responsible for the execution of every stipulation of the treaty." This reply brought forth a further request from Germany for an extension of time for forty-eight hours in order to enable the new Cabinet to come into contact with the National Assembly. This request was likewise promptly rejected, and on June 23d the German Government, "yielding to superior force and without renouncing in the meantime its own view of the unheard of injustice of the peace conditions . . declares that it is ready to accept and sign the peace conditions imposed."

This declaration was followed by several days of uncertainty in the selection of German plenipotentiaries to sign the treaty. Finally on June 27th, Dr. Hermann Müller, the Foreign Minister in the new German Government, and Dr. Johannes Bell, Minister of Colonics, arrived at Versailles, empowered to sign the treaty. The ceremony of signing took place the following day, June 28th, in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles, exactly five years to the day after the assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince at Serajevo, commonly regarded as the opening event in the Great War.

The full English text of the treaty as signed is printed in the SUPPLEMENT to this JOURNAL.

The Treaty of Peace with Germany was presented to the United States Senate by President Wilson on July 10, 1919, for its advice and consent to ratification in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of the United States. Departing from its custom of considering treaties in executive session, the Senate convened in public session for the purpose of receiving the treaty and listening to the presentation remarks of the President.

The tasks which the circumstances of the war had created for settlement by the Peace Conference were summarized by President Wilson as follows:8

Two great empires had been forced into political bankruptcy, and we were the receivers. Our task was not only to make peace with the Central Empires and remedy the wrongs their armies had done.

The Central Empires had lived in open violation of many of the very rights for which the war had been fought, dominating alien peoples over whom they had no natural right to rule, enforcing, not obedience, but veritable bondage, exploiting those who were weak for the benefit of those who were masters and overlords only by force of arms. There could be no peace until the whole order

of central Europe was set right.

8 Senate Document No. 50, 6Cth Cong. 1st sess.

That meant that new nations were to be created-Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary itself. No part of ancient Poland had ever in any true sense become a part of Germany, or of Austria, or of Russia. Bohemia was alien in every thought and hope to the monarchy of which she had so long been an artificial part; and the uneasy partnership between Austria and Hungary had been one rather of interest than of kinship or sympathy. The Slavs whom Austria had chosen to force into her empire on the south were kept to their obedience by nothing but fear. Their hearts were with their kinsmen in the Balkans. These were all arrangements of power, not arrangements of natural union or association. It was the imperative task of those who would make peace and make it intelligently to establish a new order which would rest upon the free choice of peoples rather than upon the arbitrary authority of Hapsburgs or Hohenzollerns.

More than that, great populations bound by sympathy and actual kin to Rumania were also linked against their will to the conglomerate Austro-Hungarian monarchy or to other alien sovereignties, and it was part of the task of peace to make a new Rumania as well as a new Slavic state clustering about Serbia.

And no natural frontiers could be found to these new fields of adjustment and redemption. It was necessary to look constantly forward to other related tasks. The German colonies were to be disposed of. They had not been governed; they had been exploited merely, without thought of the interest or even the ordinary human rights of their inhabitants.

The Turkish Empire, moreover, had fallen apart, as the Austro-Hungarian had. It had never had any real unity. It had been held together only by pitiless, inhuman force. Its peoples cried aloud for release, for succor from unspeakable distress, for all that the new day of hope seemed at last to bring within its dawn. Peoples hitherto in utter darkness were to be led out into the same light and given at last a helping hand. Undeveloped peoples and peoples ready for recognition, but not yet ready to assume the full responsibilities of statehood, were to be given adequate guarantees of friendly protection, guidance and assistance.

And out of the execution of these great enterprises of liberty sprang opportunities to attempt what statesmen had never found the way before to do; an opportunity to throw safeguards about the rights of racial, national and religious minorities by solemn international covenant; an opportunity to limit and regulate military establishments where they were most likely to be mischievous; an opportunity to effect a complete and systematic internationalization of waterways and railways which were necessary to the free economic life of more than one nation and to clear many of the normal channels of commerce of unfair obstructions of law or of privilege; and the very welcome opportunity to secure for labor the concerted protection of definite international pledges of principle and practice.

The principles upon which such a stupendous settlement was to be made, the President stated, had been formulated by the United

States "the principles upon which the armistice had been agreed to and the parleys of peace undertaken-and no one doubted that our desire was to see the Treaty of Peace formulated along the actual lines. of those principles," which "were readily acceded to as the principles to which honorable and enlightened minds everywhere had been bred. They spoke the conscience of the world as well as the conscience of America."

But the President, after stating that "the problems with which the Peace Conference had to deal and the difficulty of laying down straight lines of settlement anywhere on a field on which the old lines of international relationship, and the new alike, followed so intricate a pattern and were for the most part cut so deep by historical circumstances which dominated action even where it would have been best to ignore or reverse them," proceeded:

Old entanglements of every kind stood in the way-promises which governments had made to one another in the days when might and right were confused and the power of the victor was without restraint. Engagements which contemplated any dispositions of territory, any extensions of sovereignty that might seem to be to the interest of those who had the power to insist upon them, had been entered into without thought of what the peoples concerned might wish or profit by; and these could not always be honorably brushed aside. It was not easy to graft the new order of ideas on the old, and some of the fruits of the grafting may, I fear, for a time be bitter.

