composed of representatives of the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the Postmaster General, the War Trade Board, and the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information.

The Federal Trade Commission is vested by this order with authority to issue licenses under terms and conditions not inconsistent with law, or to refuse the same, to any citizen of the United States or corporation organized in the United States to procure letters patent or trade-marks or copyrights in the country of an enemy or ally of enemy, and also to issue or refuse licenses to American citizens or corporations to use articles covered by enemy-owned patents, trade-marks or copyrights during the present war, upon regulated terms to be prescribed by this Commission. It is further vested with the power to order that an invention be kept secret and the grant of letters patent be withheld until the end of the war, whenever in its opinion the publication or granting thereof would be detrimental to the public interest.

The Postmaster General is vested with the executive administration of the provisions of the Act relating to the "printing, publishing or circulation in any foreign language of any news item, editorial, or other printed matter, respecting the Government of the United States or of any nation engaged in the present war, its policies, international relations, the state or conduct of the war or any matter relating thereto, and the filing with the Postmaster at the place of publication, in the form of an affidavit, of a true and complete translation of the entire article containing such matter proposed to be published in such print, newspaper or publication, and the issuance of permits for the printing, publication and distribution thereof free from said restriction." He is also "authorized and empowered to issue such permits upon such terms and conditions as are not inconsistent with law and to refuse, withhold, or revoke the same."

The Secretary of State is vested with the executive administration of the provisions of the Act relative to "any person transporting or attempting to transport any subject or citizen of an enemy or ally of enemy nation, and relative to transporting or attempting to transport by any owner, master, or other person in charge of a vessel of American registry, from any place to any other place, such subject or citizen of an enemy or enemy ally." And he is also authorized and empowered "to issue licenses for such transportation of enemies and enemy allies or to withhold or refuse the same."

The Secretary of Commerce is vested with the power to supervise

the execution of the provisions of the Act relating to the clearance of any vessel, domestic or foreign, for which clearance is required by law.

The powers and duties of the Alien Property Custodian under this Act were the subject of an editorial comment in the last number of this JOURNAL, and a reëxamination of them here would, therefore, be superfluous. It may be convenient to note, however, that he is vested by this order with all the authority conferred upon the President by the Act, including the authority "to require the conveyance, transfer, assignment, delivery or payment to himself, at such time and in such manner as he shall prescribe, of any money or other properties owing to or belonging to or held for, by or on account of, or on behalf of, or for the benefit of any enemy or ally of an enemy, not holding a license granted under the provisions of the Trading-with-the-Enemy Act, which, after investigation, said Alien Property Custodian shall determine is so owing or so belongs, or is so held."

Attention is also called to the novel and important feature of this Act requiring that all money and quick assets belonging to enemy owners be paid over to the Alien Property Custodian and invested by him in United States bonds, to be turned over to the enemy owners or otherwise disposed of at the end of the war as Congress shall direct. This method of financing the war by the temporary conscription of enemy property has deservedly been the subject of much favorable comment.

CHANDLER P. ANDERSON.

ALSACE-LORRAINE

In the course of an address before the Sorbonne, delivered on March 1, 1918, M. Pichon, French Minister for Foreign Affairs, referred to the cession of Alsace-Lorraine and contrasted the reasons for such cession as given by the Imperial German Chancellor, Count von Hertling, and His Majesty William I, King of Prussia and first German Emperor.

M. Pichon is thus reported by the London Times of March 2, 1918:

None of the acts of violence thought of by a conqueror lacking in scruples to force himself upon a subjected population has succeeded in transforming French souls into German souls, or has made the descendants of those whose memory we honor today repudiate the long past of glory, of devotion, and of sacrifice which

unites them for all time to the country of their choice. The attachment of AlsaceLorraine to France has roots other than those given by the representatives of Prussia and the House of Hohenzollern. If we are to listen to the German Chancellor, they are "purely German countries" which had been stolen from the legitimate owners by an oppression which continued for centuries until the day when the French Revolution took what was lacking from the previous theft. What an astonishing way in which to write history. It might stupefy us if it did not come from the successor of the man who falsified the Ems dispatch, and from the head of a government which, adding insult to a breach of faith, has been cynical enough to denounce Belgium for having brought about the invasion of her territory by a hostile plot against those who violated her neutrality. It is not we but the King of Prussia himself who undertook, in declarations made at the moment when he was criminally seizing our two provinces, to justify the pretension by which he is represented as having desired to do nothing but regain German territory by incorporating Alsace and Lorraine by right of conquest in his Empire.

Here is a document which proves to the hilt what I say. It is a letter which has already partly been made public. The Empress Eugenie, to whom it was addressed, has recently had the delicate thought of transmitting the original of that letter to our national archives. It was sent to her from Versailles on October 26, 1870, by the grandfather of William II. I quote from it:

"After having made immense sacrifices for her defense, Germany wishes to be certain that the next war will find her better prepared to throw back the attack which she may expect as soon as France has remade her strength and acquired allies. It is this sorrowful motive alone (cette triste considération) and not the desire to aggrandize a country and territory which is big enough, which forces me to insist upon territorial cessions which have no other object but that of pushing farther back the starting point of the French Armies which will come to attack us in future."

