him before his work was done. The present XIII. Master of the Rolls, who succeeded him as President, most generously said to me, after six months' experience of Prize, and with a frankness which one, who like himself is universally admitted to be a consummate judge, can well afford to employ : "There was very little for me to do when I went there. The late President had lucidly and logically evolved all the principles. It only remained to apply them."

Before his death I was authorised by Mr. Asquith, then Prime Minister, in recognition of the President's extraordinary services, to inform him that he proposed to recommend him to the King for the honour of a peerage. He was touched and pleased, but, for private reasons on which it is not now necessary to enlarge, he was unable to accept this distinction. But he told me that he did most dearly covet one mark of public recognition to which he thought it might be in my power to contribute. He explained that ever since he began his Prize work it had been his hope that the University of Oxford would make him an honorary D.C.L. It seemed to me so certain that the University authorities would rejoice to show honour to the greatest judge of international law since Stowell that I gave him more encouragement than the event warranted. I immediately saw Sir Erle Richards, K.C., the learned Professor of International Law at Oxford University, himself a busy leader in the President's Court, and proposed the matter to him. He warmly agreed, and undertook to place the affair before the

XIII. University authorities. He was, however, in

credible as it may seem, quite unsuccessful; for apparently those to whom these matters were committed had resolved to suspend the bestowal of the distinction during the War. I believe, though I am not sure, that they admitted exceptions to this rule. If I am right, no exception thereto could have been more brilliantly defended than the one I now discuss. I reported the result to Sir Samuel, telling him that I was sure his name would be on the first post-war list. He whimsically and rather strangely (for he was not old) replied, "Why, I may be dead then." But I could see that he was very deeply disappointed.

I profoundly regret the answer which was given to an indication of hope which was known to have proceeded from Sir Samuel Evans himself; not that the distinction, great as it is, could have conferred any additional reputation upon the President, but because his Doctorate would have shed fresh lustre on a School devoted to the science of Civil Law.

Of his death there is little that need be told except that he became aware that he was a doomed man some thirty-six hours before he died. He received the news with unruffled serenity, though he was a man who dearly loved life; set himself for many hours with precise detachment to arrange his earthly affairs; and then died in a manner very becoming to a brave Welsh gentleman.

I have said little of the private qualities of the late President. But no more attractive personality for thirty years flashed his sword

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in Parliamentary debate, exchanged quips and XIII. pleasantries in the robing-room, or enlivened by a penetrating wit the aridity of forensic controversy. In social life he was altogether delightful. No lighter-hearted, no more jocund companion ever sat down to a pleasant table. Dr. Johnson once said (though I cannot, writing at sea, find the precise passage, and may not exactly recall the words), "A man may very well be grave in his study in the morning and cheerful at the tavern in the afternoon." If you substitute the social life which has replaced the tavern, these words might almost afford a summary of the President's philosophy of life. Great judges develop from very strangely contrasted soils. Lord Cairns and Lord Selborne, two of the more illustrious of my predecessors, commenced the day's labours betimes by prayer meetings at their houses, which were largely attended by learned counsel who could perhaps have been persuaded that it was their duty to accept county court judgeships. It is not recorded of the late President that his early morning activities were precisely of this class. But he none the less belongs to the high company of the immortals who have stamped their individuality for all time upon the majestic fabric of British law. And if a warm and tender heart, an unswerving integrity of conduct, and a lofty conception of friendship, are accounted acceptable weights in the scales by which we appraise ethical quality, Sam Evans must be pronounced a good as well as a distinguished

man.

XIV.

XIV

NEIL PRIMROSE

NEIL PRIMROSE was born on the 14th December 1882. He was the second son of Lord Rosebery, and was brought up almost from childhood in a mixed atmosphere of politics and sport. He retained during his short life a passion for both these occupations.

He was educated at Eton, but left a little early in order to vary and complete his education on the Continent. Those who knew him well before and after this year of absence traced to its influence upon him a certain easy and graceful unconventionality which was one of his greatest

charms.

He went to Oxford in his eighteenth year, and I suspect that he spent there the happiest years of his life. At least I remember him telling me in France, when we were talking of old things, that though he had liked Eton much he had liked Oxford more.

His life at the University was by no means studious. Unlike his brilliant and ill-fated contemporary, Raymond Asquith, he did not affect the Union; still less attempt to fill any office there. Little serious academic work was necessary

in the case of so clever a man, who never made XIV. academic distinction a goal. And so Neil Primrose went through his short life at New College, hunting and racing and jesting: keeping one eye upon the party politics of the day; reading more than most people supposed of general literature; and forming some of those dear and romantic friendships which cut so deep into his life, and all of which, so far as I know, stayed with him to the end. It was in these years that the friendship between himself and Thomas Agar Robartes first began. They were brothers at Oxford; they were brothers in the House of Commons; they were to die brother-like in the same cause. Very near to him, too, in these days were the ties of affection and friendship which bound him to his Rothschild cousins. There were few more familiar sights at Epsom or Newmarket than that of Neil Primrose and James de Rothschild.

Primrose left Oxford in 1904, and for some time, though never with violent devotion, began to increase the collateral interest which he had always taken in political people and political topics. But his main occupation at this time was simply to live, and for a young man, rich, well born, fashionable, and charming, merely to live in pre-war England was a most agreeable occupation.

In politics, as became the son of Lord Rosebery, he was a Liberal. And from the time when he first took any serious interest in politics, he was a thorough-going and convinced Liberal. He became, indeed, in the phrase of the day, a far