marginal notes in Montes-
quieu's Works, (L) 622; Anti-
clericalisme, (L) 53; Dix-huitieme
siecle; etudes litteraires (2nd ed.,
1890), (L) 24, 514; En lisant des
beaux vieux livres (1911), (H) 93;
Le liberalisme (1902), (H) 16, 17,
18, 21, 24; Politiques et moralistes
du XIXe siecle (3 vols., 1898-
1900), (L) 17, 30, 441; Problemes
politiques du temps present ( 1901 ) ,
(L) 81; Propos litteraires, (L) 441;
Rousseau penseur (1912), (L) 91,
(H) 93
Faith, as foundation of all belief, ( H )
377
Falkland, Lucius Gary, 2nd Viscount,
(L) 625
Fallieres, Armand, (L) 1095
Faraday, Michael, (L) 639, 665-66
Farbman, Michael S., Bolshevism in
Retreat (1923), (L) 510
Farmers Loan and Trust Co. v. Min-
nesota, (H) 1204, 1209
Farnham, castle, (L) 778
Farragut, David Glasgow, (L) 1080
Farrand, Max, The Development of
the United States from Colonies to
a World Power (1918), (H) 169,
(L) 171; The Fathers of the Con-
stitution (1921), (H) 414
Farrer, James Anson, Monarchy in
Politics, (L) 143
Fascism: its relation to Bergsonism,
(L) 977-78; its relation to Hegelian
thought, (L) 1068; its manifesta-
tions in Italy, (L) 1114-15; its
threat to civilization, 1934, (L)
1468; its growth, (L) 1469
Fashion: its respectability and impor-
tance, (H) 652, 1205; in ideas, (H)
855
"Father forgive them" as the biggest
thing in antiquity, (H) 605, 1061
Faulkner, William, (L) 1433
Faust, (H) 234, 965, 966
Favre, Jules, (L) 547
Fawcett, Henry, (H) 1208
Fay, Bernard, analysis of Laskf s plu-
ralism, (L) 247; The American
Experiment (1929), (L) 1136;
Franklin, the Apostle of Modern
Times (1929), (L) 1220; Panorama
de la litterature contemporaine
(1925), (L) 933; The Revolution-
ary Spirit in France and America
(1927), (L) 1041
Federal Courts, jury trials in, (L) 736,
(H) 738
Federal Trade Commission v. Amer-
ican Tobacco Co., (H) 601
Federalism, (L) 34, 140, 234, 392,
475, 721, 1279, 1297; of Proudhon,
(L) 62; Canadian and American,
(L) 558-59
Federalist Papers, The, (L) 147, 189,
306-307, 392, 493, 497, 695
Federalist Party, (H) 1070
Feiling, Keith, A History of the Tory
Party, 1640-1714 (1924), (L) 625
Feis, Herbert, (L) 870
Fellow-servant rule, (L) 514, (H)
515, (L) 1434-35
Fenelon, Francois de Salignac de la
Mothe, (L) 533, 614, 710, 714,
792, 851, 1151, 1301, 1356
Ferber, Edna, American Beauty, (L)
1339; Cimanon (1930), (L) 1248;
Show Boat (1926), (L) 895
Feret, Pierre, La faculte de theologie
de Paris et ses docteurs les plus
celebres: Moyen-dge, ( 4 vols., 1894-
97), (L) 962
Ferguson, Adam, (L) 1472
Ferguson, Charles W., The Confusion
of Tongues (1928), (H) 1152-53
Ferguson, William Scott, Hellenistic
Athens (1911), (L) 91, 134
Fergusson, Harvey, Capitol Hill
(1923), (L) 592
Fernandez v. Phillips, (H) 738
Ferraz, Marin, Histoire de la philoso-
INDEX
1565
phie en France au XIXs siecle
(1880), (L) 61
Ferrero, Guglielmo, The Greatness and
Decline of Rome, (L) 45, 78, 138,
147, (H) 568, (L) 724
Ferry v. Ramsey, (H) 1054
Feuchtwanger, Lion, Jew Suss (Muir,
tr., 127), (L) 913, 916; The Ugly
Duchess (1927), (L) 998
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, (L) 720
Fidelity 6- Columbia Trust Co. v.
Louisville, (H) 106
Field, Stephen J., (L) 116, 1007
Fielding, Henry, (L) 62, 992; Tom
Jones, (L) 201, 756, 851, 960
Figgis, John Neville, (L) 98, (H)
115, (L) 117, 125, (H) 162, (L)
460, (H) 918; his pluralism, (L)
7, (H) 8, (L) 9; influence on Laski,
(H) 246, (L) 246-47, (H) 1272;
Churches in the Modern State
(1914), (H) 5; The Divine Right
of Kings (2nd ed., 1914), (H) 5;
From Gerson to Grotius, (L) 388,
461, 697; The Political Aspects of
St. Augustine's "City of God1"
(1921), (L) 325
Filmer, Robert, his borrowings from
Bodin, (L) 480, 697-98; Patriarcha
(1680), (L) 480, 697; his stature,
(L) 1286
Finer, Herman, (L) 670, (H) 730
Finlay, George, A History of Greece
(7 vols., 1877), (L) 528, 627, 656
Firemen, Holmes's liking for, ( H ) 496
First National Bank v. Maine, (H)
1347, note 2
Firuski, Maurice, (L) 274, 277, 522
Fischer, Kuno, History of Modern
Philosophy (Gordy, tr., 1887), (L)
827
Fish, Frederick?., (H) 319
Fisher, H. A. L., (L) 491, 547, 644,
694, 747, 759, 1163, 1231; The Bay
Colony, (L) 1270; James Bryce9
(H) 930, (L) 933,934
Fisher, Irving, (L) 43, 995
Fisher, Sir Warren, (L) 1264
Fitz, Mrs. Walter Scott, (H) 538
Fitzgerald, Edward, (H) 754; Letters
of Edward Fitzgerald (Barton, ed.,
2 vols., 1923), (H) 663
Fitzgerald, John Joseph, (L) 222
Fitzherbert, Sir Anthony, Graunde
Abridgement, (L) 788, 1148, 1478
Fitzherbert, Maria, (L) 1030
Fitzherbert, Thomas, Treatise Con-
cerning Policy and Religion ( 2 vols.,
1606-15), (L) 299, 359
Flaubert, Gustave, (L) 62, 540, (H)
597; Anatole France's opinion of,
(L) 497, 1463; Madame Bovary,
(L) 1397
Fleming, W. K., on John Inglesant,
(L) 790
Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, (L) 201,
341
Fletcher, J. S., The Chestermarke
Instinct (1921), (L) 392
Fleuriau, Aime Joseph de, (L) 1271,
1369, 1392
Flexner, Abraham, (L) 1057-58,
1257, 1261, 1385; Universities:
American, Englishy German ( 1930 ) ,
(L) 1257, 1303
Flexner, Bernard, (L) 353
Fling, Fred Morrow, Mirabeau and the
French Revolution (1908), (L) 88
Florio, Giovanni, his translation of
Montaigne, (L) 779
Foch, Marshal, (L) 145, 148, (H)
153, (L) 925, 977; at Disarmament
Conference, 1921, (H) 385
Foerster, Norman, (L) 1303
Folger Collection, (H) 1337
Fontaine, Nicolas, Memoires pour
servir a Thistoire de Port-Royal
(1736), (L) 801, 851
Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de, (L)
514, 532, 568, 882, 1087, 1378;
wishes that he were eighty again,
(L) 325; Oeuvres (12 vols., 1766),
(L) 514, 518, 568
Fontevrault, (L) 1323-24
Forbes, George WiUiam, (L) 1289
Forbes-Robertson, Jean, (L) 1181
Forbes-Robertson, Sir Johnston, (L)
375, 1181
Forbonnais, Francois Vernon de, (L)
1381
Ford, Franklin, (H) 118, (L) 120,
(H) 121, (L) 123, 125, (H) 136,
462
Ford, H. J., The Rise and Growth of
American Politics (1898), (L) 228,
(H) 229
1566
INDEX
Ford, Henry, (L) 678; as presidential
candidate, (L) 507
Forster, E. M., The Celestial Omnibus
and other Stories, (H) 1277; A
Passage to India (1924), (L) 627,
(H) 631
Forsyth, William, Cases and Opinions
on Constitutional Law (1869), (L)
1008, (H) 1015
Fort Smith Lumber Co. v. Arkansas,
(H) 240, 248
Fort Stevens, Holmes's recollection of
battle at, (H) 339-40, 410, 414
Fortescue, Sir John, (L) 1386; The
Governance of England (Plummer,
ed., 1885), (L) 317
Fortin, , his attack on the
monarchy, (L) 1384
Fosdick, Raymond B., (L) 870-71
Foster, Reginald, (H) 518, 520, 1091
Fouche, Joseph, (L) 1326
Foundations, charitable: (H) 301,
538, (L) 1057-58, 1279; their un-
considered exuberance in support-
ing research in social science, (L)
915, (H) 1246
Fouquet, Nicolas, (L) 977
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
(1918), by Vicente Blasco Ibanez,
(L) 172
Fourier, Charles, (L) 201, 585, 1404;
Oeuvres computes (6 vols., 1841-
48), (L) 497, 539
Fourteenth Amendment, as prohibition
of what five old gentlemen don't
like, (H) 1209
Fox, A. Wilson, The Earl of Halsbury,
(L) 1190
Fox, Caroline, Memories of Old
Friends (1882), (H) 866
Fox, Charles James, (L) 23, 127, 402,
415; his good-natured appearance,
(L) 910
Fox, Edward, (L) 367
Fox, George, The Journal of George
Fox (Penney, ed., 1924), (L) 674
Fox, Henry, (L) 151
Fox, Sir John C., The History of Con-
tempt of Court (1927), (L) 1030
Foxwell, Herbert Somerton, introduc-
tion to The Right to the Whole
Produce of Labour by Anton Men-
ger, (L) 85
France: postwar folly of, (L) 387,
510, 516; its political condition (De-
cember 1922), (L) 468; political
theory, 18th-century, in, (L) 484,
501; its occupation of the Ruhr, ( L )
489; political crisis, 1924, (L) 606;
its intellectual and political condi-
tion (March 1927), (L) 932, (H)
937, 939; its political and economic
problems (May 1932), (L) 1390;
its dislike of America (May 1932),
(L) 1390
France, Anatole, (L) 102, 419, 440,
483, (H) 609, (L) 711, 867; Lasld's
delightful impression of, (L) 423-
24; Laskfs 1922 conversation with,
(L) 467-68; Laskfs 1923 conversa-
tion with, ( L ) 497; on James Joyce,
(L) 497; Holmes's estimate of, (H)
597; Laskfs conversation with,
March 1924, (L) 606; his views of
Racine, Corneille, Proust, Wells,
Hardy, (L) 606; his response to
Holmes's criticism, (L) 606-607; on
the Catholic Church, (L) 606-607;
Les dieux ont soif (1912), (L)
592, (H) 597, (L) 865, (H) 875,
(L) 1476; L'fle des pingouins
(1908), (L) 588-89, (H) 594,
596-97, (L) 602; Monsieur Ber-
geret a Paris (1900), (L) 865; La
revoke des anges (1914), (H) 597;
Sur la pierre blanche (1905), (L)
868, 874, (H) 875
Francis de Sales, Saint, (H) 753, (L)
989
Francis of Assisi, Saint, (L) 575, 1433
Franck, Adolphe, Reformateurs et pub-
licistes de I'Europe (3 vols., 1864-
93), (L) 460
Franco-Prussian War, its effect on
legal philosophy, (L) 39
Francois-Primo, Jean, La jeunesse de
J.-P. Brissot (1932), (L) 1378
Frank, Glenn, (L) 862
Frank, Jerome, (L) 1318; Law and
the Modern Mind, (L) 1309-10,
1311
Frank v. Mangum, (L) 934, 968
Frankfort, Peace of, (L) 547
Frankfurter, Felix, (L) 3, note 1, 6,
25, 28, (H) 28, (L) 34-35, 38-39,
(H) 134, (L) 145, (H) 153, 154,
INDEX
1567
(L) 184, 185, 702, (H) 705, (L)
708, 711, 721, 854, (H) 1118, (L)
1233, 1242; on election of 1916,
(L) 11; as law teacher, (L) 43-44;
sympathy for governmental regula-
tion, (L) 50; argues Bunting case,
(L) 55, 57; war work in Washing-
ton, (L) 89, 97-98, 121, 132-33;
trip to Europe in 1918, (L) 137;
Boston's hostility to, (L) 185, (H)
193-94, (L) 196, (H) 200, (L) 201;
leaves for Paris Peace Conference,
(L) 186; at Paris Peace Conference,
(L) 192, 193; position at Harvard
Law School, (H) 210-11, (L)
1100, (H) 1102, (L) 1221, 1254;
successes in Boston and at Harvard,
(L) 213, 218; his engagement, (H)
218, (L) 219; his friendship with
Laski, (L) 221; his marriage, (L)
228; return to Cambridge, 1920,
( L ) 233; contemplated book on the
14th Amendment, (L) 245, (H)
542, (L) 642; argument in depor-
tation cases, 1920, (L) 261; visit to
England in 1920, (L) 271, (H)
272; talent for seeing persons of
importance, (H) 284; charms Lady
Astor, (L) 325; address to Zionists,
1921, (L) 353; apparent disagree-
ment with Holmes's opinion in
Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon,
(H) 473; argues Adkins v. Chil-
dren's Hospital, (L) 484, (H) 495,
(L) 496; as a possible member of
the Supreme Court, (L) 548, 1397,
1399; curiosity over 1923 English
election, (L) 574; opinion of
Meiklejohn, (L) 602; supports La
Follette candidacy, 1924, (H) 671;
characterized by Laski, (L) 766,
1309, 1315; operation on his knee,
(H) 804; Harvard Crime Survey,
(L) 900, (H) 958; on Sacco-Van-
zetti case, (L) 900, 940, 946, 968,
(H) 971, 974, 975, 999, 1118; on
appointment of judges, (L) 1005;
his mother's death, (L) 1020-21,
(H) 1028; position in Presidential
campaign, 1928, (L) 1100, (H)
1109, (L) 1111; Brandeis's estimate
of, (L) 1121; not going to Univer-
sity of Chicago, (H) 1158; suggests
Whitehead as British Ambassador,
(L) 1161; Nevinson's and Laskfs
estimate of, (L) 1178; his efforts
with respect to Palestine, (L) 1261,
1292, 1296, 1298-99, 1301-1302,
1302; as possible biographer of
Holmes, (L) 1318-19, (H) 1320,
(L) 1323; nominated to Supreme
Judicial Court of Massachusetts, (L)
1393-94, (H) 1395-96, (L) 1397,
1399, (H) 1406; as possible Solici-
tor General, (L) 1413, (H) 1415-
16, 1421; his Oxford professorship,
(L) 1420, 1455, 1457, 1458-59,
1464, 1464-65; his lecture on Roose-
velt, (L) 1466; The Case of Sacco
andVanzetti (1927), (L) 929, (H)
931, (L) 934, (H) 938, (L) 952,
(H) 975, 993, 999; Criminal Justice
in Cleveland, (H) 431; "Distribu-
tion of Judicial Power," (H) 1076;
his essay on Brandeis (1931), (L)
1344; his essay on Contempt, (L)
643, (H) 646; essay on Holmes's
constitutional opinions, 1923, (L)
517; essay on petty crimes and juries,
(H) 860; "Law and Order," (H)
230; "Mr. Justice Holmes and the
Constitution/' (H) 1002-1003, (L)
1007; Report on Industrial Unrest
(1918), (L) 141
Frankfurter, Mrs. Felix, (L) 25, 221,
(H) 234, 1118
Frankfurter, Felix and James M.
Landis, The Business of the Su-
preme Court (1928), (L) 997, (H)
999, 1000, (L) 1002; essay on the
Compact Clause, (H) 742, 757-58,
(L) 808
Frankfurter, Felix and Nathan Greene,
The Labor Injunction (1930), (L)
1226
Frankland, Sir Charles Henry, (H)
1070
Franklin, Benjamin, (L) 223, 735; on
bicameralism, (L) 475, (H) 478,
(L) 1040; letter to Catherine Ray
Greene, (H) 542
Eraser, Sir Hugh, (L) 686
Frazer, Sir James George, (L) 702;
Folk-lore in the Old Testament
(1927), (L) 818; The Golden
Bough, (H) 404, 462, 466, 469,
1568
INDEX
Frazer, Sir James George ( Continued )
(L) 475, (H) 478, (L) 481, (H)
491; Pausanias (1900), (H) 404
Frederick the Great, (L) 559, 563
Free Church of Scotland, see Earl of
Kinnoul v. Ferguson
Free will, see Determinism
Freedom in the Modern World
(Kallen, ed.), (H) 1102-1103
Freedom of speech: (H) 144-45,
1250; Judge Hand's views concern-
ing, (L) 159-60, (H) 160-61;
Laski's views concerning, (L) 159—
60; Holiness theory of, (H) 160-61,
217; wartime restrictions on, (H)
190, (L) 191; with regard to mail-
ing privileges, (H) 203-204; in
England and the United States, (H)
217, 823-24; as a liberty like liberty
of contract, (H) 495; Rousseau as
martyr to, (H) 590; its meaning to
most people, (H) 753; as an issue
in Britain's trial of Communists,
1925, (L) 807, (H) 810. See also
Leach v. Carlile
Freeman, Edward Augustus, History of
Federal Government (1863), (L)
306
Freer, Julia, (L) 1001
Freer Gallery, opening of, (H) 499
French intelligence, qualities of, (L)
86, (H) 615, (L) 627, 931, 1233,
(H) 1235
French language, its supremacy for
analytic purposes, (L) 612, (H)
615
French law, histories of, (L) 854, (H)
856, 859
French literature: of 17th and 18th
centuries, (L) 606, 703, 715, 746,
1136-37, 1341, 1378; its death be-
tween 1780 and 1800, (L) 1190;
romanticism and classicism in, (L)
1236-37, (H) 1238, (L) 1241,
1243
French literary style, (H) 533, (L)
539-40, 690; its traditional liking for
universals, (H) 785, 1196-97
French men of letters, (H) 1113, (L)
1237
French nationalism, its origins, (L)
1087, 1321-22
French philosophy, (L) 573-74
French poetry, (L) 472, (H) 474,
(L) 777
French political theorists: 18th cen-
tury, (L) 488; 17th century, (L)
798
French politics: December 1922, (L)
468; March-April 1924, (L) 606
French Revolution: influence on so-
ciety, (L) 76; causes of, (L) 500,
528, 758, 936, 952, 1052; historians
of, (L) 880, 882, 977, 1030, 1048,
1374
French scholars: provincialism of, (L)
497, 978; their literary gifts, (L)
1341
French traits, (L) 425, 487, 493, 497,
(H) 763, (L) 1084, 1322, 1324-25,
1390
French, John Denton Pinkstone, Earl
of Ypres, his meeting with Meredith,
(L) 557
Freron, filie, Lettres sur quelques
ecrits de ce temps (13 vols.), (L)
1386
Freron, Louis Stanislas, Uannee lit-
teraire, (L) 1399, 1461
Freshfield, Douglas William, (L) 1078
Freud, Sigmund, (L) 100, 120, (H)
360, 470, (L) 1206
Freund, Ernst, (L) 202, (H to Croly)
203; Administrative Powers over
Persons and Property, (L) 1093;
The Legal Nature of Corporations,
(H) 29; Standards of American
Legislation, (L) 99
Freyberg, Sir Bernard, (L) 490
Friedell, Egon, (L) 1280
Friedlander, Ludwig, Roman Life and
Manners under the Early Empire
(4 vols., 1908-13), (L) 1284
Friedrich, Carl Joachim, (L) 1377,
1395
Frohwerk v. United States, (L) 170,
(H) 190, (L) 191
Fronde, (L) 700, 707, 1057, 1249,
1295, 1326, 1384; Laski's miraculous
acquisition of its rare pamphlets,
(L) 990, (H) 991
Frost and Frost Trucking Co. v. Rail-
road Commission, (H) 842
Frothingham, Paul Revere, Edward
Everett: Orator and Statesman
(1925), (L) 802
INDEX
1569
Froude, James Anthony, (L) 575;
Caesar, (L) 637
Fry, Thomas Charles, (L) 399
Fulop-Miller, Rene, Rasputin, the Holy
Devil (Flint and Tait, tr., 1928),
(H) 1144
Fuller, Alvan T., (L) 952, 972, 993,
(H) 1395, note 1
Fuller, Margaret, (L) 126
Fuller, Melville Weston, (H) 288,
579-80; qualities as Chief Justice,
(H) 579
Funck-Brentano, Frantz, L'ancien
regime (1926), (L) 847; Retif de la
Bretonne (1928), (L) 1069; Le
roi (1904), (L) 780
Furnes, Belgium, (L) 529
Furuseth, Andrew, (L) 206
Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis,
(H) 409,701
Gainsborough, Thomas, (L) 981
Galiani, Abbe, L'abbe F. Galiani cor-
respondance avec Madame d'fipi-
nay, (L) 1179
Galileo, (L) 1404
Galsworthy, John, (H) 878, (L) 1157,
1171; Laskfs estimate of, (L) 491,
613, 1307; Chevalle/s aphorism
concerning, (L) 895; Wells's apho-
rism concerning, (L) 1072, 1170;
Shaw's estimate of, (L) 1419; Es-
cape (1926), (L) 877-78; Five
Tales (1918), (L) 151; The Forest
(1924), (L) 613-14; The Forsyte
Saga, (L) 812; In Chancery
(1920), (L) 259, 296; Maid in
Waiting, (L) 1307; The Man of
Property (1906), (L) 588, 1191;
One More River, (L) 1456; The
Pigeon; a Fantasy in Three Acts
(1912), (L) 81; The Silver Spoon,
(L) 877; The Skin Game (1920),
(L) 296; To Let (1921), (L) 380;
The White Monkey (1924), (L)
669, (H) 675, 681
Galton, Francis, (L) 23, 749
Gandhi, Mohandas: his qualities, (L)
1287, 1330, 1332, 1335-36, 1338,
1348-49, 1421; The Story of My
Experiments with Truth (2 vols.,
1927-29), (L) 1287
Garcia Oviedo, Carolos, (L) 1271
Gardiner, A. G., The Life of Sir
William Harcourt (2 vols., 1923),
(L) 471, 487, 489, 1359; Prophets,
Priests, and Kings (1914), (H) 294
Gardiner, Samuel R., (L) 443, 575;
History of England . . . 1603-1642
(10 vols., 1893-99), (L) 432, 435
Gardiner, Stephen, (L) 367; De vera
obedientia (1535), (L) 353, 630,
633
Gardner, Isabella Stewart, (L) 677
Gardner v. Chicago Title and Trust
Co., (H) 495
Garfield, Harry C., (L) 585
Garner, James W., (L) 1325-26
Garnett, Edward, (L) 1423, 1439
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, (H) 294
Garvin, J. L., (L) 513, 1365, 1373-
74; The Life of Joseph Chamberlain
(1932), (L) 1419
Gary, Elbert H., (L) 50, 53
Gaskell, Mrs., Cranford, (H) 280,
(L) 669; Mary Barton, (L) 1065;
North and South (1855), (L) 438,
1065; "Sylvia's Lovers," (L) 1168;
Wives and Daughters, (L) 585, 703
Gaston, Herbert E., The Non-Partisan
League (1920), (L) 263
Gates, Sylvester, (H) 817
Gatty, Charles T., Mary Dames and
the Manor of Ebury (2 vols., 1921),
(L) 388
Gaugin, Paul, (L) 1313, 1326; Noa-
Noa (1919), (H) 331-32
Gauss, Karl Friedrich, (L) 1038
Gautier, Theophile, (L) 62
Gazier, Augustin, Histoire generale du
mouvement janseniste (2 vols.,
1923-24), (L) 982, (H) 985
Geddes, Sir Auckland, (H) 268, 287,
(L) 290
Gee, John, The Foot out of the Snare
(1624), (L) 325
Geffroy, Gustave, L'enferme (1897),
(L) 1410, 1413, 1422
Gelasius, (L) 171, 679
General propositions, their futility,
(H) 390, 579, 1020
General strike: threat of, in 1921, (L)
328-29; in 1926, (H) 836-37, (L)
838-39, 839-40, (H) 841, 842,
(L) 843
General will, delusion of, (L) 475,
1059, 1076-77
1570
INDEX
Geneva, Laskfs impressions of, (L)
870, 972-73, 1138, 1325
Genlis, Madame de, (L) 1471
Gentillet, Innocent, Apologia pro
Christianis gallis religionis evange-
licae (1588), (L) 494; Commen-
tarium de regno . . . adversus Nic-
Machiavellum (1581), (L) 480,
852; Discoiirs sur les moyens de
bien gouverner (1576), (L) 484
Gentleman: as philosopher, (H) 281,
1235; irrelevance of whether man
is, (H) 911; English ideal of, (L)
1267, 1403
Gentz, Friedrich von, (L) 925
Geny, Frangois, (H) 426, (L) 642,
1261, 1276, 1325-26; Laski's im-
pression of, (L) 424; Methode
d' interpretation et sources en droit
prive positif, (L) 60; Science et
technique en droit prive positif (4
vols., 1913-24), (L) 85, 90, (H)
91, (L) 166, (H) 166-67, (L)
1176, 1322
George III, (L) 1284, The Corre-
spondence of King George the Third,
1760-1783 (Fortescue, ed., 6 vols.,
1927-28), (L) 986
George IV, (H) 1023, (L) 1030
George V, (L) 509, 590, 729, 822,
1289, 1328, 1418-19, 1430
George, David Lloyd, see Lloyd
George, David
George, Henry, (L) 741, 1298; Prog-
ress and Poverty, (L) 659, (H)
741, (L) 749
George, W. L., Blind Alley (1919),
(L) 198
Gerdil, Cardinal, Anti-contrat social
(1768), (L) 593, 622, 627
Gerland, Heinrich, (L) 989
German people: characteristics of,
(H) 149, (L) 509-10, (H) 1193,
(L) 1273-74, 1275-76; German
scholars, characteristics of, (L) 877,
1280; German jurists, (L) 914-15;
German youth, its retreat from
Hegel, 1928, (L) 1114
Germany: political conditions (1930),
(L) 1276; her dark prospects, (May
1932), (L) 1389; the Hitler re-
gime, (L) 1437, 1440, 1442, 1452,
1453-54, 1459; academic refugees
from, (L) 1437, 1439, 1440-41,
1443; 1444, 1451-52, 1455, 1457,
1459, 1460, 1467
Gerson, John, (L) 120
Gettell, Raymond Garfield, History of
Political Thought (1924), (L)
669
Gibbon, Edward, (L) 464, 1185,
1190, 1474; his qualities as a his-
torian, (H) 409; his work com-
pared with Finlay's, (L) 627; his
library, (L) 1442; The Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire, (L) 77,
(H) 77, (L) 78, 407, 434, 528,
655-56, 695, (H) 701, (L) 951,
(H) 954, (L) 998, 1057, 1461;
Memoirs of My Life and Writings
(1796), (L) 1057
Gibbs, Josiah Willard, (L) 735
Gibson, Edmund, Codex juris ecclesi-
astici Anglicani (2 vols., 1731), (L)
65
Giddings, Franklin H., (L) 703; The
Principles of Sociology, (L) 656,
(H) 660
Gide, Andre, (L) 440, 931, 932, 1206,
1211, 1236, 1237, 1376
Gierke, Otto von, (L) 18, 237, 345,
514, 610, 902, 1187, 1229; Das
deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, (L)
1386; Johannes Althusius, (L) 567,
698
Gifford, Hardinge Stanley, Lord Hals-
bury, (H) 254, (L) 348, 764, 1041,
1190; judgment in Daimler case,
(L) 25; judgment in Marais case,
(L) 1176
Gifford, William, (L) 130
Gildersleeve, B. L., (H) 727
Gillespie v. Oklahoma, (H) 398
Gillow, Joseph, Biographical History
of the English-Catholics, (L) 296
Gilson, fitienne, La liberte chez Des-
cartes et la theologie (1913), (L)
1232
Gin, Pierre, Les vrais principes du
gouvernement francais (L) 1014
Ginguene, Pierre Louis, De I'autoritS
de Rabelais dans la revolution pre-
sente (1791), (L) 1211
Ginsberg, Morris, (L) 1384
Girard, Paul Frederic, (L) 18, 449,
821; Manuel elementaire de droit
INDEX
1571
romain (1896), (H) 31, (L) 32,
98, 109, (H) 598
Giraudoux, Jean, (L) 932
Gissing, George, The Crown of Life
(1899), (L) 1389
Gitlow v. New York, (H) 495, 752,
(L) 759
Gladstone, Herbert John, Viscount
Gladstone, (L) 558
Gladstone, William Ewart, (L) 105,
120, 160, 278, 365, 452, 476, 551,
627, 713, (H) 745, (L) 751, (L)
1301; Bagehot on, (L) 182; on
Robert Elsmere, (L) 259; Morley's
admissions concerning, (L) 278;
Morley's attitude towards, (L) 282,
329, 452; compared to Lord Birken-
head, (L) 403; on death of Karl
Marx, (L) 408; his place in his-
tory, (H) 410; as leader, (L) 415;
Lord Acton's admiration for, (L)
576; Laskfs estimate of, (L) 626,
( H ) 630; the mystery of his power,
(L) 716, 997; Holmes's meeting
with and estimate of, (H) 917-18,
1000; The State in its Relations with
the Church (1838), (L) 743
Glasgow, Laskfs visits to, (L) 884,
1114
Glastonbury Cathedral, (L) 912
Gleason, Arthur Huntington, What
the Workers Want (1920), (L)
265
Glotz, Gttstave, La ciU grecque
(1928), (L) 1322
Gloucester, England, (L) 607
Gloucester, Massachusetts, (H) 781
Glover, T. R., Democracy in the An-
cient World (1927), (L) 953, 1117;
Studies in Virgil (1904), (H) 164
Gneist, Rudolf von, (L) 1073
Godfrey of Bouillon, (L) 1086, 1088
Godldn, E. L., (L) 472
Godlee, Sir Rickman John, Lord
Lister, (L) 143, 665
Godwin, Mary, (L) 439, 1463-64
Godwin, William, (L) 740, 833; Haz-
litt on, (L) 792; The Adventures
of Caleb Williams (1849), (L) 740,
744, 853-54, (H) 856, (L) 1156,
(H) 1159; The Enquirer (1797),
(L) 1353; An Enquiry Concerning
Political Justice (2 vols., 1793),
(L) 141, 673; Memoirs of Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin (1804), (L)
740
Goethe, (L) 314, 567, 594, 880, 925,
1125, 1267, 1403; his genius as a
critic, (L) 520; Holmes's small
liking for, (H) 593; Birrell's esti-
mate of, (L) 602; Haldane's esti-
mate of, (L) 602-603; on function
of poetry, (L) 648; Conversations,
(L) 520-21; Dichtung und Wahr-
heit, (L) 670; Faust, (L) 306, (H)
404, 406, 590-91, 593, (L) 594,
600, 973, (H) 975; 1019-20, 1283;
Wilhelm Meister, (L) 594
Gogarty, Oliver St. John, (L) 490
Gogol, Nikolai, Dead Souls, (L) 368
Gold standard, (L) 703
Goldast, Melchior, Monarchiae (3
vols., 1688), (L) 376, 378, (H)
381, (L) 384, 388, 442, 449, 456,
574, 795, 998
Golding, Louis, Magnolia Street
(1932), (L) 1357
Goldman, Emma, (L) 683, 687, (H)
689
Goldsmith, Oliver, (L) 36, 808; The
Vicar of Wakefield, (H) 390, (L)
1401
Goltzius, Hendrik, (H) 609
Goncourt, Edmond and Jules de, La
femme au dix-huitieme siecle
(1862), (L) 563; Madame de Pom-
padour (1879), (L) 600; Les mat-
tresses de Louis Quinze (2 vols.,
1860), (H) 275, 565
Gooch, G. P., (L) 289, 311, 355, 427,
920, (H) 921, 958, 961, (L) 1065,
1414; on modem historiography,
(L) 450; his lecture on Franco-
German relations, (L) 547; his
Christianity, (L) 575, (H) 580;
his impressions of Harvard, 1927>
(L) 953; English Democratic Ideas
in the XVlIth Century, (L) 184,
1230; Germany and the French
Revolution (1920), (L) 267, 272;
History and Historians in the Nine-
teenth Century (1913), (L) 134,
680; Life of Lord Courtney, (L)
275-76; Studies in Modern History,
i (L) 1348
Good, nature of the, see Morals
1572
INDEX
Goodhart, Arthur Lehman, (L) 764,
1358, 1380; Essays in Jurisprudence
and the Common Law (1931), (H)
1337, (L) 1342, 1357
Goodman, Christopher, (L) 367
Goodnow, Frank J., Social Reform
and the Constitution, (H) 114
Gordon, Thomas, The Creed of an
Independent Whig (1720), (L)
416, 1157
Gore, Charles, (L) 720
Gosse, Edmund, (L) 595, 690, 760,
833, 1021-22, 1065, (H) 1070
Gosselin, Jean Edme Auguste, The
Power of the Pope during the Mid-
dle Ages (Kelly, tr.? 2 vok, 1853),
(L) 1168
Gossip, Holmes on, (H) 129, 810
Goulart, Simon, Memoires de Testat
de France sous Charles neufiesme
(1576), (L) 1460
Gourmont, Remy de, (H) 26, (L)
103; on Roosevelt, (H) 918; Eliot's
appraisal of, (L) 1245
Gourville, Jean Herault de, (H) 515-
16
Government: centralization in, (L)
117, 130, 140; has no duty to rec-
tify social desires, (H) 762
"Government of laws and not of men,"
(H) 166
Goya, Francisco, (L) 198, 981, 1427,
1446; "Miseries of War," (H) 198
Graham, R. B. Cunninghame, Bernal
Diaz del Castillo (1915), (H) 917
Grand Coutumier, (H) 343, 381
Grande Design, The (1647), (L) 345
Grant, Robert, (H) 938, (L) 952
Grant, Ulysses S., (H) 336
Grant Duff, Sir Mountstuart E., Notes
from a Diary, 1886-1888 (2 vok,
1900), (H) 1274-75, 1277
Granville Leveson Gower, Lord, let-
ters of, (L) 18, (H) 18
Graves, Robert, Good-Bye to All That,
(L) 1203
Graves v. Johnson, (L) 28
Gray, Horace, (H) 343, 381, (L)
521
Gray, John Chipman, (L) 98, (H)
162, 167, (L) 590, 621, 691, (H)
855-56, (L) 1142; The Nature and ^
Sources of the Law, (L) 777
Gray, Mrs. John Chipman, (H) 339-
40
Gray, Thomas, (L) 366, (H) 660;
Letters of Thomas Gray ( Beresford,
ed., 1925), (L) 808, (H) 810
Gray's Inn, dinner at, (L) 1349-50
Great men, (H) 161, (L) 500, (H)
961-62
Greek Anthology, (L) 885, 980
Greeks and Barbarians (1921), by
J. A. K. Thompson, (H) 354
Green, Alice Stopford (Mrs. J, R.),
(H) 46, (L) 47, 92, 320, (H)
917; as conversationalist, (L) 902,
(H) 905, (L) 912; The Making of
Ireland and its Undoing, (H) 46,
(L) 47; Town Life in the Fifteenth
Century, (L) 47
Green, Frederick Charles, French
Novelists, Manners and Ideas from
the Renaissance to the Revolution,
(L) 1136-37, 1141
Green, John Richard, History of the
English People (5 vok, 1882), (H)
46, (L) 92, 676
Green, Leon, Rationale of Proximate
Cause (1927), (H) 991, (L) 997
Green, T. H., (L) 105, 129, 156, (H)
187, (L) 686, 697, 713, 923, 1459;
Principles of Political Obligation,
(L) 33, 103, 117
Green v. Frazier, (L) 263
Greenidge, A. H. J., Sources for Ro-
man History B.C. 133-70 (1903),
(L) 78
Greenslet, Ferris, (H) 1406
Greenwood, Walter, Love on the Dole
(1933), (L) 1445
Greer, Frederick Arthur, 1st Baron
Fairfield, (L) 986, 1456
Greg, W. R., (H) 22, (L) 23
Gregoire, Henri, (L) 907
Gregoire, Pierre, De republica ( 1596 ) ,
(L) 1397
Gregory, Theodore, (L) 670, (H)
671, (L) 700, 903, 1080
Gregory Nazianzen, Saint, (L) 1073
Gregory of Nyssa, (L) 679
Gregory of Toulouse, see Gregoire,
Pierre
Greig, John Young Thomson, David
Hume (1931), (L) 1333
Gretton, Richard, A Modern History
INDEX
1573
of the English People (3 vols.,
1913-29), (L) 127
Greuze, Jean Baptiste, (H) 530
Greville, Charles Cavendish Fulke,
(L) 899, 996
Greville Diary, The, edited by Philip
Whitwel! Wilson (1927), (L) 993,
1020, (H) 1022-23, 1027, (L)
1030
Grey, Sir Edward, 1st Viscount Grey
of Falloden, (L) 151, 313, 320,
380, 403, 1452; in Campbell-Ban-
nerman government, 1905-1906,
(L) 306; his influence in Asquith's
Cabinet, (L) 349; his qualities,
(L) 476; Margot Asquith's charac-
terization of, (L) 695
Griffith, Sir Samuel Walker, (L) 1053
Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, (L) 501,
677; Conespondance , . . par le
baron de Grimm et par Diderot (6
vols., 1770-82), (L) 484, 522, 679,
689-90
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, (L) 1328
Grinnell, Frank W., (H) 202, 204
210
Grogan v. Walker b- Sons, (H) 418-
19
Gross, Milt, (L) 1262; He Done Her
Wrong; the great American novel
and not a word in it — no music,
too (1930), (H) 1288; Nize Baby
(1926), (H) 860, 1263, 1288
Grote, George, (L) 420, 676, 747;
History of Greece (12 vols., 1846-
56), (L) 663 182, 206
Grote, Mrs. Harriet, (L) 675; The
Personal Life of George Grote
(1873), (L) 184
Grotius, Hugo, (L) "442, 469, 1085,
1201, 1394, 1471; De jure belli
(Barbeyrac, ed., 2 vols., 1724),
(L ) 922-23; Via et votum ad pacem
ecclesiasticam, (L) 261
Gsell, Paul, Anatole France and His
Circle, (L) 448
Guedalla, Philip, Fathers of the Revo-
lution (1926), (H) 866, 869; The
Second Empire (1922), (L) 439,
(H) 866, 869; Supers and Super-
men (1920), (L) 303
Guerlac, Othon, Les citations fran-
caises (1931), (L) 1371
Guibert, Comte de, Essai de tactique
generate (2 vols., 1772), (L) 563
Guignebert, Charles, A Short History
of the French People (Richmond,
tr., 1930), (L) 1257
Guillois, Antoine, Le salon de Madame
Helvetius (1894), (L) 877, 1381
Guitry, Lucien and Sacha, (L) 607
Guizot, Francois, (L) 493, 1329; His-
toire des origines du gouvernement
representatif en Europe (2 vols..
1851), (L) 105, 123
Gummere, Richard M., Seneca the
Philosopher (1922), (L) 471
Guiney, Ephraim Whitman, (H) 200
Gurvitch, Georges, L'idee du droit
social, (L) 1347, 1364
Guthrie, Hugh, (L) 1289
Gutteridge, Harold Cooke, (L) 1398
Guy-Grand, Georges, Le proces de la
democratie (1911), (L) 79, 101,
103
Guyon, Madame, (L) 1245
Gwyrni, Stephen, Life of Sir Charles
W. Dilke, (L) 110, 134
Gyp (Martel de Janville), Napoleo-
nette (1913), (H) 93
Habeas corpus to Gibraltar, problem
of, (L) 483, (H) 485
Hack, Roy Kenneth, (L) 446
Hackett, Francis, (H) 28, (L) 44,
47, 63, (H) 64, (L) 69, (H) 70,
(L) 70, 78, 82, 90, 99, (H) 99,
(L) 103, (H) 114, (L) 118, 123,
126, 127, (H) 128, (L) 149, (H)
162, 426; on modem poets, (H)
35-36, (L) 36, 37; on Lincoln,
(H) 38; attitude towards Ireland,
(L) 231; leaves New Republic,
(H) 418, 426; Henry the Eighth
(1929), (H) 1153, (L) 1178, (H)
1180; his review of Margot As-
quith's Autobiography, (H) 300,
(L) 313, 1087; The Story of the
Irish Nation (1922), (L) 51, (H)
426; That Nice Young Couple, (H)
733-34, (L) 739-40, (H) 741
Haden, Six Francis Seymour, (H) 268,
(L) 650-51, 954
Hagedorn, Hermann, (H) 601
Haig, Earl, (L) 270, 461, 1092
Hailsham, Viscount, see Hogg, Sir
Douglas
1574
INDEX
Haines, Charles Grove, The Revival
of Natural Law Concepts (1930),
(L) 1352
Hakewill, George, An Apology or
Declaration of the Power and
Providence of God in the Govern-
ment of the World (1630), (L)
1438
Haldane, Elizabeth S., (L) 640, 702,
1235; Descartes, His Life and
Times (1905), (L) 1017; George
Eliot and Her Times (1927), (L)
929
Haldane, J. B. S., (L) 602, 1140,
(H) 1143, (L) 1249, 1256; Daeda-
lus, or Science and the Future
(1924), (L) 589, 591, (H) 596,
(L) 602, 1249
Haldane, Lord, (L) 207, 210, 255,
286, 288-89, (H) 291, (L) 298-
99, 302, 345, 347, 359, 410, 428,
434, 445, 461, 479, 520, 533, 581,
584, (H) 587, (L) 602, 607, 658,
673, 683, 684, 686, 693, 695, 702,
(H) 705, (L) 714, 725, 740, 764,
801, 832-33, (H) 841, 863, (L)
865, (H) 869, 886, (L) 890, (H)
917, (L) 956, 1016, 1037, 1104;
approval of Laskfs writing, (H)
208, (L) 220; interest in adult
education, (L) 228, 662, 880; evi-
dence before Coal Commission of
1919, (L) 257; Laski's first meet-
ing with, (L) 270, 273; as Eng-
land's Minister of War, (L) 270,
789-90, 1202; political speech on
behalf of Sidney Webb, (L) 306;
Margot Asquith on, (L) 313; re-
lationship with Asquith, (L) 313,
340; recollections of coalition min-
istry (1915), (L) 313-14, 509;
reviews Hoknes's Collected Legal
Papers (H) 318, (L) 321; his an-
ecdote of Margot Asquith and John
Burns, (L) 320; Holmes's respect
for, (H) 323; wisdom during coal
strike of 1921, (L) 333; on the
outlook for intellectual work, (L)
356; on Bryce, (L) 375; his politi-
cal wisdom, (L) 376; on Laski
and a political career, (L) 383;
describes building of expeditionary
force, 1914, (L) 391; anecdote
concerning Barrie, (L) 400; on
Lord Rosebery, (L) 415; on the
key to political success, (L) 464;
on English and American judges,
(L) 479; his problem of habeas
corpus to Gibraltar, (L) 483; on
Holmes's dissent in Adkins case,
(L) 496; as conversationalist, (L)
533; his anecdote of General French
and Meredith, (L) 557; possible
posts in labor ministry, (December
1923), (L) 572; named Chancellor,
1924, (L) 583; as the English
equivalent to Holmes, (H) 587;
problems and zest as Lord Chan-
cellor, 1924, (L) 591, 599, 628,
664; on Taft, (L) 599; on Goethe,
(L) 602-603; at meeting of Ameri-
can Bar in London (1924), (L)
638, 639; Margot Asquith's char-
acterization of, (L) 695; on Church-
ill, (L) 784; his reasons for
contentment, (L) 819; on the ap-
pointment of judges, (L) 844-45;
his lack of historic sense, (L) 880;
his administrative effectiveness, (L)
880, 920; his many considerable
talents, (L) 912, 1126; his first
engagement, (L) 912; on English
monarchy, (L) 992; on Gladstone,
(L) 997; has Kipling as a guest,
(L) 1032; his view of the role of
judges, (L) 1052-53; his death,
(H) 1090, (L) 1092; his relations
with Departmental staff, (L) 1173;
Before the War (1919), (L) 238,
(H) 240, 323, 1090; Human Ex-
perience (1926), (L) 845; Life of
Adam Smith (1887), (H) 364;
Pathway to Reality, (H) 158; Phi-
losophy of Humanism, (L) 463,
470; Reign of Relativity (1921),
(L) 333, 341, (H) 342, 346, (L)
356; his review of Grammar of
Politics, (H) 783; Richard Burdon
Haldane, An Autobiography ( 1929 ) ,
(L) 1125, 1135, 1136, (H) 1141,
(L) 1231; Hale, Matthew, (L) 726;
comment on Hobbes's Leviathan,
(L) 363, 368
Hale, Richard Walden, (H) 74, (L)
185, 196, (H) 200, (L) 201, (H)
202, 280, 786, 1196
INDEX
1575
Hale, Shelton, (H) 49, (L) 50, 62,
69, 77
Hale, Susan, Letters of Susan Hale,
(H) 224
Hale, William Bayard, The Story of
a Style (1920), (H) 360, (L) 368
Halevy. filie, (L) 1236, 1307-1308;
La formation du radicalisme philoso-
phique (3 vols., 1901-1904), (L)
44, 155, 186; Histoire du peuple
anglais au XIXe siecle, (L) 44, 493
Halifax, 1st Marquess of, see Savile,
George
Hall, Basil, (L) 1306
Hall, Harry Reginald, The Ancient
History of the Near East (1913),
(L) 196
Hall, John, (L) 1286
Hall, Sir John Richard, (L) 512
Hall, Thomas Cuming, The Religious
Background of American Culture
(1930), (H) 1277-78
Hallam, Henry, Introduction to the
Literature of Europe in the Fif-
teenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries (4 vols., 1839-40), (L)
296
Hallis, Frederick, Corporate Person-
ality (1930), (L) 1298
Halsbury, Lord, see Gifford, Hardinge
Stanley
Hamilton, Alexander, (H) 4, (L) 4,
17, 30, 105, 147, 171, 231, 261,
299, 326, 877, 902, 916, 982, 1431,
1445
Hamilton, Edith, The Greek Way
(1930), (H) 1263
Hamilton, Sir Ian, (L) 1059; The
Soul and Body of an Army, (L)
379,384, (H) 385
Hamilton, John Andrew, Lord Sum-
ner, (L) 490, 733, 764, 844-45,
902, 959, (H) 1044, (L) 1099;
Laski's estimate of, (L) 1040-41;
his resignation, (L) 1221-22
Hamilton, Lady, (L) 300, 1268, 1449
Hamilton, Walton Hale, (H) 597,
(L) 602
Hamilton, William Gerard, Parlia-
mentary Logick, (L) 285
Hamlet, (H) 234
Hammer v. Dagenhart, (L) 155, (H)
157, 158
Hammett, Dashiell, Red Harvest, (L)
1127
Hammond, J. L. and Barbara, (H)
277, (L) 369, 475, 550, 699, 1115;
their books on labor, (L) 206;
The Age of the Chartists (1930),
(L) 1290; Lord Shaftesbury (2nd
ed., 1923), (L) 523; The Skilled
Labourer, 1760-1832 (1919), (L)
240; The Town Labourer, 1760-
1832, (L) 98, 100, 134, (H) 158,
162, (H) 598
Hamp, Pierre, (L) 825
Hand, Augustus, (L) 687, (H) 1319
Hand, Learned, (H) 159, (L) 446,
(H) 448, (L) 450, (H) 486, (L)
557, (H) 565, 569, (L) 643, (H)
734, (L) 837, (H) 878, (L) 1005
(H) 1260, 1319; letter to Holmes,
(L) 159-60; theories of free speech
of, (L) 159-60, (H) 160-61; as
a possible member of the Supreme
Court, (L) 548, (H) 555, (L) 557,
748, 926
Handwriting, (H) 163; Laskfs, (H)
227; Lippmanns, (H) 227;
Holmes's, (H) 374, 1247
Hankey, Lord, (L) 319-20
Hanna, Mark, (L) 1431
Hansi, pseudonym, see Waltz, Jean
Jacques
Hanworth, Viscount, see Pollock, Sir
Ernest Murray
Hapgood, Norman, (L) 219, 756,
(H) 974, 985
Harcourt, Sir William, (L) 110, 471-
72, 487, 489, (H) 519, 704, (L)
1359
Hard, William, (H) 202
Hardie, James Keir, (L) 740
Harding, Warren G., (H) 339, (L)
460, (H) 529, (L) 669; death of,
(L) 524; Hughes's eulogy of, (H)
597
Hardy, Alexandre, (H) 93
Hardy, Godfrey Harold, (L) 1077
Hardy, Thomas, (L) 56^-67, (H)
568, (L) 606, 661, (H) 692, (L)
756; Laski reads his complete
Works, (L) 486; Laskfs meeting
with, (L) 566-67; Laski's admira-
tion for, (L) 573; his recollection
of Leslie Stephen, (L) 654-55; his
1576
INDEX
Hardy, Thomas (Continued)
burial in the Abbey, (L) 1016-17;
Desperate Remedies (1872), (L)
486, 1021-22; The Dynasts (3 vols.,
1904-1908), (H) 1395; A Group
of Noble Dames (1891), (L) 487;
Jude the Obscure, (L) 130, 518,
690, 1017, (H) 1022; The Mayor
of Casterbridge, (L) 1017; The
Return of the Native, (L) 1021-
22, 1405; Tess of the D'Urbervilles
(1892), (L) 487, 690, 1017, (H)
1022; The Woodlanders, (L) 517
Harlan, Mr. Justice, (H) 291, 335,
473, 1003; his acceptance of Swift
v. Tyson, (H) 823
Harleian Miscellany, The, (L) 1353
Harmsworth, Sir Leicester, (L) 334, .
