There has been a good deal of ill-informed criticism of the education at the Inns of Court. One point made is that the reason of the large attendance of students at the lectures was because the lecturers were also the examiners. As a matter of fact, half the lecturers did not examine, and more than half the examiners did not lecture; and every student had to pass in papers which were neither set nor read by the lecturers. Another baseless objection is that the lecturers are young men thinking only of getting into practice, who treat their appointments merely as a means of making a little money until practice comes. This objection is based on the fact already noted, that the Council now fills vacancies not with old but with young men. What the critics forget is that it continues in office young men who prove their fitness until they become old. Of the present lecturers, more than half have been teaching under the Council for the last wenty years, and many of

them were teaching at the Universities before they were appointed by the Council. It is true they practise, and it is a good thing too. What the Council has succeeded in creating is a staff of legal teachers much the same as the staff of medical teachers of a hospital, who are also practitioners of what they teach. It is hardly too much to hope that if the Inns of Court continue their work on these lines, they will yet create a school of practical law such as has not existed in England since the great age of Elizabeth.

No doubt the school is at present capable of improvement, and no doubt it will be in time improved. This is not the season, however, when its class-rooms are almost denuded of students, to begin reforms. I may, however, be allowed to suggest two which I hope will be considered when better times come. One is that a building with proper offices and lecturerooms should be provided for the work. At present the classes are moved from Inn to Inn from term to term, and the only permanent home of the school are two sets of chambers up three pairs of stairs. Another is that more tutorial teaching should be provided. At present it is true there is a director of legal studies who can be consulted by the students as to their reading. But one such person is not enough. Roughly, the course for the Bar consists of three groups of subjects-Common Law, Evidence, and Pleading; Equity, Real Property, and Conveyancing; and Roman

Law, Constitutional Law, and Legal History-not to mention special subjects like Indian and Dutch Law. It would, in my opinion, be of infinite benefit to many students if one of the lecturers in each of these groups was appointed to attend at the lecture-rooms between certain hours each day of the educational terms, not only to advise students as to their reading, but to help them to surmount difficulties in their reading with classes numbering from one hundred to one hundred and fifty men, it is clear a lecturer can give no such assistance to each student personally. However, theolasses do not number so many students by a long way now, and till they do the matter is of small importance.

I have mentioned examinations, and when examinations are mentioned it is a sort of custom to cite what are called "howlers" from answers given in them. These seem to be regarded by the public as funny. As a rule, the only thing funny about them is that the public oan see any fun in them.

In my time I have read thousands of answers from thousands of students both at the Inns of Court and at various Universities, and my experience is that the worse the answer the duller it is, which is natural, seeing that generally the worse the answer the stupider the student. I can now remember only one answer which was at

once bad and good; and to this moment I am not sure that the fellow who gave it was not having a joke at my expense. It was at a class examination. I had been lecturing on the Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery. The gist of my lecture was as follows: The Court of Chancery was called a Court of Conscience because, unlike a Court of Law, it intervened not so much to protect a plaintiff from wrongdoing as to prevent the defendant from soiling his conscience by doing wrong; this was a religious more than a civil principle, and its adoption was due to the fact that all the earlier Chancellors were ecclesiastios; and the way it was enforced was by the court issuing an order to compel the defendant to do himself what a man of conscience would do, and if he disobeyed the order by imprisoning him for contempt of court; this process against the defendant personally gave rise to the maxim Equity acts in personam. The question I set was, Why was the Court of Chancery called a Court of Conscience? and the answer I received was as follows: "The Court of Chancery was called a Court of Conscience because it intervened to compel the defendant to soil his conscience; and it acted in this way because the early Chancellors were all ecclesiastics. Hence the maxim that Equity acts in parsonam.”

SOMEBODY shakes me by my shoulder, and I wake to the consciousness of a dark room and a determined steward.

"Four o'clock, sir!"

I get out of my warm bed, very unwillingly, and dress lightly in a white cricket shirt, grey flannel trousers, and a blue pea-jacket and a muffler, and go out of the hut to the garage. Dawn is just breaking. The sky is still bright with stars, and a moon is drowsily hanging like a golden gong in the south-west. The air is extraordinarily fresh and oold, and soon I am tearing joyfully through it on a clamorous motor-bioyole. Down the road through the marshes I rush on my mile-long ride to the sheds.

Outside the office I dismount and go inside the bare room, with its charts and its long table, and meet the sleepy-eyed duty officer, who is wearing "gum-boots" and an overcoat over his pyjamas, and is obviously looking forward to settling down once more to sleep. The duty pilot comes in after him, with a flying-cap on his head, and a muffler round

-The Dawn Patrol.

his neok, and a pair of gloves in his hand. A welcome oup of tea is brought in by a massive bluejacket, and then I snatch up a life-belt, a pair of binoculars, the Thermos flask and Malted Milk tablets, my charts, and a few odd necessaries, and, accompanied by the pilot, I go over to the slipway, at the end of which floats the seaplane, with its wide white wings reflecting the pale light of dawn. A group of men in great rubber boots stand in the water holding the wings.

