out interference or control from other states, provided that in so doing it does not interfere with or violate the rights of other states.

III. Every nation is in law and before law the equal of every other nation belonging to the society of nations, and all nations have the right to claim and, according to the Declaration of Independence of the United States, "to assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them."

IV. Every nation has the right to territory within defined boundaries and to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over its territory, and all persons whether native or foreign found therein.

V. Every nation entitled to a right by the law of nations is entitled to have that right respected and protected by all other nations, for right and duty are correlative, and the right of one is the duty of all to observe. VI. International law is at one and the same time both national and international: national in the sense that it is the law of the land and applicable as such to the decision of all questions involving its principles; international in the sense that it is the law of the society of nations and applicable as such to all questions between and among the members of the society of nations involving its principles.

You will observe that this declaration states in the main familiar principles. We have long been accustomed to such statements in the text-books. Indeed the official reporter of the Institute, in his commentary upon the declaration, undertakes to show and does show that every statement, far from being novel, is based upon the decisions of American courts and the authority of American publicists. Yet the declaration was not superfluous or unimportant. There is a vast difference between the occasional decisions of a national court or the opinions of individual students, and a unanimous agreement of representatives of all the sovereign states of the Western Hemisphere upon a statement in definite terms of fundamental principles of international right. A still more important reason for such a declaration lies in the fact that the fundamental principles declared, now stand denied or repudiated by the conduct of nations in the great war that rages in the old world.

This instrument asserts the right of every nation to continued existence, to independence, to exclusive jurisdiction over its own territory, and to equality with every other nation; and it denies the right of any nation to commit for its own protection or preservation, unlawful acts toward innocent and unoffending states. These are the fundamentals of international right. They involve the existence of a democratic

community of nations in which each individual nation has the same rights and full liberty for their enjoyment, limited and limited only, by the equal rights of every other member of the community. The body of rules of action which long experience and general consent have worked out for the assertion and preservation of these rights and the application of the universal limitation upon them in the practical relations between nations constitutes international law. This scheme of organization of the civilized inhabitants of the earth is sharply distinguished from the conditions of tribal hostility which prevailed during all the early part of human history and in which each separate tribe maintained its independence and liberty as best it could by force of arms in a normal relation of hostility to all other tribes, and it is equally distinguished from the condition of subordination and suzerainty in which a single nation, acquiring a preponderance of power, reduces other nations to submission and imposes upon them friendly relations with each other as equal vassals of the superior state. A familiar example of the one extreme is to be found in Europe during the Middle Ages and of the other in the Roman Empire, and upon a smaller scale and for a brief period in the control of Napoleon over a large part of continental Europe. One condition affords independence to strong, civil societies at the expense of progress in civilization. The other condition fosters the arts of peace at the cost of liberty. The democratic organization of a community of nations, on a basis of acknowledged right, declared and protected by law, seeks to avoid both of these extremes, and the vast progress of civilization since the Peace of Westphalia, with the general advance of mankind in comfort, intelligence, individual freedom and opportunity, testify to the superior merit of the arrangement. Yet just as ordinary democracies composed of natural persons tend, unless continually restrained, to lapse into anarchy, on the one hand, or to seek security under autocracy, on the other, this community of nations has hitherto been in a condition of unstable equilibrium, always in danger of being overturned in one direction or the other. The age-long struggle to maintain the balance of power in Europe, often misguided, as we can see in looking back, often controlled by selfish purposes, often violating the very rights it professed to preserve, has nevertheless been a constant effort to counteract these tendencies.

