be said with accuracy that Mr. Ladd's Court had any relation to the conception by Bentham. Furthermore, for the sake of historical precision, Bentham's plan was first published in 1839; not in 1843. On page 114 the author says: "It may well be contended historically that the primary purpose of the Monroe Doctrine was not to maintain peace," etc. And yet the Monroe Doctrine specifically says, speaking of European countries, "that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." It would seem nearer to the truth to say that it may be well contended historically that the primary purpose, like the primary result, of the Monroe Doctrine was and is to maintain peace. It is difficult to picture Alexander VI issuing a Papal bull recognizing the paramount interests of Spain "in the Gulf of Mexico" as early as 1493. It is inaccurate for the author to say, as he does on page 291, that the Interparliamentary Union has "now 3,300 members drawn from the twenty-four Groups." But errors like unto these, and there are others, do not detract from the value of the book so materially as one would naturally conclude before reading it.

The author achieves his general purpose of examining the Covenant of the League of Nations at first hand. He wisely tries to abstain from defending a thesis. In no way does he criticize directly or indirectly the reservations of the Covenant of the League of Nations as proposed by the United States Senate. Thus, layman or expert, be he for or against the League of Nations, will be glad to possess this informing text both for purposes of general reading and ready reference.

There are twenty chapters in the text. Chapters I-VI deal with international organization. These chapters are not coherently arranged, but they are valuable just the same, for they do summarize previous league proposals, lay before us facts relative to the balance of power and the concert of Europe, and sketch the beginnings and the salient features of the League Covenant. Chapters VII-XIII deal with international law under such headings as customary international law and treaty-made law, the development of international law, international law and peace, international arbitration and the administration of territory. Chapters XIVXX treat of international coöperation. Here there are chapters devoted to international coöperation during the war, diplomacy as a means of international coöperation, coöperation in national legislation, and international coöperation through public and private associations. Chapter XVII, dealing with the subject of conflict of laws, that is to say, coöperation in national legislation as it relates particularly to extradition, nationality, naturalization, expatriation, and labor, is one of the most thoughtful and helpful, if not the most helpful, of all the chapters; but this is an expression of personal opinion with which many others would undoubtedly differ.

Emerson defines a good book as the book which puts us "in a working mood." Measured by that standard, we have here a good book. Every thoughtful reader of its pages will agree to that.

ARTHUR DEERIN CALL.

The Peace Negotiations: a Personal Narrative. By Robert Lansing. With illustrations. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

1921, pp. 328. $3.00.

For the readers of this JOURNAL the chief interest in this book will be in the contrast presented in this personal narrative between what the peace negotiations really were and what they might have been. Coming from the former Secretary of State of the United States, the history of the procedure followed possesses a higher degree of authority than can be claimed for the reports given by previous writers on this subject, while his emphatic dissent from the course pursued in nearly all points confirms the justice of the chief criticisms passed by others upon the work of the Peace Conference, and particularly upon the Covenant of the League of Nations as an international compact.

From the moment when President Wilson decided that he would go to Paris and personally conduct the peace negotiations there, according to Secretary Lansing's account, the President and he were at variance at virtually every step of the proceedings. Believing, as he asserts, "that the Constitution of the United States confides to the President the absolute right of conducting the foreign relations of the Republic, and that it is the duty of a Commissioner to follow the President's instructions in the negotiation of a treaty," Secretary Lansing evidently thought that this divergence of views did not constitute a sufficient reason for separating from his chief. President Wilson, however, pressed this theory of the President's prerogative in the conduct of the nation's foreign relations to its logical conclusion. "While we were in Paris," he wrote to the Secretary, on February 11, 1920, "I felt and have felt increasingly ever since, that you accepted my guidance and direction on questions with regard to which I had to instruct you only with increasing reluctance."

If it be true, as Secretary Lansing holds, that the President of the United States is intrusted with the "absolute right" of determining international policy, and it is the duty of a Commissioner to follow the President's instructions-and this is the only point in which the President and the Secretary appear to have been in perfect harmony-the President was undoubtedly right in feeling that his guidance and direction should be accepted without reluctance; for in this matter his will was the law.

It is not necessary here to enter into the question whether or not the conduct of the foreign relations of the United States is legally intrusted

to a single mind; but, if it be so intrusted, the chief permanent value of Secretary Lansing's personal narrative may prove to be a demonstration of the unhappy consequences of this theory. It shows beyond the possibility of contradiction that the exclusive exercise of such an "absolute right" in a form of government designed to render impossible any form of absolutism involves risks of error of incalculable gravity.

The utility of a wider responsibility in decisions of such public importance is well set forth in the author's conception of the duties of a diplomatic representative commissioned by the President and given full powers to negotiate a treaty. These duties are, "in addition to the formal carrying out of his instructions, twofold, namely, to advise the President during the negotiations of his views as to the wise course to be adopted, and to prevent the President, in so far as possible, from taking any step in the proceedings which may impair the rights of his country or may be injurious to its interests. These duties," he concludes, "in my opinion, are equally imperative whether the President directs the negotiations through written instructions issuing from the White House or conducts them in person." These obligations he regards as "the more compelling" in the case of the Secretary of State.

How vain and nugatory these obligations become if they encounter the resistance of a mind convinced of its "absolute right," the pages of this book disclose.

