The Legal World ing features of the final session in the case on Dec. 30. The Court declared that the evidence showed some of the men to be guilty of murder, but that as they were not charged with that crime in the indictments, they could not be punished for it. "The certainty of pun ishment, not its severity," said the Court, "is the important consideration in the administration of criminal justice." Ac cordingly, the heaviest sentence im posed was that passed on Frank M. Ryan, president of the Ironworkers' International Union, who was given seven years' imprisonment. Eight others were sentenced to prison terms of six years. The 'Panama Canal 'Protest The text of the formal protest of the British Government against the provi sion of the Panama Canal act exempt ing American coastwise shipping from paying tolls was first made public early in December. The protest, which was in the form of a letter to Ambassador Bryce from Earl Grey, was a cogently reasoned document, moderate in tone, which concisely stated arguments al ready largely familiar, and carefully forbore to dispute the legal rights of the United States to control the canal and to aid American shipping by sub sidy if it should so desire. The Senate received the protest in the same spirit as that in which it treated the exemp tion of American coastwise shipping last summer, with about the same majority in favor of dealing with the question of tolls as purely a domestic question in volving no breach of treaty obligations. The President of the United States has missed the opportunity to dignify the closing months of his administration by urging that the issue of the alleged vio lation of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty be submitted to the Hague Permanent
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Court of Arbitration as soon as prac ticable. He did, in his speech before the International Peace Forum in New York, Jan. 4, declare himself in favor of arbi tration, "when we have reached the exact issue" and when diplomatic nego tiation has failed, thus exhibiting a slight modification of his views since his recent utterance in favor of deter mination of the questions in our national courts. But the issue has already been presented, and a government which seems to be in the wrong can scarcely rely on diplomacy to right itself. Society for Judicial Settlement of Inter national 'Disputes "Essentials to be Applied by an Inter national Court" and "Sanctions of Inter national Law" were special topics for discussion at the third annual confer ence of the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Dis putes held at Washington, D. C, Dec. 20-21. A strong sentiment showed itself in favor of the arbitration of the Panama Canal dispute. Everett P. Wheeler made a notably persuasive address in which he urged that the President of the United States accept the proposal of arbitration contained in the formal protest presented to this Government by Earl Grey. He quoted from the treaties of 1850, 1901 and 1908, between the United States and Great Britain, and from his quotation drew the con clusion that "it would be better a thousand times that the United States should submit its case to the Hague tribunal than that it should be false to its plighted faith and the honorable traditions of one hundred and twentyfive years." Governor Simeon E. Baldwin of Con necticut presided and in his annual address discussed the international court as an incident of the evolution of the
