Sentiment alone does not send my thoughts back to the first meeting of the Association which I attended—that held in Washington in December, 1920, a quarter of a century ago. You will have no time for that, although, perhaps, entry into a guild and fellowship has its appropriate niche for each of us, and so in some measure plays a collective rôle. The times and circumstances then and now, however, have useful common elements; both meetings followed and follow a world war; both reflect an atmosphere of exhaustion and of worry, of unsettlement, and also of new challenges to effort in the reshaping of things.

But lately I have been recalling particularly words spoken at that earlier meeting by the then Secretary of War, Newton Baker, when he addressed the assembled Associations. Some of you will remember how vividly he described an episode in an American offensive in France, when he stood beside the commanding officer in a small hut, the maps and charts before them, and messages poured in as the hour of assault arrived and the troops moved forward. After a time came an appeal from an advanced unit requesting the barrage to be lifted, as their objective was won. The commander studied the maps and charts. “Continue the barrage,” he ordered; “we cannot yet have reached that point.” Later, after the battle was over and prisoners were being questioned, the message was traced to an enemy officer who had thus tried to trick the Americans and had faked the appeal. Secretary Baker drove home his point.

The membership of the Supreme Court did not change during the 1944 term, but Mr. Justice Roberts resigned in July after the term had ended. Divisions in the Court were as numerous and as difficult to classify as before. Four justices dissented in twenty-seven cases, while three justices dissented in sixteen cases. The Court seems to be moving toward the old practice of the pre-Marshall period by which the justices wrote seriatim opinions. There is a depressing increase in the number of cases in which three, four, and even five justices feel impelled to write separate opinions.

The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, followed by the termination of World War II, were the two events of the year having the most direct influence on Congressional activity.

The strained relation between Mr. Roosevelt and Congress had been growing increasingly tense during the last several years; it is probable that only the defense program eliminated the possibility of a complete break between the two arms of the government. Congress had been rejecting more and more items of the President's domestic program.

Better relations between the President and Congress, however, were attained overnight with the arrival of Harry S. Truman at the White House. Even sentiment for Congressional reform appeared to diminish simultaneously; at least, conversations on Capitol Hill pointed to this conclusion. The new happy status seemed like a rebirth, but only for a short period; by autumn, Congress began to disagree openly with President Truman and his attempt to direct the legislative program.

Though declining to run for a fourth term in 1945, Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia boasted: “Listen, I could run on a laundry ticket and be elected!” At one time or another during his political career, the Mayor had run under nine different party labels—under as many as four in a single election. To the outsider and the New Yorker alike, this multiplicity of candidacies and parties in New York City is highly confusing. The multi-party system is due to many factors, especially the election laws, the size and complexion of the population, the existence of an active independent movement, and the recent political activity of and schisms within organized labor.