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rights. It also follows that a nation is mistress of her own actions so long as they do not affect the progress and perfects rights of any other nation. These and their derivatives are the natural Law of Nations. It is a necessary, a natural, an international law binding the national moral conscience. The external law corresponding to this internal law is the voluntary law deliberately adopted by nations, which, as supplemented by Conventional Law (that is to say, the law contained in treaties) and Customary Law, constitutes. the Positive Law of Nations. This argument concludes with a characteristic passage: "As the necessary law is always obligatory on the conscience, a nation ought never to lose sight of it in deliberating on the line of conduct she is to pursue in order to fulfill her duty; but when there is a question of examining what she may demand of other states, she must consult the voluntary law whose maxims are devoted to the safety and advantage of the universal society of mankind." This passage exhibits clearly enough the real difficulty that Vattel (and indeed his predecessors in thought) had not the courage to face. Vattel is in reality searching for a sanction to his law. He felt as strongly as Austin felt that a law involves a law-giver, and in fact he invents a sanction for the Positive Law of Nations by creating behind it the Interior Law of Nations. We see at once why he has to postulate a moral consciousness in a nation. It is necessary to find a sanction, and so in Kantian fashion, though in pre-Kantian days, he evolves his necessary laws that bind the consciousness of moral things that he has created. Unlike Frankenstein, he was not doomed to see these beings hurling aside their moral consciousness and their internal laws in the very name of the Natural Code that he, scarcely less than Rousseau, helped to frame; Napoleon Bonaparte was not yet rocking in his Corsican cradle when Emerich de Vattel was so complacently pondering on these things.

HAVING established what seemed to him the unimpugnable basis of the family of nations, Vattel with serene logic unfolded the necessary scheme of things. A nation, as he defines it, involves a Public Authority to order and direct what is to be done by each man in relation to the end of his association of men. "The political authority is the sovereignty; and he or they who are invested with it are the sovereign." There are three kinds of sovereignty-a Democracy or Popular Government, an Aristocratic Republic represented by a Senate, and a Monarchy represented by a single person. Since "to preserve and to perfect his own nature" is the sum of all the duties of a moral being to himself, so it must be with a nation. The preservation of a nation consists in the duration of the political association by which it is formed," and the perfection. of a nation is found when everything in it must conspire "to pro

cure for the citizens whatever they stand in need of for the necessities, the conveniences, and the accommodation of life, and, in general, whatever constitutes happiness-with the peaceful possession of property, a method of obtaining justice with security, and, finally, a mutual defense against all external violence." A nation is under an obligation to preserve itself and its members, and it has a right to everything necessary to its preservation that is not unjust in itself or absolutely forbidden by the law of nature. "The second general duty of a nation towards itself is to labor at its own perfection and that of its state." The individual citizen must also strive towards the end. Vattel points to England as the nation that has realized his ideals, and there is not a flicker of his diplomatic eye as he does so. Indeed, England-England in her eighteenth-century deadness and corruption-is to him a standard nation.

WHATEVER DUTIES each man owes to other men, the same does each nation in its way owe to other nations. Therefore, one State owes to another State whatever it owes to itself, so far as that other stands in real need of assistance, and the former can grant it without neglecting the duties that it owes itself "telle est la loi eternelle et immuable de la Nature." Thus, he points out, the calamities of Portugal arising from the Lisbon earthquake gave England an opportunity of fulfilling the duties of humanity with that noble generosity which characterizes a great nation. But one nation must not force its good offices on another. Grotius asserted the general right to punish infamous behavior by other nations, but Vattel denies this unless the behavior directly affects the nation desiring to intervene. And, again, you have no right to compel another nation to help you. But the law of love applies. It is the duty of nations to love one another. In all this there is much that is interesting. The earthquake at Messina and the misconduct of the government responsible for the Congo horrors make Vattel's remarks as modern as may be. Again he asserts the general obligation of nations to trade with each other and he advocates the utmost freedom of trade, though, he adds, with his usual caution, that each nation must decide if the commerce in question is likely to be useful to it. He then lays down the rule that every nation is entitled to security, namely, to preserve herself from all injury and to prevent all intervention or interference in her private affairs. He is careful, however, to point out that the occupation of a nation does not exclude absolutely all rights of other nations in the territory. Everyone retains the right to obtain, if necessary, not only food and ships and other goods at a fair price, but also the right of intermarriage in order to secure the continuity of the nation. Women for this purpose, he adds, may be carried off. It is in this

book that the subject of treaties, on which Vattel was the greatest living exponent in his age, is treated at length. It is not possible to deal with his special branch of law here, but Vattel's treatment of it is not likely to be forgotten. His advocacy of arbitration is likewise of very real importance, and may be of more value in the future than during the last century and a half.

