Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1916-08-30
SEES KEEN COMPETITION
AT CLOSE Of THE WAR
All Glasses Must Prepare, Elihu
Root Tells American Bar
Association.

CHICAGO, August 3o.-Keener COM
petition in all economic activities iii
sure to be one of the results of the
European war, and lawyers. as we'll
as other classes of citizens. must pre-
pare themselves to meet 1t, President
Elihu Root of the American Bar Assoc
citation said today in addressing the
annual meeting of the association
Changes in the administration of JUS
| tice. lessening of the overhead cost
of running legal machinery, and more
stringent qualifications for admission
to the bar were some of his prepara-
tory suggestions.
when the war Is over we shall find
ourselves In very different world
from that which witnessed the Aus
trian ultimatum to Serbia" Mr.. Root
declared. 1T will be world in which
to the peaceful competition of produce
ton and commerce with a vast increase
OF power to compete caused by the
training of hardship and sacrifice.
Plainly. the neutral nations who have
neither endured the sufferings nor
achieved the rewards of this hard ex-
perience may not look with Indifference
upon these events.
Duty Of All Americans.
1T is plainly the duty of all Amer
leans. whatever their calling, to con-
| slider by what means they can contrib
ute. through either the increase or the
conservation of power in their own
fields of action, toward the permanent
higher efficiency of the people of the
| United States.
| There is no body of citizens to whom
this duty should appeal more strongly
ject vitality affects the relations be-
| tween the individual and the state
regulated by law and the Fundamental
conceptions upon which our system OF
government is based"
/ The underlying cause of the defec-
tive administra ton of the law, Mr.
Root said, was that the bar and the
people of the country generally pro
coed upon a false assumption as &c
their true relation to judicial proceed
ings.
| 'Unconsciously," he continued, Eve
all treat the business of administering
| justice as something to be done for
private benefit instead OF treating ii
| primarily as something to be done for
the public service. The administration
of law Is affected by the general at
titude in which citizens think about
1 what they are going to get out of their
i
4 they can contribute to their country.
| Such Attitude Natural.
| Our political system makes such an
| attitude on the part of the bar very
natural and easy. With our highly de-
veloped individualism, our respect for
the sanctity of individual rights. our
| conception of government as designed
to secure those rights. it is quite rat
| ura1 that lawyers employed to assert
| the rights of individual clients and
| loyalty devoted to their clients in
| terest should acquire habit of mind
in which they think chiefly of the in
dividual view of judicial procedure,
and seldom of the public view of the
| same procedure. 1t is natural that the
| same habit of thought should be car
| ried into our legislatures by the law
| yers who make up the greater part of
| those bodies; and with our government
| of narrow and strictly limited powers
| it is natural that there should be a
continual pressure in the direction of
| promoting individual rights and priv
| ileges and opportunities and very lit
| tie pressure to maintain the comm u
| nity's rights against the individual and
| to insist upon the individuals duties
| to the community.
| The public tendency is exhibited at
| the very beginning of the whole bust