As the result of this cross current of politics and of interest, the President admitted that "the treaty .. is not exactly what we would have written. It is probably not what any one of the national delegations would have written. But results have worked out which on the whole bear test. I think that it will be found that the compromises which were accepted as inevitable nowhere cut to the heart of any principle. The work of the Conference squares, as a whole, with the principles agreed upon as the basis of the peace as well as with the practical possibilities of the international situations which had to be faced and dealt with as facts."

Speaking of the terms of the treaty in so far as they affect the United States, the President stated that "in the settlements of the peace we have sought no special reparation for ourselves, but only the restoration of right and the assurance of liberty everywhere that

• President Wilson's fourteen points, to which he had reference, are printed in this JOURNAL for April, 1919, p. 161.

the effects of the settlement were to be felt. We entered the war as the disinterested champions of right and we interested ourselves in the terms of peace in no other capacity."

The treaty was promptly referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, where it is now under consideration.

GEO. A. FINCH.

INCURSIONS INTO MEXICO AND THE DOCTRINE OF HOT PURSUIT

The pursuit in June of this year of Villa and his semi-political "bandits" across the Mexican border from United States territory by American troops has revived memories of Villa's attack on Columbus,. New Mexico, on March 9, 1916, and the inglorious check of our expeditionary forces into Mexico at Carrizal on June 21st of that year.

It appears that in consequence of some shots fired into El Paso by Villistas in the course of an engagement with Carranzistas at El Juarez on June 16, 1919, American forces over 3,000 strong crossed to the Mexican side on the same night and returned to El Paso on June 17th with a number of cavalry horses and prisoners, after having driven the Villistas out of El Juarez to the desert beyond.

Although General Caball had told General Gonzales that "there was no idea of invading Mexican sovereignty" and that our forces would withdraw as soon as possible (which was actually done), General Aguillar, Carranza's son-in-law, and "Confidential Ambassador to the United States," protested, albeit mildly, against this "violation of Mexican sovereignty" and insisted that the Mexican Government had not asked for aid of this sort from the United States. In reply, our State Department is stated to have made strong representations that Americans must be protected, and General Aguillar declared that the Mexican Government was satisfied and that the incident was closed.

In itself this affair is of slight importance, but since a renewal of such instances may be expected in the future, it will be profitable to recall similar incursions and expeditions in our previous history, and examine the principles of international law by which they have been justified or advocated.

In the first place, it should be noted that the expedition into the heart of Mexico which came to such a humiliating end in June, 1916,1

1 For discussions of this incident, see editorials in this JOURNAL, Vol. X, pp. 337 ff, and Vol. XI, pp. 399 ff.

was of a very different sort than the recent incursion, and was inspired by a much more serious cause. It will be recalled that the object of that ill-fated expedition was the capture of Villa, that it had been deliberately planned in consequence of an actual invasion of the United States by Villista forces, and that there was an attack on an American city, in the course of which a number of Americans were killed and American property was destroyed. It was not an instance of "hot pursuit" or what has sometimes been called the "hot trail.” The pursuit of predatory Indians and other marauders into Mexican territory is an old and oft-repeated story. As early as April 21, 1836, in a memorandum to Mr. Gorostiza, the Mexican Minister, Secretary of State Forsyth, referring to the contest in Texas and much feared Indian hostilities, as also to the intention to send General Gaines to the frontier in order to protect United States territory, said: "Should the troops, in the performance of their duty, be advanced beyond the point Mexico might suppose was within the territory of the United States, the occupation of the position was not to be taken as an indication of any hostile feeling, or of a desire to establish a possession or claim not justified by the treaty of limits," but only as "precautionary and provisional," to be "abandoned whenever. the disturbances in that region should cease, they being the only motive for it."

In his reply of April 23d, Mr. Gorostiza maintained that the taking by General Gaines of any position "beyond the known limits of the United States" would "not only affect the rights of Mexico as an independent nation, but also injure its interests," and that the holding of "the position taken, even though it be included within the assigned limits of Mexico, until the disturbances in Texas should cease, would be equal to a real military occupation of a part of the territory of Mexico, and to indirect intervention in its domestic affairs."

On April 26th, Mr. Forsyth stated that his notice "was not intended to express the intention to occupy a post within the acknowledged, known limits of Mexico, but to apprize Mexico that if General Gaines should occupy a position supposed by each Government to be within its limits, that occupation would not be used either as the foundation of a claim or to strengthen a claim-the sole purpose being to enable this Government to do its duty to itself and to Mexico.”

Mr. Gorostiza, on April 28th, diplomatically "expressed satisfaction that Mr. Forsyth's opinion, as he understood it, coincided with