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cent of all royalties paid on telephones used by subsidiary companies. Each company agreed to abandon the field of the other as long as the patent remained in force. Elisha Gray, with the $100,000 he had received, went to work for the Bell at $15,000 a year. This closed Gray's fight on Bell, and the controversy which had existed between them for many years as to which of them was the inventor of the telephone was dropped without ever having been definitely settled. There is, however, no doubt that Gray constructed a telephone which talked over a line two miles long, before Bell ever made a telephone that would transmit a word. This talk was had over a telegraph wire, extending from the office of Sidney Shepard & Company, in Buffalo, N. Y., to their factory, two miles distant, and besides Gray, three men, Victor C. Gilman, a Mr. Tripp and a Mr. Forsythe, talked over this wire, through a telephone made by Gray out of a cigar box. The fact that this talk took place has never been questioned, as the men were all of high standing and undoubted integrity.

The third important question raised by the claimants contesting against Bell was that of fraud in the patent office itself, in the issuance of the patent to Bell, and in determining the priority of his application.

Before the Supreme Court, Lysander Hill, one of the attorneys in the cause, made this statement: "The whole business was cradled in fraud. Mr. Bell's attorneys had an underground railroad in operation between their office and the office of Examiner Wilbur in the patent office, by which they were enabled to have unlawful and guilty knowledge of Gray's papers as soon as they were filed in the patent office." It was further claimed that Gray's caveat was filed first and that Bell's application, afterward filed, was first recorded. Hill insisted that the very fact that Bell's application was recorded showed that it was received after Gray's, and supported his contention by showing that all applications, when received, were filed upon a spear, and at the close of the day's business, were taken from the spear

and recorded, so that the last filed would first appear of record. Examiner Wilbur, however, swore that Bell's application was received first. It was also claimed by Mr. Hill that after Bell's application was filed, it was taken from the files and the variable resistance specification stolen from the Gray caveat and inserted in the Bell application. It was shown that in the application for an English patent, filed at about the same time, the variable resistance specification was omitted.

The court, after a careful consideration, again sustained Bell, and upon this branch of the case there was no dissenting opinion. Every question raised was decided in favor of Bell, and he was thus, by the court of last resort, confirmed in his right to a patent on the telephone.

After the decision was rendered, suits were brought all over the United States against infringing companies, which operated telephone exchanges; their plants were closed and in many instances ripped up and burned in magnificent bonfires as object lessons to venturesome capitalists who dared embark their money in the telephone business. Within a year after the decision was rendered, there was not a telephone plant in operation in the United States outside the dominion of the American Bell Telephone Company, except two small plants, one at Fort Smith, Ark., and one at Aberdeen, S. D.

When the Bell patents expired there were in use only 291,253 telephones; there are today more than 10,000,000. So that, after all, as is usually the case, the public suffered the greatest damage from the Bell monopoly.

The multiple telegraph, upon which Bell spent so many years of experimenting and expended so much of his fatherin-law's money, was invented and perfected many years ago, and brought renown and wealth to its inventor. And who, do you guess, invented the multiple telegraph? Elisha Gray, Bell's old rival in the invention of the telephone.

Altogether more than $5,000,000 was paid out for attorneys' fees in the many years of litigation.

This is all ancient history now. Prof. Gray is dead. Drawbaugh is dead. Prof. Bell, years ago, retired from the Bell Telephone Company. The Bell patents have long since expired and the telephone business is now open to the inventive genius and capital of the world. But I believe that if you will read the long decision of the court and the dissenting opinion, you will find it full of romance and wonder, and more interesting than any of the "six best sellers" on the market today.

GREENFIELD, IND.

WILLIAM A. HOUGH.

CURRENT TOPICS AND NOTES.

OUR CONTRIBUTORS-ROCHESTER H. ROGERS, the writer on "Military Powers of Nation and State Under the Constitution," is a member of the Bar of Rochester, New York, and was for some years an officer in the New York National Guard.

