In Re a Good Dinner

Aimers v. The Legal Profession

(Attorney-General Intervening.)

"De minimis non curat Lev," says the maxim, but it seemed to us that no detail had been overlooked when we sat down to the Law Faculty Club dinner with the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, three King's Counsel, members of the law staff, and some thirty students at the Empire, last Tuesday night. Dick Simpson, bubbling and effervescing in the Chairman's seat between the A.-G. and the S.-G., conducted proceedings in typically excellent style. The meal was a good one and it was an hour before we had eaten our way to the muscatels and could sit back to sip and puff. But when Jack Aimers rose to toast the Profession, he quickly brought us back to earth and rapt attention to the faces at the top table with a series of well-timed shots on the usefulness of the lawyer to society and the hopelessness of the student's future. Mr. Mason, "appearing for the defendant profession," sounded quite a tradition-bound Tory in contrast, but he accepted the challenge and promised us a definite future in the law (at least as far as the Government is concerned). His speech would have been acclaimed by a much larger audience of lawyers. Mr. Sellers followed, with a touching picture of his Dean in the isles of Greece, and some delicate thrusts at Mr. Attorney— a speech in his usual perfect after-dinner style. To his defence of the staff, Professor Williams added some new legal stories and left us thinking that his lectures must be well worth attending.

The Faculty was proposed by its good friend, Mr. Weston, who seemed genuinely concerned at the remarks of Mr. Aimers, but assured us in closing that he had no fears for the future of the profession while it lay in our ambitious care. Wild used his brief for the Faculty Club in a base attempt to fix the Building Fund into the ear of the Attorney-General, but that gentleman's quickly assumed "Cabinet's face" gave no indication of the slightest feeling either way.

A unanimous judgment for a very good dinner—even though the costs were on the higher scale—at least for some of our younger trade unionists.