often at the risk of life and health, has triumphed over a scourge which has played havoc with humanity throughout the ages!  Typhoid has been conquered, and infant paralysis; gangrene and tetanus, which have taken such toll of the wounded in Flanders and France; yellow fever has been stamped out in the tropics; hideous lesions are now healed by a system of drainage.  The very list of these achievements is bewildering, and latterly we are given hope of the prolongation of life itself.  Here in truth are Christian deeds multiplied by science, made possible by a growing knowledge of and mastery over Nature.

Such men by virtue of their high mission are above the vicious social and commercial competition poisoning the lives of so many of their fellow citizens.  In our democracy they have found their work, and the work is its own reward.  They give striking testimony to the theory that absorption in a creative or contributive task is the only source of self-realization.  And he has little faith in mankind who shall declare that the medical profession is the only group capable of being socialized, or, rather, of socializing themselves—­for such is the true process of democracy.  Public opinion should be the leaven.  What is possible for the doctor is also possible for the lawyer, for the teacher.  In a democracy, teaching should be the most honoured of the professions, and indeed once was,—­before the advent of industrialism, when it gradually fell into neglect,—­occasionally into deplorable submission to the possessors of wealth.  Yet a wage disgracefully low, hardship, and even poverty have not hindered men of ability from entering it in increasing numbers, renouncing ease and luxuries.  The worth of the contributions of our professors to civilization has been inestimable; and fortunately signs are not lacking that we are coming to an appreciation of the value of the expert in government, who is replacing the panderer and the politician.  A new solidarity of teaching professional opinion, together with a growing realization by our public of the primary importance of the calling, is tending to emancipate it, to establish it in its rightful place.

Nor are our engineers without their ideal.  A Goethals did not cut an isthmus in two for gain.

Industrialism, with its concomitant “corporation” practice, has undoubtedly been detrimental to the legal profession, since it has resulted in large fees; in the accumulation of vast fortunes, frequently by methods ethically questionable.  Grave social injustices have been done, though often in good faith, since the lawyer, by training and experience, has hitherto been least open to the teachings of the new social science, has been an honest advocate of the system of ’laissez faire’.  But to say that the American legal profession is without ideals and lacking in the emulative spirit would be to do it a grave injustice.  The increasing influence of national and state bar associations evidences a