341, 378
Harnack, Adolf von, (L) 205, 1073;
The Expansion of Christianity
(Moffatt, tr., 2 vols., 1904-1905),
(L) 665
Haniman v. Interstate Commerce
Commission, (H) 21, (L) 23, 113,
(H) 203
Harrington, James, his influence on
America, (L) 25; The Common-
wealth of Oceana (1656), (L) 61,
(H) 264, 268, (L) 273, (H) 287,
(L) 293, 317, (H) 763, (L) 775,
1230, 1384
Harris, Frank, Shaw on, (L) 352
Harrison, Frederic, (L) 283, 403;
Morley's estimate of, (L) 915;
Holmes's meeting with and estimate
of, (H) 917-18; Jurisprudence and
the Conflict of Laws (1919), (L)
525
Harrison, George L., (H) 131
Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis; a Study
of the Social Origins of Greek Re-
ligion (1912), (L) 953-54
Hart, Edward H., (H) 318
Hart, Ivor B., Makers of Science
(1923), (L) 639
Hart v. B. F. Keith Exchange, (H)
500
Hartland, Edwin Sidney, Primitive
Law (1924), (L) 687, 691, 787,
792
Hartley, David, Observations on Man
(1749), (L) 365
Harvard Business School, (H) 634,
(L) 711, 1005
Harvard College: faculty meetings at,
(L) 230; deficiencies in humanities,
(L) 1242
Harvard Lampoon, (L) 237, (H)
239, (L) 241
Harvard Law Review, (L) 102,
1227
Harvard Law School, (L) 89, 110,
127, 201, (H) 202, (L) 204, 270,
410, 421, (H) 474, (L) 576, 691,
711, 763-64, 774, 790, 953, 1058,
1068, 1156, (H) 1183, 1191, (L)
1309, 1368, 1380, 1399, 1410, 1412,
1422, 1433, 1456; Laski as student
at, (L) 24-25, 26, 32, 34, 43-44,
57; its qualities, (L) 55-56;
Holmes's recollections of life as
student at, (H) 112; importance
of Pound and Frankfurter to, (H)
210-11; Laskfs regard for, (L)
875; its curse of bigness, (L) 883,
(H) 887, (L) 944, (H) 948-
49, (L) 1078, 1121, 1242, 1315;
as prospective beneficiary under
Holmes's will, (L) 1318-19
Harvard Law School Association, (H)
202, (L) 204, (H) 211
Harvard Liberal Club, Holmes's let-
ter to, (L) 233, (H) 234
Harvard University, (L) 48, (H) 55,
(L) 55-56, 103-104, 780, 952,
1234-35; shortcomings of, (L) 230,
875; as pictured in Robert Nathan's
novel, (L) 235. See also Harvard
College; Harvard Law School;
Education, American
Harvard University Press, (H) 955
Harvey, George, (H) 687-88
Haskins, Charles H., (L) 45, (H)
46, (L) 48, 56, 255, 436, 809, 867,
953, 1235; Norman Institutions
(1918), (L) 132; The Renaissance
of the Twelfth Century (1927),
(H) 955, 957
Hastings, Sir Patrick, (L) 789
Hastings, Warren, (L) 616
Hatschek, Julius, Englishes Staatsrecht
(2 vols., 1905-1906), (L) 98
Haureau, Barthelemy, Histoire de la
philosophie scolastique, (H) 33,
(L) 216, (H) 354, (L) 361, 874,
INDEX
1577
(H) 875, (L) 982, (H) 985, (L)
1199, 1366
Hauriou, Maurice, (L) 43, 56, 57,
90, 102, 1371; Etude sur la decen-
tralisation., (L) 34; Lemons sur le
mouvement sociale (1899), (L) 32;
Precis de droit administratif et de
droit public general (8tli ed., 1914),
(L) 32, 93; Precis de droit consti-
tutional (2nd ed., 1929), (L)
1223; La souverainete nationale
(1912), (L) 53
Haussonville, Othenin d', Le salon de
Madame Necker (2 vols., 1882),
(L) 536, 562, 998
Hawker, Henry G., (L) 207
Hawkins, Sir John, (L) 1293
Hawkins, Lucy Mary, Allegiance in
Church and State, (L) 1112
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, (L) 497, 725,
992, 1170, 1258; The Blithedale
Romance, (L) 1190; The Scarlet
Letter, (H) 21-22, 327
Hay, Ian, A Knight on Wheels ( 1914),
(L) 174
Hay, John, (L) 802
Haydon, Robert, The Autobiography
and Memoirs of Benjamin Robert
Haydon, (L) 1008
Hayek, F. A, (L) 1478
Haym, Rudolf, Die Romanistische
Schule (1870), (L) 903
Haynau, Julius, (L) 547
Hayward, Sir John, An Answer to the
First Part of a Certaine Conference
(1603), (L) 514
Hazeltine, Harold Dexter, (L) 483,
(H) 492, (L) 763
Hazlitt, William, (L) 13, 352, 403,
451, 482, 493, 576, 786-87, (H)
793, (L) 861, 1276, 1280, 1282,
1303, 1330, 1374, 1402; as great-
est of English essayists, (L) 540,
620; Laski purchases his copy of
Burke's Reflections, (L) 564;
Holmes's estimate of, (H) 624, 653,
799-800; Scott on, (L) 751; Laski's
estimate of, (L) 804; English
Comic Writers (1819), (L) 540;
Liber Amoris (1823), (L) 465;
New Writings, (L) 744; his re-
view of Malthus, (L) 465; The
Spirit of the Age, (L) 23, 792, (H)
799; Table Talk (1821-22), (H)
19, 24, (L) 25, 540; Winterslow,
(L) 15, (H) 19, 21, (L) 23, 540,
792, 956
Hearn, William Edward, The Aryan
Household (1879), (L) 494; The
Government of England (1886);
(L) 539; The Theory of Legal
Duties and Rights (1883), (L) 539
Hearnshaw, F. J. C., Democracy at
the Crossways (1919), (L) 189;
The Social and Political Ideas of
Some Great Thinkers of the Age
of Reason, (L) 1232
Hearst, William Randolph, (L) 125
Hecker, Julius F., Moscow Dialogues
(1933), (L) 1429; Religion and
Communism: A Study of Religion
and Atheism in Soviet Russia
(1933), (L) 1454
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, (H)
8, (L) 33, (H) 95, 115, (L) 127,
129, 131-32, 135, 283, (H) 300,
(L) 318, (H) 360, (L) 476, (L)
514, 522, 526, 622, (H) 652, (L)
655, 686, 697, (H) 706, 869,
(L) 904, 920, (H) 988, (L) 1005,
1074, 1114, 1309, 1325, 1462;
Laski's criticism of, (L) 898; Alex-
ander's comment on, (L) 1407;
Logic, (H) 133, 350, 357; Logic
(Wallace, tr.), (H) 346; The Phe-
nomenology, (L) 131-32, (H) 133,
(L) 358; The Philosophy of His-
tory, (L) 358; The Philosophy of
Right, (H) 29, (L) 131-32, (H)
133
Hegelian philosophy, (L) 1114
Heine, (L) 1073; quoted, (L) 175
Helmholz, (H) 624
Helvetius, Claude Adrien, (L) 483-
84, 501, 1232; letter to Montesquieu
on L' esprit des lois, (L) 537;
Oeuvres completes (1777), (L)
365, 497
Hemingway, Ernest, (H) 1091, (L)
1237, (H) 1239; A Farewell to
Arms (1929), (L) 1200-1201, (H)
1204-1205, 1209; Men without
Women (1927), (H) 1081, note 2,
(L) 1087; The Sun AZso Rises
(1926), (H) 1075, 1081, (L)
1201, 1203, (H) 1205, 1209
1578
INDEX
Hendel, Charles William, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Moralist (2 vols., 1934),
(L) 1476
Henderson, , (L) 1111
Henderson, Arthur, (L) 411, 1156,
1167, 1210, 1254, 1271, 1329, 1332,
1361, 1451; on cabinet techniques
and responsibility, (L) 1173; on
the cabinet crisis of September
1932, (L) 1429-30
Henderson, Gerard C., (L) 1008-
1009; The Federal Trade Commis-
sion (1924), (L) 662-63, 670, (H)
671, 905, 910
Hendrick, Burton K., The Life and
Letters of Walter H. Page, (L)
825
Henley, William Ernest and Charles
Whibley, A Book of English Prose
(1894), (H) 278
Hennequin, Joseph, editor, L'esprit de
I'Encyclopedie (15 vols., 1822-23),
(L) 522
Henry, O., (L) 1040; Heart of the
West, (L) 184, 192
Henry of Navarre, (L) 686, 697,
1397
Henry II, Assizes of, (L) 27
Herbert, George, quoted, (H) 930
Heredity and environment, Laski's
radio debate concerning, (L) 1206
Hergesheimer, Joseph, The Bright
Shawl (1922), (L) 537
Hermant, Abel, Confidences d'une
biche, (H) 26
Hermione and Her Little Group of
Serious Thinkers (1916), by Don
Marquis, (H) 453
Herodotus, (L) 544, 683, 1219
Heroes, (H) 910-11
Heroine, The, by Eaton Stannard
Barrett (Introduction by Michael
Sadleir, 1927), (L) 1036
Herrick, Robert (1591-1674), (L)
198
Herriot, fidouard, (L) 658, 1421
Hertford, 2nd and 3rd Marquesses of,
(L) 226
Hertzog, General, (L) 1294
Hervier, Marcel, Les 6crivain$ francais
juges par leur contemporains (L)
. 1341
Herzen, Alexander, The Memoirs of
Alexander Herzen (Duff, ed., 1923),
(L) 544
Heusler, Andreas, (L) 1279; Institu-
tionen des Deutschen Privatrechts
(2 vols., 1885-86), (L) 146
Hewart, Gordon, Lord Hewart, (L)
387, 411, 763, 859, 889, 902, 988,
989, 1037, 1041
Heydons case, (L) 1380-81
Heylyn, Peter, Ket^Xta e/c/cX-r/criacrrt/ca,
(1681), (L) 316
Hicks v. Guineas, (H) 796
Higgins, Henry Bournes, (L) 632,
(H) 659, (L) 1053; A New Prov-
ince for Law and Order (1922),
(L) 460
Higginson, Henry Lee, (H) 224
Hildreth v. Mastoras, (H) 377
Hill, Arthur D., (L) 34, 57, 92, (H)
122, (L) 265, (H) 357-58, (L)
417, (H) 519, (L) 780, (H) 782,
(L) 821, (H) 971, 974, (L) 976,
991, (H) 999, 1000
Hill, Birbeck, his edition of Boswell's
Johnson, (L) 907; Johnsonian Mis-
cellanies (2 vols., 1897), (L) 789
Hill, James J., (H) 8, (L) 10, (H)
158, 373, (L) 455
Hill, Sir Maurice, (L) 1293
Hillman, Sidney, (L) 206
Hincmar, (L) 171, 219
Hind, Arthur Mayger, A Short His-
tory of Engraving and Etching
(1908), (H) 180, 712, 718
Hindus, Maurice, Humanity Uprooted
(1929), (L) 1226, (H) 1291
Hirst, F. W., (L) 351, 427, 516,
699, 751, 876-77, (H) 878; Adam
Smith (1904), (L) 351; Early
Life and Letters of John Morley
(2 vols., 1927), (L) 915; Thomas
Jefferson (1926), (L) 840
Hiss, Alger, (H) 1196-97
Historians, amateur and professional,
(L) 1389, 1391
Historians, American, (L) 694, (H)
701
Historians, English: (H) 46, (L) 438,
575; the best of the modem, (L)
747
History: literary, (H) 46; complaints
over course of, (H) 119, 469;
methods of writing, (L) 124-25,
INDEX
1579
145, 443; role o£ accident in, (L)
558; role of great men in, (L)
715-16, 1350-51, economic inter-
pretation of, (L) 1053; biological
analogy in explaining, (L) 1062-
63, (H) 1066
History of Contract in Early English
Equity, by W. T. Barbour (4 Ox-
ford Studies in Social and Legal
History; 1914), (H) 9
History of ideas, (L) 443
History of Political Theories; Recent
Times (Merriam and Barnes, eds.,
1924), (L) 703, (H) 705
History of religion and churches, (L)
56, 69
Hitchman Coal 6- Coke Co. v. Mitch-
ell, (H) 114, (L) 121
Hitler, Adolf, (L) 1440, 1441, 1445,
1453-54, 1465-66, 1469. See also
Germany
Hitz, William, (H) 1337
Hoadly, Benjamin, (L) 174; Works,
(L) 388
Hoar, Ebenezer Rockwood, (H) 504,
519
Hoar, George Frisbie, (H) 727
Hoar, Samuel, (H) 727
Hoare, Sir Samuel, (L) 1336, 1348
Hobbes, Thomas, (H) 4, 6, (L) 62-
63, 112, (H) 115, (L) 117, 124,
147, (H) 180, 182, (L) 234, 237,
260, 317, 391, 408, 435, 441-42,
494, 507, 627, 630, 634, 664, 697,
710, 718, 720, 829, (H) 886, (L)
891, 898, (H) 918, (L) 923, 1038,
1083, 1115, 1135, 1201, 1223, 1255,
1386; genius of, (L) 181, 1095,
1286; Lord Clarendon's criticism of,
( L ) 325; Hale's comment on Levia-
than, (L) 363, 368; his style, (L)
442, 573; Archbishop BramhalTs
answer to, ( L ) 480; his definition of
laughter, (L) 656; his influence on
Bossuet, (L) 798, (H) 800, (L)
847-48, 977, 1110; the fiction of his
influence on Bodin, (L) 847-48;
portraits of, (L) 910, (H) 913-14,
(L) 1100; the Calvinism in his
thought, (L) 951-52; as the reflec-
tor of contemporary thought, (L)
951-52, 1316; as a possible influ-
ence on Pascal, (L) 1331; Mcll-
wain's and Holdsworth's interpreta-
tions of, (L) 1386; The Elements of
Law, Natural and Politic (F. Ton-
nier, ed., 1928), (L) 1033, 1038;
Human Nature, (H) 251, (L) 252,
(H) 258-59; Leviathan, (L) 252,
767, 1230, 1391; Works of Thomas
Hobbes, (L) 249, (H) 251-52,
(L) 252, 1245
Hobhouse, L. T., (L) 550-51, 696-97,
1099, 1149; The Elements of Social
Justice (1926), (L) 388, 391; The
Metaphysical Theory of the State
(1918), (L) 198; Social Develop-
ment (1924), (L) 589
Hobhouse, L. T. and J. L. Hammond,
Lord Hobhouse, A Memoir, (L)
154-55
Hobson, John A., (H) 831; The
Evolution of Modern Capitalism
(1917), (L) 123; Free-thought in
the Social Sciences (1926), (L)
826, 830
Hocking, William Ernest, (L) 1028,
1029, (H) 1032
Hodges, Frank, (L) 336, 411
Hodgskin, Thomas, (L) 83, 201, 205,
(H) 298, (L) 358
Hoefer v. Tax Commission, (L) 1336
Hoffding, Harald, A History of Modern
Philosophy (Meyer, tr., 2 vols.,
1901, 1924), (L) 853, 861, (H)
863, 866, 875
Holderlin, (L) 344
Hoernle, R. F. Alfred, (L) 768, 1132;
Studies in Contemporary Meta-
physics, (H) 268, 269
Hogg, Sir Douglas McGarel, Viscount
Hailsham, (L) 906, 1043
Holbach, Baron d', (L) 484, 489, 501,
522, 607, 677, 737, 767, 998, 1017,
1025, 1232, 1480; his possible in-
fluence on Bentham, (L) 488, 489;
Complete Works, (L) 488, 497;
Examen des propheties qui servent
de fondement a la religion chre-
tienne (1768), (L) 1066; La morale
universelle (3 vols., 1776), (L)
801-802; Systeme de la nature, (L)
568; Tableau des Saints (2 vols.,
1770), (L) 1255; Theologie porta-
tive (1768), (L) 552,802
Holbein, Hans, (L) 529
1580
INDEX
Holcombe, Arthur N., The Founda-
tions of the Modern Commonwealth
(1923), (L)558
Holdsworth, Sir William, (L) 667,
812, 1194, 1231; on statutory inter-
pretation, (L) 1364; on Hobbes,
(L) 1386; Ms views on English
legal education, (L) 1390, 1398; his
essays, (L) 421; History of English
Law, (L) 28, (H) 354, (L) 362,
367-68, (H) 504, (L) 629, (H)
726, (L) 756, 765; The Influence
of the Legal Profession on the
Growth of the English Constitution
(1925), (L) 707
Holland, Laskfs visits to: (L) 442
(1922); (L) 582-83 (January
1924); (L) 818 (January 1926);
(L) 1217-18 (January 1930). See
also Dutch
Holland, Sir Thomas Erskine, (L) 691,
(H) 692, 1229, 1352
Hollywood, Behrman's anecdotes of,
(L) 1379
Holmes, Amelia Jackson (Mrs. Turner
Sargent), (H) 38
Holmes, Edward J., (H) 277
Holmes, John, quoted, (H) 318
Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, (H) 136,
154, 199, 458, 474, 530, 866, 872,
(L) 875, (H) 892, 1080, 1128, (L)
1179, (H) 1278; quoted, (H) 466;
Andrew Lang's opinion of, (H)
491-92; on depolarizing language,
(H) 688; his admiration for Caleb
Williams, (H) 856, 1159; on the
Alps, (H) 971; Holmes's estimate
of, (H) 1070
Holmes, Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell,
biography: recollections of boyhood,
(H) 154, 232, 324, 712-13, 850,
1006; Civil War, (H) 6, 107-108,
112, 154, 163-64, 168, 194, 281,
340, 410, 414, 457, 463, 615, 654,
689, 769, 781, 893; law student,
(H) 800; choice of law as a pro-
fession, ( H ) 205; his reasons for go-
ing on bench, (H) 291; his nomina-
tion to Supreme Court, (H) 680,
(L) 739, (H) 741; Lodges sug-
gestion of a political career, (H)
680; considers leaving law after
writing Common Law, (H) 793;
possibility that he might become
Chief Justice, (H) 339, 846, 1227;
receives Roosevelt award, (H) 601,
(L) 606, (H) 624; first months in
Washington, (H) 887, 896; financial
circumstances, (H) 893, 911;
health, (H) 315, 418, 422, 426, 492,
503, 508, 534, 579, 590, 618, 672,
701, 1031, 1334; operation and
convalescence (1922), (H) 434,
(L) 439, (H) 439, 447-48, 456,
641; contemplation of death, (H)
256, 266-67, 378, 382, 386, 418,
508, 666, 738, 781, 1046, 1152,
1160, 1169, 1180, 1188-89, 1260,
1266, 1288, 1292, 1310, 1320, 1382,
1384; birthdays, (H) 318, (L) 324,
(H) 1035, 1039, 1308, (L) 1313,
(L) 1367; possibility of retirement,
(H) 31, 288, 378, 382, 386, (L)
401, (H) 418, 448, 508, 534, 591,
(L) 594, (H) 598, 635, 666, 671,
(L) 678, (H) 700, 742, (L) 748,
(H) 806, (L) 926, (H) 927, (L)
1086, (H) 1121; signs of age, (H)
398, 672, 786, 803, 823, 855, 988,
1047, 1070, 1135, 1209, 1334, 1336,
1340, 1345, 1346, 1360, 1404; re-
tirement, (L) 1356, (H) 1360, (L)
1362; selection of his biographer,
(L) 1318-19, (H) 1320-21, (L)
1323
Holmes, Mr. Justice, fundamental be-
liefs: political philosophy, (H) 8,9,
18-19, 19-20, 195-96, 762, (L)
770, 943, 945-46; economic theories,
(H) 5-6, 19, 51-52, 84, (L) 85,
(H) 86-87, (L) 87, (H) 95, 96,
187-88, 194-95, 205, 207-208, 272,
410, 431, 469, (L) 549-50, (H)
846, 942, 943, 946, 1272; metaphysi-
cal skepticism, (H) 211
Holmes, Mr. Justice, personal qualities,
attitudes, and habits: worrying tem-
perament, (H) 1023; avariciousness
of time, (H) 625, 755, 1081, 1110,
1127-28, 1197, 1247, 1278; repu-
tation for quickness, ( H ) 738; early
unhappiness, (H) 4, 46; happiness
of his marriage, (H) 524; flirta-
tiousness, (L) 640, 941; taste in read-
ing, (H) 67, 77, 92, 111, 153, 158,
162, (L) 198, (H) 204-205, 354,
INDEX
1581
357, 430, 659, 832, 863, 866, 1291;
reach of his memory in time, (H)
875-76, 1023; qualities as conversa-
tionalist, (L) 260, 906; concern for
style in judicial opinions, (H) 291,
601; desire to complete opinions
promptly, (H) 294, 398S 684, 755,
1118; desire to destroy personal
papers, (H) 458-59; selection of
concluding words for his first and
last books, (H) 876
Holmes, Mr. Justice, books: Collected
Legal Papers, (H) 215, (L) 216,
(H) 217, 219, (L) 220, 233, 235,
(H) 244, (L) 257, (H) 261-62,
(L) 262, (H) 266, (L) 267, (H)
281, 288, 291, (L) 293, (H) 294-
95, 297, (L) 298, (H) 307, 312,
315, 318, (L) 321-22, (H) 322,
(L) 351, 362, 384-85, (H) 386,
404, (L) 413, (H) 470, (L) 479, 654,
(H) 1118, 1119, (L) 1196, 1295; The
Common Law (1881), (L) 27, 51,
105-106, (H) 184, (L) 185, 270, (H)
291, (L) 422, 427, (H) 429-30,
704-705, (L) 713, 792, (H)
793, 797, 1019; The Dissenting
Opinions of Mr. Justice Holmes,
(H) 1196, (L) 1201-1202; his
edition of Kent's Commentaries, ( L )
27; Representative Opinions of Mr.
Justice Holmes, (L) 1337, (H)
1345; Speeches, (L) 780, (H) 782;
his "Black Book," (H) 430
Holmes, Mr. Justice, articles, reviews,
etc.: "Agency," (L) 26; "Codes and
the Arrangement of the Law," ( H )
6; "Early English Equity," (L)
110, 564; "Ideals and Doubts," (L)
9, 770-71, (H) 772; "John Mar-
shall," (L) 220, 739, (H) 1015;
"Law and the Court," (H) 5, (L)
163; "Learning and Science," (H)
67; "Memorial Day," (L) 208-209;
"Natural Law," (L) 163, (H) 163,
(L) 166, (H) 166-67, 167-68, (L)
173, (H) 175, (L) 345, 1213; "The
Path of the Law," (L) 233, 298,
321, 1368, 1372; "Privilege, Malice
and Intent," (L) 413; "The Soldier's
Faith," ( L ) 163; early contributions
to the American Law Review, (H)
6, 215; his review of Holdsworth's
History of English Law, (L) 28;
essay on Montesquieu, (H) 78, (L)
82, (H) 83, 704; letter to Harvard
Liberal Club, (January 1920), (L)
233, (H) 234; his introduction to
Rational Basis of Legal Institutions,
(H) 477, 503, 545-46, 549, (L)
549, (H) 555; speech at dedica-
tion of Bradstreet memorial, 1902,
(H) 645; foreword to Mr. Justice
Brandeis, (H) 1387, (L) 1389-90
Holmes, Mrs. Oliver Wendell, Junior,
(H) 287, (L) 324; revulsion from
unpleasant books, (H) 144, (L)
145, (H) 675, 849; taste for flowers,
(H) 243; illness of, (H) 260, 264,
(L) 265; impression of Bryce, (H)
378; urges Holmes to stop smoking,
(H) 390; on English standards, (H)
519; her anecdote of her poppies, (H)
537-38; interest in MacDonald and
his wife, (H) 635, 1192; fall in
summer of 1927, (H) 988; illness
(March 1929), (H) 1144; death,
(L) 1149, (H) 1152, 1188; funeral
and burial, (H) 1158
Holmes, Mrs. Oliver Wendell, Senior,
(H) 1278
Holstein, Friedrich von, (L) 1305,
1348
Holt, C. J., (L) 359
Holt, Edwin B., (L) 259, 729; The
Concept of Consciousness (1914),
(L) 729; The Freudian Wish, (H)
60-61, (L) 62
Holtby, Winifred, Mandoa, Mandoa!
(1933), (L) 1431; Truth is not
Sober (1934), (L) 1472
Holyoake, George Jacob, (L) 245
Holyrood, (L) 1251
Home, Henry, Lord Kames, (L) 1108
Homer, (H) 67, 164-65, (L) 225,
296, 443, (H) 530, (L) 648, 656,
670-71, (H) 685, (L) 786, 789,
980; compared with Chanson de
Roland, (H) 618; Iliad, (L) 532,
626, 683-84, (H) 685; Odyssey,
(L) 196, (H) 200, (L) 626, (H)
781, 782-83
Home, J. M. and M. M. Rossi, Bishop
Berkeley (1931), (L) 1354
Honorary degrees, applicants for, (H)
1000
1582
INDEX
Hook, Sidney, The Meaning of Marx,
(L) 1478
Hook, Theodore, (H) 515
Hooker, Richard, (L) 1097; Ecclesias-
tical Polity, (H) 1273, 1274, (L)
1281
Hoover, Herbert, (L) 108, 427, 1213,
(H) 1239, (L) 1304, (H) 1360,
(L) 1385; Presidential candidate,
1928, (L) 1100, 1105, 1108-1109,
(H) 1109, (L) 1111; Holmes's esti-
mate of, (H) 1113-14, MacDonald's
regard for, (L) 1166, 1194; on
naval disarmament, (L) 1170; on
selection of Chief Justice, 1930, (H)
1227; Presidential candidate, 1932,
(L) 1415, (H) 1415, (L) 1416,
(H) 1420
Hopkinson, Charles, (H) 1183, 1188,
1310, (L) 1317-18, (H) 1319
Hoppner, John, (L) 735
Horace, (L) 490, 570, 648-49,
789
Horder, Thomas Jeeves, Baron Horder,
(L) 1453, 1481
Homer, Sir John and Lady, (L) 468,
479, 513, 562, 584, 683, 941
Horning v. District of Columbia, (H)
294
Horridge, Sir Thomas Gardner, (L)
889
Hotman, Frangois, Brutum fulmen
Papae Sixti V (1586), (L) 345;
Franco-Gallia (1st ed., 1574), (L)
285, 289, 428, 922
Hough, Charles Merrill, (H) 601, (L)
836, 837, (H) 878, 1046
Houghton, Alanson B., (L) 749, 908,
986
Hoult, Norah, Apartments to Let
(1931), (L) 1347
Hound and Horn, The, (L) 1391
Hours of Sarum, (L) 1433-34
House, Colonel Edward, (L) 175, 368,
446, 1083; quarrel with Wilson, (L)
226; Lord Robert Cecil's admiration
for, (L) 427; The Intimate Papers
of Colonel House (Seymour, ed., 4
vols., 1926-28), (L) 1115
House of Commons, 1920: Laskfs im-
pressions of, (L) 271; qualities of,
(L) 276
House of Truth, The, (H) 142
Housman, A. E., (L) 740
Housman, Laurence, Trimblerigg
(1924), (L) 680
Houssaye, Henri, 1814, (L) 1080
Hovelle, Mark, The Chartist Move-
ment (1918), (L) 142
Howard, Sir Esme, (H) 803, 917, (L)
933, 996, (H) 1003-1004, 1118,
(L) 1161, (H) 1192, (L) 1194,
1200
Howe, P. P., The Life of William
Hazlttt (1922), (L) 451, 1097-98,
(H) 1102, (L) 1165
Howells, William Dean, (H) 1208
Howland, Charles P., (H) 142, (L)
1418
Hsiao, Kung Chuan, Political Pluralism
(1927), (L) 982
Hudson, Manley O., (L) 636, 700,
756, 870, 967, 1233
Huebsch, B. W., (L) 809
Huguenots : their political theory, ( L )
443; Leslie Stephen's observation
concerning, (L) 1401-1402; Baird's
volumes on, (L) 1449-50
Hughes, Charles Evans, (L) 1257;
Presidential candidate (1916), (L)
16, 32, (H) 33, (L) 40, 45; protest
against refusal to seat Socialist legis-
lators in N.Y., (L) 233; possible ap-
pointment as Chief Justice, 1921,
(L) 312, (H) 339; named Secre-
tary of State by Harding, (L) 322;
as Chairman of the Disarmament
Conference, 1921, (H) 382, (L)
390; similarity to Stanley Baldwin,
(L) 506; his eulogy of Harding,
(H) 597; at American Bar Associa-
tion meeting in London (1924),
(L) 636; retires as Secretary of
State, (L) 700, (H) 701; Laskfs
estimate of, (L) 700, 1226; as pos-
sible Chief Justice (1910), (H)
846, 1227-28; named Chief Justice,
1930, (H) 1224, (L) 1226, (H)
1227
Hughes, W. W., (L) 348
Hugo, Victor, (L) 712, 1237; quoted
concerning amnesty, (L) 391; his
style, ( L ) 690; anecdote concerning,
(L) 932; Choses vues, (H) 232,
246
Hull, Cordell, (L) 1442
INDEX
1583
Hull, England, (L) 1261
Human Biology and Racial Welfare,
(Cowdry, ed., 1930), (H) 1239,
1250
Humanism, (L) 1243, (H) 1247,
(L) 1303
Humanism and America (Foerster, ed.,
1930), (L) 1243, 1303
Hume, David, (L) 120, 135, 172, 260,
352, 407, 433, 476, 507, 509, (H)
594, (L) 627, 639, 661-62, 686,
696, 718, 775, 808, 1059, 1198,
1218, 1333, 1354, 1378, 1448, 1452,
1455; letter to Adam Smith on The
Wealth of Nations, (L) 537; his
style, (L) 639; his essay on En-
thusiasm, (L) 1461; Essays Moral
and Political (L) 260, 402, 740,
1168; The Letters of David Hume
(Greig, ed., 2 vols., 1932), (L)
1381, 1384; Letters of David Hume
to William Strahan (Hill, ed.,
1888), (L) 276, 402; Treatise of
Human Nature, (L) 421
Humility: its arrogance, (L) 1330; its
egotism, (L) 1433
Humphreys, Sir Travers, (L) 805
Huneker, James, Painted Veils, (H)
287; Promenades of an Impression-
ist (1910), (H) 1196
Hunt, Holman, (L) 1328
Hunt, Leigh, (L) 712, (H) 712, (L)
1255-56, 1281; The Autobiography
of Leigh Hunt (Edmund Blunden,
ed., 1928), (L) 1098
Hunt, William Morris, (H) 373;
quoted, (H) 430, 482, 1228
Huntington, Henry E., (L) 393
Hutcheson, Francis, (L) 1294, 1455;
System of Moral Philosophy ( 1755),
(L) 461
Hutchins, B, L., and A. Harrison, A
History of Factory Legislation, (L)
206
Hutchinson, Governor Thomas, (L)
222; History of Massachusetts-Bay,
(L) 296
Hutton, William Holden, John Wesley
(1927), (L) 936
Huxley, Aldous, (L) 1353; estimates
of, by Bennett and Wells, (L) 1167;
Brave New World (1932), (L)
1364
Huxley, Leonard, Life and Letters of
T. H. Huxley (2 vols., 1900), (L)
759
Huxley, Thomas H., (L) 10, 30, 138,
452, 737, 749, 759, 925, 1056; and
Bishop Wilberforce, (L) 662, 927;
his feelings towards Gladstone, (L)
716, 743; Holmes's recollection of,
(H) 753, 930; Collected Essays,
(L) 23; Principles of Biology, (L)
23
Huygens, Constantyn, (L) 825
Huysmans, Camilla, (L) 873
Huysmans, Joris Karl, Anatole France's
opinion of, (L) 497
Hyslop, Theophilus Bulckeley, (L)
805
Ibsen, Henrik, (L) 1181, 1419
Idealism, philosophical, (L) 825, 838,
1122, (H) 1124, (L) 1404
Ideals, (H) 158, 948, 1183; purpose
of, (H) 298
Ilbert, Sir Courtenay, (L) 380
Illustrious, the unknown, (H) 46, 1183
Image of Bothe Churches, Hierusalem
and Babel, Unity and Confusion,
Obedienc[!] and Sedition, The, by
P. D. M. (Matthew Pattenson;
1623), (L) 330
Imitation of Christ, The, see Thomas
a Kempis
Immortality, (H) 372-73
Imperial Conference: in 1923, (L)
548; in 1929, (L) 1203; in 1930,
(L) 1285-86, 1289, 1292. Bee also
Anglo-Indian relations
Imperialism, liberal, (L) 142
Imperialism and Civilization (1928),
by Leonard S. Woolf, (L) 1036
"Inarticulate major premise/* Holmes's
original version of the phrase, (H)
1208
Incarnation, (L) 736
Inchcape, Earl of, (L) 352
Inderwick, F. A., The Interregnum
(1891), (L) 392,765
India: British policies in, (L) 628-29;
its distrust of Britain, (L) 725,
1167; story of the condemned
prisoner in, (L) 1308; Mohamme-
dans in, (L) 1332, 1335, 1336,
1337-38. See also Anglo-Indian re-
lations
1584
INDEX
Indian Constitutional Bill (1932), (L)
1396
Indian Society of London, (L) 725
Induction, theory of, (L) 1122
Industrial Court, Laski's work on, (L)
881-82, 883-84, (H) 887, (L) 888,
894, (H) 896, (L) 941, 943, 946,
953, 962, 967, 986, 988, 1000, 1007,
1028, 1035, 1067-68, 1073, 1119,
1292-93
Infinity, as transition to new modes of
being, (H) 624
Influenza, Laski's bout with, London
and Antwerp, (L) 1122, 1125
Inge, Dean, (L) 454, 801, 902; on
Greek religion, (H) 397; Outspoken
Essays, (L) 454
Ingenohl v. Olsen 6- Co., (H) 927
Ingersoll, Robert G., (H) 75, 163, (L)
1179, 1227
Insanity, test of in criminal law, (L)
804-805, (H) 806
Intellectual, his role in society, (L)
1033
Intelligence, general, (L) 1096-97
Intelligent Mans Way to Prevent War,
The, (L) 1451
International affairs (summer 1923),
(L) 527-28
International Bridge Co. v. New Yor/c,
(H) 294, (L) 301
International congresses, their futility,
(L) 1388
International law, the literature of,
(L) 1080, 1085, 1147, 1182, 1190,
1306-1307; nationalism of, (L)
1145, 1343
International Stevedoring Co. v. Hav-
ertij, (H) 901
Intuition, (H) 1089
Ireland: histories of, (L) 47; political
problems in, (L) 137, 160; conscrip-
tion during World War I (L) 150;
Hackett's and Lipprnann's disagree-
ments concerning, (L) 231; political
events in (1921), (L) 351; treaty
negotiations (1921), (L) 368; Mor-
ley and Rosebery discuss (1921),
(L) 370; successful conclusion of
negotiations (1921), (L) 386-87,
(H) 389; Irish deportations (1923),
(L) 501-502; its problems at Im-
perial Conference (1930), (L) 1292;
its condition in 18th century, (L)
1371; Anglo-Irish disagreements
(1932), (L) 1398, 1408
Ireton, Henry, (L) 1472
Italy, Belgian fears of its imperial in-
tentions, 1928, (L) 1079
Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., (H) 456-
57, 466
Jackson, Andrew, (L) 171, 231, 1190
Jackson, Henry, (L) 648, 1316
Jackson, W. W., Ingram By water, (L)
103
Jacobi, Karl, (L) 1038, 1074
Jacobs, W. W,, Sea Whispers, (L) 880
Jaeger, Werner, (L) 889-90, 1108
James, Henry (senior), on Chauncey
Wright, (H) 565; on Mrs. Brown-
ing and God, (H) 926-27
James, Henry, (H) 162, 167, (L)
303, 310, (H) 312, (L) 721, 806,
(H) 806, (L) 825, 936, (H) 965-
66, (L) 992, 1403; Laski's low re-
gard for, (L) 13, 265, 482-83, 744;
observations concerning, by Wells,
(L) 402, 482-83, 744, 997, 1072,
1266-67; Holmes's estimate of, (H)
485, 723, 745; on necessity of ob-
scurity in style, (H) 904; his con-
versation, (H) 905; The Ambassa-
dors (1903), (L) 13; The American
Scene, (L) 483; The Golden Bowl,
(L) 1231; Letters of Henry James
(Lubbock, ed., 2 vols., 1920), (L)
265, 320-21; his review of The Bel-
ton Estate, (L) 916
James, Henry, (1879-1947), Charles
W. Eliot (2 vols., 1930), (L) 1305
James, Marquis, The Raven: A Biog-
raphy of Sam Houston, (H) 1387
James, William, (H) 87, 139, (L)
276, 310, 402, (H) 565, (L) 694,
707, 717, 729, (H) 900, (L) 1084,
(H) 1208, 1209; his pragmatism,
pluralism and will to believe, (H)
20, 69-70, (L) 71, 75; on The Scar-
let Letter, (H) 21-22, 327; his knack
for psychology, (L) 36, (H) 69-70;
on Hobbes, (H) 182; opinion of
Santayana, (H) 292; Santayana's
criticism of, (L) 303, 1252; Margot
Asquith on, (L) 313; on Charles
Eliot Norton, (H) 722; Joseph's
estimate of, (L) 735; his belief in
INDEX
1585
spiritualism, (L) 740; his conversa-
tion, (H) 905; Holmes's comment
on his views of free will, (H) 917;
his definition of the good, (L)
1025; on the Adamses, (H) 1031;
his elevation of intuition, ( H ) 1089;
The Letters of William James (2
vols., 1920), (L) 310, 320-21, 936;
"The Ph.D. Octopus," (L) 551; A
Pluralistic Universe (1909), (L)
633, (H) 634; Principles of Psychol-
ogy (1890), (L) 507, 571; Varie-
ties of Religious Experience, (L)
989; The Will to Believe, (L) 575,
725
Jansenism, (L) 674, 874, 951-52, 984,
987
Japan: postwar militarism of, (L) 387;
earthquake (1923), (H) 533, (L)
537, (H) 538
Japanese: their qualities as students,
(L) 399; as bookbuyers, (L) 446;
comments on English character, (L)
517, (H) 519; fate of Holmes's
Japanese student, (H) 561, 1015;
Laski addresses Japanese students,
(L) 1068-69
Jeans, Sir Jarnes Hopwood, (L) 1376,
1404, 1435, 1448, 1451; Eos; or,
The Wider Aspects of Cosmogony
(1929), (H) 1169, 1172
Jebb, Sir Richard, (L) 1234
Jeffers, Robinson, Thurso's Landing
and Other Poems (1932), (H) 1416
Jefferson, Thomas, (L) 17, 42, 171,
231, 261, 326, 711, (H) 713, (L)
854, 865, 877, 896, 981, 982,
1431
Jeffrey, Francis, Lord Jeffrey, (H) 20,
(L) 22,279,821
Jehangir, (L) 710-11
Jellinek, Georg, Allgemeine Staatslehre
(1914), (L) 156
Jenks, Edward, (L) 667, 681, 682,
690-91, (H) 692, (L) 717, 881,
920, 1231; The Constitutional Ex-
periments of the Commonwealth
(1890), (L) 467; Law and Politics
in the Middle Ages (1898), (L)
690
Jennings, William Ivor, The Law and
the Constitution (1933), (L) 1454,
1456
"Jeopardy," origin of the word, (H)
581
Jessel, Sir George, (H) 254, (L)
257, 476, 691, 799, 1005, 1063-64,
1077, 1142, 1191
Jesuit missionary, Laskfs meetings
with, (L) 1013, 1356-57, 1473-74
Jesuits, (L) 80, 1013; Spanish and
English compared, (L) 379
Jesus Christ, (L) 659, (H) 1061,
1224, 1269
Jevons, William Stanley, (L) 603,
(H) 1208
Jewel, John, A Defense of the Apologie
of the Churche of England (1570),
(L) 303; A Replie unto M. Hard-
inges Answeare (1565), (L) 416
Jews, (L) 83; characteristics of, (H)
153, 304, 1128, (L) 1302; Laskfs
assimilationist convictions, (L) 632-
33; suggestion of Christian mission
to, (L) 821-22; verse concerning
God's choice of, (L) 1022
Jeze, Gaston, (L) 1325, 1371
Jhering, R. von, (L) 120, (H) 713,
(L) 1279
Joad, C. E. M., Common-sense Ethics
(1921), (L) 333
Job, Book o/, (L) 593, (H) 688
"Jobbists," Holmes's society of, (H)
385, 723
John of Salisbury, Metalogicus, (L)
775; Polycraticus, (L) 775
John Inglesant, by Joseph Henry
Shorthouse (1882), (L) 790
Johnson, Alvin S., (L) 1396, 1398
Johnson, Andrew, (H) 1075, 1183
Johnson, James Weldon, God's Trom-
bones, (H) 1274
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, (L) 36, 296,
437, 794, (H) 965, 1023, (L) 1122,
(H) 1269; quoted, (H) 278, 404,
1163; his criticism of Dryden, (H)
785, 1197; his rencontre with Adam
Smith, (L) 907; Rasselas, (L) 573,
(H) 580
Johnston, Sir Harry, The Veneerings
(1922), (L) 421
Johnston, Nathaniel, The Excellency
of Monarchical Government ( 1686 ) ,
(L) 279,997
Joly, Claude, Traite des restitutions
des grands (1665), (L) 1326
1586
INDEX
Jonas, Bishop of Orleans, (L) 171
Jones, Percy Mansell, Tradition and
Barbarism: A Survey of Anti-Ro-
manticism in France, (L) 1241
Jordaens, Jacob, (L) 735
Jorga, Nicola, (L) 1251-52
Joseph, H. W. B., (L) 734-35
Josephson, Matthew, Zola and his
Time (1928), (H) 1113
Jourdain, Charles, Histoire de TUni-
versite de Paris au XVIIe et au
XVIIIc siecle (2 vok, 1888), (L)
970, 1199
Journalists, (L) 125
Jowett, Benjamin, (L) 94, 380, (H)
410; Holmes's skepticism concern-
ing, (H) 323
Joyce, James, (L) 1241, 1412; Por-
trait of the Artist as a Young Man,
(H) 70, (L) 71, (H) 78, 80, 556;
Ulysses, (L) 497, 553, (H) 556,
1236, (L) 1237
Joyce, Sir Matthew Ingle, (L) 1255
Joyce, P. W., A Social History of An-
cient Ireland (WQ5), (L) 47
Joynson-Hicks, Sir William, (L) 803
Judges, A. V., The Elizabethan Under-
world (1930), (L) 1252
Judges, American: characteristics of,
(H) 243, (L) 552; limitations of,
(H) 254; Laskfs regard for, (L)
1433
Judges, appointment of politicians as,
(L) 733, 795, (H) 796-97, (L)
844-45, (H) 846, 848, (L) 850,
1005
Judges, Canadian, (L) 559
Judges, English: limitations of, (H)
254, 692, (L) 981, 1412, 1433,
1439; qualities of, (L) 509, (H)
796-97; selection of, (L) 658, 733,
740, 764, 795, (H) 796-97, (L)
844-45, (H) 848-49, (L) 850, 997,
(H) 1000; Scrutton's classification
of, (L) 1077; retirement, age for,
(L) 1475
Judges, French, their salaries, (L) 733
Judges of inferior courts, (H) 165
Judicial review of legislation, (H) 83,
(L) 239, 535, 813, 1052-53
Judicial opinions: taste in writing of,
(H) 136-37, 138, (H) 139, 287,
457, 486, 842-43; style and form of,
(H) 224, 389, 504, 675, 938-39;
difficulties in preparing, (H) 1109-
10
Judicial salaries: congressional failure
to appropriate for, (H) 949, (L)
954; Parliamentary threat to reduce,
(L) 1456
Junius, Letters of, (L) 88, 1033
Juries, (L) 616, 619, 802-803; skepti-
cism of modern, ( L ) 736
Jurieu, Pierre, (L) 585, 715, 726, 732,
861, 867, 870, 932, 982-83, 1021,
1307; Histoire du Calvinisme (2nd
ed., 1823), (L) 750; Lettres pas-
torales (1686), (L) 795, 959; La
politique du clerge de France
(1681), (L) 795; Presages de la
decadence des empires (1688), (L)
982-83
Jurisprudence: English, (L) 690-91,
(H) 592, (L) 1229, 1352, 1357,
1441; as a subject for law school
study, (H) 1046. See also Legal
theory
Jurists, French and German, compared,
(L) 15, (H) 16, (L) 18, 39
Juror, Laskfs duties as, see O'Dwyer
v. Nair
Jusserand, Jean Jules, (H) 609, 688
769, (L) 931
Juvenal, (H) 1081
Kahn, Otto, (L) 1317
Kales, Albert, (L) 34
Kallen, Horace, (L) 309
Kames, Lord, see Home, Henry
Kaneko, Count Kentaro, (H) 385, 390,
533
Kant, Immanuel, (L) 33, (H) 95,
133, (L) 135, (H) 180, 300, (L)
607, 647, 650, (H) 660, (L) 661,
686, (H) 793, 869, (L) 904, (H)
988, 1092, (L) 1363; his bicen-
tenary, (L) 620, (H) 624; Hol-
ding's excellent account of, ( H ) 866
Kantorowicz, Ernst, Frederick the
Second, 1194-1250 (Lorimer, tr.,
1931), (L) 1378
Kantorowicz, Hermann, (L) 127, 607-
608, 610, (H) 615, 1103, (L) 1261,
1276, 1443
Kaufmann, Felix, Logik und Rechts-
wissenschaft (1922), (L) 451
Kautilya, (L) 716
INDEX
1587
Kautsky, Karl, The Dictatorship of the
Proletariat (1919), (L) 252
Kawananakoa v. Polyblank, (H) 6,
(L) 776, (H) 781, 817, (L) 820,
(H) 822, 886, 1003, 1044
Keable, Robert, Peradventure (1922),
(L) 451
Keats, John, (L) 201, 342, 620, 777,
780, 792; Endymion, (H) 663, 712,
782
Keeling Letters, (L) 192
Keim, Albert, Helvetius (1907), (L)
483-84
Keith, Arthur Berriedale, The Sover-
eignty of the British Dominions
(1929), (L) 1198
Kellogg, Frank B., (L) 908-909; his
proposal for a pact renouncing war,
(L) 1048
Kelly, Sir Fitzroy, (H) 849
Kelsen, Hans, (L) 1261, 1298, 1376;
Allgemeine Staatslehre (1925),
(L) 830, 851, 1380; Aper$u d'une
theorie generale de Tetat (Eisen-
mann, tr., 1927), (H) 1039; Haupt-
probleme der Staatsrechtslehre
(1911), (L) 1187, (H) 1192, 1193
Kelvin, Baron, (L) 639, 756, 791
Kennaway, Sir John Henry, (H) 275
Kennedy, W. P. M,, The Constitution
of Canada (1922), (L) 476, (H)
478, 482, (L) 808
Kenney v. Supreme Lodge, (H) 254
Kent, James, (H) 343, (L) 493, (H)
1015
Kentucky Co. v. Paramount Exchange,
(H) 593
Kenya, proposed constitution for, (L)
1210, 1217, 1240
Kenyon, Lord, (L) 850
Keokuk and Hamilton Bridge Co. v.