Placed in this anomalous position of considering it his duty to give advice with the growing conviction that his advice was not wanted and would not even be seriously considered, the Secretary of State reports his line of conduct as follows:

Though from the first I felt that my suggestions were received with coldness and my criticisms with disfavor, because they did not conform to the President's wishes and intentions, I persevered in my efforts to induce him to abandon in some cases or to modify in others a course which would in my judgment be a violation of principle or a mistake in policy. It seemed to me that duty demanded this, and that, whatever the consequences might be, I ought not to give tacit assent to that which I believed wrong or even injudicious.

This duty, according to the author's narrative, was faithfully performed; and it was the performance of this duty that is presented as the prime cause of the virtual detachment of the Secretary from the course of the negotiations and of the ultimate decision of the President, declared under circumstances that were not very obviously related to it and for an immediate reason that seemed even less sufficient, to request an opportunity to select some one "whose mind would more willingly go along" with his.

With what good faith the Secretary entertained convictions upon points of procedure and policy in opposition to the plans and purposes of the President is clearly evidenced by the memoranda made from day to day

as this opposition developed, sometimes prepared for submission to his chief and directly addressed to him, and sometimes kept as a registration of his private opinions regarding proposals and events.

The principal subjects concerning which the Secretary disagreed with the President he enumerates as follows:

His presence in Paris during the peace negotiations and especially his presence there as a delegate to the Peace Conference; the fundamental principles of the constitution and functions of a League of Nations as proposed or advocated by him; the form of the organic act, known as the "Covenant," its elaborate character and its inclusion in the treaty restoring a state of peace; the treaty of defensive alliance with France; the necessity for a definite programme which the American Commissioners could follow in carrying on the negotiations; the employment of private interviews and confidential agreements in reaching settlements, a practice which gave color to the charge of "secret diplomacy"; and, lastly, the admission of the Japanese claims to possession of German treaty rights at Kiao-Chau and in the Province of Shantung.

Of these seven subjects of difference the most important were those relating to the League of Nations and the Covenant, though our opposite views as to Shantung were more generally known and more frequently the subject of public comment.

Of the President's main purpose, Mr. Lansing writes: "Unquestionably the American people as a whole supported him in the belief that there ought to be some international agreement, association, or concord which would lessen the possibility of future wars"; and he adds: "I am convinced that the same popular belief prevailed in all other civilized countries." The opportunity was extraordinary.

The divergence of views between the President and the Secretary of State was, therefore, confined to basic principles and methods of procedure, but on the seven points mentioned by him it was diametrical.

The Secretary believed that if the President remained in Washington he would retain his superior place and could procure a just peace; but, if he attended the Peace Conference, he would have to submit to the combined will of his foreign colleagues and would become a prey to intrigue. After the President had departed he wrote: "I am convinced that he is making one of the greatest mistakes of his career and will imperil his reputation. . . . I believe the President's place is here in America."

It soon became apparent that Mr. Wilson's dominant idea was a league of peace based upon the superiority of armed force in support of a military guarantee of territorial integrity and political independence. As early as May, 1916, seeing this purpose already forming in the President's mind, the Secretary had said to him in writing: "In any representative international body clothed with authority to require of the nations to employ their armies and navies to coerce one of their number, we would be in a minority"; and he declared that neither our sovereignty nor our interests would accord with such a proposition, while popular opinion as well as the Senate would reject a treaty framed along such lines.

What Mr. Lansing desired and proposed was a judicial rather than

a politico-diplomatic body, but the President had in mind merely political guarantees; for, as the Secretary says, Mr. Wilson had little faith in judicial procedure, and in his own personal and official decisions "conformed grudgingly and with manifest displeasure to legal limitations," being "especially resentful toward any one who volunteered criticism based on a legal provision, precept, or precedent." "The legal principle of the equality of nations," Mr. Lansing wrote to him in November, 1918, "whatever its basis in fact, must be preserved, otherwise force rather than law, the power to act rather than the right to act, becomes the fundamental principle of organization." In President Wilson's scheme of a political union to give effect to guarantees, the Secretary believed he saw "as an unavoidable consequence an exaltation of force and an overlordship of the strong nations" that would destroy the principle of juridical equality, which is the first postulate of international law.

On December 20, 1918, in a letter addressed to the President, Mr. Lansing enclosed a memorandum calling attention to the limitations imposed by the Constitution of the United States upon the executive and legislative branches of the Government in defining their respective powers, in which he expresses his belief that the right to declare war, conferred by the Constitution upon Congress, cannot be delegated by treaty; to which he adds, that "to contract by treaty to create a state of war upon certain contingencies arising would be equally tainted with unconstitutionality and would be null and inoperative."

Holding that legal justice offers a common ground where nations can meet and settle their controversies, the Secretary proposed a plan of his own for an international organization founded upon this juridical conception. But this proposal, like all the other suggestions of the Secretary, received no sign of consideration, and he was at no time brought into consultation regarding the formulation of the Covenant of the League.

In Washington the President had never taken the Secretary into his confidence regarding his own plan for a League of Nations. "The only opportunity that I had," writes the Secretary, "to learn more of a League before arriving in Paris was an hour's interview with him on the U. S. S. George Washington some days after we sailed from New York." Even then nothing in writing was shown to him although the President had prepared a written plan, but from the oral explanation he gathered that diplomatic adjustment rather than judicial settlement was the basic idea, and "that political expediency tinctured with morality was to be the standard of determination of international controversy rather than strict legal justice." Even for arbitration there was no conclusive arrangement.

Of the President's plan, a copy of which the Secretary received for the first time from Colonel House at Paris after it had been given to the printer, Mr. Lansing says, "The more I studied the document, the less I liked it." He found it not only badly drawn, but that it established the