be extravagant, in which delays and disappointments try the patience of parties in interest are, after all, comparatively few in number, just as the cases that reach the report books are comparatively few out of the enormous number that are litigated. The real test of the value of the bankruptcy law lies in this that when it is examined in its normal working in the ordinary cases of business failures, it leaves no ground for criticism at all-that in those cases in which delays have occurred, they must be set down as normal incidents in the administration of a good law-that in those cases in which fees and expenses have been found to be extravagant, it is not the law nor its administrators as a whole that are to be blamed and the fault may be traced either to some particular official or some group of negligent creditors who have either abused or failed to take advantage of their rights and privileges and, finally, when we come to examine the cases in which frauds are to be investigated, we find that the Act affords extraordinary opportunities for the purpose of establishing a sanction for business honesty which even those who have no inherent sense of business ethics are bound to respect.

A national bankruptcy law commends itself from every point of view, and it, like all other instrumentalities fashioned to aid society in the solution of its problems, requires the co-operation of wise and just and honest men to insure its success.

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE PRESENT WAR.

BY EUGENE LAFLEUR, K.C., MONTREAL.

Until the outbreak of the present European conflict modern wars have been characterized by an ever increasing recognition of the rules of international law, and it has generally been possible at the end of each conflict to register some substantial progress.

In the titanic struggle between Russia and Japan we had a remarkable instance of the homage paid to the usages of civilized warfare by a nation which had but recently been admitted within the pale of international law. The Japanese army and navy were accompanied by distinguished jurists whose duty was to advise the military and naval commanders as to doubtful questions which might arise in the conduct of the war, just as Gustavus Adolphus was said to have kept a copy of Grotius with him in his camp for constant reference.

What distinguishes the present conflict from all modern wars between civilized states is not merely or principally the deliberate disregard by one of the combatants of almost every one of the principal rules of warfare sanctioned by usage and adopted by the conferences at the Hague, but the negation by the most authoritative and influential writers of that nation of the fundamental principles underlying the science of International Law. Indeed the practice is but the logical result of the doctrine.

So firmly were the foundations of the system supposed to be laid that the late Professor Holland said in 1896, in his work on Jurisprudence, that no one of the States of modern Christendom would venture at the present day expressly to repudiate the duty of conforming to the precepts of International Law in its dealings with the rest. Ed. p. 346).

(8th

Contrast with this assurance the answer given in 1914 to another eminent English jurist, Mr. Thomas Barclay, who desired to ascertain the views of one whose opinions have had a determining influence on German military ethics:

"Any war between the Great Western Powers at the present day can now only be a life or death struggle. No considerations of humanity, of justice, of treaty obligations,

will interfere with its one great object, which will be to annihilate the enemy's power of resistance. All methods are fair when war is no longer a mere duel, but a death grapple in which, just as teeth and nails are used between individuals, what is equivalent to them is used between nations." (Edinburgh Review, 1914, p. 1190.)

Bismarck put it even more tersely and bluntly in his famous saying:

"Where Prussia's power is in question, I know no law." (Wo Preussens Macht in Frage Kommt, Kenne ich kein Gesetz).

One of the fundamental principles of International Law is that of the equality of States and the right of each of

them to

govern

itself and to live its own life without inter

ference. Listen to the contempt with which Bernhardi repudiates this doctrine:

The weak nation is to have the same right to live as the powerful and vigorous nation. The whole idea repre

sents a

presumptuous encroachment on the natural laws of

development, which can only lead to the most disastrous consequences for humanity generally."

Starting from this premise the whole system is easily constructed. If there is a state immeasurably superior to all others in civilization, that state alone has rights, while the less civilized states have merely duties of submission and obedience. The obvious privilege of the predominant state is to realize in the highest degree its destiny by imposing its will on less cultured states, and to subjugate them if they

offer any resistance. And as some at least of the inferior states may shew a preference for their own civilization, this will generally mean war.