United States, (H) 459
Keokuk, Iowa, (L) 145
Kepler, Johannes, (L) 1293
Ker, W. P., Dark Ages (1904), (L)
48, (H) 49, (L) 49-50; Epic and
Romance (1897), (L) 361; The
Essays of John Dryden., (L) 1359,
1361
Kerr, Lord Walter, (L) 490
Kessler, Count Harry, (L) 513; WaL
ther Rathenau, sein Leben und sein
Werk (1928), (L) 1203
Keverne, Richard [pseud, of Clifford
Hosken], He Laughed at Murder
(1934), (L) 1472
Keynes, John Maynard, (L) 228, (H)
236, 240, 242, (L) 437, 1478; on
the peace conference, (H) 229;
on Woodrow Wilson, (L) 242; his
personal qualities, (L) 400; his di-
agnosis of the general strike, 1926,
(L) 840, (H) 842; Economic Con-
sequences of the Peace, (L) 235,
239, 1374; The End of Laissez-
Faire, (L) 857; Essays in Persua-
sion (1931), (L) 1347-48, (H)
1370; Monetary Reform (1923),
(L) 571, (H) 579; Revision of the
Treaty, (L) 400
Keyserling, Hermann, (L) 1280; The
Travel Diary of a Philosopher
(1925), (H) 754, 757, (L) 765-
66, (H) 768, (L) 801, (H) 803
Kidd, Benjamin, (H) 55, (L) 703,
(H) 705, (L) 1178
Kimball, Day, (H) 284, 291, 297-98,
304, 308
King, Basil, (L) 201; High Heart,
(L) 123
King, Gertrude, (L) 621, 844, (H)
846, (L) 967, 1020-21; Alliances
for the Mind, (H) 503, 618, 846
King, Mackenzie, (L) 1472-73
King, Peter, (L) 641
King, Stanley, (L) 967, 1436
Kingsley, Charles, (L) 279, 525, (H)
1003, (L) 1459
Kingsley, Henry, Ravenshoe (1862),
(L) 517, 525
Kingsley, Mary Henrietta, (H) 164,
1023; Travels in West Africa
(1897), (L) 1030
Kipling, Rudyard, (L) 359, (H) 360,
444, (L) 619, 634, (H) 653, 781,
(L) 1024, (H) 1027, 1034; Laski
meets, (L) 512-13, 1032; Limits
and Renewals, (L) 1381
Kirchwey, Dorothy, (H) 319, 390,
(L) 881
Kirchwey, Freda, (L) 959
Kirchwey, George W., (L) 881
Kirk, William, (L) 1103
Kitchener, Lord, (L) 282
Klein v. Board of Supervise™, (H)
1296
1588
INDEX
Kleist, Ewald Christian von, (H)
1367
Klisliko, of Russian Soviet Bureau,
(L) 355
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, (L) 512
Knickerbocker Ice Co. v. Stewart, ( H )
£58, 264, (L) 267
Knight, Frank Hyneman, (L) 1242
Knights v. Jackson, (H) 456-57
Knowledge, as a diluent of thought,
(H) 930
Knowles, L. C. A., The Economic
Development of the British Over-
seas Empire (2 vols., 1924), (L)
667
Knowlton, Marcus Perrin, (H) 153
Knox, John, (L) 679
Kohler, Wolfgang, The Mentality of
Apes (Winter, tr., 1925), (L) 818
Kohler, Josef, (L) 18, 39, 90, 127,
610, 642, 788, 812, 914-15, 1053,
1246
Konenkov, Serge, (L) 1221, note
1
Korkunov, Nikolay Mikhaylovich,
General Theory of Law (Hastings,
tr., 1921), (L) 889, (L) 1352
Krassin, Leonid, (L) 286, 383
Kreutzer Sonata, see Tolstoi
Krishnamurti, Jiddu, (L) 851-52
Kronprinzessin Cecilie, (H) 82, 84-
85
Kropotkin, P. A., (L) 673, (H) 1071;
The Great French Revolution (Dry-
hurst, tr., 1909), (H) 503, (L)
1048, (H) 1055
Labitte, Charles, De la democratie
chez les predicateurs de la Ligue
(1841), (L) 432, 441, 443
Labor disputes: government control
of, (L) 19-20; injunctions in, (H)
762-63; Laski serves as mediator
and arbitrator of, (L) 894, 905-
906, 943-44, 981, 1021, 1167, 1186,
1193, 1233, 1240, 1297, 1304, 1349,
1361, 1365, 1370, 1398, 1406
Labor theory of value, (L) 358
Labour party: the intelligentsia of,
(L) 289; Laski's membership in,
(L) 305; its need for people like
Lord Robert Cecil, (L) 415; its
character, (L) 611; quality of the
peers from, (L) 1225, 1229; its
Executive considers problem of
structure of Cabinet, (L) 1385
La Bruyere, Jean de, (L) 521, 574,
669-70, 714, 715, 720, 752, 798,
805, 984, 1359; Les Caracteres de
Theophraste (1688), (L) 746, 984
Lacordaire, Pere, (L) 516, (H) 519
Lacoste, Edmond, Bayle, nouvelliste
et critique littemire (1929), (L)
1223, 1226
Lactantius Firrnianus, (L) 679
Ladysmith, siege of, (L) 1403
La Fayette, Marquis de, (H)
1253
La Follette, Robert M., (H) 587,
631, 635, (L) 670, (H) 671, (L)
678, (H) 1236, (L) 1238; La Fol-
lette s Autobiography (1913), (L)
665
La Fontaine, Jean de, (L) 715, 758,
1211, 1243, 1371
Lagrange, Joseph Louis, (L) 574,
1404
Laird, John, Hume's Philosophy of
Human Nature (1932), (L) 1378,
1381; The Idea of Value (1929),
(L) 1390
Lake, Kirsopp, (L) 56, (H) 523-24,
(L) 534-35; The Stewardship of
Faith (1915), (L) 56
Lalanne, Maxime, (H) 268
Lalou, Rene, (L) 931; Histoire de la
litterature francaise contemporaine
(1923), (L) 932
Lamartine, Alphonse de, (L) 1329
Lamb, Charles, (L) 285, 573, 592-
93, 649, 657, 729, 792, 833, 847,
1018, (H) 1023, (L) 1098, (H)
1102, (L) 1280, 1281, 1344, 1407;
Essays of Elia, (H) 211, (L) 493,
(H) 1274, 1277, (L) 1463; Speci-
mens of English Dramatic Poets,
(H) 709
Lamb, Harold, Genghis Khan (1927),
(H) 1060
Lambert, Bernard, La jurisprudence
universelle, (L) 1164
Lamennais, Felicite de, (L) 18, 30,
64, 80, 83, 87, 88; Sainte-Beuve
on, (L) 326
La Mettrie, Julien Offray de, L'homme
machine (1747), (L) 627
Land of the Children, The, by Sergey
INDEX
1589
Ivanovich Gusev ( Selivanova, tr.,
1928), (L) 1044
Landau, Lloyd, (H) 304, 457, (L)
638
Landis, James M,, (H) 742, 757-58,
(L) 920
Landis, Kenesaw Mountain, (H) 308
Landor, Walter Savage, Gebir, Count
Julian, and Other Poems, (H) 281
Landseer, Sir Edwin Henry, (L) 802
Lanfrey, Pierre, L'eglise et les phi-
losophes au XV1IIG siecle (1879),
(L) 936-37, 942; Histoire de Na-
poleon Premiere (7th ed., 4 vols.,
1870), (L) 151
Lang, Andrew, (H) 930, (L) 1061;
Holmes's encounter with, (H) 491-
92; Laski's estimate of, (L) 934-
35; The Maid of France (1908),
(H) 492, 635
Lang, Cosmo Gordon, Archbishop of
York and Canterbury, (L) 150
Langdell, Christopher Columbus, (H)
67, (L) 124, 639, 691, (H) 693,
(L) 1058
Lange, Friedrich Albert, The History
of Materialism (Thomas, tr., 3rd
ed., Introduction by Bertrand Rus-
sell; 1925), (L) 766, (H) 769
Lange, Maurice, La Bruyere: Critique
des conditions et des institutions
sociales (1909), (L) 907, 909, 1359
Language, of philosophy, science, law,
and mathematics, (H) 542, 704,
706, 738, 1196
Languet, Hubert: as probable author
of Vindiciae contra tyrannos, (L)
371; Epistolae politicaey (L) 349-
50
Lansing, Robert, (L) 175; The Big
Four and Others of the Peace Con-
ference, (H) 346
Lanson, Gustave, (L) 1300-1301;
Bossuet (1894), (L) 1116, 1344;
Les essais de Montaigne (1930),
(L) 1245, 1354; Histoire de la
litter ature francaise (1895), (L)
1361; Voltaire (1906), (L) 78,724,
982
Lao-Tse, (L) 550-51, 686, 716
Laplace, Pierre Simon, (L) 138, 574,
1404
La Pradelle, Albert, (L) 1236
Larnaude, Ferdinand, (L) 978
La Roche-Flavin, Bernard de, Treize
livres de parlements de France
(1617), (L) 928, 1017
La Rochefoucauld, Frangois DeMar-
sillac, Due de, (L) 349, 714, 715,
726, 746, 752, 798, (H) 828, (L)
1099, 1122, 1359, 1410; his simi-
larity to Hobbes, (L) 951-52
Larouze, Georges, Histoire de la Com-
mune de 1871 (1928), (L) 1476
Larson Co. v. Wrigley Co., (H) 1054
Lascelles, E. C. P., Granmlle Sharp
and the Freedom of Slaves in Eng-
land (1928), (L) 1069
Laski, Diana, (L) 12, 103, (H) 104,
(L) 105, (H) 106, (L) 125, (H)
131, (L) 278, 297, 303, (H) 556,
(L) 612, 657, 694, 977, 1195, 1246,
1413, 1449, 1454-55
Laski, Frida, (H) 243, (L) 255, (H)
256, (L) 257, 392, 894
Laski, Harold J., miscellaneous: his
affection for dogs, (L) 1087; are
his stories embroidered?, (H) 1046;
as tennis player, (L) 358; boyhood
study of Hebrew, (L) 593; capa-
city as rapid reader, (H) 453, 466,
478, 492, 518, 549, 738, 782, 856,
866, (L) 951, (H) 955, 1090,
1091; his convictions contrasted
with Holmes's doubts, (L) 770,
(H) 772; his dependence on
friends, (L) 1314; his economic
theories, (L) 76, 85, 691, (L) 946;
happiness of his marriage, (L) 9,
520, (H) 524, (L) 651, 872, 1277;
Holmes's comments on his literary
style and form, (H) 91, 114, 605,
738, (L) 611; Holmes's fear that
he overworks, (H) 478, 1072;
Holmes's indebtedness to and af-
fection for, (H) 256; is he some-
times faking?, (H) 702; his literary
tastes, (H) 42, (L) 1130, 1131-
32, (H) 1135; Ms political theories,
(L) 17, 19-20, 22-23, 29, 40-41,
(H) 42, (L) 50-51, 52-53, 75-76,
(H) 77, (L) 140, (H) 157, 162,
(L) 494, 504-505; possibilities of
political career, (L) 282, 382-83,
(H) 385, (L) 393, 399, (H) 405,
(L) 408, 458, 479, 488-89, 493,
1590
INDEX
Laski, Harold J. (Continued)
508, (H) 512, (L) 570, (H) 579,
(L) 632, (H) 634, (L) 1104;
School of Economics to inherit his
library, (L) 873; should avoid ex-
cessive ingenuity, (H) 887
Laski, Harold J., personal affairs:
1916-June 1920: (L) 24-25, 27-
28, 30, 32, 36-37, (H) 37-38, (L)
38-39, 44, 49, 53, 57, 61, 80, 82,
89, 90, 92, 96, 101, 102, 106, 129,
134, (H) 135, (L) 140-41, 171,
179, (H) 193, (L) 196, 203, 223,
230-81, 237, 240, 244-45, 263, 265;
decision to leave Harvard and re-
turn to England, (H) 230, (L)
230-31, (H) 232, (L) 255, (H)
256, (L) 257
July 1920-1923; (L) 271, 273,
278, 303, 314; vacation at Bourne-
mouth, (L) 355, 358; lectureship
at Cambridge University, (L) 393,
437, 460, 488, 507, 514, 552-53;
work for International Commission
on Private Settlements, (L) 427;
vacation in Belgium, 1922, (L)
440-41; visit to HoUand, 1922, (L)
442; appointed head of the Depart-
ment of Political Science, London
School of Economics, (L) 479, 507;
blood transfusion, (L) 486, (H)
491, visit to Paris (April 1923), (L)
497; writes MacDonahTs speech
on Irish deportations, 1923, (L)
501-502; acquisition of car, (L)
514, 545, 546, 554; 12th anniver-
sary of marriage, (L) 520, (H)
524; vacation in Belgium (1923),
(L) 524
1924-1927: offered tutorship,
New College, Oxford, (L) 623; ex-
perience at Newcastle, 1925, (L)
728; visits France (April 1925),
(L) 731-32; becomes Director of
Research, London School, (L) 791;
to secure University chair of Politi-
cal Science, (L) 794, 828-29;
American trip (1926), (L) 811,
822, (H) 823, (L) 828, 835-36;
visit to Holland (January 1926),
(L) 818; visit to Scotland (Janu-
ary 1926), (L) 820-21; plans
course in Administrative Law, (L)
846; vacation on Continent (August
1926), (L) 863-64; bookbuying in
Paris (August 1926), (L) 867;
visits Geneva (August 1926), (L)
869-70; visit to Antwerp (August
1926), (L) 873; forced to leave
Warwick Gardens, (L) 876; service
on Industrial Court, (L) 881-82;
acquisition of Devon Lodge, (L)
882-83, 891, 894, 907, 908, 911;
visit to Paris (March 1927), (L)
931; automobile accident, (L) 944;
vacation in France (August 1927),
(L) 966-67, 968-69; visit to Switz-
erland (August 1927), (L) 972-
73; visit to Paris (August 1927),
(L) 977; mistaken arrest in Man-
chester, (L) 979; offered post at
Oriel, (L) 987; miraculous pur-
chase of 17th-century desk, (L)
990, (H) 991
1928-1929: vacation in Belgium
(1928), (L) 1013; lecture to secu-
lar society (January 1928), (L)
1021; appointed to Education Com-
mittee, London County Council,
(L) 1037; visit to Paris (April
1928), (L) 1047; invited to lec-
ture at Geneva, (L) 1058; meet-
ing with schoolmaster friend, (L)
1072-73; Belgian vacation (1928),
(L) 1078-79, 1082; Baldwin offers
him secretaryship to Cabinet re-
search committee, (L) 1104, (H)
1105; attack of pneumonia, follow-
ing two bouts of influenza, (L)
1128-29; visit to Paris (January
1929), (L) 1129; visit to Geneva
(March 1929), (L) 1138-39; in-
vited to lecture at Yale, (L) 1140;
campaigning and organizing La-
bour government, 1929, (L) 1150,
1153-54; urged by MacDonald to
go to Lords, (L) 1153; prepara-
tion of Yale lectures, (L) 1155,
1165, 1171; gives aid to the Lord
Chancellor, (L) 1160-61; his role
in Labour government, 1929, (L)
1170; gypsy tells his fortune, (L)
1176-77; elected member of Ra-
tionalist Press Association, (L)
1190; named to Committee on Min-
isters' Powers, (L) 1194, 1199-
INDEX
1591
1200; opposes establishment of eco-
nomic general staff, (L) 1212
1930-1934: vacation in Belgium
and Holland (January 1930), (L)
1217-18; invited to Yale lecture-
ship in 1931, (L) 1225; visit to
Paris (March 1930), (L) 1236-37;
his Deanship of London faculty,
(L) 1261; vacation in Germany
(August 1930), (L) 1273-74,
1275-76, 1278-79; visit to Paris
(December 1930), (L) 1300-1301;
visit to Belgium and Holland
(January 1931), (L) 1302; visit
to United States, 1931, (L) 1308-
20; service on Departmental Com-
mittee on Local Government, (L)
1321, 1464; visit to France (July
1931), (L) 1321, 1323, 1325-26;
becomes Chairman of Faculty, (L)
1368; visit to Paris (April 1932),
(L) 1376; his conversation with
the King, (L) 1418-19; visit to
Paris (December 1932), (L) 1421-
22; invited to Storrs lectureship at
Yale, (L) 1421; visit to Belgium
(January 1933), (L) 1427-28; lec-
tureship at Madrid, (L) 1435, 1445,
1446-47; visit to United States
(1933), (L) 1436; participates in
Cecil conversations with Russians
(January 1934), (L) 1467
Laski, Harold J., books: Authority in
the Modern State (1919), (L) 18,
20, 43, 57, 62, 64, 76-77, 83, 88,
90, 92, 101, 103, 105, 110, 126-
27, 145-46, 147, 188, (H) 189,
(L) 193, (H) 194-95; Commu-
nism, (L) 883, 901, 929, 935-36,
(H) 941-42, 943, 945, (L) 996-
97, 1342; The Crisis and the Con-
stitution: 1931 and After, (L)
1351-52, (H) 1370; The Dangers
of Obedience, (H) 1246; Democ-
racy in Crisis, (L) 1317, note 2,
(L) 1400, 1401, 1405, 1414; Foun-
dations of Sovereignty, (L) 258,
263, (H) 359, 364, (L) 366, 367,
(H) 369, (L) 369; Grammar of
Politics, (L) 81, 89, 124, 141, 156-
57, 244, 504-505, 526, 527, 531,
585, 591, 596, 600, 608, 610, 636,
(H) 641-42, (L) 647, 650, 665,
676, 678, 681, 695, 722, 732, 755-
56, (H) 761, 761-63, 768-69, (L)
775, 776, (H) 783, (L) 784-85,
(H) 786, (L) 794, (H) 1055, (L)
1195, 1212; Liberty in the Modern
State, (L) 1171, 1174-75, 1178-79,
1185, 1241, 1244, (H) 1249-50;
Political Thought in England from
Locke to Bentham, (L) 172, 233,
(H) 254, (L) 258, (H) 277, 281,
(L) 282, 295, 433; Selected Let-
ters of Edmund Burke (1922), (L)
317, 320-21, 330, 346, 353, 366,
393, 434-35; The Socialist Tradi-
tion in the French Revolution, (H)
1246; The State in Theory and
Practice, (L) 1469, 1481; Studies
in Law and Politics (1932), (H)
1367, (L) 1372. See also Vindiciae
contra tyrannos
Laski, Harold J., articles, pamphlets,
reviews, etc.: "The Personality of
Associations," (H) 4; "The Apoth-
eosis of the State," (H) 8; "The
Political Theory of Disruption,"
(H) 20; "On the Correlation of
Fertility with Social Value," (L)
22; "The Early History of the Cor-
poration in England/7 (L) 27, 32,
34, 39; "The Problem of Adminis-
trative Areas," (L) 34, 110, (H)
166, 169, 175, (L) 221; "The Basis
of Vicarious Liability," (L) 51, 54,
60, 62; "The Responsibility of the
State in England," (L) 93, 138,
172, 173, 181, (H) 189-90; "The
Theory of Popular Sovereignty,"
(L) 184, (H) 188, (L) 189; "The
Pluralistic State," (L) 219-20, 226;
"Mr. George and the Constitution,"
(L) 286; "Recent Contributions to
Political Science" (1921), (L) 289,
(H) 323; Karl Marx, (L) 338,
350, 357, 361, 366, 370, 393, 408,
(H) 409-10; The State in the New
Social Order, (L) 454, (H) 473;
The Problem of a Second Cham-
ber, (L) 475, 676, 681, 696; "Poli-
tical Theory in the Later Middle
Ages," (L) 481; "Lenin and Mus-
solini," (L) 521, 545; contributions
to The Way Out, (L) 545, (H)
549; The Position of Parties and the
1592
INDEX
Laski, Harold J. (Continued)
Right of Dissolution, (L) 587, 596,
602; preface to J. S. Mill's Autobi-
ography, (L) 616, (H) 666, 668,
(L) 675; Socialism and Freedom.,
(L) 681, (H) 761, (L) 770, (H)
772; chapter in Cambridge Medi-
eval History, (L) 681-82, 775;
"The Technique of Judicial Ap-
pointment," (L) 795, 808, 844-45,
(H) 846, 848-49; "Judicial Review
of Social Policy in England," (L)
807-808, (H) 846, 848; inaugural
lecture on political science and his-
tory, (L) 865, 890, (H) 892; "The
Present Evolution of the Parlia-
mentary System," (L) 946, 953;
"The Personnel of the English Cabi-
net, 1801-1924," (L) 968, 969;
"The Tercentenary of Bossuet," (L)
984, (H) 990; "Bolshevism," En-
cyclopedia Britannica, (L) 995,
998; "Portrait of Rousseau," (L)
1016, 1089, (H) 1089, 1092, (L)
1093, 1104, (H) 1105, 1246; "Pro-
cedure for Constructive Contempt,"
(L) 1030, 1039, 1062; "The Ameri-
can Political System," (L) 1062,
(H) 1092; "The Age of Reason,"
(L) 1085-86, 1087, 1110, 1232,
(H) 1235, (L) 1331; "The Rise
of Liberalism" for Encyclopedia of
Social Sciences, (L) 1093; "The
Crisis in the Modem State," (H)
1101; bicentennial piece on Burke,
(L) 1120, 1125; "The Dangers of
Obedience," (L) 1135; "England
in 1929," (H) 1144; lecture on
Babeuf, (L) 1212, 1220; "Mr. Jus-
tice Holmes: For His 89th Birth-
day," (H) 1227-28, (L) 1228-29,
1230, 1235, (H) 1236, (L) 1238;
"Law and the State," (H) 1272;
"Diderot: Homage to a Genius,"
(L) 1281, 1284-85; "Justice and
the Law," (L) 1285, 1292; "The
Limitations of the Expert," (L)
1300; "The Political Philosophy of
Mr. Justice Holmes," (L) 1303,
1310-11, 1372; essay on Democ-
racy for Encyclopedia of Social
Sciences, (L) 1303; "Woodrow
Wilson Ten Years After," (L)
1303-1304; lecture on Tocqueville,
(L) 1306; essay on The American
College President, (L) 1362; "La
conception de I'etat de Leon Du-
guit," (L) 1366, 1368; essay on
Peel, (L) 1386; essay on Liberty
for Encyclopedia of Social Sciences,
(L) 1398; "Mr. Justice Brandeis,"
(L) 1448, 1462, 1463;^ his essay
in The Intelligent Mans Way to
Prevent War, (L) 1451; "The Roo-
sevelt Experiment," (L) 1458, 1467
Laski, Harold J., contemplated schol-
arly writing: on representative gov-
ernment, (L) 155, 367; history of
the political ideas of the Tudors,
(L) 290; history of English politi-
cal ideas, (L) 293, 303, 367, 371;
paper on martial law, (L) 362; the
legal nature of a federal common-
wealth, (L) 382-83; history of law
reform under the Commonwealth
and Protectorate, (L) 383, 393;
biographical study of Edmund
Burke, (L) 393, 402; French politi-
cal thought in the 18th century,
(L) 501, 513, 1039, 1058; social
ideas in the 18th century, (L)
505, 559; French political thought
in the 17th century, (L) 798, (L)
848, (H) 1055, (L) 1058; study
of Rousseau, (L) 947; history of
toleration, (L) 1258
Laski, Nathan, (L) 713; Laskfs re-
lationship with, (L) 271, 273, (H)
274, (L) 278, 290, (H) 290, (L)
345, (H) 738, (L) 746, (L) 876;
quoted, (L) 650
Laski, Neville, (L) 10, 82, 113, 285,
359, 1008, 1221
Lasserre, Pierre, Le romantisme pan-
cais (2nd ed., 1907), (L) 933
Lateran Treaty (1929) (L) 1130
Lauder, Sir Harry, (L) 789
Laughter: Hobbes's definition of, (L)
656; Lord Chesterfield's disapproval
of, (H) 965
Lausanne Conference, (L) 1392
Lauterpacht, Hersh, The Function of
Law in the International Commun-
ity (1933), (L) 1443; Private Law
Sources and Analogies of Interna-
tional Law (1927), (L) 1147
INDEX
1593
Lavengro, by George Borrow, (L)
160
Laver, James, Nymph Errant (1932),
(L) "1395
Lavergne, Leonce de, Les econo-
mistes francais du dix-huitieme
siecle (1870), (L) 581
Lavie, J. C. de, Abrege de la Re-
publique de Bodin (1754), (L)
1025, 1168, 1298
Lavie, Jean-Charles de, Des corps
politiques et de leur gouvernement
(1764), (L) 1366
Law, Bonar, (L) 464, 827; ministry
of (1915), (L) 341; Laski dines
with, (L) 488, 491, 506; Baldwin's
estimate of, (L) 908
Law, Thomas Graves, A Historical
Sketch of the Conflicts between
Jesuits and Seculars in the Reign
of Queen Elizabeth (reprint, 1885),
(L) 293
Law, William, (L) 174
Law: Holmes's theory of, (H) 16,
(L) 19-20, (H) 21, (L) 22-23,
(H) 115-16, (L) 116-17, (H)
119, 822-23; Holmes's decision to
make it his profession, (H) 793;
the mystery of its source as sug-
gested in Antigone, (H) 875; eco-
nomic interpretation of, (L) 1434-
35, 1474
Law reform: ignorance as a factor
in, (H) 1300; need for, in Eng-
land, (L) 1305, 1439, 1476
Lawrence, Alfred Tristram, 1st Baron
Trevethin, (L) 330, 411
Lawrence, D. H., (L) 708, 1411-12,
1412; The Letters of D. PL Law-
rence (Huxley, ed., 1932), (L)
1411-12; Women in Love, (L)
359
Lawrence, Sir Paul Ogden, (L) 889
Lawrence, T. E., (L) 1056; Revolt
in the Desert (1927), (H) 943
Lawrence, William, (L) 109, (H)
938
Lawyers: important elements in their
training and capacity, (H) 519,
(L) 691, (H) 692-93, 797, (L)
935; Holmes's three classes of, (H)
692; the relatively late blooming
of, (L) 792; their powers of self-
persuasion, (H) 1019; provincial-
ism of English, (L) 1412
Lea, Henry Charles, (H) 492, 594;
An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal
Celibacy (1867), (L) 1389; A His-
tory of the Inquisition of Spain (4
vols., 1906-1907), (H) 1360, (L)
1365
Leach, W. Barton, (H) 579, 660, 719,
737
Leach v. Carlile, (H) 406, 410
Leacock, Stephen, (H) 581, (L) 644,
(H) 647, (L) 649; Over the Foot-
lights (1923), (H) 872
League of Nations, (L) 308, 588, 747,
756, 1139; Laskfs visits to, (L)
870-71, 972-73, 1433, 1452
Learned societies, Congresses of, (L)
123, 715
Le Bon, Gustave, Les opinions et les
croyances (1911), (H) 377
Le Bret, Cardin, (L) 848, 932; Traite
de la souverainete du roi (1632),
(L) 857-58
Le Brun, Charles, (H) 232
Lecky, William Edward Hartpole, (L)
575; Democracy and Liberty
(1896), (L) 617; A History of
England in the Eighteenth Century
(8 vols., 1882-90), (L) 134; His-
tory of European Morals from Au-
gustus to Charlemagne (2 vols.,
1869), (L) 1284
Leconte de Lisle, (L) 777
Lectera, Dom, A History of France
under the Regency, (L) 558
Le Due, W. G., (H) 463
Lees-Smith, Hastings Bertrand, (L)
1073, (H) 1114
Lefroy, A. H. F., Canada's Federal
System (1913), (L) 558-59
Lezacu of Greece, The (R. W. Liv-
ingstone, ed., 1921), (L) 392, 552,
558
Legacy of Rome, The (Cyril Bailey,
ed., 1923), (L) 555, 558
Legacy of the Middle Ages, The,
edited by C. G. Crump and E, F.
Jacob (1926), (L) 907
Legal education: in England and
United States compared, (L) 376,
421 576, 1441; in England, (L)
421 576, 763, 1068, 1096-97, 1156,
1594
INDEX
Legal education (Continued)
(H) 1159, 1163, (L) 1398-99;
Lord Atkin's views concerning, (L)
546-47, 763; Holmes's views con-
cerning, (H) 704; Lord Hewart's
views concerning, (L) 763; estab-
lishment o£ Royal Commission on,
(L) 1156, (H) 1159, 1163, (L)
1166, 1368, 1385, 1390, 1398, 1410,
1456. See also Case system; Harvard
Law School
Legal mind, virtues of, (L) 334
Legal theorists, French, (L) 102
Legal theory, (H) 1103
Legendre, , comments on Mon-
tesquieu, (L) 1453
Legendre, Adrien, (L) 1404
Legouis, Smile, La jeunesse de Words-
worth, (L) 468
Legouis, Smile and Louis Cazamian,
A History of English Literature (2
vok, 1926), (L) 1088, (H) 1091,
1119, 1121-22, (L) 1125
Legouve, Gabriel, Soixante ans de
souvenirs (2 vols., 1886-87), (H)
785, 1197
Lehuerou, Julien Marie, (H) 430
Leibl, Wilhelm, (H) 879
Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, (H) 161,
(L) 639, 686, 1125, 1129, 1376
Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of,
Commonwealth, (L) 293
Leigh ton, Frederick, Baron Leighton,
(L) 802
Leitch, John, Man to Man; the Story
of Industrial Democracy (1919),
(H) 212
Lely, Sir Peter, (L) 512
Lemaitre, Jules, (H) 162; Jean Racine
(1908), (H) 769
Lena Goldfields, Ltd., (H) 1275
Lenel, Otto, Das edictum perpetuum
(1883), (L)449
Lenient, Charles, La Satire en France;
ou, La litterature militante au XVI6
siecle (1866), (L) 497, 766
Lenin, (L) 199, 381, 584, 865, 871,
873, 880; as Pope whose God is
Marx, (L) 472; compared to Mus-
solini, (L) 521, 545; Emma Gold-
man's observations concerning, (L)
687; Laski's estimate of, (L) 883,
1257
Lenormant, Charles Francois, Jean-
Jacques Rousseau aristocrate ( 1790 ),
(L) 743, 1025
Leonardo da Vinci, (L) 977, (H)
1345, 1346, (L) 1427
Leonhard, Rudolf, translation of The
Common Law, (L) 1139
Leopold of Babenburg, (L) 219
Lepaulle, Pierre, (H) 397, 565, 566,
693, 803-804
Leroy, Maxime, (L) 62, 731, 733,
1422; La loi (1908), (L) 103, (H)
104, (L) 104-105, (H) 106, 111,
118-19, (L) 121; Le socialisme
des productions: Henri de Saint-
Simon (1924), (L) 669
Lescure, Mathurin FranQois Adolphe
de, Rwarol et la societe francaise
pendant la revolution et Emigra-
tion (1883), (L) 531
Leslie, Charles, Best of All, (L) 283;
The Rehearsal, (L) 285
Leslie, Thomas Edward Cliffe, Essays
in Political Economy, (L) 826, (H)
831
Lespinasse, Julie de, (L) 506, 524-
25, (H) 530, (L) 563, 1329
Lessing, Gothold Ephriam, (L) 925
Lessius, Leonardus, De justitia et jure
(1589), (L) 477
L'Estoile, Pierre de, Journal du regne
de Henri IV (4 vols., 1741), (L)
472
Lethaby, William R., Architecture
(1912), (H) 869
Letters, indiscretion of publishing too
soon, (H) 666
Levene, Phoebus A. T., (L) 1327
Leverrier, Urbain, (L) 1186
Levy, Hyman, The Universe of Sci-
ence (1933), (L) 1451
Levy-Bruhl, Lucien, (L) 731, 977-
78; La morale et la science des
moeurs (1904), (H) 397, (L) 403;
The Philosophy of Auguste Comte
(1903), (L) 403, note 5, (L) 724
Lewes, George Henry, (L) 476
Lewis, D. B. Wyndham, Francois
Villon (1928), (H) 1076
Lewis, Edward Rieman, America,
Nation of Confusion (1928), (H)
1103
Lewis, Sir George Cornwall, (L) 220,
INDEX
1595
539; An Essay on the Influence of
Authority on Matters of Opinion
(1849), (L) 539, 649
Lewis, Sinclair, (L) 674, 739, (H)
987, (L) 1170, 1411; Anowsmtth
(1925), (H) 721, 803, 807; Babbitt
(1922), (L) 455, 1243; Dodsworth,
(L) 1143; Main Street, (L) 1243;
Mantrap, (L) 857; Work of Art,
(L) 1465
Lewis, William Draper, (H) 482
Lewis, Wyndham, Time and Western
Man (1928), (L) 1036, 1074
Lewisohn, Ludwig, Expression in
America (1932), (L) 1395; Up-
stream (1922), (L) 514
Leys, Hendrik, (L) 1013
Leys, Norman, Kenya, (L) 683
Lezardiere, Pauline de, (L) 960, 978
L'Hdpital, Michel de, (L) 445;
Memoires de la Ligue (L) 425, 445
Liaisons danger euses, (L) 491
Liang, Yuen Li, (H) 1416
Libel suit, Aliens, (L) 693
Liberal Party, (L) 611, 843-44
Liberals, their anthropocentric attitude,
(H) 1147
Liberty, Laski's concept of, (L) 592,
1178-79
Lichtenberger, Andre, Le socialisme au
XVIII* siecle (1895), (L) 604, 620
Liddon, Henry Parry, (L) 902, (H)
905 £ _
Lieber, Francis, recollections ot the
campaign of Waterloo, (H) 281
Liggett Co. v. Baldridge, (H) 1109
Life: enthusiasm for, (L) 909, (H)
914; sanctity of, (H) 217, 1060-61,
1146
Lilburne, John, (L) 345, 352; Eng-
lands New Chains Discovered
(1648), (L) 345
Lincoln, Dean of, see Fry, Thomas
Charles
Lincoln Memorial, dedication ot, (ti)
Lincoln, Abraham, (H) 38, (L) 171,
185, (H) 264, (L) 547, (H) 659,
( L) 730, 916, 982, (H) 1162,1265,
(L) 1267; quoted, (H) 336;
Holmes's recollection of seeing him
at Fort Stevens, (H) 340, 410, 414;
similarity to Oliver Cromwell, (L)
506; his war purposes, (L) 592;
proof of his greatness, (L) 1339,
(H) 1345
Lincoln's Inn, Grand Night at, (L)
1117, 1202
Lindbergh, Charles A., (H) 955, (L)
1386
Lindeman, Eduard C., Social Dis-
covery (Introduction by Croly,
1924), (L) 629
Lindley, Lord, (L) 1408
Lindsay, Vachel, (H) 35-36, 38
Linguet, Simon, (L) 502, 536, 559,
563, 867, 1059; his great importance,
(L) 1048-49, 1439-40; Annales
polUiques (19 vols., 1777-92), (L)
852; Fanatisme des philosophes
(1764), (L) 544; Plaidoyers et
memoires de M. Linguet (2 vols.,
1787-88), (L) 1148; Theorie des
lois civiles (1767), (L) 536, 563,
1048-49, (H) 1055, (L) 1115-16,
1439-40
Linklater, Eric, Juan in America
(1931), (H) 1334
Lippincott, Benjamin Evans, (L)
1029, (H) 1032
Lippmann, Walter, (L) 36, (H) 38,
(L) 48, 61, 99, 123, 184, 186, 192,
193, 198, (H) 198, (L) 221, 231,
237, (H) 240, (L) 242, (H) 242,
(L) 512, 541, (H) 569, (L) 581,
602, 657, (H) 810, (L) 924, (L)
1132 (H) 1166, 1260; his political
convictions, (H) 17, (L) 17; lack
of historic sense, (L) 223-24, 682,
1132; handwriting, (H) 227; deci-
sion to leave New Republic, (L)
362; visit to England (September
1921), (L) 371, 387-88; his prob-
able views on democracy, (L) 540-
41; in England, (January 1924),
(L) 584; on Meiklejohn, (L) 602;
on campaign of 1924, (L) 670, (H)
671, (L) 678; his stereotyped
sophistication, (L) 1033; Laski's
admiration for, (L) 1169; Laski's
estimate of, (L) 1311, 1444; his in-
debtedness to Wallas, (L) 1401; as
the dogmatic spokesman for con-
servatism, (L) 1438; American In-
quisitors (1928), (H) 1055; "The
Basic Problem of Democracy, (L)
1596
INDEX
Lippmann, Walter (Continued)
222; Interpretations, 1931-1932
(Nevins, ed., 1932), (L) 1413, (H)
1415, (L) 1423; introduction to
Gertrude King's Alliances for the
Mind, (H) 503, 618; Men of Des-
tiny (1927), (H) 976, (L) 987,
(H) 987, 994; The Phantom Pub-
lic (1925), (H) 793, (L) 795-96,
901; A Preface to Morals (1929),
(L) 1151, 1158-59; A Preface to
Politics (1913), (L) 123; Public
Opinion (1922), (H) 414, (L)
416, (H) 417, (L) 796
Lipsius, Justus, (L) 582, 865, 1014,
1082; Politicorum Itbri sex (1589),
(L) 962
Lister, Baron, (L) 143. See also God-
lee, R. J.
