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Ruth feels that an interesting facet of FJD's legal career was his service
in 1924 as a delegate to the London Bar Convention of the American Bar, Louisiana and New Orleans Bar Associations.
She and her mother accompanied FJD to London for the occasion. The Association arranged for the delegates to be
received as official guests in the city at places like Buckingham Palace where they met King George V Queen Mary
and the famous Duke of Windsor at a garden party. Westminster Hall, held in reserve for entertaining notable dignitaries,
was the scene of another impressive event. At this particular reception, the barristers wore their medals and wigs,
while the Lords wore breeches and also displayed their medals. The ladies, like the guests, were decked in formal
finery, just as they had been at Buckingham Palace. The visiting American attorneys had to rent the appropriate
morning coats once they arrived in London. There was also a formal dinner only for the delegates at the Guild Hall,
a setting not large enough to accommodate the delegates' families, but FJD and other delegates and their families
were invited either to Oxford or Cambridge. Ruth fondly remembers the reception she and her family attended at
New College at Oxford. The American ambassador to England at the time was "the great" Charles Evans Hughes
who entertained the delegates at his private residence which Ruth remembers as a truly beautiful home.
In 1937, FJD served as a member of the first International Congress of Comparative Law held at the "peace
palace," the Hague. Ruth remembers that the meetings were particularly exciting because of the international
crisis that was brewing at the time. She heard one of Germany's leaders arguing that his country should take over
the port of Danzig, a port Germany believed to be crucial to its recovery and future economic development. At a
smaller committee meeting that Ruth attended, Germany was again asking that a judge should be allowed to decide
which cases were to be heard in his court and to be empowered to designate the punishment he deemed appropriate.
Of course, the committee voted down this suggestion. Judge Seasongood, an American leader who had once served as
mayor of Cincinnati, spoke out eloquently that such an idea ran counter both to the Magna Carta and to the Constitution
of the United States. Ruth was touched by the tone and the words that Seasongood articulated as he drew historical
lessons to counter the Nazi philosophy espoused by the German leader.
The only unhappy note to the otherwise thrilling trip was Julia Dreyfous' sickness; her physical discomforts in
Europe that summer proved to be the beginning of her declining health. FJD cabled to Julius that the house on Audubon
Place needed to have central air-conditioning installed so that Julia could be made more comfortable. Theirs was
the first home in the city to be centrally air-conditioned.
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