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Peninsula, residing in the territory over which Spain by the present treaty relinquishes or cedes her sovereignty, may remain in such territory or may remove therefrom, retaining in either event all their rights of property, including the right to sell or dispose of such property or of its proceeds; and they shall also have the right to carry on their industry, commerce and professions, being subject in respect thereof to such laws as are applicable to other foreigners. In case they remain in the territory they may preserve their allegiance to the Crown of Spain by making, before a court of record, within a year from the date of the exchange of ratifications of this treaty, a declaration of their decision to preserve such allegiance; in default of which declaration they shall be held to have renounced it and to have adopted the nationality of the territory in which they may reside.

The civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of the territories hereby ceded to the United States shall be determined by the Congress.

It will be noticed that the treaty left it entirely at the election of the individual to determine which country he should choose and that the rights of those electing the American flag were left to the discretion of Congress. As a consequence the United States took on a new relation with nationals. Previous to that time American possessions had substantially consisted of states and territories, the inhabitants of both being

citizens. But here were individuals who were not citizens, though they owed allegiance to the United States.

In the case of Porto Rico, to the governmental system of which it is not improbable that the new possessions will be assimilated, an act of April 12, 1900, determined as follows:

Sec. 7. That all inhabitants continuing to reside therein who were Spanish subjects on April 11, 1899, and then resided in Porto Rico, and their children born subsequent thereto, shall be deemed and held to be cit

izens of Porto Rico, and as such entitled to the protection of the United State; . . . and they, together with such citizens of the United States as may reside in Porto Rico, shall constitute a body politic under the name of the People of Porto Rico.

There was no provision for eventual citizenship. The island has since been governed by a Governor and Executive Council, appointed by the President with the approval of the Senate, and a House of Delegates, 35 in number, who are elected by the people of Porto Rico. The executive power in the island is therefore entirely under the control of the United States, and the legislative power is partially under the control of Washington. For the Executive Council constitutes an upper house of the Legislative Assembly. All laws passed by the latter must be reported to Congress and accepted by it before coming final. The court system of the island is assimilated to the national court system of local and federal jurisdictions.

Acquisition of the three West Indian islands may have an effect upon Congressional legislation, now pending, which contemplates a larger measure of home rule for Porto Rico. If, as is probable, the islands are made dependent upon Porto Rico, they are likely to make their democratic influence felt. In fact, at a mass meeting held at St. Thomas on December 14, 1916, protest was phrased in this resolution:

"The island does not desire to be governed by Porto Rico, but wishes to be permitted to manage its own affairs under the federal government, American citizenship to be accorded immediately on the transfer, the port to be free, and natives to be given

preference in appointments to government positions."

A committee is expected to support these ideas in Washington, and the almost certain result will be conferring of American citizenship upon Porto Ricans, whatever decision is taken respecting the three islands.

A series of referenda or plebiscites both in the islands and in Denmark previous to the ratification of the treaty of purchase called attention to what has been in some quarters advocated as an invariably desirable requisite for the transfer of territory from one state to another. The islanders themselves voted in favor of the transfer. Conservative opinion in Denmark itself was able in its opposition to the sale to wreck one cabinet, thus forcing the question of the transfer before the citizenry at an election. Denmark needed the money and had found that the islands were a liability rather than an asset. The Danish plebiscite was therefore successful in ratifying the sale.

There was nothing new in this reference of the question to the people, for the same stipulation had been made by Denmark on the previous occasions when the sale had been discussed.

There was, however, an ulterior motive for the stipulation. At

A call for an International Congress of Socialists for June 3, 1917, at The Hague, has been issued by the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of the United States: "Convinced the time is ripe for the rebuilding of the Socialist International on the basis of a concerted, workingclass movement for immediate, just and lasting peace."

Vienna November 30, 1864, a treaty of peace was signed between Austria and Prussia on the one side and Denmark on the other. By this treaty Schleswig and Holstein were transferred by Denmark to the other two powers. By the peace of Prague of August 23, 1866, the AustroPrussian war was closed and Austria succeeded in having incorporated in article 5 a palliation of her defeat in the stipulation that part of the Danish territory secured by the two powers from Denmark two years before was to be ceded to Prussia, "with the condition that the population of the northern districts of Schleswig shall be ceded to Denmark if, by a free vote, they express a wish to be united to Denmark." By a treaty between Austria-Hungary and Germany signed at Vienna on October 11, 1878, the proviso just quoted was annulled.

As a consequence, and in view of the disparity between Denmark and the German Empire, Denmark's hope of securing a plebiscite in SchleswigHolstein depends upon creating precedents for such action. Such is the explanation of the series of plebiscites which apparently has given a new recognition of the doctrine that no human being should be subject to any state against his will.

"It is a fact, not generally appreciated, that the Pan-American Union is the only actual international official peace organization that has a permanent every-day existence, with a numerous working staff, and is controlled by the plenipotentiaries of a large group of nations."-John Barrett, Director-General of the Pan-American

Union.

World-Peace

W

By STERLING E. EDMUNDS

Lecturer on International Law, St. Louis University Law School

WHILE the hope of world peace comes to us unfulfilled from remote ages, a retrospect of the past two centuries shows an undoubted advance toward its realization. One may say that the propaganda which has been most effective has not been so much in the writings of publicists but, rather, in the progress of the physical arts and sciences, emphasizing as no pen can the interdependence of nations and the indivisibility of their welfare. And yet there are four names that stand out conspicuously during the first hundred years of this period, sharing the fame of furnishing to the present nearly all of the practical suggestions comprised within our present programs of peace.

