SPEAKERS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR JUsserand HONORABLE JOSEPH H. CHOATE ROBERT C. SMITH, K. C. MR. JUSTICE JENKS LAWRENCE E. SEXTON, New York, Chairman JOHN G. AGAR, New York FREDERICK B. CAMPBELL, New York FRANCIS S. BANGS, New York HARRY M. INGRAM, Potsdam PROCEEDINGS AT THE DINNER President Root presiding. President Root: Mr. President, your Excellency, Gentlemen of the Bar, ladies and gentlemen: In behalf of that great organization which we love to call the Bar of our imperial State, represented by the Association of the Bar of the State, I welcome the President of the United States. (Applause.) I welcome the Ambassador who represents our ancient ally, the sister Republic of France. (Applause.) I welcome the distinguished Justice of the Court of the King's Bench of the nation which lies along our northern border. (Applause.) I welcome the distinguished representative of the Bar of Canada. (Applause.) I welcome the Secretary of War of the United States. (Applause.) I welcome the Federal and State Judges. (Applause.) All of whom have come to honor us by their presence and to testify by their presence to their consciousness that there lives in the Bar, in its independence, its dignity and its faithful performance of its high duty, an influence for liberty, and justice and for civilization that is worthy of their homage and their respect. (Applause.) My friends of the Bar, we have many shortcomings, and no one knows them better than we. We do sometimes in the ardency of our advocacy for our clients tangle justice in the net of form, but that is the defect of a virtue, and the virtue is that noblest and most indispensable of virtues, the virtue of loyalty. (Applause.) Loyalty to the cause we represent, to the client who entrusts his interests to our charge. I think that we are upon the threshold of a period in which deeper and more fundamental questions must be |