It is a happy conjunction that makes it possible for this Journal to celebrate in successive numbers the eightieth birthdays of Harry Hollond and Arnold McNair.

Arnold Duncan McNair, c.b.e., q.c., f.b.a., ll.d., first Baron McNair of Gleniffer, was born on March 4, 1885. It is given to very few to attain to such high distinction in so many different spheres. As an academic, a jurist de grande classe, the author of many works in the first rank of legal literature, the occupant at one time of the Whewell chair in international law and later of the chair of comparative law, an honorary doctor of seven universities, an honorary member of the Institut de Droit International, his special place amongst international lawyers was marked in 1959 when he was presented with the Manley Hudson Gold Medal by the American Society of International Law; as an administrator, he was, during the difficult period of the war and its aftermath, the Vice-Chancellor of one of the great civic universities; as a member of the legal profession, he is a former Judge and President of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, President of the European Court of Human Rights, Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and a Bencher of his Inn and sometime its Treasurer; as a man of affairs, he has served on numerous government inquiries and commissions, and is now regularly employing in the House of Lords those talents as a speaker that were already in evidence when he became President of the Cambridge Union in 1909.

The many critics of the inadequate protection afforded to consumers by the Hire-Purchase Act, 1938, as amended by the Hire-Purchase Act, 1954, have much to be grateful for in the Hire-Purchase Act, 1964, which received the Royal Assent on July 16, 1964, and became operative on January 1, 1965. Those who were cast down by the rejection, in the Final Report of the (Molony) Committee on Consumer Protection, of suggestions for more fundamental reforms which would replace hire-purchase by something less conceptually misleading, such as the chattel mortgage, may still hope; for it is believed that the deeper study promised before the change of Government in October 1964 still continues.