THE THIRD BOOK deals with war, which Vattel defines as "cet etat dans lequel on poursuit son droit par la force." Public war comes within the law of nature. Nature gives men a right to employ force when it is necessary for their defense, and for the preservation of their rights. But, as we have seen, society takes upon itself this duty and so has, for the time being, extinguished the right of private war. Thus the sovereign power alone has the right to make war. For this purpose he has the right to raise troops, and every citizen is bound to serve and defend the State so far as he is capable. No person is naturally exempt from taking up arms in defense of the State. But war must be just. The right of making war belongs to nations only as a remedy against injustice. Here once more Vattel gives us the ideal for the real. He knew well enough that wars on behalf of right and justice have been rare enough. He tells us of no remedy against unjust war. The only remedy is that great Republic of which Wolff dreamed and which today is again in the minds of men. But so insistent is Vattel on the necessity of maintaining peace that he insists on the necessity of a formal declaration of war-a res paenitentiae, so to speak. It is noticeable that this jurist gives us no lengthy discussion of the vexed problems of neutrality. His definition of contraband is, however, of real value: "Les choses qui sont d'un usage particulier pour la guerre, et dont on empeche le transport chez l'ennemi, s'appellent marchandises de contrebande." He goes on to deal with the rights of nations in war forbidding assassination and the use of poison; with faith between enemies, acquisition by war, the right of postliminium, the rights of private persons in war; and, lastly, convention in war. The Fourth and last book deals with the Restoration of Peace and Embassies. The question of the asylum offered by an ambassador's house is discussed with care.

LE DROIT DES GENS is certainly a work of the first magnitude. It modernized the whole theory and business of International Law, brought it out of the study into the field, the mart, the councilchamber, and the palace. The law of nations was no longer a mystery. One of its most brilliant practical exponents became its popularizer. He did, indeed, much for nations, for he imposed upon

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them theories of moral rational development up to which it became, in a sense, necessary for them to live. The ideals which he placed before the nations of the world, high though they were, might possibly have been higher. Vattel was a practical man, and he brought his doctrines into the domain of practical life. To have done this is in itself an achievement that will immortalize his name. But Vattel was far more than a practical man. He was a thinker of great distinction and of great honesty, and he possessed what few thinkers of that age possessed-a profound religious faith. If he has no other lesson for our age he has this: that the limits of human speculation are narrow, while the range of faith is infinite, and that man may choose the range of faith with perfect reasonableness for the purpose of determining his conduct.

BOOK REVIEWS.

THE MONROE DOCTRINE: AN INTERPRETATION. By ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, Ph. D., Litt. D., LL. D. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1916.

This timely treatise from the prolific pen of the Professor of the Science of Government in Harvard University will doubtless long remain the most authoritative and comprehensive discussion of the Monroe Doctrine. The field covered is indeed broader than the title; the entire area of the diplomatic and international relations of the United States in so far as they have to do with Latin-America is brought under review. Excursions are even made into the regions of the Pacific and the far east. It is, likewise, something more than a mere "interpretation" for it contains a mass of facts not easily found elsewhere. Coming as it does at a time when our foreign relations are commanding universal attention, this volume ought to have a very wide reading.

The work is divided into seven parts. The first deals with "The Original Monroe Doctrine," and portrays very fully the underlying conditions both in Europe and America which led to the conception and enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. The share which John Quincy Adams had in the formulation of the doctrine is emphasized. And its real meaning and interpretation at the time it was promulgated are elucidated. In Part II, the period from 1827 to 1869, is covered under the general caption, "Variations of the Monroe Doctrine." The earlier years of this epoch, down to 1844, was a time when foreign affairs were quiescent and the Monroe Doctrine slumbered, but with the accession of President Polk there begins a very active era of international relations. The Monroe Doctrine was revived in a new and expanded form to serve as the warrant for the imperalistic designs of the American government in Oregon, in Mexico, in Cuba, and on the isthmus. Succeeding Polk, each administration down until the civil war revamped the Monroe Doctrine to its own purposes. During the secretaryship of state of Seward, 1861-69, all reference to the doctrine is carefully excluded from dispatches and official utterances; and, yet, curiously enough, it was just at this time, when France was endeavoring to set up an empire in Mexico under the Archduke Maximilian, that the single important case in our whole subsequent history occurred when the original Monroe Doctrine was thoroughly apropos. Part III is entitled "The American Doctrine," and is a historical survey of the period from 1869 to 1915. Under the secretaries of state in Grant's, Hayes', and Garfield's administrations there was an assertion of a new doctrine of "paramount interest," of American hegemony, in South America. This culminated under Cleveland in Olney's extravagant statement that "Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition." Intervention in Cuba, and the SpanishAmerican war; the supercession of the Clayton-Bulwar treaty by the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, whereby we secured a free hand to build the

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