A Judge Comes of Age

THE senior justice of the United States court in New York (southern district) gives reminiscences of his career as lawyer, prosecutor, and judge, The sense of futility which any account of any such career is bound to arouse makes it rather depressing reading; yet its chief value to a judicious reader is that it does arouse this sense. Judge Knox seems aware of the ineptitude, incompetence, and imbecility of statutory law as a factor in the progress of civilization, but he has been content to take it as it is and administer it as best he might. He says that as a child he received the first vague impulse towards his profession from being in a courtroom when a malefactor was sentenced to be hanged; yet he doubts that a child should be permitted to witness such a scene. On the other hand, Brand Whitlock left record that as a young lawyer his first case, a relatively small matter, brought him into court as a prosecutor. He won; and its effect was to make him resolve that never again, come what might, would he put the law’s machinery in motion against anybody, under any circumstances; and he never did.

So while reading Judge Knox’s book is profitable to a reflective mind, it is not pleasurable. In the course of his work the judge comes out strongly against the political rascalities and economic idiocies which are rampant in our public affairs, and as strongly against the flagitious practices prevalent among labor leaders, which those in control ot our public affairs have abetted. His clear vision of what the end of all this must be, and his power of equally clear statement about it, make the reading of his book almost imperative — though, again, not for pleasure. A. J. N.