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President Eisenhower was engagingly informal as he spoke from notes last week to a vast assemblage of U.S. lawyers and British guests in ceremonies at Washington's Sheraton-Park Hotel. But his message was deadly serious. "Are we seeking peace with justice, are we seeking a world rule of law, or are we seeking to find ways in which we can cater to our own views and ideas in the legal field?" he asked. "We must put our minds on the rule of reason, not upon every kind of petty or important obstacle that can be imagined, not every kind of difficulty that might be in the way of a perfect administration of international justice."

So saying, Dwight Eisenhower lobbied hard on the biggest issue confronting the 83rd annual convention of the American Bar Association: whether the A.B.A. should stand by its 13-year-old condemnation of the so-called Connally Reservation, which weakens U.S. participation in the World Court and encourages other nations to duck World Court jurisdiction.

History of Fairness. On the day of the vote, some of the nation's best-known lawyers rose to endorse Ike or to dispute him. "I am not prepared to give up one iota of American sovereignty to a court that is controlled in part by the Soviets," said fiery A.B.A. Past President David F. Maxwell of Philadelphia, who called instead for "a court of free nations . . . where laws will be supported by Anglo-Saxon justice and not totalitarianism."*In rebuttal, the A.B.A.'s incoming president, Whitney North Seymour, 59, of New York, argued that the court's decisions during its 14-year history have shown it to be learned and impartial. The A.B.A.'s new President-elect John C. Satterfield of Mississippi, 56, who will succeed Seymour in one year, contended that "if we retain the Connally Amendment, every day, every week, every year, we will be telling the world that we will not submit to the jurisdiction of the World Court and international law."

The final vote was tense. Before it began. Attorney General William Rogers, Deputy Attorney General Lawrence Walsh and Solicitor General J. Lee Rankin--who are automatically members of the A.B.A. House of Delegates but rarely vote --slipped into their seats to underscore the Eisenhower Administration's concern over the outcome. By a slender 114 to 107, the A.B.A. stuck by its condemnation of the Connally Reservation. *

Question of Peace. In speeches the following night, Lawyer Adlai Stevenson said: "It is immensely significant that the organized bar of the country has given this manifest of America's belief in the ideal of a common confidence among nations." Secretary of State Christian Herter added his "unqualified endorsement": "As a world leader, we are setting an exceedingly poor example by such oarochial action as the Connally Amendment."

Said Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, who will carry the brunt of the load in the Senate drive for repeal: "As much as some Americans may dislike it, the U.S. has been thrust into the center of world affairs. Either we move to strengthen the mechanisms of world peace --of which the World Court is a conspicuous example--or we continue to suffer increasingly the frustrations of a world in which there is no real peace."

*On the 15-judge World Court, where majority decisions are binding, one judge is from Russia, one from Poland, one from the U.S., twelve from the rest of the non-Communist world. *The Connally Reservation can be abolished only by a treaty-ratifying two-thirds vote of the Senate.

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