While women are granted the rights and privileges of citizens that they are held to the same accounting for breaches of the law may be judged by the even-handed justice meted the dancer, Mata Hara, who was discovered and convicted of espionage early in 1917. The woman had relied on her sex for immunity, but when she had been given a fair and impartial trial, when she had been proven guilty as a spy, she was convicted, and one morning she was taken out and shot with the same form and procedure which would have been given a male criminal.

Some of the countries of Europe exclude women from law colleges and it goes without saying they are the countries in the rear of the march of progress. Bulgaria is an instance. Turkey also excludes women from law schools and refuses to permit them to act as lawyers, but any woman may appear in court and plead her own cause. In Russia women have had a long and varied experience. With the rise of certain revolutionary elements they would win a degree of recognition in the law colleges, only to lose it on the downfall of the movement. Their patience and perseverance seems never to have flagged. Women ambitious to become lawyers appear to have possessed something of the rugged courage which enabled a company of Russian women to so prepare and equip themselves as soldiers and to so fearlessly fight when sent into battle, they won honors and decorations and the title of the Legion of Death. For notwithstanding the fact women law students had repeatedly been turned from the colleges of Russia there was held intact nearly two hundred members of a woman lawyers' association in Petro

grad and Moscow for ten years. A majority of these women graduated from universities in France.

In 1906 Russia threw wide the doors of her colleges in all branches to women, but the right to study law was taken from them again in 1908 and they were expelled from the institutions. Oppression was so great throughout Russia it seemed to breed among women, as well as men, a desire to know law, to be able to practise law, So that they might go before the justices and tribunals with their complaints. With faith in ultimate freedom women went on with their legal studies, sometimes finding it possible to attend the universities of other countries, and when they could not, they pursued their studies under private tutelage. Between 1908 and 1910 there was much agitation of the question of the right of women to admission to the law classes of the colleges and they were again given permission to enter the law departments and to the same examination as male students, and there was a decree empowering the Minister of Education to enforce the right of the women. It is of record, however, that in the same year a woman appeared in court to defend a criminal case and the Chief Justice thereupon adjourned court and left the room to show his disapproval of women lawyers.

Relating the difficulties experienced by women in their effort to find recognition in Russia as lawyers, Mlle. Justine Klotz, a well educated young French woman lawyer, who lived long in Russia, says: "In 1910 the representatives of the Progressive Party introduced in the Douma a bill, which would enable women to be admitted to the Bar. During the discussion the Progressive Party and the Centre declared themselves in favor of the bill; however, no definite action was taken. Delegations of

women law students had interviews with representatives of the Department of Justice and everyone of them declared emphatically in favor of the reform advocated in the bill. As a result of the campaign made there was introduced in the Douma on February 20th, 1912, a bill entitled "Rights for Women Lawyers." In May the Douma discussed and favorably passed the bill. In an extensive report printed, which gives details of the discussion, a comment is made on the ease with which people may be deprived of rights, who have no status before the law, as a reading of the Law Statutes of 1864 shows very clearly there was no prohibition of admittance to the Bar of women."

In December, 1913, the Commission of the Imperial Council accepted the Proposition of Law concerning "The Rights of Women Lawyers," but in 1915 the proposition was abrogated by the Council and a new Proposition of Law relating to women lawyers was introduced, as follows: "I: Women are enabled to act as lawyers. 2: Women have equal rights with men to be eligible to the jury." Clause "2" was the joker put in the bill to assure its rejection and when it came up for final action in 1916 the bill was overwhelmingly defeated.

Mlle. Klotz says: "As to the admission of women lawyers to the Bar of Russia, nobody believes that the profession should be closed to them; and as the reform is advocated by the majority of the Douma, the Bar Association and public opinion, there is hope that in the near future women lawyers will be practising in Russia the same as men." This opinion of Mlle. Klotz, expressed late in 1916, was prophetic, as the successful revolutionists who deposed Czar Nicholas declared, as one of their first acts, the entire equality of women in citizenship and

all its rights and obligations. The see-saw of events which placed His Imperial Highness Czar Nicholas in the depths of despair and the degradation of forfeited civil rights and personal freedom, elevated the women of Russia to the independence of place and position in the law they had so long sought, but a peaceful and stable government for Russia is but a hope and desire of this decade, and women will have much of the conflict which must be faced by all the people of that great Empire.

Sweden admits only unmarried women to the Bar, it being the Swedish belief that married women are not free agents, hence they are unable to represent the interests of others.

In British India in 1916 Miss Guha who had received her degree as Bachelor of Law from a French university was denied the right to practise there.

Italy permits women to take the degree of law in her colleges, but the courts are not open to them as lawyers. The question has given rise to much agitation by the progressive women of Italy, for, like the girl who sought permission to go in and swim and was told: "Yes, my dearest daughter, hang your clothes on a hickory limb, but don't go near the water." The degree of law, without the right to practise, grants something but withholds

much.

Australia has long treated her women citizens generously. There they are permitted to enter the colleges, take degrees the same as male students and they are permitted to practise in all of the courts.

Switzerland admits women as lawyers in her courts and there are women actively engaged in the practise of law in Zurich, Geneva, and some of the Cantons.

In 1913 the first woman lawyer to break into the courts of Portugal was Dr. Regina Quintelitza, and her conduct of a case at Lisbon was so brilliant and successful it was commented on by the press of the whole world.

Women may study law and take degrees in Roumania, but they are denied the right of appearing as counsel in the courts, the privilege having been expressly denied to Madam Melie Nugratel in 1912.

Late in 1916 Nativedad Alemade, a young woman who graduated from a New York law college, was admitted to practise in all of the courts of the Philippine Islands. Some time later she took a case on appeal to the highest tribunal at Manila, wrote her own briefs, argued the questions of law and fact and secured a judgment for her clients, though opposed by some of the most brilliant men at the Manila bar.

Women lawyers in England have had a long and fierce fight for admission to practise in the courts. They have won the right to study in all of the law colleges, but the bar examinations are open to but one of the four Inns of Court. The benches of the Inns have the right and forbid women practising before the courts. In 1912 four Cambridge and Oxford students, Misses Bebb, Costello, Ingram and Nettlefold applied for examination to the Law Society. They based their claim upon the Solicitors' Act of 1843, the governing statute regulating the qualification and admission of solicitors. This Act contains an interpretative clause, enacting inter alia "That any word importing the masculine gender only shall extend to and be taken to include the female." The young women were denied the right of examination, the Court of Appeal sustaining the refusal of the Law Society. The sense of the decision in the matter was