In every text-book that we have ever read the subject of International Law was divided into two parts:

1° Normal relations between states, i.e., in time of peace; and

2° Abnormal relations, i.e., in time of war.

But now we are told that this is all wrong, for war is the normal and peace the abnormal condition of existence. The struggle for existence is the basis of all healthy development and the law of the strong holds good everywhere. The aspiration for peace is directly antagonistic to the universal laws of life, and all efforts directed to the abolition

of war are not only foolish, but absolutely immoral and unworthy of the human race. The desire for peace has rendered civilized nations anaemic, and war alone can secure to the true elements of progress the ascendancy over the spirits of corruption and decay.

"Might (concludes Bernhardi) is at once the supreme right, and the dispute as to what is right is decided by the arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically just decision, since its decisions rest on the very nature of things."

This invitation to return to nature in order to ascertain the rules of conduct between individuals or nations is not peculiar to modern German philosophers, historians and generals.

The Roman lawyers founded their Jus Gentium on an imaginary Jus Naturale. Grotius and his followers identified the Law of Nations with Natural Law, and Rosseau and his school based their ethics and their sociology on the theory that men must revert to a state of nature in order to be virtuous.

But to the Roman lawyers to live according to nature meant a life governed by the noble precepts of the Stoics, to Grotius is meant the reign of equality and justice, and to Rosseau an idyllic existence free from competition, jealousy or strife.

Of course, their hypothesis was historically false. Their was far more truth in the doctrine of Hobbes that "the natural state of men, before they entered into society, was a mere war and that not simply, but a war of all men against all men." (Liberty, par. 12.) For, as he tells us, "the most frequent reason why men desire to hurt each other, ariseth hence, that many men at the same time have an appetite to the same thing; which yet very often they can neither enjoy in common, nor yet divide it; whence it follows that the strongest must have it, and who is strongest must be decided by the sword." For these reasons, Hobbes concludes that in the natural state, the bellum omnium in omnes is practically perpetual, and, he quaintly adds, "the time remaining is termed peace."

The premises, therefore, of the modern apostles of brute force is true, namely, that the evolutionary course of nature is a history of competition and strife.

But the extraordinary deduction which they draw is that instead of seeking our rules of conduct in the conceptions

of a higher form of life which has been developed by ages of progress, we must go back to the predatory habits of the jungle.

No one could repudiate such an inference more forcibly than the evolutionists themselves. Spencer, in the concluding volume of his philosophy, says that his views will not be agreeable to those who follow the apostle of brute force in thinking that, because the rule of the strong hand was once good, it is good for all time. (Data of Ethics, p. 257.)

Having shewn by science that there should be a privileged nation, untrammelled by the restraints imposed on less favoured states, the next step is to prove by the aid of history that the Germans are the chosen people, destined to become the rulers of the world and to establish the par Germanica, that armed peace which will deter all rivals from any attempt to break it any more. This destiny is manifest from the time when Arminius or Herman hurled back the legions of Varus, and although Teutonic pre-eminence has been occasionally obscured by the Hellenic and Latin civilizations, these were ephemeral triumphs of nations doomed to a swift decadence.

It may seem incredible that such crude theories should have any effect on the conduct of a nation in the practical affairs of life. As Mr. Sidney Low observes, in a recent contribution to the subject in the Edinburgh Review (1914, p. 272): "In England, all the dangerous ethics and fantastic ethnology of perverted geniuses would only have set us talking. In Germany, they seem to have induced quite a large number of otherwise sane and sensible persons to believe that any war would be righteous if it were waged to impress upon a sceptical and reluctant world the consciousness of German superiority."

The surest way in which the theories of philosophers can be transmitted into practical maxims of conduct is to incorporate them in the instructions of a Government to its military and naval commanders. If we turn to the German War Manual, we find the following guiding principle enunciated:

"A war conducted with energy cannot be confined to attacking the combatants of the enemy and its fortifications. It must at the same time be directed to the destruction of the whole of its intellectual and material resources."