enthusiast party, whose platform is that war is a necessary good, and of the war-fatalist party, whose platform is that war is a necessary evil. The inventions which this war has evolved have apparently strengthened national means of defense and weakened national means of external domination. If the war shall prove that these inventions have abolished domination on sea or land, or in the air, by any one nation, this will mean that national ambitions will no longer find outlet in the control of external communities for national benefit, and that such ambitions must hereafter be directed toward the control of the natural forces of the universe for national and international benefit. Once the possibility of national domination ceases, the desire for international fellowship will doubtless operate so effectively that all war will in fact be civil war, and thus abnormal.

But even if it shall prove that these inventions have not abolished the possibility of national domination of external communities, the experiences through which the world is passing must have swelled the ranks of the war-abolitionists everywhere; and it is reasonable to believe that the world after the war will accept, as one of the fundamental international realities, the proposition to which Professor Brown commits himself, that war is abnormal and an unnecessary and remediable evil. A. H. SNOW.

Les Traités Fédéraux et la Législation des États aux États-Unis. Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence. pp. 228.

Mr. Bates has attempted a difficult task in seeking to disentangle from our daedalus of decisions the real relation of the treaty-making power to the other branches of the government. He has fortunately applied to this intricate subject the lucid and precise thinking of the trained French mind, and the result has been a clear, concise, comprehensible monograph on this difficult subject.

In order to make the situation intelligible to the foreign mind he begins with an historical résumé of the situation and explains the lamentable breakdown of American treaties during the period of Confederacy. This he follows by an excellent discussion of the relations between the Federal Government and the States, and the difficulties which, by reason of this relationship, arise regarding treaties dealing with matters covered by State legislation.

The conflict between State statutes and treaties regarding the

rights of foreigners to transfer and inherit property are set out fully, and Dr. Bates has admirably grasped the essential point of the numerous decisions of the Supreme Court, stating them briefly, but accurately. The greater part of his monograph is taken up with an analysis of these decisions. An entire chapter, for instance, is given to the conflict between treaties and State legislation regulating the administration of justice, and the much mooted question of consular rights of administration is ably discussed.

For an American lawyer with the cases before him and our various works on the subject, especially Butler's complete and able volumes on the treaty-making power, this monograph does not furnish new light. It should, however, have a very useful rôle in explaining to foreign jurists and thinkers the difficulties inherent under our constitutional system in respect to treaties. The possibility that treaties may be declared unconstitutional or may be in practice overridden by State statutes is difficult of understanding by the Continental jurist.

It has always seemed to the writer that Hamilton was correct in believing that treaties, like the Constitution itself, should be placed beyond the legislative power to repeal by subsequent statute, and should in reality be "the supreme law of the land." An unconstitutional treaty seems almost a contradiction in terms, yet it is the settled law of the United States that a treaty at any time may be overridden by a subsequent statute. This often places our foreign affairs at the mercy of the temporary majority in Congress. A recent Shipping Act, for instance, practically abrogated some eighteen treaties, and produced great confusion in our shipping relations with the foreign countries affected.

It would seem difficult to find any remedy without constitutional amendment. It may be, however, that as the United States emerge from their supposed isolation, our legislators will pay greater heed to treaty obligations and hesitate to pass laws which may abruptly and unjustly affect them.

The action of Congress in regard to the Chinese Treaty, which action was sustained as valid by the Supreme Court, would, in the case of a powerful and aggressive nation, easily have led to war. It is well that a publicist of standing should have made our difficulties clear to the foreign world.

FREDERIC R. COUDERT.

War: Its Conduct and Legal Results. By T. Baty and J. H. Morgan. London: John Murray. 1915. pp. xxviii, 578. 1016 net.

The scope and importance of this volume are indicated by the main divisions: the Crown and the Subject, the Crown and the Enemy, the Crown and its Treaty Obligations, the Subject and the Enemy, and the Crown and the Neutral. The chapters dealing with the effects of the present war on British subjects and other persons within British jurisdiction are the work of Professor Morgan, while those dealing with questions of international law are the work of Dr. Baty. The authors state, however, that the volume was prepared in close coöperation and that they are jointly and severally responsible for it as a whole. The appendix contains a valuable collection of documents illustrating the text.

Under the head of The Crown and the Subject, Professor Morgan gives a full analysis of the acts and regulations adopted for the defense of the realm, particularly of the Defense of the Realm Consolidation Act of November 27, 1914. The necessity for the enactment of such a stringent measure is denied, and the regulations adopted under it are vigorously assailed by the writer, who comments on the fact that not a single member of the House of Commons criticised the bill during its progress through the House. In the Lords, however, it was opposed by Lord Halsbury and Lord Bryce.

