the wealth of authorities with which, generally by citation, sometimes by quotation, the author buttresses every position taken. He has resolutely determined to be fair and open-minded. But as to his application of this rigorous determination, the reviewer cannot escape the impression that in matters of larger interpretation he has leaned over backwards. Nevertheless, this work upon the Mexican War is the most noteworthy contribution ever made. Many a long day must elapse before any one will venture upon so prolonged an excursion into the field. In every attempt Mr. Smith's work must now be the starting point. For many it will also be the terminus. J. S. REEVES. Le Blocus Pacifique. By Horst P. Falcke. from the German by Ant. Contat. Verlagsbuchhandlung. 1919, pp. 316. Translated into French The work before us appeared in its original German text in several installments quite removed from each other, running from 1891 to the year just past, the present edition being the first entire one of these several fragments. The author, for the first 222 pages of his publication, discusses the various affairs to which the name of "Pacific Blockade" has been attached, from the time of the Anglo-French-Russian naval intervention during the insurrection of the Greeks against Turkey in 1827, to the blockade of Vera Cruz in 1914 and of Greece in 1916-17. The details of all of these blockades are worked out by the author with ạ very great deal of care. We do not know any work covering the subject anywhere with completeness approaching that of the author. The second part of the publication discusses the theory of Pacific Blockade with relation to international law, and its effects in the forms now practiced, concluding with an examination as to its probable development in the future. It is difficult to differ from the belief so often expressed by many writers that the expression "Pacific Blockade" is a misnomer; that in point of fact an act of war is meant. In every case it is safe to say war would be the result if the party against which the blockade is directed were sufficiently powerful to risk the issue. As it is, this sort of blockade is a method simply by which a stronger party uses its strength to its own advantage while undertaking to side-step all responsibility for unfavorable effects upon neutrals. It presents a case where the stronger takes full advantage of its strength to be judge and executor. If the relations between nations were as civilized as they are within a community between man and man, the learning contained within this volume would be no more valuable than a treatise to-day upon the supposed rights of a master over his slave. As it is, probably we shall for a long time to come be compelled to pay attention to those aberrations of the human intellect known as the "laws of war," to which the subject-matter of this volume has a close relation. Pending, therefore, the arrival of mankind at a state of real civilization, internationally, this work will have a value to its readers. JACKSON H. RALSTON. Mein Kriegs-Tagebuch. Volume II: Das zweite Kriegsjahr. By Alfred H. Fried. Zurich: Max Rascher Verlag. 1919, pp. 384. The second volume of Dr. Fried's war diary coincides with the second year of the war. All the entries of this volume were made in Switzerland. It seems to have been his intention to go to Berlin in order to continue in person the publication of the Friedens-Warte, but the war spirit had become so bitter there that his friends feared for his safety and the plan was relinquished. Indeed, the publication was soon suspended in Germany and reestablished in Zurich because of the ever-increasing excisions by the censor. German writers accused it of being subsidized by the Entente (p. 248). However, it seems to have had a wide circulation in Germany and Austria even after its removal, because the author gives us the running fire of controversy kept up in German newspapers upon articles written by himself, F. W. Foerster and others. Though a pacifist, he is never averse to a battle of the pen, and strikes out bravely against his enemies. Indeed, he points out that the pacifist ideal is not to eliminate strife, certainly not the conflict of opinion, but only armed conflict between nations, which leaves all nations the poorer (p. 156). What interests us most in these sketches is the author's method. Some striking event occurs, the bombing of Karlsruhe, for example. It is recounted at length by some German writer with comments on "its purposeless cruelty." Fried uses the moment to recall statements and opinions made only a short time before, upon a similar occasion, when the bombing of Bar-le-Duc or Paris, as the case may be, was "justified" by persons in high places upon grounds which would now apply with equal force mutatis mutandis. Usually Fried's own warnings published at the time of the prior event are worked into the narrative. It thus becomes quite manifest why Fried was not unusually popular among his people at this time! And yet there is not the slightest malice in his discussions. He finds this method useful because he thus forces attention upon what he calls "the logic of things," the final victory of which over the evil will of man, sustains him in the hour of greatest trial (p. 18). The leaders of the Ford expedition reached Switzerland in February, 1916. The author gains an unfavorable impression and characterizes the movement as "vague dilettantism" which may do more harm than good (p. 200). He decries, however, the mocking tendency of the press and believes that while the destiny of Europe is at stake, it is indeed grim form of humor which seeks amusement from a sincere will to peace. In this connection he refers to an unpublished letter of Baroness von Stutner, written to him in 1912, in which she predicted the coming of a world war and admitted that she had sought an American multimillionaire with sufficient understanding of the pacifist movement to help her avert it. She sought to enlist Mr. Morgan, but without