A careful examination of the undisputed facts which show the origin and conduct of the present war leaves no room for doubt that the entire basis of the community organization of nations upon which rests the structure of international law is put at issue in the struggle. The principles of action upon which the war was begun involve a repudiation of every element of fundamental right upon which the law of nations rests. The right of every nation to continued existence, to independence, to exclusive jurisdiction over its own territory, and equality with other nations, is denied. The right of any strong nation to destroy all those alleged rights of other nations in pursuit of what it deems to be useful for its own protection or preservation is asserted. Under this view what we have been accustomed to call fundamental rights would become mere privilege to be enjoyed upon sufferance according to the views of expedience held by the most powerful. If this view prevails the whole structure of modern international law will be without foundation; and the discussion of its rules with the nations who maintain this view must now be not a real appeal to any law, but merely a balancing of possible injuries and benefits. So long as these fundamental questions are unsettled all discussion of international law must be hypothetical, as if architects were to discuss the elevation of a building while the ground plan remains undetermined. These propositions are the postulates of all reasoning regarding the rules of international law. All discussion of international right is based upon them, assumes assent to them. To discuss international law with a nation which denies these postulates can be nothing but an unreal and futile appearance of discussing the law. When your major premise is disputed you must establish that before you can go on with your argument. There is only one real question of international law to-day, and that is, whether these postulates of the law are to stand or not. As between nations which agree that they should stand there may be discussion as to international rules based upon that hypothesis, but as between nations which assert and nations which repudiate these fundamentals of the law there can be no real discussion except of expediency. The declaration of the American Institute of International Law arrays the members of all these American countries upon one side of this vital question of principle which is being fought out in the great war. Their act is altogether impersonal. It takes no ac

count of responsibility or blame or racial feelings or friendships or enmities, and it is unmistakable. The representatives of all the American countries affirm the old basis of international right upon which depends the life, the independence and the legal equality of all small nations and the laws which protect them against the arbitrary power of the strong. It will be useful to remember, however, that to be effective such declarations must be accompanied by conformity in the conduct of the nations adhering to the principles declared. There are some rules of national conduct which flow directly from the principles of national independence and equality but which do not always coincide with the impulses of sentiment or with the apparent requirements of immediate interest.

On the one hand, these principles require that nations shall refrain from interference with the internal affairs of other nations. It frequently happens that many persons, in the United States for example, strongly disapprove things that are done in other countries within the jurisdiction and affecting the citizens of those other countries and not affecting any country's international rights. Such acts may run counter to our ideas of liberty, of morality, of humanity, of fair business conduct. The strongest sentiments and interests may urge interference to prevent conduct which shocks or offends us, yet, failing some special and exceptional ground-some recognized international ground for intervention— we have no right to interfere, because interference would be an infringement upon the independent equality of the other state. The peace and order of the world require that each nation shall mind its own business and refrain from attempting to impose its ideas of conduct upon other equally independent states. This is not because the interference in the particular case might not be beneficial so far as that case goes; but because the right to interfere in one case carries with it the right to interfere in other cases; the determination of the question when interference is justifiable would necessarily rest with the interfering Power; and in the exercise of such a right all weaker states would become subject to the control of the stronger and ultimately to the control of the strongest. With the great varieties of race and custom and conceptions of social morality in the human family the right of each nation to conduct its own internal affairs according to its own ideas is of the essence of liberty.

The rule which prohibits interference by other nations, with however good a purpose, is a rule against inevitable tyranny. It is not at all uncommon that the best impulses and sentiments of our own people in this country are enlisted in favor of action by our government which would do infinitely more harm than good, by breaking down the barrier which the principle of the independent equality of states presents against the evils of foreign domination.

On the other hand, the assertion of the independent equality of states implies an interest on the part of all states adhering to the doctrine in having it preserved, and it follows necessarily that when one sovereign state is dealing not with its internal affairs but with its international relations and violates the rule of right as against another equal and independent state, all other equally independent states have a right to insist that the international rule shall be observed, and such insistence is not interfering with the quarrels of others but is an assertion of their own rights. In each case every state must be guided by its own circumstances and interests in determining how far it will go in supporting its interference. There can, however, be no doubt of the international right to interfere in behalf of the maintenance of the law. So far as it is possible to see now, if the issue of the present conflict leaves the fundamental basis of international law still existent, the possibility of securing conformity to the rules of law resting upon that basis will depend upon the recognition by the nations in general of the duty to interfere and insist upon the observance of the law and upon the adoption by them of a practice in conformity with that duty. The exercise of such an international right was well illustrated when, in November, 1861, the Commander of the United States man-of-war the San Jacinto took the Confederate commissioners, Messrs. Mason and Slidell, from the neutral British passenger vessel, the Trent. Upon England's demanding the surrender to her of Mason and Slidell, the Prussian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Count Bernstorff, the father of the present German Ambassador to the United States, wrote to the Prussian Minister at Washington for communication to the American State Department a letter, dated at Berlin, December 25, 1861. He said:

The maritime operations undertaken by President Lincoln against the Southern seceding States could not, from their very commencement,