Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 24.pdf/366

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The Legal World sions, in which most of New York's criminals are sentenced. Judge Mulqueen was made to bear the brunt of the charges. He holds the record of 125 sentences suspended during 1911, 48 being of convicts guilty of grand lar ceny, and 36 of burglars. The charges, however, have related chiefly to cases in which evidence was disregarded by the court, and the jury was directed to acquit the prisoner. Not only Judge Mulqueen, but also other judges of General Sessions, have been under in vestigation by the Grievance Committee of the Bar Association. The charges raise the question not of the soundness of the systems of suspended and inde terminate sentences, so much as of the manner in which it has been adminis tered. It is impossible to draw any conclusions from the facts already made public which are certain to be fair to the judges whose intelligence and integrity are questioned. The main point to be settled in the present controversy is whether the action of the judges under investigation supplies any definite basis for the report, long current in the New York Police Department, that there are certain "political" judges who deal leniently with cases of prisoners and can bring the influence of politicians and district leaders to bear to get off crimi nals. The Lake Mohonk Conference The eighteenth annual session of the Lake Mohonk Conference on Inter national Arbitration was held at Mo honk Lake, N. Y., May 15-17. The opening address was delivered by Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, and head of the Association for International Concilia tion, on "The International Mind." He said in part: "The consideration by the Senate of

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the United States of the projected treaties of general arbitration with Great Britain and with France came to a rather lame and impotent conclu sion. The debate, fortunately con ducted in open session, revealed that few members of the Senate have any real grasp of our international relations or any genuine appreciation of our international responsibilities. . . . "We must learn to bring to the con sideration of public business in its inter national aspects what I may call the international mind, and the international mind is still rarely to be found in high places. That the international mind is not inconsistent with sincere and de voted patriotism is clearly shown by the history of the great Liberal statesmen of the nineteenth century who had to deal with the making of Europe as we know it. If Lord Palmerston had the international mind at all, surely Mr. Gladstone had it in high degree. The late Marquis of Salisbury, whom no one ever accused of lacking devotion to national policies and purposes, had it also, al though a Tory of the Tories. Cavour certainly had it, as did Thiers. Lord Morley has it, and so has his colleague Lord Haldane. The late Senator Hoar had it when on a somewhat important occasion he expressed the hope that he should never so act as to place his coun try's interests above his country's honor. It was the possession of this international mind that gave to the brilliant adminis trations of Secretary Hay and Secre tary Root their distinction and their success. The lack of it has marked other administrations of foreign affairs, both in the United States and in European countries, either with failure or with continuing and strident friction." Other addresses were delivered by Samuel T. Dutton of New York, Dr. Benjamin F. Trueblood of Washing