prudence based upon our historical ideas of civil liberty, there should be substituted a system in which the stabilizing influence of the judiciary would be impaired by an attempt to apply in the courts principles relating to political, economic, social and industrial matters, more appropriate for regulation by legislative enactment.

January 17, 1919.

HENRY W. TAFT,

Chairman.

SCHEDULE A

AN ACT TO AMEND THE PENAL LAW, IN RELATION TO CERTAIN OFFENSES OF A HUSBAND AGAINST HIS WIFE

The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:

Section 1. Section ten hundred and ninety-one of the penal law is hereby amended to read as follows:

§ 1091. Wife a Competent Witness. In all prosecutions under the previous section, the wife shall be a competent witness against the husband, but no conviction under [this article] such section shall be had upon the testimony of the wife unsupported by other evidence.

§ 2. The Penal Law is hereby amended by inserting therein, after section ten hundred and ninety-one, a new section, to be section ten hundred and ninety-one-a, to read as follows:

§ 1091-a. Communication of Venereal Disease by Husband to Wife, and Abandonment. Any man who, having communicated a venereal disease to his wife, abandons her in destitute circumstances, and wilfully omits to furnish necessary and proper food, clothing, shelter or medical care and treatment, is guilty of a felony, punishable by imprisonment

for not more than four years. Proof of abandonment of such wife in destitute circumstances and omission to furnish necessary and proper food, clothing, shelter or medical care and treatment is prima facie evidence that such omission is wilful. The provisions of section twenty-four hundred and forty-five prohibiting the disclosure of confidential communications between husband and wife shall not apply to prosecutions under this section.

§ 3. This act shall take effect September first, nineteen hundred and nineteen.

Henry A. Forster, of New York:

There are two or three matters, Mr. President, that I would like to discuss very briefly. First, as to why the Bolsheviki Courts were weak.

Bolshevism is not the cause of the weakness of Russian Courts. Servility is, alas, the Russian judicial tradition and is the cause of the weakness in the Russian Courts. Judicial independence is unknown alike in Russia and Pan-Germany. It is immaterial whether the Russian or Pan German executive be called a Czar, Kaiser, Sultan, King or Premier. For generations no judge in Russia, Germany or Austria was able or willing to assert any independent judgment as against a ukase or order from any of the rulers of these autocracies as to how any case should be decided, whether wrong or right. The few judges who tried to assert their judicial independence were imprisoned and disbarred and their judgments were recalled by executive ukase or order. Germany and Austria (also Russia) were police states, where the police punished nearly all alleged misdemeanants ex parte without evidence, notice, hearing or trial, to the extent of not more. than 14 days imprisonment and 40 marks, or 200 kronen fine. The convicted misdemeanants were allowed the nominal priv

ilege of an appeal from the ex parte police conviction to the County Court or provincial governor, but as the policeman's word was always taken, such appeals were useless except on points of law only (New York State Bar Association Yearbook, 1917, pp. 202-208.)

No Russian or Pan-German Judge trained under the above servile traditions is morally or intellectually fit to serve as a member of any court where judicial independence prevails. Bulgaria has no judicial traditions; it is rotten.

In Turkey judicial venality has always been such that capitulations withholding jurisdiction over foreigners residing or sojourning in Turkey, from all Turkish Courts, have been the only way whereby foreigners could do business in or live in the country. Judicial servility is a condition the Bolsheviki inherited.

Second. What is the cause of the western demand for the recall of Judges and Judicial decisions?

Law reform is more needed than ever, especially to check the agitation for the judicial recall. The agitation for the judicial recall in this country is not the result of any desire tc redistribute property. Outside of the Bolsheviks in a few States, there is no substantial demand in this country to redistribute property.

Our lax law enforcement, especially of the criminal law, has been taken advantage of by skillfully camouflaged nominally pseudo-Swiss (but really Potsdam) propaganda, which seeks to induce us to apply the Swiss principle of plebiscitary recall of some non-judicial officers, to our judiciary.

Our criminal procedure is only from one-tenth to one-twentieth as effective as that of any enlightened European country. Unpunished crime flourishes here to such an extent as to shock the people's sense of justice. This is the prime cause why

the pseudo-Swiss judicial recall propaganda was so successful in making millions of patriotic citizens not unwilling for a few years before the great war to to give judicial recall a State trial.

"Do our laws protect criminals?

"Why the United States leads the world in the relative pro"portion of murders, lynchings and other felonies * * *? (51 American Law Review, 239-48; Australian Law Times, February 10 and 24, 1917; Docket, November, 1917), dealing with this subject was sent to every Judge of each of our 51 Courts of last resort, to the American Bar Association, to the 48 State Bar Associations and to the large local Bar Associations. A few individual answers were received to the effect that crime is a disease or that the people are said to be losing faith in punishment as a cure for crime.

In "Dangerous Doctrines" (51 American Law Review, 904-6), the speaker wrote (relating to judicial recall):

"In six Pacific Coast, Rocky Mountain and Missouri Valley States, the absolute local sovereignty theory that the will of any local crowd or of the plurality of the State electorate is the supreme law, which is a higher law than any treaty, constitution or statute law, is sought to be enforced by the judicial recall, and also in one of these States by a plebiscitary recall of judicial decisions. The final report of New York State Bar Association Committee upon the duty of courts to refuse to execute statutes in contravention of the fundamental law shows that some leaders of thought and action in the recall States avow that their Judges should bow to the local crowd will, all treaties, constitutions or laws to the contrary notwithstanding; or as some of the localists assert their State Judges should have one ear or both ears to the ground. Should this theory or practice be extended, it might ultimately lead to absolute local sovereignty for each of our 49 legislative units (1 Congress or Federal

Legislature and 48-State Legislatures) without any federal council or any other body whereby treaties, unity or co-ordination could be enforced, or conflicts of laws resolved. There is also a practical judicial district or county local sovereignty in three fourths of our union by reason of the condition existing in 36 of our 48 States, whereby the trial Judge is a mere moderator in all jury cases where questions of fact are tried, alike civil or criminal (Sunderland, Inefficiency of the American Jury, 13 Michigan Law Review, 307-316). This absolute and growing local sovereignty by county, judicial district and State, is liable to become as disintegrating and dangerous to our federal democratic republic as the Liberum Veto or absolute unanimity of the one Polish Diet was to the Polish Commonwealth.

"For generations every attempt of the Polish patriots to reform the archaisms of the constitution of their Commonwealth was defeated by the abuse of the Liberum Veto by the pensioners of and the sympathizers with the three surrounding military monarchies, which ultimately partitioned Poland because of the inefficiency that their pensioners and dependents had prevented the abolition of. (8 Cambridge Modern History, 525-7; 21 Ency. Britannica, 917-19.)

"When the Polish patriots twice temporarily abolished the Liberum Veto, the military power of the partitioning monarchies was used first to restore the Liberum Veto, and later after the Commonwealth's weakness had been thereby re-established, they partitioned Poland because of its inefficiency and defencelessness, which the Liberum Veto had produced. (8 Cambridge Modern History, 522-3, 535-6; Ency. Britannica, 918-920.)

"According to French official documents, the railroad strikes and general strikes in the large industries of France between 1871 and 1906 were organized by the secret service of or else paid for out of the secret service funds of the nation across the Rhine in order to weaken France by stirring up the wage earners to revolution and class war; to establish communism and overthrow private