CARL ZOLLMANN, the author of "Church Officers in the American Law," is a graduate of the Law School of the University of Wisconsin; has practiced law in both Wisconsin and Illinois, and is at present engaged in writing a treatise on American Civil Church Law.

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JOHN C. PALMER, JR., the author of "Constructive Contempt,' is a member of the Bar of Ohio County, West Virginia, and was born in that state in 1868. He graduated from Washington & Jefferson College in 1890. He was admitted to the Bar of West Virginia in 1891. He is President of the Wellsburg National Bank and a member of the law firm of Erskine, Palmer & Curl, of Wheeling, West Virginia.

U. G. DUBACH, the writer of "Quasi-Judicial Powers of Health Officers," graduated at the University of Indiana, 1908, and at Harvard in 1909 with the degree of M. A. In 1913 he obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin. He was instructor in History and Economics in Oklahoma University Preparatory School, 1909-1911, and has been Professor of Political Science in the School of Commerce of Oregon Agricultural College since 1913.

GENERAL ENOCH H. CROWDER, whose portrait appears in this issue, is a native of Missouri. He graduated at West Point in 1881, but was detailed from his regiment in 1885 as Commandant of Cadets at the University of Missouri. While there he entered. the Law School and obtained the degree of Bachelor of Laws. He went back to active service after that, and was engaged in military operations against the Sioux Indians. In 1895 he became judge advocate with the rank of Major. In 1898 he went to the Philippine Islands, where he was judge advocate with the rank of Colonel, and afterwards in turn Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and Secretary to the Military Governor. Returning to the United States, he was appointed Judge Advocate for the Department of the Lakes and in 1904 was sent by the Government as Senior Military Attache with the Japanese Army in the Field in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese war. Later he was appointed Acting

Secretary of State, Attorney General and President of the Advisory Commission in Cuba. He was a delegate to the Fourth Pan-American Congress at Buenos Aires in 1910 and a member of the Special Commission to Cuba in 1913. In 1911 he was made Judge Advocate General of the Army of the United States, which position he now holds. He had been selected by President Taft as one of the three delegates from the United States to the Third Hague Congress, unfortunately made possible by the outbreaking of war. When Mr. Taft went to the Philippines as Chairman of the Philippine Commission he found General Crowder Secretary to General MacArthur, the Military Governor. Afterwards he was the legal advisor of Governor Magoon in Cuba, a member of the code commission which prepared the election law of Cuba and made many other additions to its statutes. And when he became President, Mr. Taft said of him, "I regard him as the best Judge Advocate General we have had in a long time. He is a real lawyer; his opinions are based on his own judgment and do not respond merely to the wishes of the men who ask his opinion. He is a student of law and politics and economics, and therefore makes a rare combination in that reserve of useful men available for governmental exigency which fits a nation to meet any crisis."

DESTROYING NEUTRAL VESSELS-THE CASE OF THE WILLIAM P. FRYE.-On Jan. 27, 1915, the William P. Frye, an American vessel, owned by American citizens and sailing under the American flag, en route from Seattle, Wash., to Queenstown, Ireland, carrying a cargo of 186,500 bushels of wheat, was captured on the high seas by a regularly commissioned ship of the German navy, The Eitel Friedrich, and, though no resistance was offered by the merchantman, she was sunk, together with her cargo. These are the essential facts in the case.

Though the commander of The Eitel Friedrich showed the extraordinary consideration of not sinking the crew along with the ship, a clearer violation of international law could hardly be found in the treatment of the unoffending merchant ships of a friendly nation. And yet a settlement, demanded at once by our state department on behalf of the owners of the vessel, has not been made by the German government. Neither has said government pleaded inability to pay as a defense for its failure to meet its legal obligations.

The first proposition of the German government was to submit the case to a German prize court for adjudication. This proposition was at once refused by our state department, and very properly so. Why should the defendant be allowed to be judge and jury for the purpose of passing upon the validity of a claim by American citizens where there are no facts in dispute and the cause of action did not arise within the jurisdiction of the German courts? No neutral government can assent to the proposition that a belligerent can by the commission of torts upon the high seas extend the jurisdiction of its courts so as to enable them to

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