Suppose a simple case: The plaintiff is suing on a long account for a bill of goods which will take a long time to prove. The defendant has a receipt in full showing payment. On the theory that the defendant need not disclose his evidence in the opening, he may sit still with the receipt up his sleeve, let the plaintiff open and call his witness, the evidence may drag itself along with the usual motions and objections, and after the plaintiff rests the defendant opens to the jury. "Gentlemen," he says, "this is a simple case. The plaintiff claims he sold the goods and the defendant did not pay for them. I propose to show you that the plaintiff was not telling the truth. I made him prove to you that he sold every item in the bill because I wanted to show you how untruthful he is. My client, the defendant, not only paid for the goods but I can show the receipt in full signed by the plaintiff." To the layman this is absurd. The defendant should have shown the receipt in the first place and all the waste time of the trial would have been saved. "No," says the technical lawyer, "if I had disclosed my evidence before, the plaintiff would have framed his evidence to meet the situation." The modern view is otherwise. In France, for instance, no paper can be offered in evidence on a trial unless it has been shown to the attorney for the other side beforehand and everyone has had a chance to examine it. Indeed, this exhibition of original documents is conducted in so open and honest a fashion that it is customary to send all the original papers to the other side without even taking a receipt or retaining a copy and in the whole history of the French bar the loss of such a paper has never been known. It seems more practical and sensible that the lawyers for the defendant should be required to state the nature and detail the facts of his defense. It is the difference between the old idea of trial and the new. The first was an imitation battle, the new idea is not that it is so much a struggle as an investigation of the facts. If the plaintiff wants to meet the receipt he can make a counter-attack or explanation in the rebuttal and explain how he came to sign the receipt in full. The judge and the jury feel the necessary element of the trial is to arrive at the facts and that the planning and methods of charge and counter-charge are not so significant. The old conception of the trial as a battle is disappearing.