PUBLIC LIBEARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 96, 20 October 1934, Page 24

PUBLIC LIBEARIES

BOOK OF THE WEEK

The Chief Librarian of i)he Wellington Public Libraries has chosen "Biography of Mr. Justice McCardio," by G. Pollock, as the book of the week, and has furnished the following review:—

"Much of the trouble in tho world today," said Mr. Justice McCardie to a friend shortly before his death, "is duo to the fact that knowledge and courage seem rarely to go hand in hand. Those who have the knowledge seem so often to lack the courage, those who have the courage lack the knowledge." In Mr. Justice McCardie tho two were combined; he had tho knowledge, above all he had the courage.. He kept himself free to think and free to speak his thoughts, though he must have known that the seeds of truth and progress which he was sowing could never blossom in their full flower until he was dead and perhaps almost forgotten. On April 26, 1933, Britain and the Englishspeaking world were shocked when it was learned that the Judge had died under such tragic circumstances.

Henry Alfred McCardie was born in Birmingham in 1869, of Irish parents, and was often described as "the Judge with the laughing eyes." As a boy he was fond of sport, and tells us he learnt at school to work hard, to play hard, and enough of Latin and Greek to inspire him with an enthusiasm for the classics which ho never lost. He spoke at a meeting of the Hovatian Society the January before ho died, and the vivid speech made in his maturity rings with the spirit of youth and shows us that he possessed a picturesque phraseology and a sense of drama. McCardie left school at 16, undecided as- to what profession he should follow; he contemplated literature, made one or two unsuccessful attempts at a business career, and later on at auctioneering. Ho then entered into partnership with Mr. P. Baker, a young and rapidlyrising solicitor. The Bar it was to be, and in 1894 McCardie was called to the Middle Temple. McCardio had devoted his time to legal.studies with an astonishing intensity, and really was born with a "legal mind"; to tho smallest case he would devote a wealth of learning and research, and _ his memory was photographic and inexhaustible.

Many incidents of prominent cases are dealt with; and it was McCardie who fought Bottomley for days,'forced him. into bankruptcy, forced him out of Parliament, while at the end Bottomley wrote: "I have never met with such courtesy." In 1916, Henry Alfred McCardie was appointed a Judge of the King's Bench Division and knighted by the King. McCardie sat as a Judge with the spirit of a reformer, and before long he had condemned the divorce laws of England as unworthy of our social development. He profoundly disbelieved in the efficacy of punishing criminals by imprisonment, and held that prison hardly ever reforms a man, but confirms him in criminal habits: he believed in keeping an accused person outside the prison walls if there- was any hope of reform. His remarks from the Bench on sex problems aroused much controversy, which cost him much pain and a certain isolation from some of his oldest friends. Even his bitterest opponents admitted the Judge had not arrived at his conclusions without at least adequate opportunity for the study of sociological problems, and his voice really belonged to a generation later than his own. After ten years on tho Bench he was still, ho said, a law student. "Enthusiasm is a great thing, but it is a pity- that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth," the late Lord Balfour once acutely observed. Enthusiasm, or, less euphemistically, bias, McCardie frequently said was the greatest problem the Courts had to contend against; and as he once remarked, the psychology of bias has yet to be fully revealed, and he thought when mentioning the outside world we must be reminded of ourselves. Not only have the Courts to fight against bias, but there was the greater evil of perjury, never more rife than it is today. In lighter vein, the Judge once recalled that at a Northern Assize a witness was about to take the oath. The officer of the court said to him, "Now kiss the Book." Suddenly the voice of the opposing litigant called out, "Kiss the Book! Kiss the Book! Why, he couldn't speak the truth if he swallowed the Book." No Judge seemed so young in mind and so fresh in outlook, and no Judge was more patient, courteous, or kindly in.the exercise of his judicial functions. AVhen ho was promoted to the Bench ho was asked by a friend how lie likod being a Judge, and he replied, "Very much, except that I am bored stiff by having nothing to do in the evenings." His aimost incredible activity was not confined solely to the Bar. He told the Commerce Graduates' Association of the University of Birmingham when he addressed them on October 28, 1932, that he had read Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" when lie was 18, and that since that time he had read with unfailing interest and pleasmre, almost every work of importance on economics, trade, industry, and finance. This interesting biography may well be summed tip with the Judge's own word, "The Life of a great man does not ond with the parting of soul and body. His life is one which continues into the ages to come, a life that posterity will cherish and time itself will guard. ■ ~ ■ Other titles selected from recent ac- j cession lists are as follows:—General: "New Zealand from Tasman to Massey," by Nellie E. Coad; "The Old Bus,"- by Sir Charles E. Kingsford Smith; "Guns and Gunnery," by P. A. Curtis; "This Tear of Grace, "by Noel Coward; "John Hampden," by H. It. Williamson; "Yugoslavia," by G. Ellison; "The Problem of the Twentieth Century," by D. Davies. Fiction: "Letin Men," by E. Bates; "And Grant a Leader Bold," by Joseph Hocking; "Tho Provincial Lady in America," by E. M. Delafield; "Thel Whoop-up Trail," by B. M. Bower; "Julius Penton," by P. L. Green; "Magic Valley," by M. B. Houston; "Portrait" of His Excellency," by j Stephen MeKenna; "The Peel Trait," by Joseph C. Lincoln.