The first is that of the Abbé Saint-Pierre, who had been present at the conference of Utrecht in 1713, which terminated the bitter war of the Spanish Succession, and who became deeply affected by the misery and waste with which the constantly recurring wars were afflicting Europe. In 1729 he published the Projet de Paix perpetuelle, which, as Wheaton remarks, "the benevolent author, by a kind of pious fraud, attributed to Henry IV., and his minister Sully, with the view of recommending it to the adoption of the sovereigns and ministers, to whom

the authority of these great names would be more imposing than the intrinsic merits of the scheme itself."

The plan was based upon the state of possession, as fixed by the treaties of Utrecht, and the first article provided for a perpetual alliance between members of the European League, for their mutual security against civil as well as foreign war.

The second article provided for the maintenance of a general assembly of plenipotentiaries. By the third article each state was to renounce the right of making war against the others and accept mediation and arbitration of the General Assembly, three-fourths of the votes being necessary for a binding judgment.

The principal sovereigns and states who were to compose the league were: the King of France, the Emperor of Germany, the King of Spain, the Emperor of Russia, the King of Great Britain, Elector of Hanover, the Republic of Holland, the King of Denmark, the King of Sweden, the King of Poland, Elector of Saxony, the King of Portugal, the Sovereign of Rome, the King of Prussia, Elector of Brandenburg, the Elector of Bavaria and his costates, the Elector of Palatine and his co-states, the Swiss and their costates, the Ecclesiastical Electors

and their co-states, the Republic of Venice and its co-states, the King of Naples and the King of Sardinia.

Each of these nineteen powers was to have a single vote, and the smaller republics and princes to be associated in the league might have a single collective vote.

The fourth article provided for the use of armed force against any state which refused to comply with the judgments or regulations of the Assembly, while the fifth conferred on the Assembly the power to enact by a plurality of votes all laws necessary and proper to carry into effect the objects of the league, though no alteration in the fundamental articles might be made without unani

mous consent.

Although the times were perhaps but slightly sympathetic toward the object of Saint-Pierre, his program contemplated a system obviously too inflexible and rigid.

The second exponent of enforced peace appeared also in France, in the person of Rousseau, who adopted and elaborated the project of his predecessor in 1769, in a published work entitled Extrait du Projèt de Paix perpetuelle de M. L'Abbé de Saint-Pierre.

European public law, founded on no fixed principles, wrote Rousseau, has incessantly varied, and accommodated itself to the will of the most powerful; so that constantly recurring wars have become inevitable, and the general sense of insecurity has compelled even the most pacific states to maintain permanent military establishments disproportioned

to their resources and oppressive to their people. It would be a fatal error to suppose that these evils can ever be remedied by the mere natural force of things, without calling in the aid of political science. The system of Europe has precisely that degree of solidity which keeps it in a state of perpetual agitation, without overthrowing it. . . . In order to substitute for this imperfect association a solid and durable confederacy, all its members must be placed in such a state of mutual dependence, that no one shall be able to resist all of the others united, or to form separate alliances capable of resisting the general league. this purpose it is indispensable that the confederacy should embrace all the European powers; that it should have a supreme legislature, capable of establishing general regulations for its government, and a judicial tribunal adequate to give effect to these regulations; that it should possess a coercive power capable both of restraining and compelling the action of its members; and sufficient authority to prevent any of them from withdrawing from the union whenever caprice or interest may dictate.

For

On the eve of the Napoleonic wars, which were characterized by the most flagrant repudiation of public law, the third apostle of peace appeared, in England, the Jurist Jeremy Bentham, who, however, introduced a profoundly significant conception into his program. He adopted the idea of a league, with a common legislature and common

tribunal, but he did not conceive the expedient of armed force as necessary to sustain the system. Let the proceedings of the league be public and circulate freely in each state with the judgments arrived at and the force of public opinion will usually be adequate, he maintained. It It might become necessary to use force, but the necessity for its employment would, in all human probability, be superseded by guaranteeing the liberty of the press in each state and by the most extensive circulation of the findings of the court or the other agencies in any case.

Whatever may be the practical difficulties in Bentham's program it is philosophically sound with respect to the power of public opinion and the facility with which it forms under the stimulus of a free press.

The last and most interesting of the four personages was Immanuel Kant, the philosopher of Königsberg, whose projects of perpetual peace were put forward at the beginning of the last world war in 1795. He lays down as a primary condition that every state composing the proposed world league, must have a form of government where every citizen participates by his representatives in the exercise of legislative power, and especially in the decision of questions of peace and war.

In the existing system of international relations, he says, the state of nature, which has ceased as between individuals whilst it still subsists as between nations, is not a state of peace, but of war, if not flagrant, at least always ready to

break out. The code expounded by public jurists to nations has never had the obligatory force of law, properly so called, for want of an adequate coercive sanction. The field of battle is the only tribunal where states plead for their rights; but victory, which ends the litigation, does not finally decide the controversy. The treaty of peace, which may follow, is, in effect, a mere suspension of arms, the contending parties still remaining in a state of hostility towards each other, without being subject to the reproach of injustice, since each party is the exclusive judge in its own cause. state of peace must, consequently ever remain insecure, unless guaranteed by a special compact having for its object the perpetual abolition of war. Nations must renounce, as individuals have renounced, the anarchical freedom of savages, and submit themselves to coercive laws, thus forming a community of nations, civitas gentium, which may ultimately be extended so as to include all the people of the earth.

The

In his metaphysics of jurisprudence published in 1797, Kant says that "the natural state of nations, being like that of individuals, a state

which must be abandoned in order to enter into a social state sanctioned

by law, every right acquired by war previous to this transition must be considered as provisional merely, until confirmed by a general union of independent states, analogous to that association of individuals which forms each separate state. . . .”

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