Liszt, Franz, (H) 950,954
Literature: of past and of present, ( H )
26, 67-68, (L) 68, (H) 77, 229-30,
605, (L) 609-10, (H) 704, 723,
769, 781, 897, (L) 903, (H) 904,
(L) 908, (H) 918, 1081, 1092;
difficulties in comparing ancient and
modern, (H) 634-35; mannerisms
in modern, ( H ) 734; humor in past,
(H) 891, 892, 1090
Literature of the Old Testament, The
(1913), by George Foot Moore,
(H) 327
Littell, Philip, (L) 5, 603; comments
on Holmes's Collected Legal Papers,
(H) 315; This Way Out (1928),
(H) 1101
Little, A. G., Roger Bacon Essays
(1914), (L) 360
Little Pedlington and the Pedlingto-
nians by John Poole (1839), (H)
866
Littleton, Sir Thomas, (L) 978
LitvinofT, Maxim, (L) 1444
Liverpool, Bishop of, (L) 791
Liverpool Navigation Co. v. Brooklyn
Terminal, (H) 224
Livingstone, R. W., A Defence of
Classical Education (1916), (L)
59; The Greek Genius and its Mean-
ing to Us (1912), (L) 59; The
Legacy of Greece (1921), (L) 392,
(H) 397
Livy, (L) 528-29
Llewellyn, Karl N., (H) 1296, (L)
1358
Lloyd George, David, (L) 40, 150-51,
250, 276, 292-93, 305, 310, 313,
314, 344, 351, 411, 450, 550, 562,
784, 980, 1024, 1197-98, 1222,
1234, 1457; Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, 1908, (L) 279; reasons for
naming Geddes Ambassador to
Washington, (L) 290; Bryce's dis-
trust of, ( L ) 302; Laski dines with,
(L) 302; intrigue during Campbell-
Bannerman government, (L) 305—
306; debonair cynicism of, ( L ) 820,
506; trickery during miners' strike,
1921, (L) 328; mismanagement of
the coal strike, 1921, (L), 332-33;
prospect of indefinite control of
government, (L) 348; his relative
influence in Asquith's Cabinet, (L)
349; Winston Churchill on, (L)
383, 995; negotiation of Irish Treaty,
1921, (L) 387; fall of his govern-
ment (October 1922), (L) 450,
458; mismanagement of Near East-
ern affairs (1922), (L) 452; simi-
larity to Theodore Roosevelt, (L)
491; his response to Labour victory
(December 1923), (L) 571; Bald-
win's quip concerning, (L) 827;
breach with Asquith, 1926, (L) 843,
885; Balf our's quip concerning, ( L )
1064; his position in General Elec-
tion (1929), (L) 1150-51; as he
appears in biography of Asquith,
(L) 1411, 1414-15; War Memoirs
(Vols. 1 and 2, 1933), (L) 1452
Local government: international Con-
gress on, (L) 1388; Laskfs essay
on committees in, (L) 1471
Local Government Board v. Arlidge,
(L) 113
Lochnerv. New York, (L) 7, 116, 223,
257, 265, 689, 1201, 1219, 1368
Locke, John, (L) 112, 117, 118, 147,
172, 237, 317, 393, 476, 585, 697,
1198, 1480; Morley on, (L) 349,
351; his unpublished letters, (L)
633-34; discovery of his letters, (L)
721—22; as an influence on Rousseau,
(L) 747-48, 1227; his looks, (L)
910; as spokesman for his genera-
tion, (L) 1316; Santayana's essay
INDEX
1597
on, (L) 1445; Two Treatises on
Government (1690), (L) 1455; his
Works, (L) 446, 641, 952, 1005-
1006
Locke, William, (H) 1382
Lockwood, John E., (H) 1102
Lodge, Henry Cabot, (L) 170, (H)
339, 1236, (L) 1316; his final illness
and death, (H) 641, 659; Laskfs
estimate of, (L) 677, 739, 748,
1431; Holmes's recollections and
estimate of, (H) 680, 741, 741-42;
Alexander Hamilton (1882), (L)
677; "The Anglo-Saxon Land Laws"
in Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law
(1876), (L) 677, 748; Life of
George Washington (2vok, 1889),
(H) 693; editor, The Works of
Alexander Hamilton (12 vols.,
1904), (L)748
Lodge, Mrs. Henry Cabot, (H)
741
Lodge, Thomas, Rosatynde (1592),
(L) 1349
Loeb-Leopold case, (L) 736, (H)
738
Logic, see Induction, theory of
Loisy, Alfred, (L) 87
Lollards, their influence on American
culture, (H) 1277
Lomenie, Louis Leonard de, Beau-
marchais et son temps (2 vols,5
1856), (L) 528
Lomenie, Louis Leonard de and
Charles de, Les Mirabeau (5 vols,,
1878,1889), (L) 510,604
London University, School of Eco-
nomics: problems of its curriculum
(1925), (L) 716, 890-91; to in-
herit Laskfs library, (L) 873; com-
pared with Oxford, (L) 1029; com-
memoration exercises (1930), (L)
1263-64
London, Bishop of, (L) 1350
London, Laskfs nostalgia for, (L)
247-48, 265
London County Council, (L) 1468,
1469, 1477-78
Londonderry, Lady, (L) 912
Londonderry, Lord, (L) 1477
Long, Walter Hume, Viscount Long,
(L) 566
Longv. Rockwood, (H) 1054
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, (L)
760
Longworth, Alice Roosevelt, (H) 1375
Loos, Anita, But Gentlemen Marry
Brunettes (1928), (H) 1067; Gen-
tlemen Prefer Blondes (1926), (L)
858, (H) 872
Lord, Robert Howard, (L) 862
Loreburn, Earl, see Reid, Robert
Threshie
Loring, Charles G., (H) 1019
Loring, Katherine Peabody, (H)
1071
Loring, William Caleb, (H) 758
Lorrain, Claude, (H) 139
Lost Naval Papers (1918), by Freder-
ick Harcourt Kitchin (pseud. Ben-
nett Copplestone), (L) 147
Loti, Pierre, (H) 718-19; PScheur
d'Islande, (H) 541, 719
Lotze, Rudolf Hermann, (L) 1179;
Microcosmos, (H) 327
Louis of Orleans, see Orleans, Louis d*
Louis XIV, (L) 585, 707, 715, (H)
718, 757, (L) 792, (H) 1023, (L)
1401
Louis XV, (L) 558
Louis XVIII, Charter of, (L) 19
Louis Napoleon, (L) 472, 843
Louvain, Laski invited to lecture at,
(L) 1355
Louvel, Louis-Pierre, (H) 243
Louvre, The (L) 607
Low, David, (L) 1396
Lowe, Robert, (L) 283, 1108
Lowell, A, Lawrence, (L) 123, (H)
210, 211, (L) 255, (H) 285, (L)
535, 690, 711, 780, 825, 875, 1029,
1221, 1235; Hoknes's correspond-
ence with, concerning Pound and
Harvard Law School, (H) 211; at-
titude towards Laski during Boston
police strike, (L) 218; quality and
limitations of, (L) 424; proposal
for quota of Jewish students, (L)
436; as judged by the Webbs, (L)
521; his part in Sacco-Vanzetti case,
(L) 952, 968; his resignation from
Harvard, (H) 1420-21; Public
Opinion and Popular Government
(1913), (L) 644, 648, 1083; Public
Opinion in War and Peace (1923),
(L) 489
1598
INDEX
Lowell, Amy, (H) 236, 240, 841; John
Keats (2vols., 1925), (H) 712
Lowell, James Russell, (L) 721, (H)
722, (L) 750, 867-68, 1455
Lowell, John (1743-1802), (H) 242
Lowell, John, (1769-1840), (L) 241,
(H) 242
Lowell, Judge John (1824-97), (H)
3, 1027
Lowenthal, Max, The Investor Pays
(1933), (L) 1443
Lowie, Robert, Primitive Society., (H)
291, 294, 462
Loyola, Ignatius, (H) 910-11
Loyseau, Charles, (L) 750, 848, 881,
932, 1017, 1304
Lucas, E. V., (H) 580; The Life of
Charles Lamb (2 vok, 1905), (L)
573, 1407, 1463
Lucas, F. L., Cecile (1930), (L) 1252;
Euripides and His Influence ( 1923 ) ,
(L) 621; Studies French and Eng-
lish (1934), (L) 1465
Luchaire, Julian, (L) 1140
Lucretius, (H) 1250
Ludendorff, Erich, (H) 671; The
General Staff and Its Problems
(Holt, tr., 2 vols., 1920), (L) 357;
My War Memories (2 vols., 1919),
(L) 925
Ludlow, John Malcolm, (L) 279
Ludwig, Ernil, (L) 1039-40, (H)
1044, 1067, 1280; Laski's estimate
of, (L) 1063; Bismarck (Paul, tr.,
1927), (L) 989-90; Kaiser Wilhelm
II (Mayne, tr., 1926), (H) 972;
Napoleon (Paul, tr., 1926), (L)
945, (H) 972, 974^75, 976, 1044,
(L) 1063; The Son of Man: The
Story of Jesus (Paul, tr., 1928),
(L) 1063
Lugard, Sir Frederick, The Dual Man-
date in British Tropical Africa
(1922), (L) 421
Luther, Martin, (L) 1293, 1335;
Works, (L) 442
Lutma, Janus, (H) 866, 1080-81
Luxemburg Gallery, (L) 607
Luxuries; economic insignificance of,
(H) 207-208; as preferable to
necessaries, (H) 872
Lydon, William, 7th Earl Beauchamp,
(L) 1263-64
Lyndwood, William, Provinciale, (L)
248, (H) 248, (L) 250, 325, 1148,
1359-60
Lysaght, S. R., My Tower in Desmond
(1925), (L) 799
Lytton, Bulwer, (L) 725, 1175
Maas, Nicolaas, (L) 735
Mabillon, Jean, (L) 951
MaUnogion, The, (H) 354
Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de, (L) 366,
425, 484, 1453; Oeuvres completes
(12 vols., 1792), (L) 428
Macaulay, Rose, Milton (1934), (L)
1465
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, ( L ) 39,
(H) 42, (L) 151, 181, 539, 575,
676, (H) 685, (L) 697, 771,
802; on Boswell's Johnson, (H) 38;
on Jane Austen, (L) 325; quality
of his essays, (L) 329, 639-40, 656;
anecdote concerning, (L) 411-12;
his hostility to Croker, (L) 433;
Laskf s estimate of him as historian,
(L) 443, 575, 649-50, 1219-20;
contrasted with Sainte-Beuve, (L)
516; Holmes's estimate of, (H)
645, 652-53; anecdote of Brougham,
(L) 821; on the non-jurors, (L)
1112; his essay on Bacon, (L) 443,
640; History of England from the
Accession of James II, ( L ) 40, 44,
213, 443, 544, 625-26, 1080; his
notice of Barere's Memoirs, (H)
561
McBain, Howard Lee, The Living
Constitution (1927), (L) 1168
McCabe, Gordon, (H) 322, 671-72,
910-11
McCardell, Roy L., Conversations of
a Chorus Girl (1903), (H) 1258;
The Show Girl and her Friends
(1904), (H) 1258
McCardie, Sir Henry Alfred, (L) 408,
854, 1478; as presiding justice in
O'Dwyer v. Nair, (L) 613, 616
McCarthy v. Arnstein, (L) 672
McClellan, George B., (H) 1075
Macclesfield, Lord, his Mandeville let-
ters (L) 1131, (H) 1133
McCormick, Sir William, (L) 298
McCulloch, J. R., The Literature of
Political Economy (1845), (L) 477
Macdonald, Mrs. Frederika, Jean
INDEX
1599
Jacques Rousseau (1906), (L) 522;
Studies in the France of Voltaire and
Rousseau (1895), (L) 514
MacDonald, Philip, The Noose (L)
1262; The Rasp (1925), (L) 1409;
The White Crow (1928), (L) 1409
MacDonald, Ramsay, (L) 351-52,
488, 501, 583, (H) 587, (L) 602,
663, 724, 749, 787, (H) 841, 842,
(L) 885-86, 919, 946, 996, 1107,
1141-42, 1187, 1188, 1222, 1251-
52, 1292, 1300-1301, 1332-33,
1392, 1442; Lasld lunches with, (L)
329; on Lord Bolingbroke, (L) 329;
insight of, ( L ) 352; his responsibili-
ties after victory of 1923, (L) 570,
572; Holmes's impressions of, (H)
580; speech at time of formation of
Labour government, 1924, (L) 584;
on Anglo-American relations, 1924,
(L) 588; his labors as Prime Minis-
ter (1924), (L) 591, 599, 610-11,
628, 664; Mrs. Holmes's interest in,
(H) 635; personal relief on return-
ing to opposition (November 1924),
(L) 669; his religious convictions,
(L) 679; his self -righteousness and
vanity, (L) 778, 1187, 1213, 1264;
1430, 1432; intended call on
Holmes, (L) 933; Laski's estimate
of (1927), (L) 981, 1167; forms
Labour government (1929), (L)
1153-54; his anxiety to improve
Anglo-American relations, (L) 1156,
1166, 1169-70; telegram concerning
alleged call on Holmes, (L) 1189;
his inability to call on Holmes
(1929), (H) 1192, (L) 1194; pro-
poses an economic general staff, ( L )
1212; his problem in selecting Poet
Laureate, (L) 1244, 1248; his
stubborn pride of authorship, (L)
1285; his unwillingness to accept
criticism, (L) 1194, 1432; his quali-
ties appraised by his colleagues, ( L )
1299; his indecisiveness in Indian
negotiations, (L) 1338; Low's car-
toon biography of, (L) 1396-97;
Henderson's description of, (L)
1430; his attitude towards Hitler's
regime, (L) 1452; Lord Horder's
diagnosis of, (L) 1453; quip con-
cerning his new liking for the rich,
(L) 1477, 1480; The Government
of India (1919), (L) 241; The
Socialist Movement (1911), (H)
354, 580
MacDonald, Mrs. Ramsay, (H) 635,
(L) 642, 663
McDonald v. Mabee, (L) 68
McDougall, William, World Chaos;
The Responsibility of Science
(1932), (H) 1367
McGill University, Laski's salary prob-
lem at, (L) 954
McGrainv.Daugherty, (L) 920
Machault D'Arnouville, Jean-Baptiste,
(L) 969
Machiavelli, (L) 59, 246, 299, 302,
361, 452, 480, 697, 699, 1001, (H)
1003, (L) 1097, 1480; Laski's ar-
ticle on, (L) 934, 935, (H) 1246;
Discorsi di Nicolo Machiavelli
(1540), (L) 1287, 1290; The
Prince, (L) 365
Mcllwain, Charles H., (L) 56, 57-58,
130, 174, 239, 242, 285, 295, 420,
452, 494, 611, 809, 840-41, 844,
846-47, (H) 849, (L) 851, 862,
867, (H) 875, (L) 953, 1242, 1315,
1377, 1386, 1391, 1445, 1453; The
American Revolution (1923), (L)
596, 616-17; The Growth of Politi-
cal Thought in the West (1932),
(L) 1221, (H) 1382, (L) 1386,
(H) 1387, (L) 1391, 1413; The
High Court of Parliament, (L) 141,
(H) 142, 148, 153, 182, (L) 292;
The Political Works of James I
(1918), (L) 181, (H) 182, (L)
185, 191, 198, (H) 199, (L) 378,
438, 789
Mack, Julian, (L) 512, (H) 515,
(L) 546, 636, 638, 836, 858, 1148,
1302, 1311
Mackail, Denis, The Flower Show
(1927), (L) 982; Greenery Street
(1925), (L) 760; The Joung Liv-
ingstones (1930), (L) 1272
Mackail, John William, (L) 885
McKay, Claude, Home to Harlem
(1928), (L) 1078
MacKay, James Lyle, see Inchcape,
Earl of
McKee v. Grotz, (H) 459
McKenna, Joseph, (L) 116, 249-50,
1600
INDEX
McKenna, Joseph (Continued)
276, (H) 309, 331, 339, 445, 597,
598, 668, 693, (L) 699, (H) 846,
1227; T. Roosevelt on, (L) 428; as
editor of Holmes's opinions, (H)
486; his death, (H) 896, (L) 903
McKenna, Reginald, (H) 148, (L)
384, 584-85, 703
McKenna, Stephen, Sonia, between
Two Worlds (1917), (L) 134, 142,
(H) 144, 148-49, (L) 149
Mackenzie v. Englehard Co., ( H ) 668
Mackenzie, Compton, April Fools
(1930), (L) 1257, (H) 1259; Car-
nival (1912), (L) 248; Extremes
Meet (1928), (L) 1065; Poor Rela-
tions (1919), (L) 218; Sylvia and
Michael (1919), (L) 196; The
Three Couriers (1929), (L) 1137
McKeon, Richard, The Philosophy of
Spinoza (1928), (L) 1168
MacKinnon, Sir Frank Douglas, (L)
940, 1041, 1063-64
Maclean, Sir Donald, (L) 312-13, 352,
368, 449-50
McMaster, John B., A History of the
People of the United States during
Lincoln s Administration, (L) 959-
60
McMillan, Harold, (L) 1153-54
Macmillan, Hugh Pattison, Baron Mac-
millan, (L) 1222
Macnaghten, Sir Edward, Baron Mac-
naghten, (L) 795, 1005, 1041, 1077,
1142; Wells on his style, (L) 1072,
(H) 1075
Macnaghten, Sir Malcolm, (L) 1412
M'Naghtens Case, (L) 589
MacNally, Leonard, (L) 1371
Macnaughton, Sarah, (L) 780, (H)
782
McPherson, Aimee Semple, (L) 1107
McReynolds, James Clark, (L) 225,
(H) 309, (L) 410, 450, 490, 493,
502, 545, 557, (H) 609, (L) 715,
(H) 937, 964, 1045, (L) 1062, (H)
1066, 1133, 1196, 1209, (L) 1262,
1400; relations with Brandeis, J.,
(H) 413, 842; Holmes's estimate of,
(H) 413, 554-55, 842, 1259; his
delays in reaching decision, (H)
1027, 1045, 1054-55, 1133; as an
expert in admiralty, (H) 1135; his
arrogant tone, (H) 1253-54; his
attitude towards Holmes, (H) 1259;
his responsibility for overruling prec-
edent, (H) 1291
Macrobius, (L) 490, 784
MacSwiney, Terence, (L) 280
McTaggart, John McTaggart Ellis,
(L) 131-32, 718; Some Dogmas of
Religion (1906), (L) 86; Studies in
Hegelian Cosmology (1901), (L)
861, (H) 863, (L) 1059
Madariaga, Salvador de, (L) 973
Madelin, Louis, The French Revolution
(1916), (L) 91
Madison, James, (L) 147, 261, 586,
982, 1242
Madras House, The, by Harley Gran-
ville-Barker (1911), (L) 811
Magdalene College, Cambridge, (L)
595
Maggs, bookseller, buys two novels of
George Moore from Laski, (L) 666,
667
MfltZ Divisor Cases, The, (H) 229
Maine, Sir Henry, (L) 56-57, 155,
427, 575, 617, 691, 922, 925, 1352,
1462; Morley's estimate of, (L)
408; as an influence leading Holmes
to write The Common Law, (H)
429; Ancient Law, (L) 617, 735,
(H) 1273, 1274, (L) 1307, 1311-
12, (H) 1340; International Law
(1888), (L) 220; Popular Govern-
ment, (L) 57, 209, 617, 1400
Maintenon, Madame de, (H) 524
Maisky, Jean, (L) 1435, note 2, (L)
1436
Maistre, Joseph, Comte de, (L) 156,
472, 980, 984; Oeuvres (14 vols.,
1884-87), (L) 472, 1336, 1355
Maitland, Frederic William, (L) 18,
39, 40, 43, 56, 65, 68, 94, 98, 106,
110, 112, 117, 124, 125, 253, 403,
(H) 409, (L) 422, 438, 539, 590,
650, 655, 691, 731, 747, 765, 792,
812, 844, 845, 847, 891, 906, 908,
926, 978, 1051, 1142, 1213, 1279,
1339, 1352, 1374, 1376, 1399, 1431,
1433; his theory of agency, (L) 26;
tributes to, by Holmes and Saleilles,
(L) 30; his introduction to Gierke,
(L) 44; on The Common Law, (L)
185; compared to Gibbon, (L) 407;
INDEX
1601
Laski speaks on, (L) 483; his com-
ment on Holmes's essay on early
English equity, (L) 564; the influ-
ence of his style, (H) 738, 803;
Holmes's estimate of, (H) 803;
Wells on his style, (L) 1072; Sir
Malcolm Macnaghten's opinion of,
(L) 1412; Collected Essays (3 vols.,
1911), (L) 479; Domesday Book
and Beyond (1897), (L) 196, 567;
English Law and the Renaissance,
(H) 280; The Life and Letters of
Leslie Stephen (1906), (L) 174,
185-86, 436, 614, 655, 721, 750,
(H) 753, (L) 847, (H) 849, (L)
1008
Making much of self, Holmes's apho-
rism concerning, (H) 485
Malebranche, Nicolas de, (H) 342,
(L) 715, (H) 718
Mallarme, fitienne, (L) 931
Malleus Maleficarum, (H) 1132,
1235-36
Mailock, William Hunnell, Memoirs of
Life and Literature, (H) 1089-90
Maloue, Edmond, (L) 1232
Malthus, Thomas Robert, (H) 122,
165, 272, (L) 277, (H) 385, (L)
420, (H) 431, (L) 465, (H) 597,
(L) 654, (H) 658-59, 762, (L)
788, 821, (H) 950; Ricardo's notes
on, (L) 1036
Man: cosmic insignificance of, (H)
207, 351, 828, 914, 939, 946, 948,
1019, 1039, 1069-70, 1089, 1101,
1124-25, 1266; as means and not
as end, (H) 264
Man, Henri de, (L) 1445
Manchester, Duke of, (L) 1369
Manchester, Laski's visits to, (L) 365,
467, 475; Laski's opinion of, (L)
538, 610, 1284
Mandeville, Bernard, his unpublished
letters, (L) 1131, (H) 1133; The
Fable of the Bees (Kaye, ed., 1924),
(H) 49, (L) 436, 700, 752, 1041-
42, 1223
Manet, Edouard, (L) 536, 607, 802,
824, 1315
Maney v. United States, (H) 1102
Mann, Horace, (H) 1193
Mann, Thomas, Buddenbrooks (Lowe-
Porter, tr., 1924), (L) 812; The
Magic Mountain (Lowe-Porter, tr.,
1927), (L) 956
Manner and style contrasted, (L) 693
Manners, their importance, (H) 631,
(L) 636-37
Manning, William, The Key of Lib-
berty, (L) 432-33, 446-47
Mansbridge, Albert, (L) 270
Mansfield, Lord, (L) 282, 483, 981-
82; Laski purchases books belong-
ing to, (L) 830, 858, 899
Mantegna, Andrea, (H) 414, 496,
(L) 496 (H) 713, 1345
Mantell, Walter, Short Treatise of the
Lawes of England, (L) 295
Mantoux, Paul, La revolution Indus-
trielle au XVIW siecle (1906), (L)
314
Maple Flooring Manufacturers Asso-
ciation v. United States, (H) 719
Marais, Mathieu, (L) 525
Marais v. General Officer Command-
ing, (L) 764-65, 1176
Marat, Jean Paul, De Thomme (1773),
(L) 490
Marblehead, Mass., (H) 165, 757, 872,
1070
Marcel, Pierre, Essai politique sur
Alexis de Tocqueville (1910), (L)
1042, 1374
Marcus Aurelius, (H) 605
Marechal, Sylvain, Dictionnaire des
athees anciens et modernes (1800),
(L) 1427
Margoliouth, David Samuel, The
Homer of Aristotle (1923), (L)
622-23
Mariana, Juan de, (L) 412, 697, 1218;
De rege et regis institutione (1599),
(L) 314, 480, 682, (H) 685, (L)
685, 1207, 1381
Marie Antoinette, (L) 564
Marine Railway ir Coal Co, v. United
States, (H) 377
Maritain, Jacques, An Introduction to
Philosophy (Watkins, tr., 1930),
(L) 1249
Maritime rights, British and American
dispute concerning, (L) 1136, 1170,
1343
Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de Cham-
blain de, (L) 532, 698
Marlborough, 1st Duke of, (L) 1290
1602
INDEX
Marlowe, Christopher, (H) 709, 1127
Marmontel, Jean Francois, Memoires
d'un pere (4 vols., 1804), (L) 510,
562, 826-27
Marot, Clement, (L) 1450
Marquand, John P., Lord Timothy
Dexter of Newburyport (1925),
(H) 800
Marquis, Don, Hermione and Her
Little Group of Serious Thinkers
(1916), (H) 453; The Old Soak
(1921), (H) 453
Marriott, Sir John, The Mechanism
of the Modem State, (L) 936
Marris, Sir William, his translation of
Catullus, (L) 637
Marron v. United States, (H) 1420
Marsh Arab, Haji Rikkan (1928) by
"Fulanain," (H) 1055
Marshall, Alfred, (L) 663, 677, 826;
Industry and Trade, (L) 220, 221
Marshall, John, (L) 30, 408, (H) 593,
(L) 678, 730, (H) 796-97, (L)
978, 982, (H) 1183, (L) 1439;
Laski's estimate of, (L) 1007, 1016;
Holmes's estimate of, (H) 1015
Marshall, L. C., (H) 730
Marshall, Thomas Riley, (H) 64; Rec-
ollections of Thomas R. Marshall
(1925), (H) 800, 803
Marsiglio, (L) 682, 1199; Defensor
pads, (L) 106, (H) 107, 111, 112,
(L) 112, (H) 114, (L) 173, 221-
22, 747, 777; Defensor minor, (L)
467
Marten, Henry, The Independency of
England Endeavored to be Main-
tained (1648), (L) 345
Martial, (L) 964
Martial law, (L) 362, (H) 363; con-
flicting views of Dicey and Pollock,
(L) 553, 619, 621, 764, 771-72,
1176; as a problem in O'Dwyer v.
Nair, (L) 619, 621
Martin, Kingsley, (L) 434, (H) 466;
French Liberal Thought in the
Eighteenth Century (1929), (L)
1156-57, 1165
Martin, Sir Theodore, (L) 433
Martineau, Harriet, (L) 3, 151, 152,
834; Morley's admiration for, (L)
3, (H) 343, (L) 476; Autobiogra-
phy: with Memorials by Maria
Weston Chapman (1877), (L) 151;
History of the Peace (4 vols., 1864-
66), (L) 130, 151
Martyrs, Holmes's views of, (H) 119,
227
Marvell, Andrew, (L) 306, 352; The
Rehearsal Transposed, (L) 477
Marvin, F. S., The Century of Hope,
(L) 198, (H) 202, 205, 207, (L)
209; The Living Past, (L) 209;
editor of Progress and History, ( H )
94
Marx, Karl, (H) 84, 95, 161, 360,
(L) 603, 826, 871, (H) 994, (L)
1151, 1212; intellectual relation-
ships with Proudhon, (L) 82, (H)
82, 84, (L) 85; Laski's view of,
(L) 83, 85, 338, 357, 358, 361,
370, 466-67, 998, 1478; indebted-
ness to others, (L) 85, 536, 998,
1021; Laski's Fabian tract on, (L)
338, 350, 357, 370, 395, 408, 435-
36; Holmes's criticism of, (H) 375,
398, 474, 1000, 1265; on Adam
Smith, (H) 409, 474; anticipated
by Linguet, (L) 536, 563; Bohm
von Bawerk's, refutation of, (L)
553; Laski discusses with Russian
communist, (L) 657-58; anticipated
in Federalist, (L) 695; The Civil
War in France, (L) 338; The
Communist Manifesto, (L) 370,
1168; Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels: Correspondence 1846-1895
(Torr, ed., 1934), (L) 1471-72
Mary, Queen of Scots, (L) 877, 1234,
1251, 1465
Masaryk, Thomas Garrigue, The Spirit
of Russia (1919), (L) 213, 573
Masefield, John, reflections on Sor-
row's possible influence on Mel-
ville, (L) 334; Laski's contemplated
meeting with, (L) 359; Laski's
weekend with, (L) 361; becomes
Poet Laureate, (L) 1248
Mason, A. E. W., The House of the
Arrow (1924), (L) 969; The Pris-
oner in the Opal (1928), (L)
1125; The Sapphire (1933), (L)
1433
Mason, Edward S., The Paris Com-
mune (1930), (L) 1305, 1335, (H)
1337, 1346
INDEX
1603
Massachusetts, tercentenary celebra-
tion, (H) 1269-70
Massachusetts politicians, Laski's bit-
terness concerning, (H) 681
Massey, W. F., (L) 348
Massillon, Jean-Baptiste, (L) 1357
Massingham, H. W., (L) 125, 208,
209-10, 270, 279, 286, 305, 322, "
345, 347, 368, 369, 427, 432, 445,
446, 520, 619-20; leaves The Na-
tion, (L) 475; his death, (L) 654,
(H) 658; H.W.M.: A Selection
from the Writings of H. W. Mas-
singham (H. J. Massingham, ed.,
1925), (L) 750, 787
Masson, David, The Life of Milton
(7 vols., 1859-94), (L) 299
Masson, Pierre Maurice, La religion
de J. J. Rousseau (3 vols., 1916),
(L) 513-14, 826, (H) 831, (L)
1017; Une vie de femme au XVIII6
siecle: Madame de Tencin (1909),
(L) 531-32
Masterman, C. F. G., (L) 270, 312,
475, 695, 783-84; England after
War (1922), (L) 463-64
Masters, Edgar Lee, Lincoln the Man
(1931), (L) 1339
Mathematicians: fruitfulness of their
early years, (L) 792, 1074; their
failure to question their postulates,
(H) 886-87; British, (L) 1077;
their conviction that they have dis-
covered the ultimate, (H) 1288
Mathematics: its place in education,
(L) 880, (H) 886-87, (L) 890;
false notion that it teaches accuracy
of thought, (H) 1196
Mather, Cotton, (H) 761, (L) 1390;
Magnolia Christi Americana,, (H)
742, (L) 749
Mather, Increase, (L) 729-30, 774,
1390
Mathew, Sir James Charles, (L) 1026,
(H) 1026
Mathew, Theobald, (L) 1026, (H)
1026
Mathiez, Albert, (L) 1048, (H)
1055; The French Revolution (Phil-
lips, tr., 1928), (L) 1030, 1038,
1435; Robespierre terroriste (1921),
(L) 951
Matsui, Baron Keishiro, (L) 1068-69
Mattapoisett, Mass., Holmes's recol-
lections of, (H) 893
Matthew of Paris, (L) 777
Mauclair, Camille, L'dpre et splendide
Espagne (1931), (H) 1319, 1320
Maugham, Frederic Herbert, Baron
Maugham, (L) 1063-64; The Case
of Jean Galas, (L) 1063
Maugham, W. Somerset, Ah King
(1933), (L) 1454; Cakes and Ale
(1930), (L) 1290, (H) 1291, 1296;
The Moon and Sixpence (1919),
(H) 269, (L) 1427
Maupassant, Guy de, (L) 310, 345,
1087, 1347, 1454; Boule de suif,
(L) 26, 310, (H) 311, (L) 444;
Une vie, (L) 443-44
Maupeou, Rene, (L) 1049
Maurice, Sir Frederick, Robert E.
Lee, the Soldier (1925), (L) 1299
Maurice, Frederick Denison, (L) 279
Maurois, Andre, (L) 1048, 1376-77;
Ariel, ou la vie de Shelley (1923),
(H) 568, (L) 1048, 1219; Byron
(2 vols., 1930), (L) 1226, 1229,
1234; Lyautey (Miles, tr., 1931),
(H) 1336; Les silences du Colonel
Bramble (1918), (H) 264; La vie
de Disraeli, (H) 961, 965
Maurras, Charles, L'avenir de I'intelli-
gence (1909), (L) 1033; Prologue
d*un essai de critique (1930), (L)
1241
Maxse, Admiral Frederick Augustus,
(H) 234, 323
Maxse, L. J., (H) 323
Maxton, James, (L) 1166-67
Maxwell, James Clerk, (L) 666, 791,
1058
Mayne, Ethel Colburn, Byron (2 vols.,
1912), (L) 1171; her book on
Philippines, see Mayo, Katharine
Mayo, George Elton, (L) 1065
Mayo, Katherine, Isles of Fear ( 1925),
(L) 812
Mazarin, Jules, (L) 977, 984
Mazzini, (L) 720
Mearne, Samuel, (L) 629
Medicines, Holmes's distrust of, (H)
108
Meigham, Arthur, ( L) 348
Meiklejohn, Alexander, (H) 597, (L)
602
1604
INDEX
Meinecke, Friedrich, Weltbilrgertum
und Nationalstaat (1919), (L) 192,
514, 575, 617
Melbourne, Lord, (L) 329, (H) 1023;
quoted, (H) 165 '
Melville, Herman, (L) 334-35, 539,
997, (H) 1000; Holmes's boyhood
recollections of, (H) 323; possible
influence of George Borrow on his
writing, (H) 323-24, (L) 334-35;
Moby Dick, (H) 323, 327, (L)
328, (H) 331, (L) 1079, (H)
1091, (L) 1170, (H) 1172, (L)
1299; Holmes's estimate of, (H)
1147
MelviUe, Sir James, (L) 1229
Melville, Lewis, pseudonym, see Ben-
jamin, Lewis Saul
Memling, Hans, (L) 1084
Memoir es de la ligue (6 vols., 1590-
99), attributed to Simon Goulart,
(L) 425, 441
Memoires sur I'etat de la "France sous
Charles IX (3 vols., 1579), attrib-
uted to Simon Goulart, (L) 428
Menander, quoted, (L) 195
Mencken, H. L., (L) 885, (H) 891,
987, (L) 1073; Prejudices, First
Series (1919), (H) 236, 240, (L)
241, (H) 891; Treatise on the Gods
(1930), (L) 1257, (H) 1269
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Albrecht, (L)
1452
Menger, Anton, The Right to the
Whole Produce of Labor (Tanner,
tr., introduction by H. S. Foxwell,
1899), (L) 85
Menger, Carl, (L) 446, (H) 872
Mens rea, ( H ) 4
Mercier, Louis Sebastien, (L) 1025;
Van deux mille quatre cent qua-
rante (1771), (L) 536; De J. J.
Rousseau (2 vols., 1790), (L) 620;
Tableau de Paris (8 vols., 1782-
83), (L) 1241, 1251
Mercier de la Riviere, Pierre-Paul, (L)
620
Mercure Francois (2nd ed., 1617),
(L) 378
Meredith, George, (L) 10, 62, 71,
109, 317, 344, 441, 482, 493, 1234;
his characterization of Leslie Ste-
phen, (L) 186; Holmes's recollec-
tion of last conversation with, (H)
235; his style, (L) 407; his respect
for Emerson, (L) 471; Laski's
small liking for, (L) 521; his meet-
ing with Field Marshal French,
(L) 557; compared with George
Eliot, (L) 596; Beauchamps Ca-
9 reer, (L) 234, (H) 234; Diana of
the Crossways, (L) 663; The Egoist,
(L) 279, 518, 544, 771; Harry
Richmond, (L) 557; his Letters,
(L) 50, 234; Rhoda Fleming, (L)
760; The Shaving of Shagpat, (L)
60
Meriot, Clement, (L) 487
Merlat, £lie, Traite du pouvoir absolu
des souverains (1685), (L) 1115
Merriam, Charles Edward, American
Political Ideas (1920), (L) 415;
American Political Ideas 1805-1917
(1923), (L) 573; A History of
American Political Theories, (L)
710, note 1; New Aspects of Politics
(1925), (L) 795
Merry man, Ex parte, (L) 1176
Mersenne, Marin, (L) 1017
Meryon, Charles, (H) 144, (L) 146,
(H) 149, 243, 268, (L) 349, (H)
354, (L) 422, 425, 536, 603, 606,
651, 686, 802, (H) 813, (L) 977,
1078, 1212
Merz, Charles, Rigger and Better Mur-
ders (American title, The Great
American Band Wagon, 1928), (L)
1104
Merz, John Theodore, A History of
European Thought in the Nine-
teenth Century (4 vols., 1903-14),
(L) 134, (H) 136, (L) 137, (H)
138-39, 140, (L) 141
Meslier, Jean, Le testament de Jean
Meslier (1762), (L) 574-75, (H)
580, (L) 604
Meston, James Scorgie, Baron Meston,
(L) 1051-52
Metaphysics, the need for skepticism
in, (L) 898, (H) 1124-25, 1134
Metra, Frangois, Correspondance se-
crete, politique et litter air e (18
vols., 1787-90), (L) 1151
Meyer, Eduard, Geschichte der Al-
terthums (5 vols., 1884-1902), (L)
650
INDEX
1605
Meyer, Eugene, (L) 506, 829, 1319,
1394
Meyer, Mrs. Eugene, (H) 180, (L)
182, 506, 1319
Meyer v. Nebraska, (L) 507, (H)
508, (L) 508
Meyerson, fimile, (L) 825, 979, 1029,
1104, 1122, 1129, 1236, 1237, (H)
1239, (L) 1300-1301, 1325, 1376,
1422; De Texplication dans les sci-
ences (1921), (L) 1122
Meynell, Alice, (H) 474
Michael Neo-Palaeologos, His Gram-
mar., by His Father Stephen N.
Palaeologos (1925), (H) 797, 800
Michel, Henri, L'idee de I'etat; essai
critique sur Thistoire des theories
sociales et politiques en France
depuis la revolution (1896), (L)
58, 71, 184, 573
Michelangelo, (H) 139; his "Captive,"
(H) 618
Michelet, Jules, (L) 680; Histoire de
France, (L) 953
Michels, Robert, Political Parties
(1915), (L) 11
Michelson, A. A., (L) 735
Michoud, Leon, "La notion de per-
sonalite morale," (H) 28, (L)
903
Middle Ages: supernatural quality of,
(H) 541; Laskfs dislike for, (L)
775
Middle Temple Murder, see Mystery
of the Middle Temple, The
Middle West, its qualities, (L) 1312-
13, (H) 1315
Middleton, Lord and Lady, see Wil-
loughby, Ernest
Middletown, by Robert S. and Helen
M. Lynd (1929), (L) 1241
Mignet, Frangois, Moges historiques
(2nd ed., 1864), (L) 493; His-
toire de la Revolution (1824), (L)
1048
Military matters, civilian control of,
(L) 925, (H) 926, (L) 1452
Mill, James, (L) 141, (H) 182, (L)
616; articles from Encyclopedia,
(L) 181
Mill, John Stuart, (L) 50, 52, 107,
109, 113, 129, 135, 237, 278, 306,
498, 531, 616, 673, (H) 675 (L)
675-76, (H) 834, (L) 884, (H)
891, (L) 925, 1221, 1280; Warts's
portrait of, (L) 138; Alexander
Bain's study of, (L) 228; his quali-
ties and those of John Morley com-
pared, (L) 340; Morley's admira-
tion for, (H) 343, (L) 543; Laski
acquires his unpublished speeches,
(L) 420-21, (H) 422, (L) 429;
indebtedness to Saint-Simon, (L)
429; on Bright and the American
Constitution, (L) 730; took Holmes
to Political Economy Club meeting
(1866), (H) 841, (L) 1208; apho-
risms of, (L) 1476; Autobiography,
(L) 192, 420, 452, 616, (H) 666,
668; Essay on Liberty, (L) 42-43,
45, 160, (H) 187, (L) 592, 1184,
1350; Examination of Sir William
Hamilton's Philosophy, (L) 1097;
The Letters of John Stuart Mill (2
vok, Elliott, ed., 1910), (L) 156;
Principles of Political Economy,
(L) 571, 663; Representative Gov-
ernment, (L) 189, 1476
Mill, Mrs. John Stuart, (L) 471, (H)
668, (L) 675-76, (H) 680, (L)
1005
Miller, Gerrit Smith, Jr., (H) 737,
1019, 1128, 1133, 1134, 1235-36,
1250, 1416
Miller, Vaughn, (H) 102
Millet, Jean Francois, (H) 139, 180
Milligan, Ex parte, (L) 764, 1175-
76, 1478
Milligan Case, The (1929), Samuel
Klaus, ed., (L) 1175-76
Milner, Alfred, Viscount Milner, (L)
149; Laskfs meeting with, (L) 336;
The Nation and the Empire ( 1913 ) ,
(L) 149
Milton, John, (L) 1087; Laski given
copy of his prose works, (L) 265;
his prose style, (H) 278, (L) 370,
(H) 373, (L) 391, (H) 397; ma-
jestic use of proper names, (H)
281; Jonathan Richardson's portrait
of, (H) 287-88; Areopagttica, (L)
252, 370; Paradise Lost, (L) 610,
(H) 866; Paradise Regained, (H)
1345
Minerals Separation Corp. v. Magma
Copper Co., (H) 1224
100G
INDEX
Miners: strike of (1921), (L) 324;
Laski's lectures to, (L) 661; their
behavior in Newcastle disaster, (L)
728-29; their behavior during gen-
eral strike (1926), (L) 840
Mining problems, English (1920-21).