When I get to the edge of the water, I climb on to the back of one, and he wades out into the water until I can stand on the float and climb up into a seat in front of the pilot.

It is an ample seat-wide enough for three people-and I sit on a soft cushion over a petrol-tank. The wireless sets, in varnished wooden boxes, are fixed in position in front of me. My machine-gun is ready to be fixed at a moment's notice, and I settle myself into the seat and put down my various impedimenta and wait for the start,

The pilot in the back seat examines his instruments, and soon there is a hissing noise as he turns on the compressed air. The propeller in front of me moves round slowly. The engine fires and begins to start with a roaring noise.

The propeller vanishes as it gathers speed, and I can see straight ahead with an uninterrupted view.

The engine is tested with men hanging on to the wings. The pilot waves his hand, the men leave go, and we begin to move out across the wide harbour with its grey battleships and lean destroyers, and merchant ships painted in strange patches.

The moon is growing paler now, and nearly all the stars have vanished before the silver of the dawn. On our right is the outline of a red-roofed harbour town, quiet and asleep. On the left are the great sheds of the station, and the low green hills beyond. We face the wind. The engine recommences its roar, and the seaplane begins to move quickly across the water with a steady noise. Faster and faster it rushes on, then begins to leap from wave-top to wave-top until we rise into the air, and move at a rushing pace just over the pale oily water.

The roar of the motor is soon registered no more by my ear, lulled by its perpetuity. I find it glorious to be winging my way into the heart of the dawn over the silver water. Above a long floating boom we pass, and turn east towards the wide misty level of the sea. Ahead

of me in the haze burns a redeyed sun, looking hot and only half awake.

Far to my left and far to my right is a faint grey coast-line as we move up the widening estuary. I bring out a little blue-covered note-book, and sharpen a pencil and prepare to record the name, nationality, and type of every ship, with a brief note of its cargo, course, and characteristics.

Through the haze suddenly appears a little group of ships anchored round a stout red lightship, with its great lantern at the top of the mast and the cheery white-painted name on its side.

My pencil is very busy as we sweep round in oircles, while I make notes of the different types of ships. Neutral ships being luridly decorated with painted colours and their names in enormous white letters, are easily recorded. It is somehow very dramatic to see a great steamer loom through the mist, and to read Jan Petersen - Norge or Hector Sverige on its black sides as it sweeps majestically under the seaplane, its churning propeller leaving a wide lane of white bubbling foam.

It gives such a splendid idea of far-flung commerce-of nation linked up with nation by these loaded ships. You realise how the forests of Scandinavia have been despoiled to fill these deoks with the towering piles of olean fair wood. There is something in the passing of the great ship proclaiming its nationality and origin in such bold characters that

seems like the triumphant note of an organ.

Yet these signs are the heartfelt appeal of an apprehensive and vulnerable vessel, hoping against hope that the vivid stripes of colour and the proclamation of nationality will protect it from the cruel, greedy submarine.

Then we leave the little orowd of anchored ships below and sail on into the mist to the lonelier levels of the sea. Now and then we overtake some heavily-laden freighter, low in the water, pounding outwards on its hazardous journey, its plain unlettered sides showing that it is a vessel of the Allies.

In front of me I wind a little handle. This causes the wireless set to connect with the engine, and the little motor revolves rapidly. I press the brass key, and a blue spark spits and splutters inside one of the boxes. Then I call up the seaplane station far behind me in the mist and record my position. Putting the telephone - receiver over my ears, I hear above the roar of our engines the sharp staccato signals of some warship below us on the grey sea. As I move a lever round a series of studs I hear it more clearly or more faintly as I get more or less in "tune" with it. Then I remove the receiver, having tested the wireless instruments and found them correct, and once more look over the side to the chilly sea.

We fly over three or four little trawlers steaming slowly

along, dredging the waterway for mines. Then over two leaning masts of some wreck, which pierce the water like thin lances. Next we pass above a Belgian relief ship, advertising its nature by means of innumerable placards and flags and colours, which are yet not sufficient to keep it immune from the Germans and their unreliable promises. Now it is a familiar line of mud-hoppers carrying a load of dredged mud to some deep dumpingground. Now over a couple of lean grey torpedo-boats, nosing every where, carefully and suspiciously, protecting the Channels.

So at times over ever-varying craft, and at times over grey wet loneliness, we travel on in our long patrol, until at last the squat red shape of a lightship appears through the haze, and we know that we have reached the limit of our outward journey. We sweep low over the isolated vessel, wave our hands to the men on board, and start to return home by a different route, and roar on over mile after mile of water glittering in the sun, which is slowly dissipating the mist of early morning.

Soon a group of ships are met steaming along towards us, and I recognise the vessels which I had seen anchored together waiting for the dawn. They are left behind us, and we regain the land from which we started. Over the sleeping seaport town we pass, and can see its red and brown roofs lit by the sun, and its empty