success. Mr. Ford would have been her ideal, but the author doubts whether in 1912 she would have had any greater success with him than with the others (p. 213). The author discusses the significance of America's entry as an interested party, although actual intervention was still one year off. He analyzes the Sussex note and Germany's reply. He approves of Germany's offer to submit the issue to the Hague Court for arbitration, and points out the importance which the dilatory method of settling international disputes will have after the World War (p. 263). Neither does he fail to add in another connection (p. 275) that the suggestion would have had real value only if Germany had accompanied it with an offer to suspend her submarine methods until the court's final decision. He sees that a new element has entered the contest, and he warns of the danger in the campaign of detraction which had set in against President Wilson's addresses and messages. He correctly sees that the German Weltanschauungen were so diamet rically opposed to these as to constitute an irrepressible conflict. "It will then remain to be seen which is of clay and which of iron" (p. 311). ARTHUR K. KUHN. The Recommendations of Habana Concerning International Organization. Adopted by the American Institute of International Law at Habana, January 23, 1917. Address and Commentary by James Brown Scott. New York: Oxford University Press, American Branch. (Publication of the Division of International Law of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.) 1917. pp. 100. On the proposal for a permanent court of international justice, Dr. James Brown Scott writes with persuasive power. It is safe to say that no other American of our time has pursued this great idea so persistently, written upon it from so many points of view, or shown such genius as he in rallying the forces of scholarship to its support. Developed primarily through international arbitration from the days of Washington, through a succession of Presidents and Secretaries of State, including Mr. Root, who, with the United States Supreme Court in mind, gave it new form in his instructions to the delegates to the Second Hague Conference, this idea became a political possibility when that body in its Final Act approved the Court of Arbitral Justice. From 1907, the date of that act, the proposed court has been associated with the name of Dr. Scott. He helped to elaborate the details of its constitution at The Hague, to which he was a technical delegate, explained it before conferences of publicists in this country, and in Europe, where it received approval, advocated it in this JOURNAL, urged it upon the attention of our Department of State, and was on the point of seeing it practically instituted by diplomatic action when the outbreak of the war made new plans for reconstruction necessary. Dr. Scott then adapted the plan to what he believed to be the new needs of the nations in a way that might meet with their acceptance. In his proposed reconstruction he made the court the central feature of a judicial union. This partial kind of union or federation is, in the judgment of many statesmen, the farthest point of advance that can be safely made at the present time. But the court was not lost sight of at Paris, to which Dr. Scott went as an adviser in the early days of the Peace Conference; for it was given a place in the Covenant of the League of Nations, although in that league the executive department rather than the court appears to be the more important branch of the form of international government to be established. The Recommendations of Habana Concerning International Organization were made unanimously by the American Institute of International Law on motion of its president, Dr. Scott, at its second annual meeting held at Habana in January, 1917. The institute is a society of publicists, jurists and statesmen, some of whom are judges of the Hague Court, selected from the Pan-American Republics, and therefore is a body of distinguished authority. The suggestions offered are briefly stated; they were not made as the draft of a treaty or developed as a project complete in details, but put forth as a series of propositions to serve as a minimum basis for a discussion of the problem of reconstruction. Assuming, as was appropriate in 1917, when the war was still in progress, that all the nations of the world will from the outset be members of any union that shall be formed after the peace is made, the American Institute of International Law proposes the calling of the Third Hague Conference, to which all nations shall be invited, but in which no one of them shall of right have a preponderating part; the holding of periodic conferences at The Hague as a law-recommending, perhaps eventually as a law-declaring, body; an agreement on international parliamentary procedure; the appointment of an executive committee to secure the ratification and observance of international conventions; an understanding upon the fundamental principles of international law in accordance with the Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Nations adopted by the American Institute of International Law in Washington in 1916, which harmonizes with British and American court decisions; the creation of a council of conciliation, the employment of good offices, mediation, and friendly composition for disputes of a non-justiciable nature; the resort to arbitration for justiciable cases which owing to special circumstances have become unsuitable for submission to a court; the formation of a judicial union shaped along the lines of the Universal Postal Union, with a permanent court of this union to which differences involving law and equity may be submitted, and whose decisions will be binding not only on the litigating nations but also on all parties to the creation of this union; this system to be supported by what is termed "an appeal to that greatest of sanctions, 'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.'"' |