(L) 280
Ministers* Powers, Committee on, (L)
1194, 1199-1200, 1202, 1223, 1225,
1233, 1264, 1285, 1349, 1358, 1362,
1364, 1368, 1372, 1382
Minnesota, University of, (L) 1292
Mirabaud, Jean Baptiste de, see Hoi-
bach, Baron d', Systeme de la na-
ture
Mirabeau (fits), comte de (1749-
1791 ), similarity to Theodore Roose-
velt, (L) 510; Rivarol's aphorism
concerning, (L) 531
Mirabeau, (p&re), Marquis de (1715-
1789), (L) 472, 604, 1120; L'ami
des hommes, (L) 497, 747, 1227;
Lettres economiques (1770), (L)
839
Mirabeau, (pere), Marquis de, and
Frangois Quesnay, Elements de la
philosophic rurale (1767), (L) 686
Miracles, (H) 139, (L) 140, (H)
660, (L) 665, (H) 866, (L) 970,
(H) 1315, (L) 1428; William
Turner's book on, (L) 774
Mirrors of Downing Street, The, by
a Gentleman with a Duster ( Harold
Begbie, 1921), (H) 322
Miscellany of Tracts and Pamphlets,
A. C. Ward, editor (1927), (L)
993, (H) 999, 1003
Missouri v. Holland, (H) 254
Mitchison, Naomi, Cloud Cuckoo
Land (1925), (L) 802; When the
Bough Breaks (1924), (L) 620
Mitsui 6- Co. v. Watts, Watts 6- Co.,
(H) 84
Mitteis, Ludwig, (L) 473
Modern thought, its value as com-
pared with ancient thought, (H)
519-20
Moffatt, James, (L) 687
Mohamedans, see India
Molesworth, Sir William, The English
Works of Thomas Hobbes ( 11 vols.,
1839), (L) 1245
Moliere, (L) 539, 698, 703, (H) 706,
(L) 715, 868, 884, 1316, 1371,
1419; Le bourgeois gentilliomme,
(H) 709
Molina, Luis de, De justitia et jure.,
(L) 1258
Molinier, Auguste, (L) 559
Mommsen, Theodor, (L) 32, 40, 45
147, 449, 576, 747, 923, 1038, 1279;
on Max Miiller, (L) 889, 1053;
Romisches Staatsrecht (4 vols
1881-85), (L) 433, 1112, 1397
Monarchists, French Catholic, (L)
711-12, (H) 713
Monarchomachs, English and French
compared, (L) 379
Monarchy: constitutional problems in,
(L) 143; Haldane's defense of, (L)
992
Monet, Claude, (L) 607
Money matters, Holmes's indifference
to, (H) 911
Moneypenny, W, F, and G. E. Buckle,
Life of Disraeli, (L) 1186
Monkhouse, Allan, The Conquering
Hero (1924), (L) 617
Monson, Lord and Lady, (H) 405
Montagu, Edwin Samuel, An Indian
Diary (1930), (L) 1294
Montague, C. E., Right off the Map
(1927), (L) 982, 985
Montague, William Pepperell, (L)
729
Montaigne, (L) 428, 460, (H) 495,
503-504, 586, (L) 729, 743, 779,
789, 853, 867, 977, 978, 1087,
1104-1105, (H) 1105, (L) 1316,
(H) 1345, (L) 1354, 1422, 1465;
quoted, (L) 446; Laski's admira-
tion for, (L) 487, 496, 510, 639,
649, 765, 771; Holmes's estimate
of, (H) 645; Les essais (A. Ar-
maingaud, ed., 1924-27), (L) 743
Montchretien, Antoine de, (L) 1098
Montesquieu, (L) 24, 77, 121, 172,
433, 470, 488, 493, 501, 518, 544,
655, (H) 704, (L) 732, 792, (H)
793, 831, (L) 870, 925, 960, 969-
70, 972, 978, 983, 1013, 1049, 1099-
1100, 1116, 1157, 1211, 1218, 1238,
1307, 1316, 1326, 1328, 1341, 1356,
1371, 1386, 1399, 1422, 1439, 1453;
Laski's admiration for, (L) 532,
647-48, (H) 652, (L) 1041-42,
INDEX
1607
1115; his letters, (L) 536-37;
Faguet's annotations on, (L) 622;
as an influence on Rousseau, (L)
748, 986; his influence on Adam
Smith, (L) 826; influence of Bodin
on. (L) 1025, 1168, 1298, 1366;
the need for an exhaustive book on,
(L) 1431; Esprit des lois, (L)
1381, 1399; Lettres persanes, (L)
606, 805, 1377; Oeuvres completes
(Edouard Laboulaye, ed., 7 vols.,
1875-79), (L) 622, 839; Temple
du Guide, (L) 1037
Montluc, Blaire de, (H) 534
Mooney, Tom, (L) 934, 952, 968
Moore, George, (H) 8, (L) 9, (H)
863; his personal qualities and criti-
cal judgments, (L) 1365-66; The
Brook Kerith, (L) 29; Esther
Waters, (L) 666; Memoirs of my
Dead Life (1906), (H) 78; A
Mummers Wife, (L) 667
Moore, George Edward, (L) 1429
Moore, Sir William Harrison, (L)
1053, 1203
Moore v. Dempsey, (H) 964, note 1,
971, (L) 976
Moors, John Farwell, (L) 226, 778,
780
Moralists, special qualities of the
French, (L) 670
Morality: futility of criticizing past
in terms of, (H) 119, 469; as an
ideal, (H) 259; common concep-
tions of, (H) 523; as an issue in
political questions, (L) 531; its re-
lationship to aesthetics, (L) 1294-
95
Morals: excessive concern with, (H)
158, 653; as record of predominant
choice, (L) 656, (H) 659-60, (L)
691, 696-97, (H) 704, 837, (L)
1025, 1059, 1388; as human, not
cosmic ultimates, (H) 706; Holmes's
concept of, (H) 762, 837; possi-
bility of a science of, (L) 898;
their social character, (L) 1165,
(H) 1165, (L) 1407; relativism in,
(H) 1238-39. See also Evil, prob-
lem of
Morand, Paul, Magie noire (1928),
(H) 1165-66
Morant, Sir Robert Laurie, (L) 221
Morawetz, Victor, (L) 903
More, Paul Elmer, Platonism (1917),
(L) 125
More, Sir Thomas, (L) 801; Collected
Works (1554), (L) 338; Utopia,
(L) 170, 273; The Works of Sir
Thomas More (1557), (L) 756,
858, 1343-44, 1399, 1440
Moreau, Celestin, Bibliographie des
Mazarinades (1850-51), (L) 1230,
1460
Moreau, Jean Michel, (L) 818, 884,
1298; his engraving of the statu-
ette of Voltaire, (L) 830, (H) 835
Morellet, Andre, (L) 484; Memoires
sur le XVin° siecle et la Revolu-
tion (2 vols., 1821), (L) 562, 611;
Reflexions sur les avantages de la
liberte d'ecrire (1775), (L) 559
Morelly, (L) 366, 425
Mores, their elevation to ultimates,
(H) 1165, 1172
Morgan, John H., (H) 453, (L) 456;
John, Viscount Morley, (H) 744-
45, (L) 751
Morgues, Mathieu de, (L) 746
Morin, Gaston, La revolte des faits
contre le code (1920), (L) 1369
Morison, Samuel E., (L) 432, 454,
1221; as Harmsworth Professor at
Oxford, 1922, (L) 436; his inau-
gural lecture at Oxford, (L) 436-
37, (H) 444, (L) 447,452; Builders
of the Bay Colony (1930), (L)
1390; The Development of Harvard
University (L) 1234-35; Maritime
Historu of Massachusetts (1923),
(L) 548, 802, (H) 1314; The Ox-
ford Historu of the United States
(2 vols, 1927), (L) 992-93, 996,
(H) 1071, 1075, (L) 1145; Sources
and Documents Illustrating the
American Revolution (1923), (L)
573
Morland, George, (H) 300, (L) 778
Morley, Christopher, (H) 609
Morley, Edward Williams, (L) 735
Morley, Henry, his edition of Emer-
son's Essays, (L) 951
Morley, John, (L) 120, 126, 151, 192,
210 306, 329, 403, 452, 570, (H)
754, 823, (L) 882, 951, 1374; on
Woodrow Wilson, (L) 241-42,450;
1608
INDEX
Laski's first visit to, (L) 270, 274,
277, 278-79; Holmes's acquaintance
with, (H) 281; reflections on the
British Cabinet, (L) 282; respect
for judicial office, (L) 282; Margot
Asquith on, (L) 313, 463; political
and personal qualities of, (L) 340,
1409, 1419; Holmes's estimate of,
(H) 343, 745, 1121; lack of ap-
preciation of the institution of the
state, (L) 344; observations on
Rousseau, (L) 348-49, 351, 476,
506; liking for Lloyd George, (L)
349; on men of action, (L) 349,
370, (H) 373-74, (L) 508-509,
(H) 512; as critic of life, (L) 351;
on Locke, (L) 351; on Ireland,
1921, (L) 370, 391; on Leslie
Stephen, (L) 370; on Bryce, (L)
375; on Laski and possible Parlia-
mentary career, (L) 383, (H) 405,
(L) 493, 508, (H) 512; on Win-
ston Churchill, (L) 383; on Mil-
ton's prose style, (L) 391; com-
pared with Bryce, (L) 400; on
Sir Henry Maine, Cromwell, Isaac
Newton, and Voltaire, (L) 408; on
Lord Rosebery, (L) 415, 513; on
Comte, (L) 438; as conversation-
alist, (L) 438, 476, 533, 696; on
history as the history of ideas, (L)
443; roots of his liberalism, (L)
463; on French thinkers of the 18th
century, (L) 470-71, 506, 513;
his mistaken enthusiasms, (L) 476;
Laski's estimate of, (L) 476, 542-
43, 626, 751, 915; his opinion of
Renan, Thiers, Guizot, de Tocque-
ville, and Blanc, (L) 493; his opin-
ion of Turgot, (L) 506; his literary
criticism, (L) 542-43; his political
criticism, (L) 542-43; his death,
(L) 542, (H) 548; Laski's essay
on, (L) 602; was given Lord Ac-
ton's Horary, (L) 627; on Roose-
velt, (L) 739; Morgan's biography
of, (H) 744-45, (L) 751; his ti-
midities, (L) 1179; Burke (1867),
(L) 392, 1120; on Compromise,
(L) 593, 626, 683, (H) 745; es-
say on Condorcet in Critical Mis-
cellanies (1871), (L) 78, 528, 542;
Diderot and the Encyclopaedists
(2 vols,, 1878), (L) 506, 542-43,
593, (H) 949, 955, 957; Life of
Richard Cobden (1881), (L) 543;
Life of William Ewart Gladstone
(3 vols., 1903), (L) 39, 543, 626;
Notes on Politics and History
(1913), (L) 3, (H) 5, (L) 57;
OUver Cromwell (1900), (L) 299;
Recollections (2 vols., 1917), (L)
98, 109-10, (H) 111, 129; Rous-
seau (2 vols., 1873), (L) 81, 118,
126, 344, (H) 347, (L) 648
Morliere, Chevalier de la, (H) 1019
Morley, Lady, (L) 329, 340
Mornay, Philippe de, A Notable Trea-
tise of the Church (Eng. trans.,
1580), (L) 293, 296
Mornet, Daniel, Les origines intellec-
tuelles de la revolution francaise
(1933), (L) 1445; Le romantisme
en France au XVIW siecle (1912),
(L) 913, 1085
Morris, Sir Harold, (L) 1256
Morris, William, (L) 651, 683; The
Dream of John Ball (1888), (H)
13 (L) 14; News from Nowhere
(1891), (L) 14
Morrison, Stanley, (H) 200
Morrow, Dwight W., (L) 1231, 1233,
1238, 1254
Morse, , of Salem, (H) 1076
Morse Drydock and Repair Co. v.
Steamship Northern Star, (H) 842-
43
Morton, Henry Canova Vollam, In
Search of Ireland (1931), (H)
1395
Morse, John T., Jr., (H) 972, 1209,
1395
Morton, Marcus, (H) 500
Mosley, Sir Oswald, (L) 437, 509,
513, 566, 603; joins Labour party,
(L) 611
Moton, Robert Russa, What the Negro
Thinks (1929), (L) 1201
Moulton, John Fletcher, Baron Moul-
ton, (L) 330, 801, 1065, (H) 1070
Mounier, Jean Joseph, (L) 666, 674
Mozart, the Rodin bust of, (L) 607
Miilberger, Arthur, Studien uber
Proudhon (1891), (H) 82
Miiller, Max, (L) 889, 1053, 1280
Mugler v. Kansas, (H) 473
INDEX
1609
Muirhead, James, Historical Introduc-
tion to the Private Law of Rome,
(L) 1097
Mulgan, Alan K, Home (1927), (H)
1192
Mutter v. Oregon, (L) 962, 1372
Mullins, Claud, In Quest of Justice
(1931), (L) 1305
Mumford, Lewis, The Golden Day
(1926), (L) 1033; Herman Mel-
ville, (H) 1144, 1146-47
Munthe, Axel, The Story of San Mi-
chele (1929), (H) 1239
Muraski, Lady, The Tale of Genii,
(H) 1387
Murillo, Bartolome, (L) 1446
Murphy v. Sardell, (H) 800
Murray, Andrew Graham, Viscount
Dunedin, (L) 479, 764, 902
Murray, Gilbert, (L) 293, 392, (H)
556, 560, (L) 724, (H) 727, (L)
732, 747, 979-80; Aristophanes: A
Study, (L) 1433, note 2, 1437;
Aristophanes and the War Party,
(L) 1433; Essays and Addresses
(1921), (L) 384; Euripides and
his Age (1913), (L) 40; Faith,
War, and Policy, (H) 99; Tradi-
tion and Progress (1922), (H) 913,
916, 918; his translation of Eurip-
ides, (H) 605
Murray, John, (H) 609
Murray, Robert H., (L) 460, 461;
Erasmus and Luther: Their Atti-
tude to Toleration (1920), (L)
460; History of Political Science
from Plato to the Present (1926),
(L) 820, (H) 831, 837, 939; Politi-
cal Consequences of the Reforma-
tion (1926), (L) 820, (H) 831
MusSe Plantin, (L) 582, 818, 865,
1014
Musee Rodin, (L) 607
Music, Laski's liking for, (L) 608,
695-96, (H) 702, (L) 702, 960;
its value as form of expression, (H)
954, (L) 960
Musicians: anecdotes concerning, (L)
693-94, 1441; fruitfulness of their
early years, (L) 791-92; Laskfs
dislike for, (L) 960, 1238, 1441
Musset, Alfred de, (H) 26
Mussolini, Benito, (L) 699-700, 833,
932, 1114, 1130, (H) 1134, (L)
1139, 1210, 1354, 1465; Laski
writes article comparing him to
Lenin, (L) 521, 545
Myers v. United States, (L) 895-96
Myers, F. W. H., "Essay on Greek
Oracles," (L) 439
Mystery of a Hansom Cab, The, by
Fergus Hume, (L) 19
Mystery of the Middle Temple, The,
(H) 516, (L) 522
Mysticism, (L) 182, (H) 183, (L)
209, 241; philosophical importance
of before Descartes, (L) 216
Nalson, John, The True Liberty and
Dominion of Conscience Vindicated
(1678), (L) 611
Namier, L. B., The Structure of Poli-
tics at the Accession of George III
(2 vols., 1929), (L) 1131, 1287
Nansen, Fridtjof, (H) 161
Nanteuil, Robert, (H) 168, 300, 561,
769; engraving of Pomponne de
Bellievre, (H) 232
Napier, Macvey, Selections from the
Correspondence of the Late Macvey
Napier (Napier, ed., 1879), (L)
279
Napier, Sir William, History of the
Peninsular War (1828-40), (H)
555
Napoleon, (L) 179, 349, 362, 531,
(H) 974-75, 976, (L) 1038, 1040
(H) 1044, (L) 1063
Nash v. United States, (H) 203
Nathan, Robert, Peter Kindred, (L)
235
Nation, The (London), (L) 286, 475,
619
National Association of Window Glass
Manufacturers v. United States, (H)
564, 569
National Prohibition Cases, The, (H)
254, (L) 276
National Wealth and Income (1926),
(L) 854
Nationalism, (L) 199, 1292
Natural law, (L) 116-17, 1083, 1213,
1218; as a problem of the Tudor
and Stuart period, (L) 371; Haines's
concept of, (L) 1352. See also
Morals
Natural rights, (L) 244, (H) 246,
1610
INDEX
Natural rights (Continued)
1045; 18th-century belief in, (L)
436; Laski develops doctrine con-
cerning, (L) 454
Nature in the Age of Louis XIV, by
Phyllis E. Crump (1928), (L)
1211
Nature: state of, fallacies concerning,
(L) 428-29; its grandest spectacles,
(H) 541
Naude, Gabriel, Considerations poli-
tiques sur les coups d'estat (1618),
(L) 378, 455
Naval Disarmament, 1930 conference
on, (L) 1170, 1210, 1219, 1233,
1238. See also Maritime rights
Naval officers, British, (L) 502, 1136,
1200
Neale, John Ernest, (L) 682, 765,
861, 867, 877; Queen Elizabeth
(1934), (L) 1465, 1467
Necessity, (H) 565, 634
Necker, Jacques, (L) 686
Neff, Emery, Carlyle (1932), (L)
1445; Carlyle and Mill (1924), (L)
637
Negroes, American injustices to, (H)
974, 975, 1265
Neilson, William Allan, (L) 1078
Nelson, Lord, (L) SOO, 1268, 1449
Nero, (H) 1081
Neurath, Baron von, (L) 1286, note
5, (L) 1305
Neville, Henry, Plato redivivus
(1681), (L) 388
Nevins, Allan, The American States
during and after the Revolution,
1775-1789 (1924), (L) 980, 1008;
Henry White: Thirty 'Years of
American Diplomacy (1930), (L)
1316
Nevinson, Christopher R. W., (L)
744, (H) 1113, (L) 1477
Nevinson, H. W., (L) 351, 368, (H)
385, 390-91, (L) 403, 409, 413,
(H) 414, (L) 427, 437, 475, 520,
548, 550, 651, 654, 912, 920, 1051,
1058-59, 1060, 1103, (H) 1105,
1113, (L) 1178, 1185, 1212, 1225,
1402-1403, 1432; Holmes's liking
for, (H) 397, 405-406, 917, 1180;
Changes and Chances (1923), (L)
548; The Dardanelles Campaign
(1918), (L) 490; The English
(1929), (L) 1178; Goethe; Man
and Poet (1931), (L) 1344, 1364,
(H) 1367; Last Changes, Last
Chances (1928), (L) 1059, 1112;
More Changes, More Chances
(1926), (L) 787; Original Sinners,
(L) 307
New College, Oxford, (L) 623, 1077
New England Primer, The, (H) 456
New Jersey v. New York, (H) 1314
New Republic, The, (L) 7, 11, (H)
17, 35, (L) 43, 97, (H) 99, 114,
(L) 780, (H) 1101, 1109, 1118-
19; personal and editorial problems
at, (L) 231; solemnity of its edi-
tors, (L) 1315
New School for Social Research, (L)
179, 247; Laski lectures at, (L)
237
New Testament, The, (H) 659, 660,
(L) 665, 1199, 1342
New Willard Hotel, (H) 418
New York v. Jersawit, (H) 569, 579
New York v. McCall, (L) 127, 146
New York Central Railroad v. Win-
field, (H) 128
New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, (H)
331, 335
Newburyport, Mass., (H) 871-72
Newcastle, mining disaster at, (L)
728-29
Newman, Bertram, Edmund Burke
(1927), (L) 945
Newman, John Henry, (L) 278, (H)
409, 580, (L) 626, (H) 745, (L)
751, 989, (H) 1003, (L) 1058,
1459; Laski's estimate of, (L) 407;
compared to Pascal, (L) 703, 743;
Scott's influence on, (L) 1179;
Apologia pro vita sua (1864), (L)
407, 1353; his edition of Aristotle's
Politics, (L) 225, (H) 227; Gram-
mar of Assent (1870), (H) 139,
(L) 407, 409, 544, 743, 1355
Newspapers and magazines, (H) 1196
Newton, Sir Isaac, (L) 138, 349, 408,
634, (H) 645, (L) 694, 722, 735,
791, 922, 1077, 1125; his preemi-
nence, (L) 639; his influence on
political science, (L) 809; his ef-
feminate appearance, (L) 910; his
library, (L) 1341; his disagreement
INDEX
1611
with Leibnitz over calculus, (L)
1376; England as his essential set-
ting, (L) 1404
Nicaea, Council of, (L) 1255
Nicely, James M., (L) 541, (H) 545,
(L) 552
Nicholas of Cusa, (L) 120, 682,
775
Nickerson, Albert Winslow, (H) 417,
1300
Nickleby, Mrs., Holmes on, (H) 389
Nicolay, John G., (L) 802
Nicolson, Harold, Byron: The Last
Journey (1924), (L) 600, 604;
Public Faces (1932), (L) 1411
Nietzsche, (H) 653, (L) 657, 933
Nightingales, (L) 505, 511, 1060,
1387
Nineteenth century, characteristics of,
(L) 110
Niven, Frederick, Justice of the Peace,
(H) 609
Nixon v. Herndon, (H) 927
Nobility, its characteristics in 17th
century, (L) 633, (H) 634
Noble State Bank v. Haskell, (L) 34,
140, 160, 484-85, 557, 721, 844
Nock, Albert Jay, Jefferson (1926),
(L) 896, 902
Nokes, G. EX, A History of the Crime
of Blasphemy (1928), (L) 1198
Nominalism and realism, as the basic
divisions in life, (L) 360-61
Nonconformity, English, (L) 804
Nonjurors, (L) 1112
Norman, George H., (H) 930
Norman, Montague, (L) 1394
Normand, Charles, La bourgeoisie
francaise au XVII* siecle (1908),
(L) 700
North Carolina, University of, (L)
1317-18
"North, Christopher/* see Wilson,
John
North, Lord, (L) 296
NorthclifTe, Lord, (L) 40, 125, 924
Northern Securities Company v.
United States, (H) 741, (L) 1201-
1202
Northumberland, Duke of, (L) 673
Northwestern Mutual Life Ins. Co. v.
Johnson, (H) 291
Norton, Caroline, (H) 1023
Norton, Grace, her works on Mon-
taigne, (H) 1105-1106
Norton, Charles Eliot, (L) 721, (H)
1105; Holmes's estimate of, (H)
722-23; Historical Studies of
Church-Building in the Middle
Ages (1880), (H) 187
Norwood, Cyril, The English Tradi-
tion of Education, (L) 1203
Notestein, Wallace, (L) 858, 862,
956
Nottingham University, Laski delivers
address at, (L) 451
Nourrisson, Paul, Histoire de la liberte
d' 'association en France depuis 1789
(2 vok, 1920), (L) 494
Novelists, women, as inventors of
forms in fiction, (L) 433
Novels: Holmes's later neglect of, (H)
12, 67-68, (L) 79, (H) 659, 1081,
1135; their evolution, (L) 441,
1136-37; English and American
compared, (H) 675; character of
modern, (L) 1351
Noyes, Alfred, (L) 513, 827
Noyes, Frances (Mrs. Edward H.
Hart), (H) 42, 111, 133, (L) 135,
(H) 135,318
Nugent, Holmes's driver at Beverly
Farms, (H) 347
Gates, Captain L. E. G., 455
Gates, Titus, (L) 9
Obedience, Tudor and Stuart theories
of, (L) 371
Obermann, by Etienne Pivert de
Senancour, (L) 600
O'Brien, Ex parte, (L) 501-502
O'Brien, Kate, Without my Cloak
(1931), (L) 1353
O'Casey, Sean, The Silver Tassie, (L)
1199
Ockham, William of, (L) 173, 682,
(H) 685, (L) 777, 791, 1331
O'ConneU, Cardinal, (L) 970
O'Dwyer v. Nair, (L) 612-13, 616,
619, 621-22, (H) 625, (L) 625,
(H) 630, 887
Oesterley, W. O. E., Hebrew Religion,
Its Origin and Development (Rob-
inson, tr., 1930), (L) 1262
Office-seeking (1924), (L) 583
Ogburn, William Fielding and Alex-
ander Goldenweiser, The Social
1612
INDEX
Ogburn, William Fielding and Alex-
ander Goldenweiser (Continued)
Sciences and their Interrelations
(1927), (H) 1006, (L) 1041
Ogg, Frederic A. and P. Orman Ray,
Introduction to American Govern-
ment (2nd ed., 1925), (L) 808
Ohm, Georg Simon, (L) 639, 666
Ohnet, Georges, (L) 151
Oil scandals, United States (1924),
(L) 588, 591
Okakura, Kakuzo, The Ideals of the
East (1903), (H) 180, (L) 193
Oklahoma v. Texas, (H) 422-23
Old Dominion Land Co. v. United
States, (H) 796
Old Testament, The, Moffatt's trans-
lation of, (L) 687, (H) 688
Oleffe, Auguste, (L) 365, 536, 1217
Oliphant, Mrs., (L) 259
Olmstead v. United States, (L) 1067,
1176
Olson, Floyd B., (L) 1313
Oncken, Hermann, (L) 1280
Onomatopoeia, (L) 649, (H) 652
OpeUka v. Opelika Sewer Co., (H)
614-15
Opera, (L) 698-99, 960, 1217
Oppenheim, E. Phillips, (L) 151
Oppenheimer, Franz, (L) 1053; The
State: Its History and Development
Viewed Sociologically ( Gitterman,
tr., 1914), (L) 514
Optimism, philosophical, (L) 141
Oratory: Greek and modern compared,
(L) 908; its fleeting success, (L)
1120
Orfeuil, Auguste Rouille d', L'alambic
des loix, (L) 1049
Oriental art and philosophy, (H) 180,
(L) 182, 209, (H) 210, (L) 241,
550, 582, 686-87, (H) 688, (L)
716-17
Orleans, Louis d', Advertissement des
catholiques anglais aux francais
catholiques (1591), (L) 461
Ornstein, Martha, The Role of the
Scientific Societies in the Seven-
teenth Century (2nd ed., 1928),
(L) 1104
Orpen, Sir William, (L) 1382
Ortega y Gasset, Jose, The Revolt of
the Masses (1932), (L) 1390
Osborne, Dorothy, Letters from Doro-
thy Osborne to Sir William Temple
(Parry, ed, 1914), (H) 685, 860
Ostade, Adrian van, (H) 139, 180,
(L) 227, 297, 422, 425, 441, (H)
458, (L) 468, 488, 582, 735, 865,
(H) 866, (L) 1084
Otis, James, (L) 222, 296, 586
Ottinger v. Consolidated Gas Co., ( H )
888
Otto of Freising, (L) 777
Ouida, (L) 259, 983
Ouspensky, P. D., Tertium organum
(Bessaraboff & Bragdon, tr., 1920),
(H) 624
Ovid, (H) 63, (L) 64, (H) 723, (L)
740, (H) 741, (L) 908, (H) 916-
17, 918, (L) 922
Owen, Robert, (L) 600; John Stuart
Mill's attack on, (L) 420; Leslie
Stephen's comment on, (L) 1287
Oxenstiema, Count Axel, (H) 1274-75
Oxford and Cambridge, Royal Com-
mission on, (L) 221, 270, 416
Oxford University, (L) 193, 313;
Laski's undergraduate years at, (L)
17, 44, 53; admissions policy at,
(L) 221; compared with Cam-
bridge, (L) 253, 273, 293, 662,
676-77; Laski's impressions of, (L)
273, 293, 380, 454, 1028-29, 1163-
64; control of by churchmen, (L)
329; its inadequacies, (L) 416, 735,
775, 847, 1380; Laski offered tutor-
ship at New College, (L) 623;
problem of its Chancellorship, 1925,
(L) 747, 759; teachers of law at,
(L) 774-75; its insulation from the
19th century, (L) 1058; American
students' impressions of, (L) 1063;
Siegfried's criticism of, (L) 1267
Pacific Mail Steamship Co. v. Lucas.,
(H) 413
Pacifism, (H) 18-19, 1146
Paeff,Bashka, (L) 104, (H) 104, 106,
(L) 133, (H) 133-34, (L) 157,
(H) 181, (L) 1221
Page, Professor W. H., (L) 138
Page, Walter Hines, (L) 825
Paine, Thomas, (L) 475, (H) 478,
1003, (L) 1040, 1219; The Age of
Reason, (L) 1383; Rights of Man,
(L) 1131
INDEX
1613
Painting, modern, (H) 921, 1177,
1180, (L) 1191, (H) 1209, 1236,
1266
Palestine: anecdotes concerning Eng-
lish visitors to, (L) 679; formulation
of British policy in, 1930, (L) 1261,
1294, 1296, 1298-99, 1301, 1302-
1303. See also Zionism
Palfrey, John G., (H) 440, (L) 447,
(H) 448, (L) 548, (H) 555, 860,
1320-21
Palmer, Edwin, (H) 856
Palmer, Ralph, (H) 1031
Palmer, Sir Roundell, 1st Earl of Sel-
borne, (H) 1031
Palmer, Samuel, (H) 496
Palmerston, Lord, (L) 38, 329, 843,
899, 902
Palmetto Fire Insurance Co. v. Conn,
(H) 888
Palmstierna, Baron, (L) 919, 1141-
42
Palyi, Melchior, (L) 877, 1242
Pan- African Congress, Laski addresses
(November 1923), (L) 562
Panama Railroad Co. v. Basse, (H)
186
"Panama Railroad v. Rock, (L) 668
Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, (L)
1479
Panhandle Oil v. Knox, (H) 1054
Paradox, virtue of, (H) 389
Parke, Baron, (L) 1041
Parker, Carleton H., (L) 193
Parker, Francis E., (H) 930-31
Parker, Henry, (L) 370-71
Parker, Joel, (H) 112,363
Parker, Robert John, Baron Parker,
(L) 1145
Parker Samuel, Discourse of Ecclesias-
tical PolWe (1670), (L) 477
4 Parkman, Francis, (L) 980, 1080
Parkyn, Ernest Albert, An Introduc-
tion to the Study of Prehistoric Art
(1915), (H) 51
Parliament: supremacy of, (L) 39;
House of Commons, decline after
1886; (L) 89; House of Commons,
quality of (November 1922), (L)
459-60; the right to dissolve, (L) 587;
its imperial legislative powers, (L)
616-17; House of Lords, rumor of
Tory plan to strengthen, 1924, (L)
676; 1927 plan to reform House o£
Lords, (L) 955-56, 959. See also
Bicameralism
Parodi, Dominique, La philosophie
contemporaine en France (1919),
(L) 933; Traditionalism et demo-
cratic (1909), (H) 187, 188-89
Parrington, Vernon Louis, (L) 1361,
1458; Main Currents in American
Thought (2 vols., 1927), (L) 944-
45, 948, (H) 949, 950, 961, (L)
1029, (H) 1060, 1067, 1069-70,
(L) 1072, (H) 1075, 1340; (Vol.
3, 1930), (L) 1298, (H) 1310
Parry, D. Hughes, (L) 1296
Parry, Sir Edward Abbott, The Law
and the Poor (1914), (L) 1290,
(H) 1291
Parsifal (H) 630,635
Parsons, Robert, (L) 137, 299-300,
306, 326, 367; An Answer to the
Fifth Part of Reportes Lately Set
Forth by Syr Edward Cooke, Knight
(1606), (L) 293, 299-300; A Con-
ference about the Next Succession to
the Crowne of Ingland (1594), (L)
137, 293; The Jesuit's Memorial for
the Intended Reformation of Eng-
land (1690), (L) 449
Parte of a Register (1590), (L) 420,
465
Parties, political: multiplicity of, in
France, (L) 494; desirability of
two-party system, (L) 669
Parton, James, Life of Thomas Jeffer-
son (1874), (L) 326
Pascal, Blaise, (H) 96, (L) 349, 356,
574, (H) 710, (L) 710, 715, 718,
(H) 745, (L) 746, (H) 754, 757,
(L) 758-59, 798, (H) 831, (L)
983, 989, 1097, 1122, 1125-26,
1359, 1377, 1465; Anatole France's
opinion of, (L) 497; Laski's esti-
mates of, (L) 521, 649, 703, 707,
987, 1230, 1354-55; Holmes's esti-
mate of, (H) 587, 645; compared
to Newman, (L) 703, 743; his
fairness to Jesuits, (L) 1065-66;
possible influence of Hobbes on,
(L) 1331; his epigram on parting,
L) 1369; Lettres a un provin-
cial (L) 732, 750, 794, 858, (H)
860, (L) 1301; Pensees, (H) 342,
1614
INDEX
Pascal, Blaise (Continued)
346, (L) 707, (H) 709, (L) 962,
(H) 966, (L) 1120
Pasquet, Desire, An Essay on the Ori-
gins of the House of Commons
(Laffan, tr., 1925), (L) 857
Pasquier, fitienne, (L) 425; Re-
cherches de la France (1665 ed.),
(L) 428
Past, impossibility of knowing its
mood, (H) 646
Pastor, Ludwig von, (L) 45, (H) 46,
(L) 48
Pater, Walter, (L) 125, (H) 128, (L)
174, 903-904; quoted, (L) 141;
compared with Hazlitt, (L) 540;
Marius the Epicurean (1885), (H)
8, (L) 10,25,540, (H) 646
Patmore, Coventry, (H) 426
Patriotism, (H) 75, (L) 75-76, (H)
89-90; of small nations, (L)
1079
Patten, Simon N., The Development
of English Thought (1899), (H)
4, (L) 5, (H) 139, 926
Pattison, Mark, Mrs. Ward's portrait
of, (L) 260; Isaac Casaubon, 1559-
1604 (1875), (L) 155, 174, 441,
489, 571, 633, 1195; Milton (1894),
(L) 370
Paul and Virginia, see Saint-Pierre,
Bernardin de
Paul-Boncour, Joseph, (L) 724, 1222;
Le federalisme economique (1900),
(L) 62
Paule, Sir George, The Life of the
Most Reverend and Religious Pr'el-
ate John Whitgift (1612), (L)
349
Paxson, Frederic L., History of the
American Frontier, 1763-1893
(1924), (L) 839, 1203
Payne, Roger, (L) 952
Peace Conference, 1918-19, (L) 175,
(H) 176, (L) 185, 226, 228, (H)
229, 319
Peacock, Thomas Love, (H) 397;
BirrelFs and Laskfs disagreement
concerning, (L) 391
Pearson, A. F. Scott, Thomas Cart-
wright and Elizabethan Puritanism.,
(L) 752
Pearson, Karl, A Grammar of Science>
(H) 327; The Life, Letters and
Labours of Francis Galton (4 vols,,
1914-30), (L) 1284
Pease, Edward R., The History of the
, Fabian Society (1916), (L) 141
Peckham, Rufus W.> (L) 130, 149,
686, 1007; T. Roosevelt on, (L)
428
Peel, Sir Robert, (L) 226, 245, 329,
415, 899, 902, 1306, 1386
Peguy, Charles, (H) 688
Peirce, Charles Sanders, (H) 565;
Chance, Love and Logic (Morris
Cohen, editor, 1923), (H) 537, 541,
(L) 545, 563, 571
Pelham, Henry, (L) 487
Pellico, Silvio, My Ten Years' Im-
prisonment (Roscoe, tr., 1886), (H)
269
Pennell, Joseph, (L) 146, 802
Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, (H)
503
Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, (H)
462, 466, 473-74
Penty, Arthur J., A Guildsmans Inter-
pretation of History, (L) 279
Pepper, George Wharton, (L) 150
Pepys, Samuel, (L) 595; his short-
hand, (L) 488; Diary, (H) 430, 431,
(L) 434, 498, 595, (H) 857, 859,
(L) 867, (H) 868-69, (L) 909,
990, (H) 1046, 1188, (L) 1316;
Memoires of the Royal Navy
(1690), (L) 434
Pepys Library, Cambridge, (L) 488
Per curiam opinions, Chief Justice
White's conception of, (H) 580
Percy, Lord Eustace, (L) 43, (H) 142,
(L) 143, 239, 673, (H) 675, (L)
1142, 1219, 1396, 1480-81; Govern-
ment in Transition, (L) 1465; The
Responsibilities of the League, (L)
239, 250
Percy, Sir Hugh, 2nd Duke of North-
umberland, (H) 876
Pere Duchene, (H) 144-45, 204
Pericles, (H) 194, (L) 592
Perkins, Thomas Nelson, (L) 196,
(H) 200, (L) 201
Peroration vs. argument in political
theory, (L) 655, (H) 659
Perrault, Charles, Les hommes illustres
(2 vols., 1696-1700), (L) 1377
INDEX
1615
Perriere, Guillaume de la, A Mirrour
of Policie, (L) 296
Perrin, Jean, (L) 68
Perry, Bliss, Emerson Today (1931),
(H) 1336
Perry, Ralph Barton, Present Philo-
sophical Tendencies (1912), (H)
211
Perry, Thomas Sargeant, (H) 311; Se-
lections from the Letters of Thomas
Sargeant Perry, (H) 1208-1209
Pershing, General John (H) 406
Personality, respect for as the secret of
freedom, (L) 1458
Peters, Andrew J., (L) 529, note 1,
535
Petersfield, (L) 778
Petronius, Satyricon, (L) 443, 503,
(H) 1090, 1091
Phelan, Edward Joseph, (L) 871
Philadelphia, (H) 594
Philippines, (L) 812
Phillimore, Sir Walter, 1st Baron
Phillimore, (L) 1198, 1202
Phillipps, Lisle March, Europe Un-
bound (1916), (L) 44, 90, 97,
note 1
Phillips, Sir Claude, (H) 1283
Phillips, Wendell, (H) 893
Phillips, William, (H) 87
Phillipson, Coleman, Three Criminal
Law Reformers: Beccaria, Bentham,
Romtily (1923), (L) 962
Philology, (L) 724
Philosophers: German, (H) 29, (L)
32; small value of their systems,
(H) 133, (L) 135, (H) 277, 360,
971-72; their reluctance to preserve
doubt, (H) 541; relative importance
of ancient and modern, (H) 519-
20; continental and English com-
pared, (L) 573-74, (H) 580, 608;
their mistaken selection of mystery,
(H) 866
Philosophes, importance of opposition
to, (L) 593
Philosophical skepticism, Holmes's
(H) 139, 706. See also Metaphysics
Philosophy: economic interpretation
of, (H) 4, 139; as an end of life,
(H) 129, (L) 131; as gossip, (H)
129, 810, 835; French, Italian, Span-
ish, and Russian deficiencies in, (L)
573-74, (H) 580; methods of teach-
ing, (L) 696, (H) 704, (L) 713; its
limitations, (H) 706; professors of,
(H) 811; of past and of present,
(H) 878; histories of, (L) 1293
Phlipon, Manon, see Roland, Madame
Photographs, requests for, (H) 646,
719, 797
Physiocrats, (L) 484, 497, 607, 620,
1238, 1381, 1429, 1439
Picavet, Frangois, Esquisse d'une his-
toire generate et comparee des
philosophies medievales (1907),
(L) 127
Pick, Frank, (L) 1099
Pickford, William, Baron Sterndale,
(L) 330
Pierce v. United States, (L) 252
Pigou, A. C., Wealth and Welfare
(1912), (L) 307
Pindar, (L) 908
Pinero, Sir Arthur, (L) 683
Piot, Alice, Droit naturel et realisme
(1930), (L) 1371
Piozzi, Hester Lynch, Anecdotes of the
Late Samuel Johnson (1786), (H)
803, 1266, 1269
Pipe Line Cases, (H) 901, note 2, 939
Piron, Alexis, (L) 532
Pithou, Pierre, Les libertez de I'eglise
gallicane (1594), (L) 743
Pitney, Mahlon, (H) 54, 85, 229, 335,
374, 389, 398, 445; slowness of re-
turning opinions, (H) 377; Brandeis
comments on his intellectual hon-
esty, (H) 389
Pitt, William, (L) 40, 137-38, 326,
573
Pitt, William, the younger, (L) 402
Pittsfield Library, (H) 458
Pius II, Pope, (L) 120-21
Pius IX, Pope, (L) 3
Place, Francis, (H) 207, (L) 220
Planck, Max, (L) 1435
Plantin, Cristofe, (L) 582, 784
Plato, (L) 68, 101, 125, (H) 166, (L)
225, 460, 696, (H) 704, (L) 713,
885, 898, 931, 961, 1002, 1218; as
an influence on Rousseau, ( L ) 747-
48; Holmes's estimate of, (L) 877,
(H) 878, 891; Taylor's book on,
(L) 1108; Apology, (L) 452, 885;
Banquet, (H) 67; Crito, (L) 551,
1616
INDEX
Plato (Continued)
736, 885; Eumenides, (L) 736;
Laws, (H) 215, (L) 548, 748, 885,
895, 1108, (H) 1320; Meno, (L)
551, 885; Phaedo, (L) 548, 551,
(H) 555, (L) 885; Phaedrus, (H)
357; Protagoras, (L) 895; Republic,
(L) 449, 548, 551, (H) 555, (L)
735, 857, 885; Statesman, (L) 885;
Symposium, (H) 327
Plautus, (H) 605, (L) 648, (H) 651,
891
Pleasures, the Darwin quip concern-
ing, (H) 1275, 1278
Pliny: on idleness, (H) 754; his letters,
(H) 786
Plucknett, Theodore F. T., his in-
augural lecture, (L) 1339; Statutes
and Their Interpretation in the 14th
Century (1923), (L) 452, (H) 492,
(L) 494
Pluralism: political theory of, (H) 6,
(L) 7, (H) 8, (L) 9, 15, 22, (H)
67, (L) 71, 73, (H) 74-75, (L)
75-76, (H) 77, (L) 87, 116-17,
(H) 246, 248, (L) 494, 1272;
philosophical theory of, (H) 20-21,
(L) 135; political, basic character-
istics of Laski's belief, (L) 247
Plutarch, (H) 604, 872
Podmore, Frank, Robert Owen
(1906), (L) 600
Poe, Edgar Allan, (H) 60, 61, (L)
61, (H) 144, (L) 1024, 1319
Poet, young, anecdote concerning, (L)
933-34, (H) 939
Poet laureate, selection of, 1930, (L)
1244, (H) 1247, (L) 1248
Poetry: contrasted with philosophy,
(H) 474, 533, 593; secret of its
beauty, (L) 649, (H) 652;
Holmes's selection of best 19th-cen-
tury lines of, (H) 793; BirrelFs view
of modem, (L) 1018
Poets, the fruitfulness of their early
years, (L) 792
Poincare, Jules Henri, (L) 423, (H)
426, (L) 574, 1084
Poincare, Raymond, (L) 419, (H)
426, (L) 468, 518; Laski's im-
pression of, (L) 423
Pole, Cardinal Reginald, pamphlets by,
(L) 285; Ad Henricum Octavum
Britanniae Regem, pro ecclesiasticae
unUas defensione (1536), (L) 285
Police methods, (L) 1073, 1107, 1415,
(H) 1420
Police power, the petty larceny of,
(H) 457
Political Economy Club: Holrnes's
dinner with, 1866, (H) 841, 1207-
1208; Laski dines at, (L) 1205-
1206
Political instinct, its absence in human
nature, (L) 464
Political questions as moral questions,
(L) 531
Political science: methodology in, (L)
105, 718, 903, 912, (H) 917, (L)
1182, (H) 1183; historical method
in, (L) 117, 124; in America, (L)
674; methods of education in, (L)
747
Political Science Club, Oxford, (L)
1248
Political scientists, their concern with
trivialities, (L) 589-90; the two
types, (L) 655
Political theory: national temperament
as a factor in, (L) 379; contem-
porary uncertainties contrasted with
17th-century simplicities, (L) 441-
42; in 16th century, (L) 448, 460-
61; in 18th-century France, (L)
470-71, 500-501, 506-507, 516,
528; in 17th-century France, (L)
798
Political views, increasing disparity be-
tween those of Laski and Holmes,
(H) 943, (L) 943, (H) 945-46,
(L) 946, (H) 948, 949, 949-50,
991, 1265
Politicians: their assumption of su-
periority to scholars, (L) 1064,
1206; the quality of their minds,
(L) 1141-42
Politics: the intellectual's relation to,
(L) 192, 531, 637, 1033, 1048;
personal influence as factor in, (L)
715-16; as the grave of decencies,
(L) 886; as clash between two
rights, (L) 1409
Politique du temps, Le, see Davenne,
Francois
Pollard, A. F., The Evolution of
Parliament (1920), (L) 292
INDEX
1617
Pollard, Alfred William, (L) 455
Pollock, Dighton Nicholas, (L) 513
Pollock, Sir Ernest Murray, Viscount
Hanworth, (L) 363, 550, 717, 1042,
1117, 1342
Pollock, Sir Frederick, (H) 277, 291,
374, 418, (L) 455, (H) 631, (L)
638, 663, 682, (H) 701, 753, (L)
756, (H) 758, 761, (L) 784, 801,
812, (H) 817, (L) 819, 959, 963,
981, 989, (H) 994, (L) 1002, 1051,
1068, 1078, 1117, (H) 1250, (L)
1338-39, 1352, 1368, 1388-89,
1412, 1430, 1470; Laski lunches
with, (L) 298; on legal education,
(L) 421; on Pound's Interpreta-
tions of Legal History, ( H ) 515; on
Jane Austen, (H) 519, 523, 950,
1168; on martial law, (L) 553, 621,
764, 771-72, 1176; anecdotes con-
cerning, (L) 717, (H) 723; on
Russell's theodicy, (H) 1075, (L)
1082; his criticism of Sumner's
Folkways, (H) 1172; visits Holmes,
1930, (H) 1282-83, (L) 1285;
Essays in the Law, (L) 451, (H)
469, (L) 517; "Has the Common
Law Received the Fiction Theory of
Corporations?", (H) 28; History of
the Science of Politics, (L) 1279;
The Law of Torts (12th ed., 1923),
(H) 549; review of Foundations
of Sovereignty, (L) 425; review of
Political Thought in England from
Locke to Bentham, (L) 295;
Spinoza, (L) 637, 920, 923, (H)
939, (L) 979, 1388
Pollock, Lady, (H) 235, 1282-83
Pollock and Maitland, History of
English Law, (L) 132, 690, 764,
1297
Polybius, (L) 449, 464, 1219
Pompadour, Marquise de, (L) 957,
1356, 1362
Ponet, John, A Short Treatise of
Politique Power (1556), (L) 314,
338, 633
Pontius, Paulus, (H) 561
Pooky case, (L) 1184, 1350
Pope, Alexander, (L) 216, 620, 749
Poplar case, see Roberts v. Hopwood
Population, increasing, (H) 549, (L)
551-52, (H) 658-59, 761, (L) 770,
(H) 773, 945. See also Malthus,
Thomas; Birth Control
Porgy, by Du Bose and Dorothy Hey-
ward (1925), (L) 1149
Port-Royal, (L) 718, 801, 996. See
also Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal
Porter, Jane, (L) 433
Portsmouth, Laskfs visit to bookshop
at, (L) 779-80
Post Mortem (1923) by Charles Mac-
Laurin, (H) 761
Post, Albert Hermann, (L) 788
Post, Louis F., The Deportations De-
lirium of Nineteen-Twenty (1923),
(L) 576
Postgate, Raymond W., Dear Robert
Emmet (1932), (L) 1371; That
Devil Wilkes, (L) 1241
Pound, Roscoe, (L) 84, 89, 110, (H)
111, (L) 124, 130, 156, (H) 210,
285, (L) 295, 309, 376, 383, 452,
525, 535, (H) 566, (L) 567, 590,
610, 636, 644, 672, 700, 812, 836,
837, 854, (H) 886, (L) 889, 898,
914, 1050, 1213, 1310, 1352, 1362,
1377, 1433; on Duguit, (L) 15;
distinction of his work, (H) 16, (L)
28, 56; his legal philosophy, (H)
20, (L) 22; on France versus Ger-
many, (L) 45, 56; on Brandeis's
opinions, (L) 127; efforts at Har-
vard Law School, (L) 127, 196,
201, (H) 202, (L) 204, 205, (H)
210, (L) 883, 944, (H) 948-49,
(L) 953, 1078, 1242, 1254; on
Zane, (L) 181; on Zane's criticism
of Holmes, (L) 184; achievements
for Harvard Law School, (L) 204;
position at Harvard Law School,
(H) 211; on Holmes's dissent in
the Abrams case, (L) 223, 231,
257; respect for Albion W. Small,
(H) 224, 226, 232, (L) 235-36;
limitations of his capacity, (L) 235-
36, (H) 481, (L) 1276, 1434-35,
1463; comment on Wigmore's criti-
cism of Abrams case, (L) 257; Pol-
lock's criticism of, (L) 298; visit
to Europe (1922), (L) 362, 407,
410, 427, 436; qualities of, (L)
399, 649, 1281; on quality of
Holmes's opinions, 1922, (L) 401;
his misinterpretations of England
1618
INDEX
Pound, Roscoe (Continued)
(1922), (L) 425; secures honorary
degree at Cambridge, (L) 432;
his liking for classification, (H) 515,
(L) 642, 809, 1007, 1100, 1276,
1434; Laski lunches with at Har-
vard, (L) 535; Kantorowicz's obser-
vation concerning, (L) 608; his
great qualities, (L) 638, 642-43,
(H) 646, (L) 655; Holmes's esti-
mate of, (H) 645, 651, (L) 1470;
as possible president, University of
Wisconsin, (L) 702, (H) 705, (L)
708-709, 711, 721; his excessive
knowledge, (H) 930, (L) 953,
1276; Scrutton's comment on, (L)
1142; his Germanic qualities, (L)
1279; Kelsen's judgment of,
(L) 1376; his footnotes, (L) 1377;
on economic interpretations of law,
(L) 1434-35; Criminal Justice in
America, (L) 1315; Interpretations
of Legal History, (L) 476, (H) 481,
(L) 514, (H) 515; An Introduction
to the Philosophy of Law, (L) 407,
(H) 430, (L) 467; Law and Morals
(1924), (H) 651, (L) 658, (H)
660; Outlines of Lectures on Juris-
prudence (4th ed., 1928), (H)
1046; The Spirit of the Common
Law (1921), (H) 404, (L) 407,
455, 467; "The Theory of Judicial
Decision," (L) 517, (H) 519, (L)
564
Pourtales, Guy de, Franz Liszt
(Brooks, tr., 1926), (H) 950, 954,
965
Poussin, Nicolas, (H) 24
Powell, Thomas Reed, (H) 646, note
2; review of Holmes's Collected
Legal Papers, (H) 312, 315, (L)
321
Power, Eileen, (L) 546, 1062; Medie-
val English Nunneries (1922), (L)
467
Powicke, Sir Maurice, (L) 1008
Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, (L)
676
Pragmatism, (H) 20, (L) 22, (H)
69-70, (L) 71, (H) 75, (L) 75,
(H) 139; Bradley's criticism of,
(H) 705
Pratt, Charles, see Camden, Lord
Prayer book, parliamentary debate
concerning, ( L ) 1064
Precedents, Holmes's respect for, (H)
164
Predictions, their futility, (L) 592-
93, (H) 769
Presidential elections: of 1916, (L)
11, (H) 12, (L) 15, 15-16, 32,
(H) 33; of 1924, (L) 667, 670,
(H) 671, (L) 678; of 1928, (L)
1100, 1105, 1108-1109, (H) 1109,
(L) 1110-11, (H) 1113; of 1932,
(L) 1413, 1415, (H) 1415-16, (L)
1416
Presidents, powers of, (L) 146
Prestonettes, Inc. v. Coty, (H) 601
Prevost, Antoine, Histoire genfrale
des voyages (1746-89, 20 vols.),
(L) 1377
Price, Richard, (L) 743
Price v. Sears, Fed. Gas. #11,416
(1877), (H) 3
Priestley, J. B., Angel Pavement
(1930), (L) 1284; The Good Com-
panions (1929), (L) 1182
Priestly v. Fowler, (L) 1372
Prime Minister, his role in Cabinet,
(L) 628
Primer of Modern Art, A (1924), by
Sheldon Cheney, (H) 718
Primo, J. F., see Francois-Primo, Jean
Prince, Walter Franklin, The Case of
Patience Worth, (H) 958
Pringle, Henry F., Theodore Roosevelt
(1931), (L) 1393, 1408
Print Collectors' Quarterly, (H) 581
Prints, Holmes's interest in, (L) 62,
(H) 63, (L) 65, (H) 111, (L)
113, (H) 114, 115, 133, 139, 144,
167, 187, 227, 268, 300, 482, 495,
561, 609, 709, 712-13, 745, 879,
914, 1015, 1345
Prior, James, Life of the Right Hon-
ourable Edmund Burke (1825),
(L) 365
Prior, Matthew, (L) 216
Proal, Louis, La psychologie de Jean-
Jacques Rousseau (1923), (L) 1232
Procopius, see Prokop the Great
Professor How Could 'You! (1924),
by Harry Leon Wilson, (H) 666
Professors, as pale little prigs, (L)
1243, (H) 1247
INDEX
1619
Progress, (H) 95-96, (L) 96-97, 209,
(H) 210, (L) 279, 520, (H) 523,
(L) 528, (H) 534, (L) 549-50,
1404
Prohibition, Holmes's views and prac-
tices concerning, (H) 389, 557,
1006-1007, 1291
Prokop the Great, (L) 777
Pronunciation, American, (H) 1315
Proofreading, (L) 689, (H) 692
Proportional representation, (L) 494
Prothero, see Ernie, Rowland Edmund
Prothero, Baron
Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, (L) 62, 80,
81-82, (H) 82, (L) 83, (H) 84,
(L) 85, (H) 95, (L) 97, (H) 161;
on federalism, (L) 94; on Marx,
(H) 375; De la justice dans la
revolution et dans I'eglise (1858),
( L ) 97; Du principe federatif et de
la necessite de reconstituer le parti
de la revolution, (L) 97
Proust, Marcel, A la recherche du
temps perdu, (H) 275, 300, 312,
(L) 480, 606, 619-20, (H) 624,
(L) 708, 756, 834, (H) 835, (L)
980, 1048, 1074, 1099, 1154, 1465
Provincialism of English, (L) 517,
(H) 519, 523, (L) 533, (H) 745,
831, 856, 1030, 1169
Prynne, William, (L) 891, 1286;
Aurum reginae (1668), (L) 784;
Tracts, (L) 334
Psalmanazar, George (c. 1679-1763),
Memoirs (1764), (L) 438
Psalms, the Book of, (H) 274-75, 280
Public schools, England, (L) 1203
Pufendorf, Samuel, (L) 442, 567,
698, 1085, 1190; De jure naturae et
gentium (Barbeyrac, ed., 1712),
(L) 567, 698, 1120
Pupin, Michael, From Immigrant to
Inventor (1923), (H) 842
Puritanism, as an influence on Ameri-
can culture, (L) 1277
Putnam, Bertha Haven, (L) 1161
Putnam, Herbert, (H) 268
Pym, John, (L) 352-53
Quakers, (L) 674
Quaritch, Bernard (1819-1899), (L)
392-93, 446, (H) 463
Queen, Ellery, The Roman Hat Mys-
tery (1929), (L) 1479
Queen Insurance Co. v. Globe Insur-
ance Co., (H) 569,579
Quesnay, Francois, (H) 166, (L)
686
Quick, John, and Robert R. Garran,
The Annotated Constitution of the
Australian Commonwealth (1901),
(L) 392
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, On the Art
of Writing (1916), (H) 414, 426
Quincy, Josiah (1859-1919), (L)
521
Rabelais, (L) 449, 460, 487, 812,
1087, 1211, 1378
Rachilde, (H) 855
Racial prejudice, (L) 619
Racial superiority, theories of, (L)
1206
Racine, Jean, (H) 404, (L) 472, (H)
474, (L) 510, (H) 606, 609, (L)
690, (H) 692, (L) 698, (H) 706,
(L) 715, (H) 772, (L) 776-77,
(H) 781, (L) 931, (H) 990, (L)
1084, 1236, 1243, 1324, 1341, 1361;
Andromaque, (H) 769; Phedre,
(L) 510, (H) 586, (L) 777
Radbruch, Gustav, (L) 1279
Radcliffe, William, Fishing from the
Earliest Times (1921), (H) 419,
(H) 918
Radio, Laskfs lectures on, (L) 1052,
1056, 1125, 1428-29
Rae, John, Life of Adam Smith
(1895), (L) 808, 826
Raeburn, Sir Henry, (L) 512, 735,
1079
Rafael, (H) 158
Railroad strike (1916), (L) 14, 15,
18, 76
Rait, Robert S., Memorials of Albert
Venn Dicey (1925), (L) 706-707,
(H) 712
Rakovsky, Christian, (L) 717
Ranee, Le Bouthillier de, (L) 951
Randall, John Herman, Jr., Ow
Changing Civilization (1929), (L)
1350
Randolph, Peyton, (L) 222-23
Ranke, Leopold von, (L) 747, 1280,
1364
Rashdall, Hastings, (L) 729
Rasputin, (H) 1141, 1144
Ratcliffe, S. K., (L) 1051, 1185
1620
INDEX
Rate cases, (H) 86, 1135. See also
Valuation cases
Rathenau, Walter, (L) 387, 444, 1203
Rationalist Press Association, (L)
1190, 1256, 1383
Raven, Charles E., Christian Social-
ism, 1848-1854 (1920), (L) 279,
(H) 385
Ravenstone, Piercy, A Few Doubts as
to the Correctness of some Opinions
generally Entertained on the Sub-
jects of Population and Political
Economy (1821), (L) 1394-95
Rayleigh, John William Strutt, 3rd
Baron Rayleigh, (L) 791
Raymond, R. L., "The Genesis of the
Corporation," (H) 28
Razors, (H) 1061
Rea, Loma, First Night (1932), (L)
1420; Six Mrs. Greenes ( 1929), (L)
1143
Read, Conyers, Mr. Secretary Walsing-
ham and the Policy of Queen Eliza-
beth, (L) 808
Read, Herbert, (L) 1465; English
Prose Style (1928), (L) 1069
Reade, Charles, The Cloister and the
Hearth, (L) 913; Foul Play, (L)
553; Hard Cash, (L) 548, 553; It
Is Never Too Late to Mend (1853),
(L) 559; Put Yourself in His Place
(L) 553
Reade, W. H. V., (L) 170
Reading: purpose of, (L) 68, (H)
507, 1091, 1189; Laskfs stomach
for long books, (H) 803, 994, 1046,
1090; Holmes's misery in long books,
(H) 1046, 1133, 1183
Reading, Lord, (L) 411
Realism in art, (H) 61, (L) 61-62,
71, (H) 107, (L) 130, 425, 1087
Reason, (H) 122, 1134, 1314-15, (L)
1354-55
Rebel's Looking Glass, The (1648),
(L) 345
Reclus, Jacques £lis6e, (L) 673
Recueil de pieces intSressantes
(1590), (L) 873
Redlich, Josef, (L) 289, 322, (H)
322, (L) 399, 674, 765, 876-
77, (H) 878, 913, (L) 941,
953, (H) 1133, 1135, (L) 1254,
1255, 1256, 1262, 1313; opinion of
Roscoe Pound and Felix Frank-
furter, (L) 333; comments on F.