That is clear enough, and can anyone better sweep away the legend which Count Hertling endeavors to get believed, according to which the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine had as its origin in the mind of those who carried it out the desire to gain back for Germany German territory which had been taken from them by France?...

Gentlemen, the case is judged, and it is in vain that those who caused the war endeavor to avoid the tribunal of the people and the judgment of posterity by falsifications and omissions in documents which will be recorded by history. While the tragic debates of Bordeaux, whose anniversary we commemorate today, were proceeding a group of members of the National Assembly, of whom M. Clemenceau today is the sole survivor, said in an address to the representatives of the annexed Departments: "Whatever happens, you will remain our countrymen and our brothers, and the Republic promises you an eternal vindication." This pledge in the course of time has acquired a universal character which its authors can not have foreseen. It is not only France which says to Alsace and Lorraine, "You will come back to your country." It is the whole of the great Coalition which has been formed to bar the road to the disturbers of the world's peace and to establish upon justice an international organization; it is the voice of the Old and of the New World, of the East and of the West, an avenging, prophetic voice heard

high above the tumult of battle, and strong in the united sentiments of all who are actuated by justice, which tells the powers of death who are fighting against the powers of life that they can not hope for a victory which would be a disaster for humanity.

The letter from King William of Prussia is a document of no mean importance, and it is because thereof that the portion of M. Pichon's address relating to it has been quoted without comment on the part of the undersigned.

JAMES BROWN SCOTT.

SIR GRAHAM BOWER ON PRIZE LAW CHANGES

An interesting article from the November issue of the Contemporary Review, entitled "Capture or Control: A Study in the Development of Sea Law," supplemented by certain private letters from the author to the Editors of this JOURNAL, deserves comment.

The writer of the article, Sir Graham Bower, Retired, Commander R. N., after pointing out the changed conditions of naval war as contrasted with the time of Lord Stowell, argues for a change of rules to correspond.

The changed conditions are:

Merchant ships too big to search at sea, laden with a vast variety of goods and with an equal variety of shippers, enemy and neutral; Ships of war to visit these merchantmen, ranging from the large cruiser to the submarine, many extremely vulnerable and with no carrying capacity;

A consequent tendency to destroy ships which can not be safely sent in for trial; disregard of the lives of passengers and crew during this process;

A corresponding tendency to arm merchant ships in their own defense;

An enormous expansion in the definition of contraband.

To meet these changed conditions are suggested the following changes:

The destruction of merchant shipping is absolutely prohibited; such ships accordingly may not be armed; a prize which can not be sent to the captor's jurisdiction may be interned in a neutral port; time of search to be limited to two days, with demurrage for overde

tention; preëmption instead of confiscation for conditional contraband; merchant ships to be clearly and distinctively marked.

The novelties here briefly summarized are that merchant ships shall not be destroyed; that, therefore, they shall not be armed; but that they may be interned in a neutral port during the war. internment presumably would include their crews.

This

Let me give the line of thought in the writer's own words addressed to the editors.

I feel strongly that the destruction of merchant ships must be ruled out from the permissible practices of warfare, but I feel that to compel a belligerent to take prizes into port would be to balance the scales unduly in favour of the British Empire, which has ports all over the world. So, in exchange for the abandonment of the exceptional right of destruction, we should, I think, concede the right of asylum, a right common in the treaties of the eighteenth century. I feel also that there is something, and indeed a great deal, to be said in favour of the argument and proposal contained in Mr. Lansing's confidential letter 18th January, 1916, proposing the abandonment of the right to arm merchant ships.

Human progress or at all events the advocates of humanity — have hitherto sought human progress in the separation of combatants from noncombatants, and it is impossible to say that a merchant vessel armed to resist visit and search is not a combatant.

So I propose to abandon the right to arm merchant vessels if the right of destruction is abandoned. The proposals, that is, the proposed grant of the right of asylum—and the abandonment of the right to arm merchant vessels being both of them conditional on the abandonment of the right of destruction.

Sir Graham adds privately the resolutions adopted by the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union, as follows:

That in view of the enormous destruction of property and life at sea, it would be an advantage if in future wars an international law should be established insisting that all merchant ships should be unarmed, and that war vessels should have the right to search merchant ships and escort them to their home ports or to neutral ports to be interned during the progress of the war, and that it should be considered a crime for any war vessel to attack noncombatant merchant ships, and further that it would be an offence against the international law for noncombatant merchant vessels to carry armament of any description.

The sequence of argument in this resolution and in Sir Graham's article is perfectly clear. The destruction of merchant ships is abominable and barbarous. To be immune, however, they must be truly noncombatants and unarmed. Otherwise the U-boat, for instance, which might be sunk by a single shot, is justified in using its safest