It is astonishing to what an extent the constitutional rights of Englishmen have been suspended as a result of the wholly unprecedented condition in which England finds herself to-day. Professor Morgan asserts that,

For the first time in England for at least two hundred and fifty years, a civilian may be sentenced to death without trial by jury. . . . Considering that the king's courts are still sitting, that the king's writ runs throughout the realm, and that juries can be, and are being, empanelled every day, we think this subjection of the lives of private citizens to military law is entirely unjustified. The death penalty, once inflicted, is irrevocable. - (pp. 110-111.)

Again (p. 112) he says:

Certainly never in our history has the Executive assumed such arbitrary power over the life, liberty, and property of British subjects. The net of restriction is now so finely woven, so ingeniously designed, that it enmeshes every activity of the citizen.

After citing a number of instances in which arbitrary power may be employed, he adds:

The private citizen is placed under the absolute orders of any major holding His Majesty's commission. The military authority issues these orders, and the military authority decides whether the citizen has offended against them. To challenge these Regulations in a court of law will, as we have seen, be often difficult and sometimes impossible. To "appeal" against the sentence of a court-martial to a civil court may be attempted by a writ of certiorari, but precedents are not encouraging. We must leave the reader to judge for himself whether this "Parliamentary despotism," which recalls nothing so much as the kind of legislation hitherto exclusively reserved for uncivilised Protectorates, is either necessary or wise.

In view of the expressions just quoted, it would appear that freedom of speech was one of the rights of which Englishmen had not been deprived at the time this book was written.

The sea policy of England had not been fully developed when this book was published. The chapters written by Dr. Baty, therefore, do not discuss the practical application of the measures adopted by Great Britain in restraint of neutral trade. Most of the vital points of British policy are, however, strongly condemned in advance. On "military areas," for example, Dr. Baty says (pp. 224-225):

We attach no special importance to the declaration issued by the British Admiralty, affecting to make the North Sea "a military area." All that such a declaration can effect is to put neutrals on guard; to inform them that their presence in such waters will be regarded as suspicious, and that, when navigating there, they will be more than ordinarily liable to charges of contraband trading or of unneutral service. Probably no more is meant.

The doctrine of continuous voyage as laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States in the Civil War cases is strongly condemned, and the assertion is made that the attempt of the United States to apply the doctrine of continuous voyage to blockade has been "universally reprobated, and finds no sanction in the Declaration of London (Arts. 18, 19)." Summing up the policy adopted soon after the outbreak of the war by Great Britain in regard to contraband and continuous voyage, he says:

This may be beneficial to Great Britain in the immediate present. It is our duty only to point out that it goes far beyond what neutrals have tolerated in the past and may be calculated to drive them into the arms of a belligerent. (p. 379.)

Another policy which Great Britain has pursued is condemned in even stronger terms (p. 391):

We should add, with the strongest reprobation, that by Art. 47 of the Declaration of London, a member of the belligerent armed forces may be forcibly taken from on board a neutral merchant ship. Since the foreign captor cannot be contradicted, this opens up the way to the most violent abuses, and is in conflict with all that has been maintained by America and Great Britain in the controversies regarding impressment and the Trent respectively. There is little doubt, as Dr. T. A. Walker says, that Britain was wrong in 1807 and right in 1862. The inviolability of the neutral flag, except under due sentence of a prize court, cannot be too firmly maintained. It is here set at nought in a quite anachronistic fashion.

It would thus appear that Great Britain has little legal ground to stand on. It is interesting to note that the full development of British maritime policy has not shaken Dr. Baty's convictions, for in this JOURNAL for January, 1916, he criticises this policy with great frankness and severity. The reader lays down the volume with the conviction that laws, national and international, are made for peace and that war is anarchy. Inter arma leges silent.

JOHN H. LatanÉ.

International Cases, Arbitrations and Incidents illustrative of International Law as Practised By Independent States. Volume II. War and Neutrality. By Ellery C. Stowell and Henry F. Munro. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company: pp. xvii, 662. $3.50 net. There is no date on the title page, an omission to be regretted, but the date of the preface is "November 1916."

The work is one of 662 pages and it is the second volume in a series. The preface sets out as follows the advantages thought to appertain to a collection of this sort made while war is in progress.

In time of war acts of governments and those for whom they stand responsible are to be judged upon the facts as they appear at the time, especially when the government concerned makes no effort to furnish the evidence which it has at its disposal or which it might procure. Hence it is that a collection of cases to serve as a basis for the study of the law of war and neutrality ought to be made flagrante bello. With the return of peace any incident of a controversial nature can be subjected to a post mortem examination, studied and dissected, but it can no longer serve as a living example.

With this thought in view we have endeavored to make a full collection of the material relating to the war in course and take advantage of the moment which will not return to make "the volume a wartime publication."