Frankfurter, (H) 336; Das Ctster-
reichische Staats und Reichsproblem
(L) 293, 310; Emperor Francis
Joseph of Austria ( 1929), (H) 1127,
1135
Redmayne, Sir Richard, (L) 363
Redslob, Robert, Histoire des grands
principes du droit des gens ( 1923 ) ,
(L) 1080, 1085
Reed, James A., (H) 731
Reformers: (H) 164, (L) 721; their
optimism, (H) 17, (L) 17,41, (H)
42, (L) 48, (H) 49, (L) 50-51,
(H) 51-52, (L) 109, (H) 549;
their despotism, (H) 942
Regina v. Nelson and Brand, (L) 764
Registrum Brevium, (H) 343
Regnier, Henri de, (H) 1224
Regulation, governmental, (H) 49,
(L) 50, (H) 52-53
Rehearing, petitions for, (H) 1224
Reichstag Trial, (L) 1459, 1468
Reid, Robert Threshie, Earl Loreburn,
(L) 23, 740
Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, (L) 481
Reinach, Salomon, (H) 1209; Cubes,
mythes et religions (5 vols., 1905-
1923), (L) 69, (H) 491, 492;
Orpheus (1909), (L) 69, (H) 69,
(L) 70
Rejected Addresses, see Smith, Horace
and James
Relativity, in law and taste, (H)
887-88
Religio medici, by Sir Thomas Browne,
(L) 633
Religion: influence on society, (L) 80,
154, 270, 1258, 1292, 1454; de-
cline of, (L) 454, 1140; organized,
(L) 501, 1454; Laski's dislike of,
(L) 574-75, 1435; beauty as its
sole justification, (L) 871; should
emphasize the small incidents of
Me, (L) 909; as contributing cause
to breakdown of Anglo-Indian set-
tlement, (L) 1337-38. See also Sci-
ence and religion
Religious belief, difficulties of accept-
ing, (H) 153-54, (L) 154, (L) 575
Religious services, (L) 1145, (H)
1146
INDEX
1621
Religious unity, expectations with re-
spect to, (L) 250
Remarque, Erich Maria, All Quiet on
the Western Front (Wheen, tr.,
1929), (H) 1159-60
Rembrandt van Rijn, Paul, (H) 136,
(L) 138, (H) 158, 187, (L) 271,
292, 297, 422, 425, 434, 441, 442-
43, 468, 488, (H) 495, (L) 496,
582, 686, (H) 702, (L) 716, 778,
813, 834, (H) 835, (L) 865, (H)
866, (L) 1013, (L) 1017-18, (H)
1081, (L) 1094, 1105, (H) 1296,
(L) 1302
Renan, Ernest, (L) 79, (H) 79-80,
(L) 81, 493, 514, 576, 711-12,867,
895, 1219, 1329; his qualities, (L)
487; Lfavenir de la science (2nd
ed., 1890), (L) 487; Averroes et
I'averro'isme (1852), (L) 81; Essais
de morale et de critique (1859),
(L) 487; History of the Peopk of
Israel (5 vols., 1888-96), (H) 79-
80; Marc Aurele (1881), (L) 576;
Philip the Fair (1899), (L) 81; his
translation of the Song of Solomon,
(H) 688; La vie de Jesus, (L) 487,
(H) 663; Thibaudet's comment on,
(L) 1048
Rendall, Vernon, The London Nights
ofBelsize (1917), (L) 118
Renoir, Pierre- Auguste, (L) 1315
Reparations, anecdote concerning, (L)
1111. See also Lausanne Conference
Repington, Charles a Court, The First
World War, 1914-1918 (1920),
(L) 283, (H) 350
Report on the Steel Strike of 1919, by
Interchurch World Movement, (H)
284
Reporters, their hunger, (H) 823
Representative government, future of,
(L) 19-20,57,76,89
Republicans, contrasted with Demo-
crats, (H) 800
Research: character of contemporary,
(L) 107, 915, (H) 818; govern-
ment's responsibility to aid, (L)
298, (H) 301; Lasld's aphorism
concerning, (L) 454, 488, 553, 716,
1472; cooperative, (L) 1024
Restif de la Bretonne, (H) 1019, (L)
1025, 1069; L'andrographe (1782),
(L) 1326; Monsieur Nicolas, ou Le
coeur-humain devoite (1794-97),
(L) 1298; Lethesmographe (1789),
(L) 1326
Restoration drama, (H) 1259-60
Retz, Cardinal de, Memoires, (L) 714
Reveille-Matin des Frangais (1574),
(L) 451, 455
Review, The, (H) 229, (L) 231
Revolutionists, their misleading enthu-
siasm, (L) 361
Revolutions, small likelihood of, in
United States or England, (H) 280;
essentials for success, (L) 361; their
uncreativeness, (L) 510-11; as an
evil to be avoided, (L) 521
Rex v. Almon, (L) 1030
Rexv. Boulter, (L) 1198
Rexv. Halliday, (L) 107
Rex v. New Statesman, (L) 1030,
1037
Rex v. Pooley, (L) 1184, 1350
Rey, Marc-Michel, (L) 1230
Reynaud, Louis, Le romantisme: ses
origines anglo-germaniques (1926),
(L) 920
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, (H) 24, (L)
813, 957, 1079; Discourses, (H) 549
Rheims Cathedral, responsibility for
destruction of, (H) 319
Rhodes, James Ford, (L) 148; History
of the Civil War (1916), (H) 194
Rhondda, 1st Viscount, (L) 1392-93
Rhondda, Viscountess, (L) 1392-93
Ricardo, David, (L) 614, 703, 749,
1280; Notes on Malthus's "Principles
of Political Economy' (Hollander £
Gregory, eds., 1928), (L) 1036;
Principles of Political Economy and
Taxation, (L) 1341, 1404; Works
and Correspondence (Sraffa, ed.),
(L) 1413
Rice, Richard Austin, (H) 227, 252,
268, 294, 315, 414, 482, 491, 561,
609, 689, 706, 709, 713, (L) 715,
(H) 745, 876, 1015, 1295
Richardson, Jonathan, [father and son],
Explanatory Notes and Remarks on
Milton s Paradise Lost (1734), (H)
288, 783, 786, (L) 788
Richardson, Samuel, (L) 848, (H)
849, (L) 1088, 1122; Clarissa Har-
lowe, (L) 525, 1268
1622
INDEX
Richelieu, Cardinal, (L) 798, 977, 996,
1301, 1377
Richelieu, Due de, (L) 996
Richer, Edmond, (L) 907, 978, 1207
Riezler, Sigmund, Die literarischen
Widersacher der Papste zur zeit
Ludwig der 'Balers, (L) 173, 1331
Rights of man, (H) 8, 16, 21, (L) 23,
30, (H) 202-203, 762, 768-69, 888,
948. See also Freedom of speech
Rights, private, their origins in Roman
law, (L) 441
Riker, Thad W., Henry Fox, First Lord
Holland (1911), (L) 151
Rimbaud, Jean Arthur, (L) 931
Rios, Fernando de los, (L) 1446-47
Ritchie, David George, Natural Rights
(1895), (L) 123
Rivarol, Antoine, (L) 531; Courrier de
provence, (L) 572
Rivers, W. H. R., (L) 253, (H) 254,
(L) 259, 273, 293, 295, 435, 589,
657, 987; his death, (L) 432;
Instinct and the Unconscious
(1920), (L) 299; Psychology and
Politics (1923), (L) 481; Social
Organization (1924), (L) 687
Rizzio, David, (L) 1251
Road to Xanadu, The ( 1927), by John
Livingston Lowes, (H) 958, (L)
967
Roberts, Frederick Sleigh, 1st Earl
Roberts, (L) 1150
Roberts, Owen J., (H) 1291
Roberts v. Hopwood, (L) 808
Robertson, Alexander, Fra Paolo Sarpi
(1894), (H) 1136-37, 1340, (L)
1342, (H) 1345
Robertson, C. Grant, Bismarck (1919),
(L) 189, 191
Robertson, George Groom, (L) 1386
Robertson, John Mackinnon, (L) 1184,
1383, 1438; Buckle and His Critics
(1895), (L) 1350; A History of
Free Thought in the Nineteenth
Century (1929), (L) 1179, (H)
1180, (L) 1205, 1227; A Short
History of Christianity (1902), (L)
1431; A Short History of Morals
(1920), (L) 1190, (H) 1193, (L)
1448; A Short History of Free-
thought (2 vols., 1906), (L) 993,
1002, 1088, 1464
Robespierre, (L) 951, 1030, 1038,
1225
Robinson, Henry Crabb, (L) 455, 480
Robinson, Howard, Bayle the Sceptic
(1931), (L) 1341
Roche, Baron, (L) 928, (H) 930
Rock Island, Arkansas and Louisiana
Rd. Co. v. United States, (H) 294
Rockefeller, John D., (H) 158
Rockingham, Lord, (L) 326
Rockow, Lewis, Contemporary Politi-
cal Thought in England (1925),
(L) 708
Rocquain, Felix, L'esprit revolution-
naire avant la revolution (1878),
(L) 484, 500, 501, 503, (H) 503
Rodda, Charles, Green Talons (L)
1355, note 3
Roden, see Buxton, Charles Roden
Rodin, Auguste, (L) 1095, 1234, 1313
Rodman, Admiral Hugh, (L) 502
Rogers, B. B., (L) 1064
Rogers, Lindsay, The American Senate
(1926), (L) 1029-30
Rohan, Louis de, (L) 1468-69
Rohden, Peter Richard, (L) 1336,
note 2
Roland, Madame, (L) 1086
Rolland, Remain, Liluli (1920), (H)
284; Some Musicians of Former
Days, (H) 93
Remains, Jules, (H) 236; Europe
(1919), (H) 236-37
Roman Catholic Church: (L) 9, 52,
87-88, 476, 1267, 1284, 1450; its
literature, (L) 77, (H) 78,80, (L)
80; attitude towards democracy, ( L )
79; its possible influence on French
philosophy, (L) 574; Meslier's con-
ception of, (L) 604; its penchant
for falsehood, (L) 633; its influence
in France, 1926, (L) 864; its record
of misshaping human character, ( L )
1230; its capture of French bour-
geoisie, (L) 1267; its influence in
Belgium, (L) 1428
Roman law: influence on English con-
stitution, (L) 58; Teutonic influ-
ences on Roman public law, (H)
171-72; as source of private rights,
(L) 441; its political influence, (L)
449; Scottish ignorance of, (L) 821
Romance: not to be found in ultimates,
INDEX
1623
(H) 615; persons who make it
apparent in life, (H) 930-31; rests
on the death o£ men, ( H ) 966
Romance of the Last Crusade, The,
(1924), by Vivian Gilbert, (H) 615
Romanticism, its relationship to mod-
ern realism, (L) 1353
Romer, Sir Robert, (L) 1065, (H)
1070
Romilly, Sir Samuel, (L) 962
Romney, George, (L) 536, 962-63,
981, 1079
Ronaldshay, Earl of, see Curzon, Lord
Ronciere, Charles de la, (L) 932
Roosevelt, Franklin D., (L) 1413,
(H) 1415-16, (L) 1416, 1419,
(H) 1420, (L) 1438, 1442, 1464,
1466, 1467, 1470, 1473
Roosevelt, Theodore, (L) 125, 179,
(H) 281, (L) 502, 524, 963, 970,
1268, 1299-1300, 1305, 1393; anec-
dote of London visit, 1913, (L) 313;
basis of his popular strength, (L)
361; speaks of Holmes to Webb,
1897, (L) 428; similarity to Lloyd
George, (L) 491; similarity to
Count de Mirabeau, (L) 510; as
judged by the Webbs (1894), (L)
521; Laskfs estimate of, (L) 739,
1431, 1457; his uneasiness concern-
ing Holmes, (L) 739, (H) 1015;
Holrnes's estimate of, (H) 741; his
efforts to scale the higher reaches,
(H) 918; on Mr. Justice Brewer,
(H) 1270; his similarity to Church-
ill, (L) 1294, 1417; his insignifi-
cance, (L) 1408, 1431; Selections
from Correspondence of Theodore
Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge
(1925), (L) 739, (H) 741
Root, Elihu, (L) 53, 179, (H) 482,
486; Addresses on Government and
Citizenship (1916), (L) 29
Ropncr, Leonard, (L) 1153-54
Reps, Felicien, (L) 813, 1013, 1328,
1427, 1463
Rose, Horace Chapman, (H) 1334,
note 1, 1360
Roscbery, Lord, (L) 110, 152, 368,
415, 487, 1044, 1374; and Cambell-
Bannerman government, 1905-1906,
(L) 306; Laski's single meeting
with, (L) 306, 487, 833; Margot
Asquith on, (L) 313; on Ireland
(1921), (L) 370; Laski's estimate
of, (L) 370, 833, 1339; anecdote
concerning, (L) 411-12; Morle/s
estimate of, (L) 415, 513; his mono-
graph on Peel, (L) 415; his faults,
(L) 489; Marquess of Crewe's biog-
raphy of, (L) 1339
Rosensohn, Samuel J,, (L) 47, 63,
839
Rosenthal, Lessing, (L) 858
Rosmini-Serbati, Antonio, (H) 187,
580
Ross, Charles G., (L) 1233-34, 1238
Ross, Edward Alsworth, Principles of
Sociology (1920), (H) 272; Social
Control (1901), (L) 62, (H) 69,
272
Ross, Sir Ronald, Memoirs (1923),
(L) 505
Ross, Sir William David, (L) 774;
Aristotle (1923), (L) 1182; The
Right and the Good (1930), (L)
1305, 1388
Rossaeus ( William Rainolds ) , De justa
republicae Christianae potentate
(1592), (L) 388,401
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, (L) 603,
(H) 605, (L) 1328
Rostovtzeff, Mikhail, A History of the
Ancient World (2 vols., 1926-28),
(L) 1060
Roth, Hermann M., Der Trust in
seinem Entwicklungsgang vom
Feoffee to Uses zur Amerikanischen
Trust Company (1928), (H) 1165,
1172
Roth, Leon, Spinoza (1929), (L) 1145
Rothschild, Alfred Charles de, (L)
125-26
Rothschild, Hannah de, Lord Rose-
bery's marriage to, (L) 412
Roubillac, Louis Francois, (L) 735
Round Table Conference (1930), see
Anglo-Indian relations
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, (L) 117, 118,
(H) 119, (L) 126, 222, 228, 237,
317, 337, 341, 393, 476, 488, 500,
508, 527, 567, 604, 614, (H) 659,
(L) 677, 732, 805, 853, 860, 880,
929 941, 945, 966, 968, 969-70,
983, 986, (H) 988, (L) 1016, 1017,
1041, 1053, 1086, 1120, 1165, 1195,
1624
INDEX
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (Continued)
1237, 1353, 1381, 1422; Laskfs
estimate of, (L) 344, 506, 532-33,
647-48, 655, 690, 747-48, 1093,
1357; Morley on, (L) 351, 506;
Anatole France and Laski discuss,
(L) 467-68, 497; as an influence
on the French Revolution, (L)
500; Pierre Masson's book on, (L)
513-14, 826, (H) 831; his children,
(L) 514, 522; as victim of con-
spiracy, (L) 522; medical explana-
tion of his qualities, (L) 571, 1116,
1232; contemporary answers to, ( L )
581, 622, 972; Hobnes's estimate of,
(H) 590, 652; his inconsistencies,
(L) 620, 1218; Cardinal Gerdil's
criticism of, (L) 622; his novels,
(L) 658; Lenormant's book on, (L)
743; his noble savage, (L) 798;
Laski lectures on, (L) 826; his re-
lations with Voltaire, (L) 748, 947;
discovers egotism in literature, (L)
1025; his concept of the general will,
(L) 1059; Laskfs portrait of, (H)
1089, (L) 1093; his appearance
contrasted with Hobbes's (L) 1100;
his thefts from Locke, (L) 1227;
his romanticism, (L) 1316; as pre-
cursor of religious reaction, (L)
1399; Les confessions (Ernest
Seilliere, ed., 3 vok, 1929), (L)
300, (H) 590, 593, (L) 594-95,
629, (H) 631, (L) 747, 870, 947,
1151, 1173, 1478; Le contrat social,
(L) 543, 571, (H) 652, (L) 726,
747, 776, 986, 1162, 1212, 1218;
Discours sur I'origine de I'in&galite
parmi les hommes ( 1755), (L) 595,
1059, 1127, 1377; £mile, (L) 748,
749-50, 907; Lettre a d'Alembert
(1758), (L) 1230, 1307, 1399;
Lettre a M. Beaumont, (L) 947;
Lettres forties de la montagne (2
vok, 1762), (L) 567, 698, 747,
1324; Reveries du promeneur soli-
taire, (L) 947
Roussel, Michel, L'antimariana
(1610), (L) 844
Roustan, Marius, Les philosophes et
la societe francais au XVIII6 siecle
(1906), (L) 510; The Pioneers of
the French Revolution, (L) 772
Rowe, James Henry, Jr., (L) 1477
Royal Academy, (L) 617
Royal Charter Granted unto Kings by
God Himself, The (1649), by
Thomas Bayley, (L) 334
Royalty, English response to presence
of, (L) 882, (H) 887
Royce, Josiah, (H) 199, (L) 1252
Royde-Smith, Naomi, The Double
Heart, a Study of Julie de Lespinasse
(1931), (L) 1329, (H) 1370
Royer-Collard, Pierre Paul, (L) 19,
30, 65
Rubens, Peter Paul, (L) 443, (H)
561, (L) 582, 607, 735
Rublee, George, (H) 111, (L) 1233,
1254
Rud, A. M., The Second Generation
(1923), (L) 573
Ruddy v. Rossi, (H) 173
Rueff, Jacques, From the "Physical to
the Social Sciences (Green, tr.,
1929), (L) 1182, (H) 1183
Rugg, Arthur Prentice, (H) 742, (L)
1362
Ruggiero, Guido cle, The History of
European Liberalism ( Collingwood,
tr., 1927), (L) 996, 1033, 1080
Ruggles of Red Gap (1915), by
Harry Leon Wilson, (L) 156
Ruhr, French occupation of, (L) 489
Rules for Compositors and Readers at
the University Press, Oxford (21st
ed., 1909), (H) 786
Ruskin, John, (L) 14, (H) 167, (L)
471, (H) 530, (L) 576, (H) 580-
81, (L) 806, (H) 1209, (L) 1225;
Holmes's early and late estimates
of, (H) 1204
Russell, Bertrand, (L) 451, 546, 584,
612, (H) 689, (L) 790, (H) 886,
(L) 1185, 1206, 1304, 1305, 1396,
1429, 1470; reinstated at Cambridge,
(L) 253; Laski meets and converses
with, (L) 273; his extraordinary
qualities, (L) 387, 399-400; his
meeting with Roscoe Pound ( 1922 ) ,
(L) 425; as candidate for Parlia-
ment, (L) 458, 459, 566; as a
conversationalist, (L) 483, 1095,
1404; his estimate of Morris Cohen,
(L) 483, (H) 485, (L) 698, 801,
809; contemplated trip to United
INDEX
1625
States (1924), (L) 537, (H) 542,
549, (L) 554, 584; call on Holmes
(April 1924), (L) 587, (H) 542,
549, 555, (L) 586, (H) 608,
(L) 612, (H) 615, 689; his poli-
tical campaign (November 1923),
(L) 561, 566; comments on philos-
ophers and on the East, (L) 686-
87; his estimate of Dewey, (L)
801, 809; on Whitehead's Science
and the Modern World. (L) 820;
Holmes's estimate of his philosophy,
(H) 1071, 1075; Pollock on his
theodicy, (H) 1075; Lasld's esti-
mate of his philosophy, (L) 1082;
a sentimentalist disguised as a
skeptic, (H) 1109; on great men
and history, (L) 1350-51; his
rejection by British Academy, (L)
1407; on Leibnitz, (L) 1435; his
reception in the House of Lords,
(L) 1435; The A.B.C. of Atoms
(1923), (L) 541; Analysis of Mind
( 1921 ), ( L ) 345; Education and the
Good Life, (L)796; Icarus; or, The
Future of Science ( 1924), (L) 589;
Introduction to Mathematical Philos-
ophy (1919), (L) 198; Mysticism
and Logic, (L) 40, 147, 154, (H)
164; Our Knowledge of the External
World, (L) 1082; An Outline of
Philosophy (1927), (L) 1036, (H)
1040, (L) 1057, (H) 1060, 1067,
1070, 1071; Philosophical Essays
(1910), (H) 104; Political Ideals,
(L) 101, 103; The Practice and
Theory of Bolshevism (1920), (L)
292, 299; Proposed Roads to Free-
dom (1919), (L) 192; Sceptical
Essays (1928), (L) 1095, 1109,
(H) 1113; The Scientific Outbok
(1931), (H) 1336, (L) 1448;
What I Believe (1925), (H) 733;
Why Men Fight, (L) 103
Russell, Bertrand and Mrs., Prospects
of Industrial Civilization (1923),
(L) 543
Russell, Mrs. Bertrand, (L) 306
Russell, Charles, Lord Russell of
Killowen (1832-1900), (L) 479
Russell, Frank, Baron Russell of
Killowen, (L) 1197, 1210
Russell, Countess, (L) 1229; Christo-
pher and Columbus (1919) by
"Elizabeth," (L) 1201; Elizabeth
and her German Garden (1898),
(L) 882; Introduction to Sally by
"Elizabeth" (1926), (L) 882
Russell, Earl (1865-1931), (L) 1227
Russell, Lord John, (L) 843
Russell-Smith, H. F., Harrington and
His Oceana (1914), (L) 25, 61
101
Russia: political events in, (L) 89,
109, 117; political philosophy in,
(L) 213; England's relations with
(1920), (L) 280; pamphlets on
the Communist regime, (L) 317;
Sir George Young's impressions of
(1921), (L) 380-81; its influence
in Europe (1922), (L) 444; its in-
creasing nationalism, 1923, (L)
510-11; Emma Goldman's attitude
towards, (L) 687; discussed by ex-
perts, 1925, (L) 717; its legal sys-
tem, 1926, (L) 851, 1226; its
alleged persecution of churches,
(L) 1230, 1428, 1454; its charges
against British engineers, ( L ) 1444;
hope in its efforts, (L) 1466; Cecil's
conversations with her representa-
tives (January 1934), (L) 1467
Russian Embassy, London, receptions
at, (L) 850, 1435, 1473
Russian literature, its death since
1910, (L) 1190
Russian Revolution, (L) 510-11, 592,
1257; Brandeis on, (H) 503; its
background and causes, (L) 510-
11; its purposes, (L) 592, (H) 1071
Rutherford, Sir Ernest, (L) 295, 460,
584, 589, 830, 880
Rutherford, Mark (William Hale
White), The Autobiography of
Mark Rutherford, (L) 550, 559,
799, (H) 800, (L) 804; Miriams
Schooling (1890), (L) 559
Rylands, G. H. W., Elizabethan Trag-
edy; Six Representative Plays
(1933), (L) 1462
Sacco-Vanzetti case, (L) 900, 929,
934, (H) 938, (L) 946-47, 952,
955, 968, 976-77, 978-79, (H)
1118, (L) 1120-21, (H) 1396;
Holmes's official involvement in,
(H) 971, (L) 972, (H) 974,
1626
INDEX
Sacco-Vanzetti case (Continued)
975-76, (L) 976, 979, 991, 1120-
21; Holmes's attitude towards, (H)
974, 975-76, 993-94, 999, 1028,
1265
Sacco and Vanzetti, The Letters of,
(Marion Frankfurter and G. Jack-
son, eds., 1928), (L) 1118, 1120-
21
Sackville-West, Victoria, All Passion
Spent (1931), (H) 1320; The Ed-
wardians (1930), (H) 1320; The
Land (1927), (H) 1320; Twelve
Days, (H) 1320
Sadleir, Michael, Anthony Trollope
(1927), (L) 916, (H) 931
Safe Deposit and Trust Co. v. Virginia,
(H) 1196, 1204
Sage v. United States, (H) 202
Sagnier, Marc, (L) 419
Saint-fivremond, Charles de, ( L ) 1087
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, (H) 785-
86, 893
St. Louis and O'Fallon Railway Co. v.
United States, (L) 1152, 1155
Saint-Pierre, Bemardin de, (L) 1053;
Etudes de la nature (1784), (L)
1086; Paul et Virginie, (H) 530,
(L) 656
Saint-Pierre, Charles Irenee Castel,
Abbe de, (L) 998, 1341; Discours
sur la polysynodie (1718), (L) 984
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri, Comte de
(1760-1825), (L) 201, 419, 429,
707, 737, 980, 1021
Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, Due
de (1675-1755), Merits intdtts (8
vok, 1880-93), (L) 792, 931, 934,
1030, 1139, 1316
Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin, (L)
93, 220, 325-26, 361, 432, 571,
714, (H) 718, 831, (L) 982, (H)
1023, (L) 1051, 1220, 1369; as
critic, (L) 24, 85, 473, 489, 543,
571, (H) 754, (L) 1402; Arnold
Bennett's estimate of, (L) 520-21;
as a pious Catholic, (H) 541;
Causeries du lundi, (L) 489, 505,
(H) 507, (L) 510, (H) 511, (L)
512, (H) 515, (L) 516, (II) 519,
523, 530, 533, 537, 539, 541-42,
555, 624, 630, 754; Nouvelles lun-
dis, (L) 604; Portraits contempo-
rains (3 vols, 1855), (L) 514;
Port-Royal, (L) 329, 460, 489, 521,
732, 746, 747, (H) 753, 753-54,
757, (L) 758-59, (H) 761, 763;
Proudhon — sa vie et sa correspon-
dence (1872), (L) 82, (H) 82,
(L) 97, 118
Saintsbury, George, (L) 1308
Sait, Edward McChesney, American
Parties and Elections (1927), (L)
1025
Saki (pseudonym of Hector Hugh
Munro), stories of, (H) 1162-63,
1165-66, 1169, 1177, (L) 1182,
1186
Saklatvala, Shaphuiji, (L) 695
Saleilles, Raymond, (L) 43, 90, 105,
903, 1276; De la declaration de
volonte, (L) 30; Le domaine public
a Rome et son application en matiere
artistique (1889), (L) 90, (H) 91,
(L) 91, (H) 92, (L) 92, (H) 93;
De la personalite juridique (1910),
(L) 27-28, 30; De la possession des
meubles, (L) 30
Salisbury, Life of Lord (2 vols., 1921)
by Gwendolen Cecil, (L) 384
Salisbury, 3rd Marquess of, (L) 152
Salisbury, 4th Marquess of, (L) 736
Salkeld, bookseller, (L) 296
Sallust, (H) 369
Salmasius, see Saumaise, Claude de
Salmond, Sir John, (L) 691, (H) 692,
(L) 1229, (H) 1337, (L) 1352
Salmony, Alfred, (L) 550
Salter, Sir Arthur, (L) 973, 1444;
Recovery (1932), (L) 1374, (H)
1384, 1387
Salter, J. A., Allied Shipping Control
(1921), (L) 353
Salter, William Mackintire, NietzscJie
the Thinker (1917), (H) 653, (L)
657, (H) 659
Salvemini, Gaetano, (L) 833, 1068
Salvesen, Edward Theodore, (L) 821
Salvini, Tommaso, (H) 1210
Samuel, Sir Herbert, (L) 1004-65,
1333
Samuels, Arthur P., The Early Life,
Correspondence, and Writings of
the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke, (L)
553, 557
Samuels, Arthur Warren, (L) 564
INDEX
1627
Sanborn, Walter Henry, (L) 858, (H)
859
Sand, George, (L) 433; as a story-
teller, (H) 580; Consuelo, (L) 573,
(H) 580, (L) 744, (H) 745, (L)
1074
Sandburg, Carl, (H) 35, (L) 37,
(H) 38; Abraham Lincoln: The
Prairie Years (2 vols., 1926), (L)
837
Sanderson, Frederic William, (L) 586
Sandys, John Edwin, A History of
Classical Scholarship (3 vols., 1903-
1908), (L) 371, (H) 374
Sanford, Mr. Justice, (H) 495, 555,
598, (L) 638, 780, (H) 1102
Sanitary District of Chicago v. United
States, (H) 684, (L) 693, (H) 701,
(L) 702
Sankey, John, 1st Baron Sankey, (L)
321, (H) 322, (L) 334, 356, 407,
410, 461, 501, 546, 550, (H) 555,
(L) 600, 632, 759, 821, 853, 854,
886, 889, 902, 952, 981-82, 986,
1001, 1041, 1068, 1114, 1142, 1149,
1156, 1166-67, 1194, 1211, 1217,
1222, 1240, 1304, 1368, 1385, 1396,
1456, 1471, 1475; conduct o£ Coal
Commission's investigation, 1919,
(L) 258; Laski dines with, (L)
273; on judges, (L) 330-31; Laskfs
admiration for, (L) 376, 383, 1285,
1303; his anecdotes of trials, (L)
383-84, 795, 818-19; possible Cabi-
net post in Labour ministry, 1923,
(L) 572; his views and conduct on
appointment o£ judges, (L) 740, 795,
1176, 1197; his tale of the "artificial
silk," (L) 947; advanced to Court of
Appeal, (L) 1026; his view of the
judicial function, (L) 1052-53; as
probable Lord Chancellor, (L)
1107, 1153; becomes Lord Chancel-
lor, (L) 1155; his multiple duties as
Chancellor, (L) 1160, 1163; his
decision to stay in the National
Government, 1931, (L) 1327; his
role at Indian conference, 1931, (L)
1332, 1338, 1348-49, 1421; his dif-
ficulties in National Government,
(L) 1349, 1392, 1476
Sanlaville, Ferdinand, Moliere et le
droit (1913), (L) 1052
Santarelli, Antonio, (L) 379
Santayana, George, (H) 292, 328,
684; Holmes's estimate of, (H)
297, 440, 594, 608, 618, 659; Laskfs
estimate of, (L) 612; "A Brief His-
tory of My Opinions," (L) 1245,
note 4, 1249; Character and Opinion
in the United States (1920), (H)
297, (L) 303, 1252; Egotism in
German Philosophy, (L) 27, (H)
29, (L) 29, 32-33, (H) 33; his
introduction to Spinoza's Ethics^
(H) 470, 473; The Life of Reason:
Reason in Art, (H) 618; Scepticism
and Animal Faith (1923), (H) 608y
659; Soliloquies in England (1922),
(H) 440; Some Terms of Thought
in Modern Philosophy, (L) 1445;
The Unknowable (1923), (H) 594,
652; Winds of Doctrine (1913),
(H) 4, 29
Sardanapalus, by Byron, (L) 274
Sarfatti, Mario, (L) 1051
Sargent, John Singer, (H) 499, (L)
824-25, (H) 965-66, (L) 1427
Sarpi, Fra Paolo, (H) 1336-37, 1340,
1346
Sartiaux, Felix, Foi et science au
moyenage, (L) 874, (H) 875
Sarwat Pasha, (L) 963
Sassoon, Siegfried, (L) 261, 852,
1024, (H) 1028; Memoirs of an
Infantry Officer (1930), (L) 1287
Sastri, V. S. Scinivassa, (L) 1301
Satow, Ernest, Diplomatic Practice,
(L) 90
Satire Uenipee, (L) 449
Saumaise, Claude de, Defensio regia,
proCarolo! (1649), (L) 303
Saurin, Elie, Reflections sur les droits
de la conscience (1697), (L) 928
Savidge, Irene, case of, (L) 10-73,
1107
Savigny, Friedrich Karl von, (L) 237,
422, 607, 622, 655, 792, 922, 925,
1036, 1230, 1341, 1462; Geschichte
des romischen Rechts im Mittelalter,
(L) 752, 1199, 1442; On the Voca-
tion of Our Age for Legislation and
Jurisprudence, (L) 1408
Savile, George, 1st Marquess of Hali-
fax, (L) 611, 696, 1410; The Com-
plete Works of George Savile, First
1628
INDEX
Savile, George, 1st Marquess of Hali-
fax (Continued)
Marquess of Halifax (1912), (L) 172
Savile, Sir Henry, (L) 633
Say, Jean-Baptiste, (L) 206
Scaliger, Joseph Justus, (L) 724, 818,
1014
Schacht, Hjalmar, (L) 1285
Schaeffer v. United States, ( H) 248
Schapiro, Jacob Salwyn, Condorcet
and the Rise of Liberalism (1934),
(L) 1472
Schatz, Albert, Ifindividualisme eco-
nomique et social (1907), (L) 1083
Schechter, Frank L, Historical Founda-
tions of the Law Relating to Trade-
marks (1925), (H) 742
Scheer, Reinhard, (H) 671
Schenck v. United States, (L) 170,
(H) 186, 190, (L) 191, (H) 203
Scherer, Edmond, Diderot (1880),
(L) 1195; Melchior Grimm (1887),
(L) 860
Scherer, Wilhelm, (L) 24, 1369
Schiller, Friedrich von, (L) 717; on
Rousseau, (L) 344
Schinz, Albert, La pensee de Jean-
Jacques Rousseau (1929), (L) 1154
Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, New View-
points in American History (1922),
(L) 592
Schlesinger v. Wisconsin, (H) 831
Schlitz Brewing Company v. Houston
Ice Company, (H) 202
Schmidt, Conrad, (L) 1472
Schmidt, Otto, (L) 1473
Scholars, C. W. Eliot's dictum con-
cerning their function, (H) 930
Schmitt, Carl, "The Necessity of
Politics," in Essays in Order ( Daw-
son & Burns, ed., 1931), (L) 1355
Schneider, Hermann, History of World
Civilization (Green, tr., 1931), (H)
1367, (L) 1369
Scholarship, ideals of, (L) 103, 103-
104; Gilbert Murray on, (L) 384
Schoolfellows, Laskfs meetings with,
in Manchester, (L) 1327-1328
Schopenhauer, Arthur, ( H ) 133
SchouvalofF, Count Piotr Andreyevich,
his conversation with Holmes
(1871), (H) 624
Schiickmg, Levin L., Character Prob-
lems in Shakespeare's Plays ( 1922),
(L) 452
Schumpeter, Joseph Alois, (L) 1057
Schuster, Claude, Baron Schuster, ( L )
764
Schwab, Charles, (L) 124
Schweitzer, Albert, The Quest for the
Historical Jesus (1910), (L) 480-
81, 1262
Schwimmer, Rosika, see United States
v. Schwimmer
Science: and religion, (L) 141, 771,
1140, 1205, 1256; as source of
progress, (H) 210; discoveries in,
(L) 639; history of, (L) 639, 694-
95; its relevance to metaphysics,
(L) 696, 718; Sartiaux's account
of medieval science, (L) 874; its
doubtful postulate, (H) 1134; in
the Victorian age, (L) 1140, (H)
1143-44; must be seen in its social
setting, (L) 1404, 1451
Scientists: limitations and genius of,
(L) 143, 693-94, 880, 1229; Laskfs
respect for, (L) 586; fruitfulness of
their youthful years, (L) 791-92;
Holmes's admiration for, (H) 842;
their philosophical speculations,
(H) 1169
Scopes v. State of Tennessee, (L) 759,
771
Scotland, Laskfs impressions of
(January 1926), (L) 820-21
Scotsmen, their traits, (L) 679, 884
Scott, Austin Wakeman, (L) 43-44
Scott, C. P., (L) 467, 1354
Scott, Geoffrey, The Architecture of
Humanism (1914), (H) 1204, 1209
Scott, James Brown, (L) 870, 1231,
1279, 1325; Judicial Settlement of
Controversies between States of the
American Union (1919), (H) 232
Scott, Lady, (H) 1346
Scott, Leslie, (H) 291, (L) 299, (H)
800-301, 354, 417, 579, 666, (L)
667, 669, 673, (H) 675, (L) 676,
686, 717, (H) 758, (L) 853, 856,
(H) 891, (L) 894, 921, 988, 1043,
1116, 1118, 1167, 1225, 1255, 1353,
1358, 1372, 1382, 1470; argument
before Coal Commission (1919),
(L) 257; views on coal strike
(1921), (H) 342; Laskfs estimate
INDEX
1629
of, (L) 363, 1123, 1362; becomes
Solicitor-General, (L) 411; as pos-
sible appointee to bench, (L) 1122-
23, 1222; on Committee on Minis-
ters* Powers, (L) 1194; his part in
Lena GoldfielcTs arbitration, (H)
1275
Scott, Robert Falcon, (L) 505, 1473;
Scott's Last Expedition (arranged
by L. Huxley, 2 vols., 1914), (L)
455, 1473
Scott, Sir Walter, (L) 626, 640, (H)
647, (L) 650, (H) 653, (L) 748,
912, 1173, 1308, 1352-53; com-
pared to Dumas, ( L ) 749; on Haz-
litt, (L) 751; his influence on New-
man, (L) 1179; Anne of Gierstein,
(L) 644, 1179; Guy Mannering, (L)
650; Heart of Midlothian, (L) 644;
Ivanhoe, (L) 644; The Monastery.,
(L) 650; Old Mortality, (L) 644,
1179; Quentin Durtoard, (L) 650;
Redgafrntlet, (L) 644, 655, 1427;
Waverley, (L) 644, 1352-53
Scmtton, Lord Justice, (H) 374, (L)
501, 550, 795, 889, 981, 1026, 1077-
78, 1142, 1166, 1293, (H) 1296;
his rating of English judges, (L)
1142, 1271
Scullin, James Henry, (L) 1289
Search and seizure, see Police methods
Sebonde, Raymond de, (L) 1354
Second Part of a Register, (L) 334,
338, 341, (H) 343, (L) 349
Secularism, decline of, (L) 1383
Sedgwick, Anne Douglas, The Little
French Girl (1924), (L) 700; The
Old Countess (1927), (L) 934
Sedgwick, Ellery, (L) 226
Sedgwick, Henry D wight, Ignatius
Loyola (1923), (H) 910; Marcus
Aurelius (1921), (H) 606
S6e, Henri Eug&ne, Les idees politi-
ques en France au XVIII6 siecle
(1920), (L) 585
Seeley, Sir John, (L) 355
Segregation, racial, (L) 1200
S6gur, Pierre, Marquis de, Julie de
Lespinasse (1906), (L) 506, 525,
882; Le royaume de la rue Saint-
Honore: Madame Geoffrin et sa
file, (L) 882; work on youth of
Madame de Stael, (L) 766
Seilliere, Ernest, Mme. Guyon et
Fenelon precurseurs de Rousseau
(1918), (L) 1245
Selborne, 2nd Earl of, (L) 747
Selden, John, (L) 630; portraits of,
(L) 910; Wells on his style, (L)
1072, (H) 1075; Fleta (1647), (L)
302, 629-30; Table Talk, (H) 994
Selden Society, (L) 439, 1373
Selective Draft Law Cases, The, (L)
118
Self-defense, scope of the duty to re-
treat, (H) 335
Self-importance, as folly not sin, ( H )
887
Selfishness and altruism, (H) 385, 723
Seller, Abednego, History of Passive
Obedience (1689), (L) 283
Seneca, (L) 50, 171, 471, (H) 474,
604, (L) 670, (H) 723, 913, (L)
1473; Laskfs liking for, (L) 495,
510, 771, 799, 908, 1112; as the an-
cestor of toleration, (L) 744
Senior, William, Doctors' Commons
and the Old Court of Admiralty,
(L) 460, (H) 470, 474
Sergeant, Elizabeth Shipley, (H) 807,
841, 843, (L) 844, (H) 860; her
portrait of Holmes, (H) 900-901,
(L) 906
Sergerat, , Les grands convertis,
(L) 83-84
Sermons, 17th- and 18th-century
changes in form of, (L) 697
Serres, Jean de, Inventaire general de
Thistoire de France (1576), (L)
1397
Servants, their treatment by proper
Bostonians, see Manners, their im-
portance
Servants* uniforms, (L) 271, (H) 272,
(L) 276
Seton-Watson, Robert William, (L)
717
Settlements, Commission on, (L) 427,
432
S6verin, L'homme blanc, souvenirs
d'un pierrot (FrejaviUe, ed., 1929),
(H) 1228
Sevigne, Madame de, (L) 537, 698,
798; Lettres choisies, (H) 537, (L)
714
Seward, Sir Albert Charles, (L) 483
1630
INDEX
Sex: Holmes's aphorism concerning
modernists' interest in, (H) 1180;
meeting of International Sexual Re-
form Congress, (L) 1185
Seward, William H., (L) 1339, (H)
1345
Seydel, Max von, (L) 147, 237
Seymour, Beatrice Kean, Intrusion
(1922), (L) 501; Maids and Mis-
tresses (1932), (L) 1381; Three
Wives (1927), (L) 984
Seyssel, Claude de, La grande mo-
narchie de France (1519), (L) 490
Shaftesbury, 1st Earl of, (L) 721-22
Shaftesbury, 3rd Earl of, (L) 1294,
Characteristics of Men,, Manners,
Opinions, and Times (1711), (L)
446, 455, (H) 593-94, (L) 743,
860, (H) 863; A Letter Concern-
ing Enthusiasm to My Lord ,
(H) 593-94
Shaftesbury, 7th Earl of, (L) 532
Shakespeare, (H) 79, (L) 151, (H)
165, 200, 248, (L) 250, 325, (H)
439, 444, 447, (L) 448, (H) 453,
561, (L) 690, (H) 709, 769, (L)
777, (H) 781, (L) 908, 1088, 1267,
1403; Anatole France's estimate of,
(L) 468; his humor, (H) 892;
Antony and Cleopatra, (H) 565,
(L) 1300; Hamlet, (H) 165; Henry
V, (L) 452; Henry VIII, (L) 452;
King John, (H) 1127; King Lear
(H) 397, 447, (L) 633; Loves
Labour Lost, (L) 1396; Macbeth,
(H) 447, (L) 448, 1300; Measure
for Measure, (L) 452; Richard III,
(H) 1127; Troilus and Cressida,
(H) 709; Twelfth Night, (H) 863
Shand, Alexander Faulkner, Founda-
tions of Character (1914), (L) 276
Shanks, Edward, The Old Indispensa-
bles(lQlQ), (L) 226
Shapley, Harlow, (L) 1235
Shattuck, George Otis, (H) 1019
Shaving of Shagpat, The, see Mere-
dith, George
Shaw, Frank H., (L) 168
Shaw, George Bernard, (H) 8, 18,
(L) 81, 352, 566, 570, 613, 864-
65, 865, 1016, 1024, 1157, 1191,
1206, 1466; as a conversationalist,
(L) 399, 407-408, 902, 1014, 1200;
his Carlylian approach to political
problems, (L) 454; on The Old
Wives Tale, (L) 480; at early meet-
ings of Fabian Society, (L) 603;
Holmes's estimate of, (H) 635, 642,
991, 1018-19; his admiration for
Samuel Butler, (L) 656; discusses
theatre with Barrie, (L) 683, 740;
his anecdote of Wells and William
Archer, (L) 740; Sidgwick's re-
sponse to his defense of Henry
George, (L) 740-41, 989; com-
ments on various men of letters,
(L) 749; his method of writing,
(L) 749; his rencontre with Austen
Chamberlain, (L) 853; the Webbs'
characterization of, (L) 1056;
Wells's comment concerning, (L)
1072; his pronouncements on Ibsen,
(L) 1181-82, 1419; urges Astor's
appointment as Ambassador to
United States, (L) 1194; his bad
manners, (L) 1286-87; Nevinson's
comments on, (L) 1403; on Gals-
worthy, (L) 1419; discusses de-
cline of religious belief, (L) 1419;
Laski attacks his flippancy, (L)
1438; his lack of respect for per-
sonality, (L) 1458; The Apple Cart
(1929), (L) 1187; Back to Methu-
selah, ( L ) 344; Cashel Byron's Pro-
fession, (L) 352; Great Catherine,
(H) 212; Heartbreak House, (H)
212; The Intelligent Woman s Guide
to Socialism, (L) 1057, 1059; John
Bull's Other Island, (L) 368; Man
and Superman, (H) 635, 1296;
Peace Conference Hints (1919),
(L) 196; The Perfect Wagnerite
(1909), (L) 1211; Playlets of the
War, (H) 212; his preface to the
Webbs* Prisons and Local Govern-
ment, (L) 429; Saint Joan (1924), '
(L) 613, 629, (H) 631, 635, (L)
636, (H) 642; Widowers' Houses,
(L) 448
Shaw, Lemuel, (L) 923, 1077
Shaw, Robert Gould, (L) 152
Shaw, Thomas, Baron Shaw of Dun-
fermline, (L) 107, 1167; as chair-
man of the Commission on Dockers*
Wages, (L) 334; Letters to Isabel
(1921), (L) 337,341
INDEX
1631
Shea, General Sir John, (L) 1187-88
Sheehan, Canon, (H) 158, 281, 381,
(L) 799, (H) 1183, 1193, (L)
1330
Shelburne, Lord, (L) 1033
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, (H) 161, (L)
201, 276, 296, 369-70, (H) 568,
(L) 620, 736, 777, 792, 833, (H)
835, (L) 908, 1463-64; his prose,
(H) 369; letter to Mary Godwin,
(L) 439; Lamb's blindness towards,
(L) 1407; Adonais, (L) 689; De-
fense of Poetry, (H) 369; "Masque
of Anarchy," (L) 1308
Sheridan, Philip, (L) 171
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, The
Duenna, (L) 1176; A Trip to Scar-
borough, (L) 1176
Sherlock Holmes stories, (L) 644, (H)
647, (L) 771, 1365, (H) 1367,
(L) 1369, (H) 1375. See also
Doyle, Arthur Conan
Sherman, Charles Phineas, Roman
Law in the Modern World ( 3 vols.,
1917), (L) 138
Sherman, Roger, the quality of bis
descendants, (H) 519, 782
Sherman, Stuart P., On Contemporary
Literature, (L) 126, (H) 128
Sherman, William Tecumseh, (L) 171
Sherman Act, (H) 248-49, (L) 249-
50, (H) 335, (H) 469, (L) 691,
(H) 719
Sherman v. United States, (H) 1296
Sherwood, Mary Martha, The History
of the Fairchild Family, (L) 1174
Shonts, Theodore, (L) 124
Shrewsbury, Earl of, (H) 1260
Sidgwick, Ethel, (L) 7
Sidgwick, Henry, (L) 103, 105, 237,
648, 1394; his altercation with
Shaw, (L) 740-41, 989; The De-
velopment of European Polity
(1903), (L) 105-106; Elements of
Politics (1891), (L) 105, 648;
Method of Ethics (1874), (H) 104,
(L) 105
Sidgwick, Mrs. Alfred, Humming
Bird (1925), (L) 766
Sidrnouth, Viscount, see Addington,
Henry
Siegfried, Andre, (L) 1267, (H)
1270, (L) 1444-45; Tableau des
partis en France (1930), (L) 1303
Sieyes, Emmanuel, Quest-ce que le
tiers etat? (1789), (L) 477, 1468;
on bicameralism, (L) 1040
Silone, Ignazio, Fontamara (Wharf,
tr., 1934), (L) 1480
Silverthorne Lumber Company v.
United States, (L) 241
Sirnmel, Georg, Melanges de philoso-
phic relativiste ( Guillain, tr., 1912),
(H) 653, (L) 656, (H) 659
Simon, Sir John, (L) 349, 351, 408,
452, 502, 784, 798-99, 885, 940,
1222, 1264, 1430, 1444
Simon, Richard, (L) 715
Simplicity of politicians, (L) 547-48,
566, 940
Simpson, F. A., Lewis Napoleon and
the Recovery of France (1923), (L)
489
Sims, Charles, (L) 437
Sims, Admiral William S., (L) 502;
The Victory at Sea (1920), (H)
346
Sin, Western conception of, ( H ) 80
Sinclair, May, Anna Severn and the
FieWngs (1Q22), (H) 470
Sinclair, Upton, The Profits of Religion
(1918), (L) 247
Sirmond, Jean, (L) 746
Sisley, Alfred, (L) 1427
Sismondi, Jean Charles Leonard, (L)
201, 617
Sismondi, Simonde de, Etudes sur les
constitutions des peuples libres
(1836), (L) 617; Nouveau prin-
cipes d'economie politique (2 vols.,
1819), (L) 614
Six Collection, (L) 1094
Skepticism: its virtues, (L) 633; its
excesses, (L) 698; Pascal's and
Newman's response to, (L) 743-44;
as a preventive of conceit, (H)
1039, 1044-45
Slavery, early Christian doctrine con-
cerning, (L) 679
Slesser, Sir Henry, (L) 794, 853,
1412
Sloan Shipyards v. United States
Fleet Corp., (H) 418
Small, Albion W., (H) 224, 226, (L)
235, (H) 236; The Meaning of
Social Science, (H) 232
1632
INDEX
Smedley, Constance, Mothers and
Fathers (1911), (L) 353
Smellie, K. B. S., (L) 809, (H)
817, (L) 827
Smiles, Samuel, (L) 539
Smith, Adam, (H) 161, (L) 221,
234, 278, 352, 506, 566, 571, 747,
749, 808, 884, 1098, 1359, 1407,
1480; Dugald Stewart on, (L) 242;
his large stature, (L) 407, 1280;
understanding of businessmen, (L)
421; his library, (L) 465; letters
to, from Hume, (L) 537, 1381; Laski
lectures on him as a political
thinker, (L) 826; Leslie's essay
on, (L) 826; his retort to Johnson,
(L) 907; quoted on strength of
nations, (L) 1393; The Wealth of
Nations, (L) 407, (H) 409, (L)
471, (H) 474
Smith, Alfred E., (L) 1100, 1105,
1108-1109, (H) 1109
Smith, Frederick Edwin, see Birken-
head, Lord
Smith, Goldwin, (L) 283, (H) 856
Smith, Horace (1836-1922), (L) 5
Smith, Horace and James, Rejected
Addresses (1812), (H) 3, (L) 5,
(H) 625
Smith, Joseph, (L) 1445
Smith, Logan Pearsall, Four Words
(1924), (L) 1241, 1247, (H) 1250;
A Treasury of English Aphorisms
(1928), (L) 1122
Smith, Norrnan Kemp, (L) 884; A
Commentary to Kant's "Critique of
Pure Reason" (1918), (L) 884
Smith, Preserved, Erasmus (1923),
(H) 1159; A History of Modern
Culture (Vol. 1, 1543-1687; 1930),
(L) 1284
Smith, Reginald Heber, (L) 383
Smith, Sydney, Letters of Peter Plym-
ley, (H) 69, (L) 71, 1317
Smith, Sir Thomas, De republica an-
glorum (1583), (L) 1218
Smith College, (L) 110, 112, 116,
117, 186
Smith v. Kansas City Title Co., (H)
312
Smollett, Tobias, (L) 812, (H) 818;
Peregrine Pickle, (L) 1232
Smuts, General Jan, (L) 348, 547-
48, 1200; on Wilson, (L) 226;
Holism and Evolution (1926), (H)
1162, 1204
Smyth v. Ames, (L) 1344
Snobbishness, British: effect on poli-
tics, (L) 501; its supremacy, (L)
1234; example of, (L) 1435-36.
See also Social ambitions; Royalty
Snowden, Philip, Viscount Snowden,
(L) 1141-42, 1205, 1242, 1244-
45, 1251-52
Snyders, Franz, (L) 735
Social ambition in England, France,
and United States, (H) 879
Social sciences: methodology in, (L)
629, 826, 1041, 1182, (H) 1183;
vast and fruitless research in, (L)
915; cooperative research projects
in, (L) 1024; their quest for ex-
actitude, (L) 1164, 1182. See also
Political science
Socialism: artists' sympathies for, (L)
14; H. G. Wells's, (L) 18; Holmes's
estimate of, (H) 96, 207-208, 272,
597, 658-59, 761, 762, 768-69;
Laskfs sympathies with, (L) 117,
205-206, 358, 1408-1409, 1443;
history of, (L) 201; Marxian, rea-
sons for its broad appeal, (L) 358;
inevitability of, if civilization is to
survive, (L) 483, 770; Wells's ex-
cellent criticism of, (L) 873-74
Society, contemporary: its softness,
(H) 19, 21, (L) 40-41; its evils,
(H) 469, (L) 475, (H) 478
Society of Public Teachers of Law,
(L) 959
Sociological Society, (L) 311
Sociologists, their style, (L) 589
Sociology: its pretensions and jargon,
(L) 28, 540, 656, 879, 881; its
central problem, (L) 656-57, (H)
660
Socrates, (H) 645; as combination of
Voltaire and Pickwick, (L) 551;
inadequacy of his logic, (H) 961
Sohm, Rudolf, (H) 855
Soldiers, their qualities, (L) 464,
1452
Solipsism, (L) 135, 639
Soltau, Roger, French Political
Thought in the Nineteenth Cen-
tury (1931), (L) 1329; Pascal;
INDEX
1633
The Man and the Message (1927),
(L) 987
Sombart, Werner, (L) 1035
Somers, Lord, (L) 544; Tracts, (L)
1353
Somervllle, E. GE., and Martin Ross,
Irish Memories (1918), (L) 125
Somnium viridarii; le songe du vergier
(1510), (L) 622
Sophocles, (L) 563, 908; Antigone,
(L) 452, 563, 633, (H) 872, 875,
(L) 1316; Oedipus, (H) 67; Oedi-
pus coloneus, (L) 548, 1316;
Sophocles, The Fragments of (A. G.
Pearson, ed., 3 vols., 1917), (L)
384
Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides,
(H) 727
Sorbiere, Samuel, (L) 767
Sorel, Albert, (H) 95, (L) 103, 108;
L'Europe et la revolution francaise
(8 vols., 1885-1904), (L) 450,
484, 637
Sorel, Georges, Reflections on Vio-
lence (Hulme, tr., 1914), (L) 3,
(H) 3, (L) 5, (H) 5, (L) 6
Soto, Domingo de, (L) 379, 412,
923, 1190, 1255; De justicia et jure
(2 vols., 553-54), (L) 359, 365,
671
Soulie, Frederic, on valor, (H) 534
"Souls, The," (H) 523, 568, 605
Soupirs de la France esclave, Les
(1689), attributed to Pierre Jurieu,
(L) 586, 789
South Africa, racial problems in, (L)
1294
South Coast, The, (H) 240, 248
Southern Pacific Co. v. "Berkshire, (H)
300
Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, (H)
183, (L) 286, 643, 1157, (H) 1159
Southerners: their bias, (L) 1072;
contrasted with Northerners, (L)
1318
Southey, Robert, (L) 130, 156;
Holmes mistakenly ascribes quota-
tion to, (H) 793; Wat Tyler ( 1817),
(L) 341
Sovereign immunity, (L) 107, (H)
183; Holmes's views concerning,
(H) 190, 822, 824; Laski's views
concerning, (L) 191, 832; history
of, (L) 380. See also Western
Maid, The
Sovereignty, (H) 5-6, (L) 7, (H)
8, 12, (L) 14, 15, (H) 21, (L)
22-23, (H) 67, (L) 68, 73, (H)
74-75, (L) 75-77, (H) 77, 115-
16, (L) 116-17, (H) 119, 183, (L)
191, 244, (H) 246, (L) 246-47,
762, 775, 776, (H) 804, (L)
811, (H) 817, (L) 820, (H) 822,
(L) 832, (H) 897, 964, 1101,
1272; Zane's criticism of Holmes's
theory of, (H) 180, 817; of Parlia-
ment, (L) 371; legal concept of,
after American Revolution, (H)
591; Holmes's early criticism of
Austin, (H) 824; Bodin's theory
of, (L) 847-48, (H) 849; Dickin-
son's essay on, (H) 1044
Spain, Laski's impressions of (1933),
(L) 1446-47
Spanish jurists, 16th-century, (L)
379, 412, 460, 1190, 1201, 1213,
1246, 1255, 1394
Specialization of knowledge, (L) 56,
110, (H) 713
Spectator, The, (L) 829
Spedding, James, An Account of the
Life and Times of Francis Bacon
(2 vols, 1878), (L) 1165
Speeches, Holmes's dislike of, (H) 430
Spencer, Herbert, (H) 8, (L) 19, (H)
21, (L) 23, (H) 24, 49, (L) 84,
86, 88, 105, (H) 115, (L) 337,
476, (H) 652, (L) 749, 819, 833;
Laski's estimate of, (L) 516; his
estimate of Gladstone, (H) 630;
his manners contrasted with Hux-
ley's, (L) 759; anecdote concern-
ing, (L) 791; attitude towards
Beatrice Webb's engagement, (L)
1094r-95; Man versus the State
(Beale, ed.), (L) 86; Social Statics,
(H) 19
Spender, J. Alfred, (L) 924
Spender, J. Alfred and Cyril Asquith,
Life of Herbert Henry Asquith,
Lord Oxford and Asquith (2 vols..,
1932), (L) 1409, 1411
Spengler, Oswald, Der Untergang des
Abendlandes (2 vols., 1922-27),
(H) 624, 630-31, 631, 634, 635,
(L) 636, (H) 641, 646, (L) 847,
1634
INDEX
Spengler, Oswald (Continued)
(H) 849, 879, (L) 1036, (H)
1204, 1382, 1384, (L) 1387-88
Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queen,
(L) 1300
Spingarn, J. E., (L) 412
Spinoza, (L) 7, 456, 475, (H) 519,
(L) 634, 661, 686, 898, 920, 922,
925, 979, 1002, 1223, 1230, 1244,
1327, 1468-69; quoted, (L) 186;
Holmes's basic agreement with, ( H )
474, 478, 939, 966, 971-72, 1132-
33, 1135; Laski's estimate of, (L)
494, 923, 1145; his influence on
Bossuet, (L) 977; his influence on
Rousseau, (L) 986, 1041; Alex-
ander's admiration for, (L) 1429;
Ethics, (H) 470, 474, 478, 965,
966, 971; Opera (4 vols., 1925),
(L) 1349; The Philosophy of Spi-
noza (Ratner, ed.), (H) 1132-33,
1135; Tractatus theologico-politicus>
(L) 494, 899, 978, 1139, 1468
Spiritualism, (H) 139, 214, (L) 740,
(H) 958, (L) 1267-68, (H) 1270
Spooner, Shearjashub, A Biographical
and Critical Dictionary of Painters,
Engravers, Sculptors, and Architects
(1853), (H) 712-13
Sprague, Oliver M. W., (L) 1221,
1373, 1438
Sprigge, S. Squire, Physic and Fiction
(1921), (L) 402
Springer v. Philippine Islands, (H)
1054, (L) 1061-62
Spuller, Eugene, Royer-Collard, (L)
30
Spurgeon, Caroline F. E., Mysticism
in English Literature (1913), (H)
183
Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, (L) 699,
819
Squire, J. C., (L) 756, 1022; verses
quoted, (L) 760; The Grub Street
Nights Entertainments (1924), (L)
667
Stael, Madame de, (H) 153, (L) 525,
626, 666, 686, 996, 1151, 1190,
1232, 1237; on the French Revolu-
tion, (L) 674
Stafford v. Wallace, (H) 423
Stalin, Joseph, (H) 1265, 1275
Stammler, Rudolf, (L) 39, 90, 610,
(H) 615, (L) 898, (H) 900, 901,
(L) 906, (H) 910, (L) 1120; The
Theory of Justice (Husik, tr., 1925),
(H) 837, 841, (L) 845, (H) 846
Stamp collector, Laskfs encounter
with, (L) 1327
Stanley, Oliver, (L) 676, 898-99
Stapleton, Thomas, (L) 379
Star Chamber, Laski hopes to acquire
unpublished treatise on, (L) 439
Stark Bros. v. Stark, (H) 307
State: extended powers of, (L) 113;
as an abstraction, (L) 622, 832
State and government, relations be-
tween, (L) 132
States, modern, origin of, (L) 258
Statesmanship, in judges, (H) 474,
(L) 552
Statesmen: wisdom of, in loving their
fellows, (L) 509; as churchmen
without orders, (L) 941
Statham, Abridgement of the Book
of Assises (1495?), (L) 7, 484,
(H) 499, (L) 767
Statistics, as subject for compulsory
university study, (L) 890-91
Statutes: modern tendency in draft-
ing of, (L) 379-80; interpreta-
tion of, (L) 1364, 1368, 1372-73,
1380-81, 1382
Steele, Sir Richard, (L) 697, 1122
Stein, Lorenz von, (L) 105
Steinlen, Theophile, (L) 227
Stendhal, (L) 1463
Stephen, Sir James (1789-1859), (L)
152, 679-80
Stephen, Sir James Fitzjames, (L)
149, (H) 175, (H) 219, (L) 400,
535, 592, 925, (H) 1044, 1208,
(L) 1272; his qualities, (H) 405,
926; Morley's estimate of, (L) 471;
bookdealer's anecdote of, (L) 805-
806; A History of the Criminal
Law of England (3 vols., 1883),
(L) 283, 543-44; Home Sabbaticae
(1892), (L) 400; Liberty, Equal-
ity, Fraternity, (L) 592
Stephen, Sir Leslie, (L) 174, 185,
274, 283, (H) 323, 332, (L) 400,
438, 614, 721, 767, 847, 877, 906,
(H) 949, (L) 967, 1078, 1231,
1299, (H) 1340; on Coleridge, (L)
35; Holmes's personal recollections
INDEX
1635
of, (H) 175; Lady Morley's ad-
miration for, (L) 329; Morley on
(L) 370, 493; on Bentham, (L)
388; on Emerson, (L) 471; on
Carlyle, (L) 533; Birrell's com-
ments on, (L) 626-27; on George
Eliot, (L) 632; Hardy s recollec-
tion of, (L) 654-55; on Gladstone,
(L) 743; on Balguy and arch-
bishops, (L) 752; as drawn by
Meredith, (L) 771; and the Sun-
day tramps, (L) 801; his influ-
ence on Morley, (L) 915; on the
taking of Sedan, (L) 937; on
Robert Owen, (L) 1287; J. M.
Robertson's attack on, (L) 1350;
as a critic, (L) 1401-1402; Alex-
ander's recollection and estimate of,
(L) 1408; his 1885 prophecy con-
cerning the United States, (L)
1455; contributions to Dictionary
of National Biography, (L) 433,
436; The English Utilitarians (3
vols,, 1900), (L) 44, 179, 186, 192,
258, 487, 860-61, 1391; Essays on
Free Thinking and Plain Speaking
(1873), (L) 487; George Eliot
(1902), (L) 847; History of Eng-
lish Thought in the 18th Century,
(1876), (L) 174, (H) 175-76,
(L) 179, 436, 1351, 1391, 1464;
Hobbes (1904), (L) 317, 1391;
Hours in a Library (1874, 1876,
1879), (L) 650; The Life of Henry
Fawcett (1886), (L) 213; Life of
Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, (L)
149, 174, 185, 847, 1008; Some
Early Impressions, (L) 620, (H)
624; Studies of a Biographer (4
vols., 1898-1902), (L) 650, 1401-
1402; Swift (1882), (L) 847
Sterling, John, (L) 437
Sterndale, Lord, see Pickford, Wil-
liam
Sterne, Laurence, (H) 234
Stevens v. Arnold, (H) 500
Stevenson, Robert Louis, (L) 655,
(H) 781, 1034, 1337; his photo-
graph of Tahiti, (H) 331-32; his
letters, (L) 1104; Dynamiter, (L)
279; Kidnapped, (L) 522; New
Arabian Nights, (L) 482; Treasure
Island, (H) 426
Stewart, Dugald, on Adam Smith,
(L) 242
Stewart, Sir James, see Denham, Sir
James Stewart
Sthamer, Friedrich, (L) 1286
Stimson, Frederic Jesup, My United
States (1931), (H) 1370
Stimson, Henry L., (L) 222, 1194
1233, 1240, 1254, 1368-69, (H)
1370, (L) 1430
Stintzing, Roderich von, Geschichte
der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft,
(L) 1431
Stirling, James Hutchinson, (L) 131-
32; The Secret of Hegel (2 vols.,
1865), (L) 135
Stoicism, (L) 50, 52, 170, 1083
Stoke Rochford, (L) 735, (H)
737
Stone, Harlan Fiske, (L) 699, (H)
737, (L) 798, (H) 824, 834, 1196;
Holmes's regard for, (H) 800
Stonier, G. W., Gog and Magog
(1933), (L) 1468
Storey, Moorfield, (H) 758, 1209
Stories, off-color, (H) 1102
Storrs, Sir Ronald, (L) 679
Story, Joseph, (H) 162, (L) 493,
639, (H) 644-45, (L) 649, (H)
652, (H) 796-97, 848, 1015
Story of a Style, The (1920), by
William Bayard Hale, (H) 360,
(L) 368
Stourm, Rene, Budget, (L) 105
Stowell, Lord, (L) 526, 1026, 1145,
1226
Strachey, John, The Coming Struggle
for Power (1933), (L) 1443
Strachey, Lytton, (L) 189, 220, 253,
(H) 556, (L) 571, 604, 808, 1050-
51, 1386, 1433; Asquith's estimate
of, (L) 571; on French literature,
(L) 690; Characters and Commen-
taries, (L) 1459; Elizabeth and
Essex (1928), (L) 1116, (H)
1118, 1122, 1127; Eminent Victo-
rians (1918), (L) 279, 303; Land-
marks in French Literature (1912),
(H) 586; Queen Victoria (1921),
(L) 329
Strafford, 1st Earl of, (L) 352
Stratton, Samuel W., (L) 952, note
2
1636
INDEX
Straus, Ralph, The Unseemly Adven-
ture (1924), (L) 617
Strauss, David Friedrich, (L) 30,
1073
Stresemann, Gustav, (L) 1138, 1287
Strindberg, August, Countess Julia
(Recht, tr., 1912), (H) 1266
Strikes against utilities, (L) 70-71,
(H) 74-75
Strupp, Karl, (L) 1138
Stubbs, Bishop, (L) 438, 575, 1392
Students: Laski's enthusiasm concern-
ing, (L) 664, 791, 846, 879; skep-
ticism in, (L) 1063, (H) 1067
Sturzo, DonLuigi, (L) 699-700, (H)
704
Style, literary: (H) 91, 727-28; fash-
ions in, (H) 785; its basis in sound,
(H) 897, (L) 903-904; the small
importance of simplicity, (L) 903-
904, (H) 904; contrasted with
style in talk, (H) 955; of Selden,
Maitland, and Macnaghten, (L)
1072
Suarez, Francisco, (L) 365, 379, (H)
381, (L) 412, (H) 727, (L) 922-
23, 1036, 1085, (H) 1183, (L)
1190, (H) 1193, (L) 1213, 1218,
1231, 1394; A. Franck's essay on,
(L) 460; De legibus, (L) 1199,
1201, 1246, 1251, 1255, 1381, 1442
Sugimoto, Etsu Inagaki, A Daughter
of the Samurai (1925), (H) 1015
Sullivan, J. W. N., The Bases of Mod-
ern Science (1929), (H) 1133,
1134, 1135
Sullivan, Mark, Our Times (6 vols.,
1926-35), (H) 1055
Sully, Due de, quoted, (L) 126
Sumner, Charles, (L) 231; Holmes's
recollections of, (H) 232
Sumner, Increase, (H) 591
Sumner, Lord, see Hamilton, John
Andrew
Sumner, William G., Folkways, (H)
226, 1160, 1162, 1165, 1172
Sunday, Billy, (L) 82
Sundays, ennui of, (H) 154
Supreme Court of the United States:
responsibilities of, (L) 130; its
method and pace in disposing of
business, (L) 230, (H) 790, (L)
794, (H) 1100-1101, 1113; Laskfs
imagined personnel for, (L) 548,
(H) 554; quality of its Justices,
(L) 552; political appointees to,
(H) 796-97; its jurisdiction under
the Act of 1925, (H) 797; its
"votes" at conference, (H) 1031,
1045; its regrettable decision (Oc-
tober 1927 term), (H) 1060; its
methods compared with those of
House of Lords, (L) 1068; Maine's
praise of, (L) 1400-1401
Surriage, Agnes, (H) 1070
Sutherland, Arthur E., Jr., (H) 975,
985, 1020
Sutherland, Duchess of, (L) 1234
Sutherland, George, (H) 445, (L)
446, (H) 448, 498, 608-609, (L)
636, (H) 668, 985, 993, (L) 1062,
(H) 1102; opinion in Adkins case,
(H) 495, (L) 496; opinion in
Humphrey case, (H) 896-97
Swedenborg, Emanuel, (H) 254
Swift, Jonathan, (L) 216, 238, 341,
588, 680, 749, 847, (H) 1075, (L)
1122, 1364; his influence on Vol-
taire, (L) 920; A Complete Collec-
tion of Polite and Ingenious Con-
versation, (L) 179; The Conduct
of the Allies (1711), (L) 216;
Journal to Stella, (H) 1180, 1188;
Gulliver's Travels, (L) 1313
Swift v. Tyson, doctrine of, (H) 822-
23
Swinburne, Algernon, (L) 14, (H)
144, 198, (L) 300, (H) 1127
Swinfen, Lord, see Eady, Charles
Swinfen
Swinnerton, Frank, The Chaste Wife
(1917), (L) 725; Coquette (1921),
(L) 353; Elizabeth (1934), (L)
1472; September (1919), (L) 221
Switzerland, its scenery, (H) 970-71
Sylvester, J. J., (L) 1038
Symonds, John Addington, (L) 748,
989; Studies of the Greek Poets
(1873), (H) 634-35
Sympathy, Holmes's theory of, (H)
139-40, 653, (L) 657
Synge, J. M., The Well of the Saints
(1905), (H) 863
Szold, Robert, (L) 118
Tacitus, (L) 106, 170, 362, 434, (H)
511, (L) 540, 777, (H) 782, (L)
INDEX
1637
861, 90S, 1108, 1474; Holmes reads
for first time, (H) 605
Taft, Henry W., An Essay on Con-
versation (1927), (H) 988
Taft, Horace, (H) 723
Taft, William Howard, (L) 65, 222
(H) 413, 418, (L) 452, (H) 549,
(L) 552, (H) 590, 597, 850, 878,
961, 1091; as possible Chief Jus-
tice, ( H ) 339; Holmes's impressions
when nominated Chief Justice, ( H )
346; Laskfs response to his nomi-
nation as Chief Justice, (L) 347;
his attack on Brandeis (1920), (L)
347; his promising beginning as
Chief Justice, (H) 373, 377; slow-
ness of returning opinions, (H)
377; his attitude in labor cases,
(H) 389-90; spongy opinion in
Truax v. Corrigan, (H) 389-90,
398; qualities as Chief Justice, (H)
390, 423, 555, 579, 797; Bir-
relFs characterization of, (L) 437;
praises J. M. Beck, (L) 485; his
social graces, (H) 485; his dissent
in the Adkins case, (L) 492, (H)
495; Haldane's judgment of, (L)
599; pressure o£ Court's work un-
der his impulse, (H) 790, 1100-
1101; as a political appointee to
Court, (H) 797, 848; his selection
of a Chief Justice (1910), (H)
797, 846; his assignment of cases
to Holmes, (H) 938; his doctors,
(H) 1031; his kindness at time of
Mrs. Holmes's death, (H) 1158;
his retirement, (H) 1224; his ill
health, (H) 1224, Laskfs regard
for, (L) 1226; Our Chief Magis-
trate and His Powers (1916), (L)
13
Tagore, Sir Rabindranath, Gora
(1924), (L) 600
Taine, Hippolyte Adolph, (L) 24, 57,
88, 558, 712, 731, (H) 733? (L)
969, 1225, 1329, 1381; BirrelFs
aphorism concerning, (L) 521;
Chevalley's aphorism concerning,
(L) 895; Mathiez's aphorism con-
cerning, (L) 1048; L'ancien re-
gime (4th ed., 1877), (L) 525,
528, 674
Talbot, Sir John George, (L) 564
Talleyrand, quoted, (L) 563; Me-
moires, (L) 774
Taney, Roger B., (L) 479, (H) 796-
97, 848, (L) 865, (H) 892, 1035,
(L) 1176
Tarde, Gabriel, (L) 41, 62, (H) 492,
(L) 1333
Tardieu, Andre, (L) 1222
Tarkington, Booth, Growth (1927),
(L) 996
Taste, variations in, between nations,
(H) 447,474
Taussig, F. W., (L) 663, 677, 1009
Tawney, R. H., (L) 432, 458, 509,
(H) 720, (L) 890, 1052, 1058,
1112; as Labour candidate, (L)
432, 459; illness of, (L) 450; his
edition of Wilson's Discourse upon
Usury, (H) 733, 737, (L) 748;
Equality (1931), (L) 1305; The
Establishment of Minimum Rates
in the Chain-Making Industry (H)
11; The Establishment of Minimum
Rates in the Tailoring Trade
(1915), (H) 11; Land and Labour
in China (1932), (L) 1417; Reli-
gion and the Rise of Capitalism,
(L) 748, (H) 855
Taxation, Conservative response to in-
creases in (1930), (L) 1242, (H)
1247
Taxi-driver, his estimate of the judges,
(L) 1257
Taylor, A. E., Plato, the Man and his
Work (1926), (L) 895, 1108;
Varia Socratica, First Series (1911),
(L) 125
Taylor, Bayard, his translation of
Faust, (H) 590-91, 1283
Taylor, Frederick Winslow, (L) 124;
Principles of Scientific Manage-
ment, (L) 124
Taylor, Hannis, (L) 50, 118, (H)
119; Cicero (1916), (H) 46, (L)
47, (H) 49, 51
Taylor, Sir Henry (1800-1886), (L)
910; The Statesman (1832), (L)
976, 984
Taylor, Henry Osborn, The Classical
Heritage of the Middle Ages
(1901), (L) 364, (H) 368, (L)
563; Freedom of the Mind in His-
tory (1923), (L) 563; Human
1638
INDEX
Taylor, Henry Osborn (Continued)
Values and Verities (1928), (H)
1076; The Medieval Mind, (H)
350, 354, (L) 360, 364; Thought
and Expression in the Sixteenth
Century (1920), (L) 303
Taylor, Jeremy, (L) 391, 784, 1265;
9eoAo7/a e/cXe/diKfy: A Discourse on
the Liberty of Prophesying (1647),
(L) 252; The Rule and Exercises
of Holy Living (1650), (L) 784
Tchekov, Anton, (H) 1090, 1091;
The Cherry Orchard, (L) 759
Teachers and students, relationships
between, (L) 263
Teaching, the proper goals of, (L)
321, 1121, 1309, 1358; Laskfs en-
thusiasm for, (L) 791, 1295
Temple, Sir William, (L) 285, (H)
685
Tencin, Madame de, (L) 531-32
Teniers, David, (L) 582, 596, 1281,
(H) 1283
Tennant, Margot, see Asquitli, Margot,
Lady Oxford and Asquith
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, (L) 250, 586,
(H) 781, (L) 1462; on his own
verse, (H) 248; BirrelFs estimate
of, (L) 1374
Terence, (L) 648
Terry, Ellen, (H) 856
Tertullian, (L) 1073
Texte, Joseph, Jean- Jacques Rousseau
and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Lit-
erature (Matthews, tr., 1899), (L)
1401
Thacher, Thomas Day, (L) 1202
Thackeray, William Makepeace, (L)
245, 285, 344, (H) 1133, 1135,
1337; compared to Dickens, (L)
655, 677, (H) 681, (L) 685; on
snobbishness, (H) 887; Laskfs es-
timate of, (L) 1122, 1129-30; Ad-
ventures of Philip, (L) 238, 637,
640, 655, 677, 780; A Collection
of Letters of Thackeray, 1847-
1855 (Brookfield, ed., 1887), (H)
1040; The English Humorists, (L)
234, (H) 234; The Four Georges,
(L) 234; Henry Esmond, (L) 325,
760, 780, 1122, 1335; The New-
comes, (L) 146, 250, 626, 771,
1129; Pendennis, (L) 126, (H)
142, (L) 238, 576, 640, (H) 652,
(L) 908, (H) 931, (L) 1080,
1129-30; Vanity Fair, (L) 226,
241, 576, 640, 777, (H) 914, (L)
1129, (H) 1320, (L) 1329, 1474;
The Virginians, (L) 780, 1122,
1130, 1344
Tharaud, J. and J., see A Tombre de
la croix
Thayer, Abbott, (H) 499
Thayer, James Bradley, (L) 691
Thayer, Judge Webster, (L) 934
Theis, Louis, (H) 63
Theobald, Lewis, (L) 1232
Theory, Holmes's predominant con-
cern with, (L) 946, (H) 949-50
Theosophists, Laskfs conversation
with, (L) 1018, 1123-24
These Eventful Jears (1924), (H)
671, 672, 680-81, 688, 701, 754,
1076
Thibaudet, Albert, (L) 1029, 1048;
Les idees politiques de la France
(1932), (L) 1417; La republique
des professeurs (1927), (L) 1014
Thiers, Louis Adolphe, (L) 493, 547,
(H) 555
Thinkers, their loneliness, (L) 595
Thirion, Henri, La vie privee des finan-
ciers au XVIW siecle (1895), (L)
581-82
Thirlwall, Gonnop, (L) 420
Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ,
(H) 530
Thomas, Albert, (L) 711
Thomas, James Henry, (L) 626, 759,
890
Thomasius, Christian, (L) 442, 1129,
1190, 1471
Thompson, Edward, An Indian Day
(1927), (L) 960
Thompson, Walter, Federal Centrali-
sation (1923), (L) 589
Thompson, William (1783-1833),
(L) 201, 205, (H) 208, (L)
358
Thompson, William G., (L) 991, 993,
1397
Thompson, WiUiani Hale, (L) 992
Thomson, J. J,, (L) 68, 553, 589,
629, 791
Thoreau, Henry David, (H) 1070,
1340
INDEX
1639
borne, Doctor, see Trollope, An-
thony
lireo Musketeers, The, motion pic-
ture of, (H) 372
:hueydides, (L) 39-40, 68, 106, 228,
362, 434, 441, 464, 487, (H) 511,
(L) 528, (H) 534, (L) 563, (H)
641, 645, 646, (L) 650, (H) 653,
(L) 787, 1173, 1219
Tichborne case, (H) 1026
"Tiddledies," running, (H) 1006
Tilley, Arthur, The Literature of the
French Renaissance (1885), (L)
487; Studies in the French Renais-
sance (1922), (L) 460
Tilley, Sir John, The Foreign Office
(1933), (L) 1452
Tillotson, John, (L) 697
Time, its influence on belief, (H)
580, 1146; Holmes' s avariciousness
concerning, (H) 625, 755S 1081,
1110, 1127-28, 1197, 1247, 1278;
as form of finite consciousness, ( H )
660
Times, The (London), (L) 329, 450
Tinker, Chauncey Brewster, Nature's
Simple Plan; a Phase of Radical
Thought in the Mid-Eighteenth
Century (1922), (L) 980
Tirpitz, Alfred von, (H) 671
Tissier, Theodore, (L) 1203
Titian, (H) 1346
Titulescu, Nicolas, (L) 1189
Tocqueville, Alexis de, (L) 24, 71,
123, 130, 151, 155, 160, (H) 162,
(L) 325, 400, 416, 471, 472, 493,
514, 531, 765, 877, 1042, 1225,
1329, 1338, (H) 1340, (L) 1366,
1374; his influence on English po-
litical thought after 1875, (L) 925,
1306; Vancien regime et la revolu-
tion (1850), (L) 484, 525, 567,
(H) 579, 587, (L) 674; Democ-
racy in America, (L) 329
Toland, John, (L) 722
Toledo Newspaper Co. v. United
States, (H) 157
Toleration: theory of, (H) 8, (L)
159-60, (H) 160-61; Bagehot on,
(L) 182; illogicalities of, (H) 217;
history of, (L) 743; Laskfs belief
in, (L) 883
Toller, Ernst, (L) 1457-58; I Was
a German (Crankshaw, tr., 1934),
1468
"Tolpuddle Martyrs," (L) 1151
Tolstoi, Leo, (H) 288, (L) 1458;
Anna Karenina, (L) 603, 929, (H)
931, 1180, 1188, (L) 1401; The
Kreutzer Sonata, (H) 404; War
and Peace, (L) 633, (H) 646, 651,
659, (L) 929, (H) 931, 994, 1081
Tomlin, Thomas James Cheshyre,
Baron Tomlin, (L) 564, 959
Tomlinson, H, M., (L) 619, 1181,
1392; All Our Yesterdays (1930),
(L) 1218; The Sea and the Jungle,
(H) 1387, (L) 1392; Tide Marks,
(H) 1387
Tories, Laskfs pleasure in dining
with, (L) 957, 1058
Torrey, Norman Lewis, Voltaire and
the English Deists (1930), (L)
1284
Tory Democrats, (L) 676, 735
Tours, cathedral at, (L) 1323 s
Tourtoulon, Pierre de, Les principes
philosophiques de Thistoire du droit
(1908), (H) 277, 300, 335, (L)
607, 610, (H) 615
Tout, Thomas Frederick, (L) 661,
992; France and England: Their
Relations in the Middle Ages and
Now (1922), (L) 401
Townes, John Charles, (H) 991
Toynbee, A. J., (H) S97; The
Tragedy of Greece (1921), (H)
377-78
Toynbee Hall, Laski's lecture at
(1921), (L) 356
Trade Disputes Act (1927), (L) 935,
940, 944, 946, 1035-36, 1092, 1160
Tragedy, English and French com-
pared, (L) 1361
Transcendentalism, (H) 1069-70
Translations, their inadequacy, (H)
609
Tree of Heaven, The (1917), by
May Sinclair, (L) 146
Treitschke, Heinrich von, History of
Germany in the Nineteenth Cen-
tury (Vol. 2, 1917), (L) 88; PoU-
tics, (L) 29, (H) 35
Trenck, Baron, (H) 144
Trent's Last Case, by E. C. Bentley,
(L) 848
1640
INDEX
Trevelyan, Sir Charles, (L) 902
Trevelyan, George Macaulay, (L)
676-77, (H) 680, (L) 902, 1115;
England under Queen Anne (3
vols., 1930-34), (L) 1290; A His-
tory of England (1926), (L) 676,
1257; The Life of John Bright
(1913), (L) 221; Lord Grey of
the Reform Bill (1920), (L) 265;
Manin and the Venetian Revolu-
tion of 1848 (1923), (L) 548;
works on Garibaldi and Italy, (L)
299
Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, anecdote
concerning, (L) 411-12; Holmes's
recollection of, (H) 680; The Early
History of Charles James Fox
(1880), (L) 127; Life and Letters
of Lord Macaulay (2 vols., 1876),
(L) 39, 296, 639-40, 802, 962
Trevethin, Lord, see Lawrence, Alfred
Tristram
Trial procedure: Anglo-American and
French compared, (H) 804;
Holmes's recollection of English,
(H) 1026-27
Trine, Ralph Waldo, (L) 1328-29
Trinity House, Elder Brethren of, (L)
1202
Trinity man, witticism concerning,
(L) 902, (H) 905, (L) 1350
Tristram Shandy, (H) 234
Troeltsch, Ernst, Die Soziallehren der
christlichen Kirchen (1912), (L)
617, 1335
Trollope, Anthony, (L) 658, 915, (H)
1090; Laski's admiration for, (L)
225, 344, 527, 707-708, (H) 1135;
the Barchester novels, (L) 521,
573; Holmes's indifference to, (H)
565, 773; Leslie Stephen's essay on,
(L) 1402; Ay alas Angel (L)
1168, 1313, 1476; Barchester
Towers, (H) 1081; The Belton
Estate, (L) 585, 916; The Bertrams,
(L) 563; The Claverings, (L)
493-94, 517, 655; Dr. Thome, (L)
337, 633, (H) 634; The Duke's
Children, (L) 592; The Eustace
Diamonds, (L) 1272, 1295, 1303;
Framley Parsonage, (L) 216, 337;
The Golden Lion of Granpere, (L)
669; The London Tradesman, (L)
990; Mm MacKenzie, (L) 707;
Orley Farm, (L) 407, 1131; Phin-
eas Finn, (L) 358-59, (H) 360,
(L) 771, (H) 773, (L) 774, (H)
994, 1135, (L) 1187, 1452; Phineas
Redux, (L) 358-59, (H) 360, (L)
771, 774, 1131; The Three Clerks,
(L) 384, 521; The Vicar of Bull-
hampton, (L) 669, 766; The Way
We Live Now, (L) 854, 1078,
1474
Trollope, Frances, (L) 1306
Tronchin, Henry, Un medecin du
XVIII6 sidcle: Theodore Tronchin
(1709-1781), (1906), (L) 895
Trotsky, Leon, (L) 381, 865; The
History of the Russian Revolution
(Eastman, tr., 3 vols., 1932), (L)
1393, 1423; My Life (1930), (L)
1257, (H) 1259, 1262-63, 1265;
Whither England, (L) 829-30, 857,
(H) 859, 1275
Trotter, Wilfred, Instincts of the Herd
in Peace and War, (L) 36, 61
Truax v. Corrigan, (H) 389-90, 398,
(L) 401
True, Ruth, (L) 446
Truth: character of, (L) 75; com-
plexity of, (H) 108, (L) 108-109;
Holmes's definition of, (H) 259,
1124-25; as the universalizing of
introspection, (L) 345; ultimate
and absolute, our ignorance of, ( H )
634, 1071, 1169; its discovery and
its realization distinguished, (H)
910
Tseretelli, Irakly, (L) 1422
Tucker, Josiah, Four Tracts (1774),
(L) 794, 1384, 1455, 1459
Tudor Constitutional Documents,
edited by J. R. Tanner (1922), (L)
421
Tully, Jim, Circus Parade (1927),
(H) 974
Tupper, Martin, (L) 124
Turberville, Arthur Stanley, Johnson's
England (2 vols,, 1933), (L) 1459
Turgenev, Ivan, (L) 992; Fathers
and Sons, (L) 673; "First Love,"
(L) 1448; On the Eve (Garnett,
tr., 1895), (L) 1448; Rudin (Gar-
nett, tr., 1894), (L) 1448; "Tor-
rents of Spring," (L) 1448
INDEX
1641
Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, (L)
470-71, 501, 506, 516, 576, 620,
1232, 1252, 1480; his criticism of
the American constitutions, (L)
472; Oeuvres de Turgot, (9 vols.,
1808-11), (L) 472, 604
Turkish Peace Conference, Lausanne,
(L) 465
Turner, Frederick Jackson, (L) 694,
(H) 701, (L) 1005, 1374-75; The
Frontier in American History
(1920), (L) 310-11, (H) 311
Turner, John Hastings, A Place in the
. World (1920), (H) 252
Turner, Joseph Mallord William, (L)
440, 530, 536, 1079, 1427; quoted,
(H) 444
Turner, Willaim, A Compleat History
of the Most Remarkable Providences
(1697), (L) 774
Tumor, Christopher Hatton, (L) 735
Twain, Marie, Autobiography (2 vols.,
1924), (H) 672, 681; Huckleberry
Finn, (H) 618, (L) 874
Twisden, Chief Justice, (H) 1159
Tyler, Moses Coit, The Literary His-
tory of the American Revolution
(2 vols., 1897), (L) 1458
Tyndale, William, (L) 367
Tyrrell, George, (L) 87
Tyrrell, William George, 1st Baron
Tyrrell, (L) 1377
Tyson & Brother v. Banton, (H) 921,
927
Unamuno, Miguel de, (L) 1267
Undergraduates, by R. H. Edwards,
J. M. Artman and G. M. Fisher
(1928), (L) 1173-74
United Railroads v. San Francisco,
(H) 197
United Shoe Machinery Co. v. United
States, (H) 319
United States: Flemish engineer's ad-
miration for, (L) 442; its equalities
of opportunity, (L) 708; Laskfs
impressions of (1926), (L) 836, 838;
inequitable distribution of wealth
in, (L) 854; its materialism, (L)
922; prediction of a renaissance in,
(H) 937, 939, (L) 1411; Palyfs
impressions of, (L) 1242-43; Laskfs
impressions of (1931), (L) 1312,
1312-13, 1322; Duhamel's criticism
of, (L) 1333; economic conditions
(1932), (H) 1387, (L) 1389;
French distrust of, (May 1932),
(L) 1390; Laskfs impressions of
(1933), (L) 1437; Siegfried's in-
terpretation of, (L) 1445. See also
England and United States com-
pared
United States v. Behrman, (H) 413-
14
United States v. Dickey, (H) 730-
31
United States v. Heinszen 6- Co., (L)
13
United States v. Ju Toy, (H) 164
United States v. Lenson, (H) 1109
United States v. Macintosh, (L)
1316-17
United States v. Reading Co., (L) 28
United States v. Schwimmer, (H)
1146, 1152, (L) 1155, (H) 1158,
1177
United States v. Sischo, (H) 498
United States v. United States Steel
Corp., (H) 248, 251
United States v. Walter, (H) 554
United Zinc ir Chemical Co. v. Britt,
(H) 413
Universal, its discovery in the par-
ticular, (H) 1208
Universities, American, see Education,
American
Universities: appropriate motto for,
(L) 132; their proper objectives,
(L) 711; their proper location, (L)
1163
Unknown soldier, burial of, at Arling-
ton, (H) 381
Untermeyer v. Anderson, (H) 1045,
1046
Unwin, George, Studies in Economic
History, (L) 1051
Ure, P. N., The Origin of Tyranny
(1922), (L) 412, 637
Urwick, Edward John, (L) 716
Usher, Roland G., (L) 997
Usury, 17th-century treatises on, (L)
1301
Utilitarianism, (L) 117, 124, 141,
181; its origins and the straggle
for religious toleration, (L) 246-
47
Utopias, (L) 1120, 1164
1642
INDEX
Vaas, Walter, (L) 802, 1218
Vagueness in statutes restricting
speech, (H) 203
Vairasse, Denis, Histoire des Sevaram-
bes (1677-78), (L) 1164, 1168
Valentine, Robert Grosvenor, (H) 35-
36, (L) 36, 37, 447
Valery, Paul, (L) 932, 1219
Vallandingham, Clement K., (L) 171
Valor, Soulie's aphorism concerning,
(H) 534
Valuation cases, absence of fixed
standards in, (H) 887-88
Vanbrugh, Sir John, (H) 1259
Vandal, Albert, L'avenement de Bona-
parte (2 vols., 1903-1907), (L)
1326
Vanderpol, Alfred, La doctrine scolas-
tique du droit de guerre (1919),
(L) 1201
Vandervelde, fimile, Le socialisme
contre I'etat (1918), (L) 149
Van Devanter, Willis, (H) 119, 202,
266, 398, 597, 598, 1106, 1119;
his fields of special competence,
(H) 1135
Van Doren, Dorothy, Strangers, (L)
1088
Van Dyck, Sir Anthony, (H) 114,
116, (L) 442, (H) 458, (L) 512,
(H) 561
Van Dyke, Henry, (L) 1244
Van Gennep, Arnold, La formation
des Ugendes (1910), (H) 360
Van Overloop, , (L) 1082
Van Tyne, C, H., The Causes of the
War of Independence (1922), (L)
449
Vane, Sir Henry, The Retired Mans
Meditations (1655), (H) 688, 689
Vasquez Menchaca, Fernando, (L)
1246, 1394
Vathek (1786), by William Beckford,
(H) 269, (L) 276
Vattel, Emeric, (L) 1085, 1182, (H)
1183, (L) 1190; Droit des gens,
(L) 1226
Vauban, Marshal, (L) 737, 983
Vaughan, Charles Edwyn, (L) 655;
Studies in the History of Political
Philosophy (2 vols., 1925), (L)
720-21, (H) 723, (L) 746, (H)
753
Vaughan, Sir John (1603-1674), (L)
630
Vauvenargues, (L) 349, 574, 669-70,
726, 820, (H) 828, (L) 1122, 1369
Veblen, Thorstein, (H) 162, 208, 236,
360; his indebtedness to Mande-
ville, (L) 700; Absentee Owner-
ship and Business Enterprise, (L)
658, 677; Engineers and the Price
System (1921), (L) 388; An In-
quiry into the Nature of Peace
(1917), (H) 158; The Place of Sci-
ence in Modern Civilization, (L)
238, (H) 240; The Theory of the
Leisure Class (1899), (L) 81
Vegelahn v. Guntner, (H) 374
Veitch, George Stead, The Genesis of
Parliamentary Reform (1913), (L)
220
Velasquez, Diego, (L) 529, 1427,
1436, 1446
Verdant Green, The Adventures of,
by Edward Bradley (1857), (H)
1090
Verdross, Alfred, Die Einheit des
Rechtlichen Weltbildes auf Grund-
lage der Volkerrechtsverfassung
(1923), (L) 1201
Vergennes, Comte de, (L) 509-10
Verlaine, Paul, (L) 690
Vermeer, Jan, (L) 468, 574, 582,
818, 867, 1094, 1181, 1195, 1211,
1217, 1302
Verrall, A. W., Euripides the Ra-
tionalist (1913), (L) 563
Versailles, Treaty of, (L) 235, 239,
547. See also Peace Conference,
1918-19
Vicarious Liability, (L) 26-27, (H)
55, (L) 60, (H) 61, (L) 62, (H)
189-90, (L) 362, (H) 363-64, (L)
380
Vico, Giovanni Battista, (L) 581,
1366
Victoria, Franciscus de, (L) 923,
1085, 1190
Victoria, The Letters of Queen Vic-
toria., Second Scries, edited by
George Earle Buckle (3 vols., 1926-
28), (L) 1017, (H) 1022
Victorians, (L) 808, 988-89, 1462;
Mrs. Cameron's photographs of, ( L )
908-10
INDEX
1643
Vieressaev, V. V., The Deadlock ( Wis-
sotzky and Coventry, tr., 1922),
(L) 945
Villard, Oswald Garrison, (L) 574;
Prophets, True and False (1928),
(L) 1083
Villars, Due de, (H) 624
Villernain, Abel Frangois, (L) 1369
Villey, Pierre, Les sources et revolu-
tion des essais de Montaigne (2
vok, 1908), (L) 998, 1033, 1104-
1105, 1257-58, 1282, 1422
Vincent, Edgar, 1st Viscount D'Aber-
non, (L) 1287
Vindiciae contra tyrannos, (L) 338,
349, 365; probable authorship of,
(L) 371; Laskfs edition of, (L)
393, 442, 443, 445, 455, 500, 505,
554, 572, (H) 579, (L) 582, 596,
(H) 599, (L) 602, 603, (H) 605,
(L) 611
Vinet, Alexandre, fitudes sur Blaise
Pascal (1848), (L) 1125-26, (H)
1128, (L) 1229-30, 1371
Vinogradoff, Sir Paul, (L) 403-404,
(H) 404, (L) 812, (H) 817, (L)
888-89, (H) 893, (L) 922, (H)
1003; Birr ell's anecdote concerning,
(L) 1374; Common Sense in Law,
(H) 886; essay on Custom and
Right, (H) 886, (L) 888, (H)
892; essay on FolMand, (L) 889;
The Jurisprudence of the Greek
City (1922), (L) 472-73; Outlines
of Historical Jurisprudence (Vol. I,
1920), (L) 889; Villainage in Eng-
land (1892), (L) 403, 812, (H)
817, 886, (L) 889
Vinogradov, Anatolii, The Black Con-
sul (1935), (L) 1476
Viollet, Paul, (L) 18, (H) 29, 31
(L) 32 978; Histoire du droit civil
francais (1893), (H) 31, (L) 1223
Virgil, (L) 66, (H) 67, 186, (L) 470,
490, 600, 789, 980, (H) 1375;
Aeneid, (L) 648
Virginians, their provincialism, (n)
713
Visscher, Jan, (H) 372
Vitalism, (L) 821
Vives, Juan Luis, (L) 433-34
Volland, Louise Henriette, (L) 1131,
1303, 1479
Voltaire, (L) 24, 81, 150, 216, 508-
509, 516, 527, 532, 543, (H) 580,
(L) 732, 818, 820, 830, (H) 835,
(L) 895, 969, 1021, 1053, 1120,
1195, 1284, 1341, 1386, 1399; Mor-
ley's admiration for, (L) 349, 408,
470, 543; Laski purchases his Works,
(L) 425, 505; Anatole France and
Laski discuss, (L) 468, 497; his
letters, (L) 501, 528, 554, 737, (H)
1337; his letters to Madame du
Deffand, (L) 505-506; Faguet's
interpretation of, ( L ) 514; his repu-
tation among his contemporaries,
(L) 611, 928-29; Laskfs estimate
of, (L) 626; his relations with
Rousseau, (L) 748, 947; his opinion
of Marmontel, (L) 827; influence
of Swift on, (L) 920; on kings and
priests, (L) 1130; Candide, (L)
573, (H) 580, (L) 612, 1176; Dic-
tionnaire philosophique, (L) 502,
573, (H) 580; Lettres philoso-
phiques (Gustav Lanson, ed., 2
vols., 1909), (L) 982; "Le mon-
dain" (L) 1041; Sentiments d'un
citoyen, (L) 947
Vondel, Joost van den, (L) 864-65,
(H) 866, (L) 868, 1079, (H)
1080-81
Vorsterman, Lucas, (H) 561
Vox plebis (1646), (L) 345
Voyagers of 17th century, (L) 798,
805, 1120, 1127, 1168, 1243,
1475
Vries, Hugo de, (H) 1134
Waddell, Helen, Mediaeval Latin
Lyrics (1929), (H) 1345; The
Wandering Scholars (1927), (L)
948, (H) 950
Wade, Henry (pseud, of Henry Lance-
lot Aubrey-Fletcher), The Duke of
fork's Steps (im), (L) 1418
Wade, E. C. S. and G. Godfrey
Phillips, Constitutional Law (1931),
(L) 1352
Wagner, Richard, (H) 950, 954, (L)
1211
Wake, William, The Authority of
Christian Princes over their Eccle-
siastical Synods Asserted (1697),
(L) 433
1644
INDEX
Waldstein, Sir Charles, Aristo-Democ-
racy, (H) 122, (L) 124. See also
Walston, Sir Charles
Wales, character of, (L) 309-10, 824
Wales, Robert W., (H) 1288, 1315,
(L) 1329
Walker, James, (H) 1101
Wallace, Alfred Russel, (L) 1213
Wallace, Edgar, A King by Night
(1926), (H) 869
Wallas, Ada, Before the Blue-stock-
ings (1929), (L) 1155
Wallas, Graham, (L) 11, 15, 85, 98,
134, 141, 216-17, 221 223, 255,
270, 311, 380, 438, 493, 541, 573,
592, 702-703, 717, 801, 818, 890,
920, (H) 921, 937, 939, (L) 941,
(H) 943, (L) 963, (H) 1055, (L)
1058, 1149, 1164, 1198, 1248; calls
on Holmes, (H) 230, 930, 961;
urges Laskfs return to England,
(L) 231; as type of English mind,
(L) 303; Laskfs disappointment
in, (L) 376; dreams of book on
Bentham, (L) 388; resigns chairman-
ship of Department of Political
Science, London School of Econom-
ics, (L) 479; his trip to America
(1923), (L) 520; is anticipated by
Walter Bagehot, (L) 540; on Peri-
cles, (L) 592; recollections of early
Fabian days, (L) 603; anticipated
by Marmontel, (L) 826-27; exces-
sive concern with method, (L)
912; talks to Austen Chamberlain
of foreconsciousness, (L) 919-20;
Laskfs estimate of, (L) 935, 956,
1050; dinner for his 70th birthday,
(L) 1064-65; his death, (L) 1401;
The Art of Thought, (L) 498, 589,
658, 694, 840, (H) 892; The Great
Society (1914), (H) 12, (L) 15,
41, 64; Human Nature in Politics,
(L) 1401; introduction to Dawson
on The Principle of Official Inde-
pendence, (L) 455; The Life of
Francis Place (1898), (L) 206,
1401; Our Social Heritage, (L)
321, 329, 376; Social Judgment,
(L) 1164
Wallas, May Graham, Luc de Clapiers,
Marquis de Vauvenargues, (L)
1112, 1115
Wallas, Mrs. Graham, (H) 801, 935,
941. See also Wallas, Ada
Walpole, Horace, (L) 403, 416, (H)
832, (L) 867, (H) 868-69, (L)
907, 909, 934, 1036, (H) 1046,
1188, 1223-24, 1228, 1239, (L)
1329, 1381, 1384
Walpole, Hugh, (H) 609; Fortitude
(1913), (L) 571; The Green Mir-
ror (1917), (L) 113, 118, 134;
Silver Thorn, (L) 1148; Winters-
moon (1928), (L) 1039
Walpole, Sir Robert, (L) 487, 794
Walsh, Stephen, (L) 590
Walston, Sir Charles, Truth (1919),
(H) 214. See also Waldstein, Sir
Charles
Walton, Isaac, The Compleat Angler,
(H) 280, 281
Waltz, Jean Jacques, Colmar en
France, (H) 601
Wambaugh, Eugene, (L) 642-43,
(H) 646, (L) 700
Wan v. United States, (L) 670, 1073
War, its ultimate necessity, (H) 1291-
92
War debts, American forgiveness of,
(H) 346-47
War of the future, characteristics of,
(H) 287
Warburg, Paul M., (L) 126, (H) 133,
(L) 135, 205; The Federal Reserve
System, (H) 1260
Warburton, William, (L) 366; The
Divine Legation of Moses (2 vols.,
1737-41), (L) 784
Ward, Artemus, (L) 607, (H) 892,
(L) 1082
Ward, Mrs. Humphrey, (L) 35, (H)
176, (L) 1258; Lady Rose's Daugh-
ter, (L) 525; Robert Elsmere, (L)
174, 259, 451, 673, 963; A Writers
Recollections (1918), (L) 174, 259
Ward, John, Diary of the Rev. John
Ward, A.M., Vicar of Stratford-
upon-Avon, 1648-1679 ( 1839 ) ,
(H) 1031
Ward, Lester, (L) 661, 786, (H)
961, 1034
Ware and De Freville, Ltd. v. Motor
Trade Association, (H) 374
Warner Barnes 6- Co. v. United States,
(L) 13-14
INDEX
1645
Warr, John, The Priviledges of the
People (1649), (L) 345
Warren, Charles, Congress, the Con-
stitution, and the Supreme Court,
(L) 812-13, (H) 817; The Making
of the Constitution (1928), (H)
1109, 1113; The Supreme Court in
United States History (3 vols.,
1922), (H) 459, 817, (L) 916,
980, 1328
Warren, Edward H., (L) 708, 711
Warton, Thomas, The History of
English Poetry (1840), (L) 334
Warwick, Countess of, (L) 657
Washington, George, (H) 4, (L)
452, 547, (H) 713, (L) 729-30,
982, 1150; Thackeray's portrait of,
(L) 780, 1130
Wassermann, Jakob, The Mauritius
Case (Newton, tr., 1929), (L) 1229
Waterloo, Anthonie, (H) 482
Watson, John B,, (H) 810-11; Be-
haviorism (1925), (H) 1110, 1113,
1128
Watson, William, Baron Watson, (L)
509, 559, 691, 726, 795, (H) 797,
(L) 1077, 1142
Watteau, Antoine, (L) 539, 864, 1281,
(H) 1283
Watts, George Frederic, (L) 138
Way, Arthur S., his translation of
Euripides, (H) 556, 560
Way Out, The, (L) 545, (H) 549
Wearv. Kansas, (H) 111
Weaver v. Palmer Brothers, (H) 834
Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism (1.
Parsons, tr., 1930), (L) 1284
Webb, Beatrice, (L) 270, (H) 278,
(L) 286, 289, 306, 455, 464, 590,
602, 610, 749, (H) 753, (L) 759,
902, 911-12, 1056, 1092; anecdotes
concerning, (L) 320, 411-12; on
the outlook for intellectual work,
(L) 356; virtues of, (L) 356, 464,
647; approval of Laskfs tract on
Marx, (L) 393; diary of visit to
United States (1894), (L) 521;
recollections of Woodrow Wilson,
Spencer, Galton, and Huxley, (L)
749; love for religious mysticism,
(L) 911-12, 1176; influence of
"society" on her judgment, (L)
911—12; on the influence of aristoc-
racy, (L) 992; as Spencer's literary
executor, (L) 1094-95; My Appren-
ticeship (1926), (L) 833
Webb, Sidney, (H) 96, (L) 255, 270,
(H) 278, (L) 286, 289, 306, 411,
455, 464, 570, 590, 602, 60S, 610,
770, 902, 911-12, 1056, 1176, 1225,
1292; on the outlook for intellectual
work, (L) 356; virtues of, (L) 356,
464, 647; his socialism, (H) 375;
energetic abilities of, (L) 383; ap-
proval of Laskfs tract on Marx,
(L) 393, 408; 1897 conversation
with Roosevelt concerning Holmes,
(L) 428; Parliamentary candidate
(1922), (L) 459; urges Laski to
seek seat in Parliament, (L) 479;
his intellectual cleanliness, (L) 491;
diary of visit to United States
(1894), (L) 521; his extraordinary
utility to Labour government (De-
cember 1923), (L) 572; prospective
Cabinet post (1924), (L) 583, 584;
political talk (April 1924), (L)
610; activities in Cabinet (1924),
(L) 632; Holmes's estimate of, (H)
634; Parliamentary candidate (Oc-
tober 1924), (L) 667; his eager re-
turn to writing (November 1924),
(L) 669; recollection of Woodrow
Wilson, (L) 749, 1094; becomes
Colonial Secretary (1929), (L)
1155; his relations with departmen-
tal staff, (L) 1173; his draft of
constitution for Kenya, (L) 1210,
1217, 1240; his unwillingness to ac-
cept criticism in political matters,
(L) 1294; his part in Palestinian
problem, (L) 1296; his reflections
on holding office, (L) 1304; The
Story of the Durham Miners, 1662-
1921 (1921), (L) 334
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, joint writ-
ings: A Constitution for the Social-
ist Commonwealth of Great Britain
(1920), (L) 273-74; The Con-
sumers' Cooperative Movement
(1921) (L) 383, 388; English Lo-
cal Government: from the Revolu-
tion to the Municipal Corporations
Act (4 vols., 1906-22), (L) 123,
192, 428; English Prisons under
1646
INDEX
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, joint
writings (Continued)
Local Government (1922), (L) 429,
(H) 430, 431; The History of Trade
Unionism (rev. ed., 1920), (L) 257,
(H) 272, 275, (L) 277, 289
Weber, Max, (L) 610, (H) 615, (L)
1035
Webster, Daniel, (H) 230, (L) 1419
Webster, Pelatiah, (L) 47
Webster, Richard Everard, Viscount
Alverstone, (L) 1439
Well of Loneliness, The, by Radclyffe
Hall (1928), (L) 1136
Wellhausen, Julius (L) 150, 1073
Wellington, Duke of, (L) 226, 547,
(H) 1023, (L) 1030
Wells, H. G., (H) 70, (L) 79, (H)
79, (L) 100, 108, 352, 371-72, 437,
(H) 519, (L) 520, 567, 606, 613,
(H) 615, (L) 657, 725, 740, 760,
987, (H) 987, 994, (L) 997, (H)
1075, (L) 1190, 1314; Laskfs first
meeting with, (L) 292; his con-
versation, (L) 348, 352, 390, 465,
482, 516, 895, 1072, 1267; as artist,
not as thinker, (H) 350, 485, 615;
Laski's impressions after visiting,
(L) 355, 1267; as host to Charlie
Chaplin, (L) 376; in Washington
(1921), (H) 382; dines with
Holmes, (H) 385, 390; on Henry
James, (L) 402, 482-83, 744, 997,
1072, 1266-67; as candidate for
Parliament (1922), (L) 435, 459,
461; as a democrat, (L) 454; on
Goethe, (L) 521; his political cam-
paign (November 1923), (L) 561;
on Napoleon, (L) 725; discusses
novelist's technique with Bennett,
(L) 783, (H) 785; on modern
novelists, (L) 992; on Galsworthy,
(L) 1072, 1170; on Shaw, (L)
1072; his kindness, (L) 1072; on
the prose style of Selden, Maitland,
and Macnaghten, (L) 1072; on
Aldous Huxley, (L) 1167; on
American novelists, (L) 1170, 1411;
on a possible American renaissance,
(L) 1411; his virtues and faults,
(L) 1411, 1470; on Joyce and D.
H. Lawrence, (L) 1412; The Autoc-
racy of Mr. Parham (1930), (L)
1268; The Bulpington of Blup, (L)
1429; The Dream (1924), (L)
612; Experiment in Autobiography
(2 vols., 1934), (L) 1470; The
Future in America (1906), (L)
320-21; God the Invisible King
(1925), (L) 795; Kipps (1905),
(L) 1093; Men Like Gods, (L)
464-65, 487, 489; A Modern Utopia
(1905), (L) 16, (H) 16, (L) 18;
Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole
Island, (L) 1093; Mr. Britling Sees
It Through, (L) 27, 108; Open
Conspiracy, (L) 1057; Outline of
History (1920), (L) 279, (H) 311,
315, 350, (L) 361-62, (H) 999;
The Salvaging of Civilization
(1921), (L) 344; The Soul of a
Bishop, (L) 86, 88, 740; The Stonj
of a Great Schoolmaster (1924),
(L) 586; Tono-Bungay, (L) 993;
The World of William Clissold,
(L) 873-74, 882
Wells, Mrs. H. G., (L) 348, 987
Wendell, Barrett, (L) 690, (H) 692
Wentworth, Patricia, The Amazing
Chance (1926), (H) 1193
Wesley, John, (L) 679, 936, (H)
1003
West, William, Symbolaeographia
(1590), (L) 362, (H) 363
Westbury, Baron, see Bethell, Richard
Westermarck, Edward, Ethical Rela-
tivity (1932), (L) 1395
Western Maid, The, (H) 389, 405,
(L) 409, (H) 601, 1046
Western Union v. Czizek, (H) 597
Western Union v. Georgia, (H) 796
Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Fos-
ter, (H) 157
Westlake, John, International Law (2
vols., 1904-1907), (L) 1080, 1145,
1147, 1307
Weulersse, Georges, Le mouvement
physiocratique en France (2 vols.,
1910), (L) 484, 600, 620; Lcs
physiocrates (1931), (L) 1429
Weyl, Walter E., (L) 228, 239
Weyman, Stanley J.? Chippinge Bor-
ough (1906), (L) 134
Wharton, Edith, Hudson River Brack-
eted (1929), (L) 1218; The
Mother's Recompense, (L) 744
INDEX
1647
Wheatley, John, (L) 607
When Crummies Played, (L) 954
Whigs, Laski's dislike of, (L) 265
Whipple, Sherman L., (L) 249
Whistler, James McNeill, (H) 116,
(L) 117, (H) 268, (L) 297, 425,
440, (H) 499, 500, (L) 651, 667,
678, 802, 813, 865, 873, 1013, 1079,
1427
Whitaker, William, (L) 379
White v. Mechanics Securities Corp.,
(H) 804
White, Edward Douglass, (L) 13,
(H) 54, 69, (L) 76, 123, 133, (H)
157, (L) 159, 198, (H) 197, 210,
(L) 222, (H) 305, (L) 970;
Holmes's estimate of, (H) 294, 797,
846; his death, (H) 338-39; pos-
sible reasons for his failure to resign,
(H) 339; appointment as Chief
Justice, (H) 339, 797, 846, 1227-
28; physical infirmities in later years,
(H) 373; qualities as Chief Justice,
(H) 579-80; views of Wilson, (H)
593; on the Jews, (L) 1302; his
love for generalities, (H) 1367
White, Sir George, (L) 1403
White, Gilbert, The Natural History of
Selborne (1st ed., 1789), (H) 281,
(L) 285
White, Henry, see Nevins, Allan
White Oak Transportation Co. v.
Boston, Cape Cod & New Jork
Canal Co. , (H) 414
Whitefield, George, (H) 831-32, (L)
936
Whitehead, Alfred North, (L) 387,
953, 1161, 1301; Adventures of
Ideas, (L) 1437-38; The Aims of
Education (1929), (L) 1155; Proc-
ess and Reality (1929), (H) 1196,
(L) 1205, (H) 1207, (L) 1218,
1221, (H) 1269, 1288; Science and
the Modern World (1925), (H)
810-11, 817, (L) 820, 920, 1407-
1408; Symbolism, Its Meaning and
Effect, (L) 1227
Whiteheaded Boy, The (1916), by
Lennox Robinson, (L) 296-97
Whitfield, Ernest A., Gabriel Bonnot
deMably, (L) 1062
Whitlock, Brand, Lafayette (1929),
(H) 1236, 1253
Whitman, Mrs. Henry, (H) 199
Whitman, Walt, (L) 14, (H) 61, 236,
901, (L) 1179
Whitney, Lois, Primitivism and the
Idea of Progress in English Popular
Literature of the Eighteenth Cen-
tury (1934), (L) 1472
Whittaker, Thomas, The Neo-Plato-
nists, (L) 216
Whole Works of W. Tyndall, John
Frith, and Doct. Barnes, (1573),
(L) 321
Whymper, Edward, (L) 967
Wicksteed, Philip H., Dante and Aqui-
nas (1913), (L) 56
Wickwar, William H., The Struggle
for Freedom of the Press, 1818-1832
(1928), (L) 1115
Widdrington, Roger, (L) 1453;
Apologia Cardinalis Bellarmini pro
Jure Principum (1611), (L) 788-
89, 1445; A New Jeares Gift for
English Catholikes (1620), (L)
295-96
Widener Library, (L) 242
Wiener, Leo, Commentary to the Ger-
manic Laws and Medieval Docu-
ments (1915), (L) 15
Wigglesworth, Michael, (H) 378
Wigmore, John H., (L) 18, (H) 31,
477, 503, 1228, (L) 1242, 1252,
(H) 1370; criticism of Holmes's
dissent in Abrams case, (L) 257,
262; on Sacco-Vanzetti case, (L)
940, 946-47
Wilamowitz-Mollendorf, Ulrich von,
(L) 50, 91, 889; Aristoteles und
Athen (2 vok, 1893), (L) 562,
920; My Recollections (Richards,
tr., 1930), (L) 1245, 1290
Wilberforce, Samuel, (L) 662, 927
Wilberforce, William, (H) 598, (L)
679
Wilde, Norman, The Ethical Basis of
the State (1924), (L) 669
Wilde, Oscar, (L) 9, 14, 62, 300, 352,
(H) 1260, (L) 1267
Wilder, Thornton, The Bridge of San
Luis Rey (1927), (L) 1005; The
Cabala (1926), (L) 1025
Wilderness campaign, (H) 781
Wilkes, John, (L) 277, 299, 402; The
North Briton, (L) 433
1648
INDEX
Will to believe, (L) 75, (H) 1134
William of Champeaux, controversy
with Abelard, (L) 360
William of Moerbeke, (L) 1017
William of Ockham, see Ockham
Williams, Albert Rhys, The Russian
Land (1928), (H) 1103
Williams, Whiting, Mainsprings of
Men (1925), (H) 1367
Williamson, Henry, The Pathway
(1928), (L) 1115
Willis, George, The Philosophy of
Speech (1919), (H) 426, 606
Williston, Samuel, (H) 1102, (L)
1295
Willoughby, Ernest, (H) 485
Willoughby, W. W., The Fundamental
Concepts of Public Law, (L) 766,
775
Wilson, Edmund, (H) 1247
Wilson, Sir Henry, Field-Marshal Sir
Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries
(1927), (L) 990
Wilson, John, (L) 285
Wilson, Margaret, Daughters of India
(1928), (L) 1051-52
Wilson, R. McNair, Madame de Staelf
.High Priestess of Love (1931), (L)
1341, 1378
Wilson, Sir Roland, (L) 575
Wilson, Thomas, A Discourse upon
Usury (Tawney, ed., 1925), (L)
710, note 1, (H) 733, 737
Wilson, Woodrow, (H) 12, (L) 79,
130, (H) 142, (L) 152, 170, 175,
(H) 176, (L) 179, 185, (H) 190,
(L) 241-42, (L) 250, 253, (H)
254, 298, 339, (L) 531, 711, 1076,
1115, 1316; speech on Lincoln, (L)
15; his railroad legislation, (L) 18;
as candidate in 1916, (L) 32; as
wartime president, (L) 44, 46, 48,
58; his "new freedom/' (L) 53;
his attitude toward wartime prosecu-
tions of radicals, (L) 191; quarrel
with House, (L) 226; illness of,
(L) 241-42; refusal to pardon
Eugene Debs, (L) 310; Robert
Lansing's reflections on, (H) 346;
criticism of his style, (H) 360;
Laskfs estimate of, (L) 402, 588,
1025, 1303-1304; Lord Robert Cec-
il's estimate of, (L) 427; Colonel
House on, (L) 446; his war
addresses, (L) 446; Morley's im-
pressions of, (L) 450, as judged by
the Webbs, 1894, (L) 521, 1094;
BirrelFs estimate of Congressional
Government, (L) 521, (H) 522;
Laskfs meetings with, (L) 588,
(H) 1105, (L) 1110, (H) 1113;
his death, (L) 588; his funeral,
(H) 590; Holmes's estimate of, (H)
593; compared to MacDonald, (L)
1285, 1294; Congressional Govern-
ment (1885), (L) 402, (H) 404,
410, (L) 521, (H) 522; History of
the American People, (L) 253
Wilson v. Illinois Southern Railway,
(H) 581
Wilson v. New, (L) 54, (H) 55, (L)
68-69, (H) 69, (L) 70-71, 116
Winchester Cathedral, (H) 541, 782
Winchester College, (L) 778
Winfield, Sir Percy Henry, (H) 499,
(L) 764, 1166, 1352; quoted, (L)
928; The Chief Sources of English
Legal History (1925), (L) 833;
The History of Conspiracy and
Abuse of Legal Procedure, (L)
349, (H) 354
Wingfield-Stratford, Esme, The His-
tory of British Civilization (2 vols.,
(1928), (L) 1125
Winstanley, D. A., The University of
Cambridge in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury (1922), (L) 464
Winstanley, Gerard, Light Shining in
Buckinghamshire (1648), (L), 650,
1230
Wisconsin v. Illinois, (R) 1235
Wise, Edward Frank, (L) 286
Wiseman, Robert, The Law of Laws:
or, The Excellency of the Civil Law
(1656), (L) 419-20
Wister, Owen, (H) 955, 1071, 1075,
1204-1205, 1236, 1416; Neighbors
Henceforth (1922), (H) 463; The
Story of a Friendship (1930), (H)
1259, 1263, 1269, (L) 1299-1300;
When West Was West ( 1928 ) , ( H )
1070
Wodehouse, P. G., (L) 1127, 1257,
(H) 1346, (L) 1347, 1376, 1383,
1384, (H) 1384, (L) 1395; Big
Money (1931), (L) 1313, (H)
INDEX
1649
1314; The Clicking of Cuthbert
(1928), (L) 1057, (H) 1060; Fish
Preferred, (L) 1168, (H) 1177;
Heavy Weather (1933), (L) 1452;
Plot Water (1932), (L) 1407; In-
discretions of Archie (1922), (L)
1326; Jill the Reckless (1920), (L)
1083, 1232, 1256, 1316, 1335, (H)
1337; Leave It to Psmtth (1924),
(H) 606, 609, 803, 913; The Little
Nugget (1914), (L) 1171; Meet
Mr. Mulliner, (L) 1157; Money
for Nothing (1928), (L) 1095;
Mostlij Sally, (H) 913; Picadilly Jim
(1917), (L) 908, (H) 913, (L)
929, (H) 930; Right Ho Jeeves,
(L) 1470; Sam the Sudden, (L)
973, 986, 1423; The Small Bachelor
(1927), (L) 962, (H) 965; Un-
easy Money (1916), (L) 1478;
Ukridge (1924), (L) 1265
Wolff, Christian von, (L) 1085, 1129,
1182, 1190
Wolff Packing Co. v. Court of Indus-
trial Relations, (L) 667
Wollaston, William, The Religion of
Nature Delineated (1724), (L)
365, 366
Women: their intellectual pretensions,
(H) 618, 841, (L) 844, (H) 917;
a rum lot when publicly articulate,
(H) 681; feminist breed of, (L)
1034, (H) 1034-35; their coarse-
ness, (H) 1166
Wood, General Leonard, (L) 223
Woodberry, George Edward, (H) 722
Woodbury, Robert Morse, Social In-
surance (1917), (H) 187
Woodfall, Henry Sampson, (L) 299,
420
Woolf, Cecil N. Sidney, Bartolus of
Sassoferrato (1913), (L) 7, (H)
8, (L) 9,752
Woolf, S. J., Drawn from Life (1932),
(H) 1367
Woolf, Virginia, (L) 1299, 1351; The
Common Reader (1925), (L) 1281,
1351; Mrs. Dalloway (1925), (H)
1340, 1346
Wordsworth, William, (L) 198, (H)
287, 793, note 1, (L) 833-34,
947, 967, 1097-98, 1464; his in-
fluence on John Stuart Mill, (L)
420, 834; as fossilized old prig, (L)
451; Anatole France's estimate of,
(L) 468; Holmes's estimate of, (H)
834-35; Prelude, (L) 201
Workers* Education, Conference on,
(L) 454
Workers' Educational Association, (L)
289
Workingmen: alleged awakening of,
(H) 275; intellectuals' idealization
of, (L) 919, (H) 921, 1208; their
intellectual hunger, (L) 1186-87,
(H) 1192. See also Coal miners,
Laski's talks with
Workman, Herbert B., John Wyclif (2
vols., 1926), (L) 903, 1201
World Court, selection of judges for,
1930, (L) 1255, 1256
World Economic Conference, 1933,
(L) 1442-43
World War I, (L) 10, 34^35, 39,
43, 44-45, 77, 82, 89, (H) 111,
142, (L) 143-44, (H) 144, (L)
145, 148, (H) 149, (L) 150-51,
152, (H) 153, 169, (L) 170, (H)
1239
Worry, Holmes's tendency to, (H)
1090-91, 1110
Wren, Sir Christopher, (L) 293
Wren, Matthew, Monarchy Asserted,
(L) 293
Wrenbury, Lord, see Buckley, Henry
Burton
Wright, Chauncey, (H) 565, 634, (L)
1327-28
Wright, Ernest Hunter, The Meaning
of Rousseau (1929), (L) 1147,
1154, 1195
Wright, Robert Alderson, Baron
Wright, (L) 767-68
Writers: contemporary, English and
American, their reputation on the
Continent, (L) 440; creative, their
vanities, (L) 1126, 1171, (H) 1172
Wu, John C. H., (H) 478, 499, 519,
549, 557, 561, (L) 564, (H) 565-
66, 583, 587, 615, (L) 644, (H)
646, 745, (L) 750-51, (H) 837,
846, 869, 961, 991, (L) 997, (H)
1004, 1006, (L) 1014, 1022, (H)
1047 (L) 1050, (H) 1055-56,
1071-72, (L) 1093, (H) 1110,
1141, 1228, 1260; Holmes's advice
1650
INDEX
Wo, John C. H. (Continued)
to him before his return to China,
1924, (H) 579; danger that he may
waste energies in philosophy, (H)
900, (L) 906, (H) 910, (L) 914-
15, (H) 1228, 1253; appointment
to Shanghai Provisional Court, (H)
917; his desire to lecture in Eng-
land, (L) 1252, (H) 1253, (L)
1261; Juridical Essays and Studies
(1928), (L) 1120, (H) 1121
Wulfsohn v. Russian Socialist Feder-
ated Soviet Republic, (H) 965
Wyat, Sir Thomas, (H) 414
Wycliffe, John, (L) 293, 1201, (H)
1277
Wylie, Elinor, (H) 1166
Wylie, Max, Hindu Heaven (1933),
(L) 1441
Wyndham-Quin, Windham Thomas,
(L) 348
Xenophon, (L) 650, 713, 885, (H)
891, (L) 1404
Yale Law School, (L) 1308-1309,
1380, 1436
Yale University: Laski's associations
with, ( L ) 182; compared with Har-
vard, (L) 213; Laskfs lectureships
at, (L) 1140, 1225, 1421; compared
with Minnesota and Ohio State, ( L )
1313
Yazoo 6- Mississippi Valley Rd. v.
Ckrksdale, (H) 377
Year Books, (L) 1232, 1339, 1359,
1404
Yetts, Walter Perceval, (L) 1427-28
Yonge, Charlotte, (L) 983
Young, Allyn, (L) 986, 1004-1005,
1024, 1050, 1057, 1062, 1065, 1111,
1138, 1147
Young, Arthur, Annals of Agriculture,
(L) 1343; Travels in France, (L)
1148
Young, Francis Brett, My Brother
Jonathan (1928), (L) 1099, 1104;
The Red Knight (1921), (L) 380
Young, Sir George, (L) 380-81; The
New Germany (1920), (L) 263
Young, George Frederick, The Medici
(2vok, 1909), (H) 1340
Young men: Holmes's liking for, (H)
4, 114, 142, 855, 938; Holmes's
influence on, (L) 906; their produc-
tivity in science, mathematics,
music, and poetry, (L) 791-92,
(H) 793, (L) 1354
Zaghlul, Saad, (L) 483
Zamacois y Zabala, Eduardo, (H)
1067
Zane, John M, (L) 184-85, (H) 892,
(L) 998-99, 1004; his criticism of
Holmes, (H) 180, (L) 181, (H)
183, 817, 886, (L) 888, (H) 1003,
1044
Zangwill, Israel, (L) 613; Ghetto
Comedies (1907), (L) 613; The
War for the World (1916), (L)
11, (H) 12
Zeiller, Jacques, L'idee de Tetat dans
saint Thomas D'Aquin (1910), (L)
127
Zimmern, Mrs. Alfred, (H) 404
Zimmern, Sir Alfred, (L) 239, (H)
390, (L) 392, (H) 397, 404, (L)
545, 870; Laski visits in Wales, (L)
309-10; American visit (1922), (L)
432, (H) 462; America and Europe,
and Other Essatjs, (L) 1136, (H)
1141; The Greek Commonwealth,
(L) 40, 45, 98, 169, 231, 433, 551,
(H) 556, 560, (L) 562, 595, 649,
953, 1117, 1322, 1474; Learning
and Leadership (1927), (H) 1102;
The Third British Empire (1926),
(H) 914
Zionism, (L) 223, 632-33, 702-703,
1261
Ziska, John, (L) 777
Zola, fimile, (L) 110, (H) 937, 1113,
1239; Germinal (L) 1474
Zoos, Holmes's pleasure in, (H) 556-
57, 684
Zorn, Anders, (H) 139, 168, (L)
297
Zucchero, Federigo, (L) 735
115746
3m
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