No other decision of the Hague Court, in our opinion, demonstrates more convincingly the inherent possibilities of international arbitration and the potential power of the great tribunal at The Hague to keep the world at peace. GEORGE C. BUTTE. Anglo-American Isthmian Diplomacy, 1815-1915. [Prize Essays of the pp. xii+ A Committee of the American Historical Association awarded to this book the Justin Winsor prize in American history for 1914. This assures for it a high degree of accuracy and respectable literary style, for committees in the past have more than once withheld the prize for want of a worthy candidate. English-American Isthmian relations have been summarized in many books, and portions of the subject have furnished topics for monographic investigation. Miss Williams's book claims attention for its distinguished patronage and because it is a consecutive study of the whole subject. It is based on a minute and painstaking study of all available English and American manuscript and printed sources, and the writer lists in her bibliography a wide range of secondary authorities from whom she has drawn more or less assistance. One expects the book to be, and it ought to be, a most useful contribution, but it is disappointing. It is a conscientious seminar report, with the defects of such an exercise, exhibiting immense industry but small sense of proportion. Details piled on details note every shade of shifting, transitory ministerial opinion in England, the United States, and Central America, as revealed in the diplomatic correspondence; and the really important aspects of the subject are lost in a desert of unessentials. The same fault is evident in the documentation. It hardly seems necessary in a printed book to make six or eight references in a single brief paragraph-as is frequently done to a short document which forms the sole source of the paragraph. As a rule, over documentation is a good fault, and this criticism would be captious but for the fact that it emphasizes the principal defect of the book, its exaggeration of detail. Henceforth the book must necessarily be on the shelves of all well stocked libraries and in the hands of professors of history, but students and readers who desire a clear-cut presentation of the essentials of AngloAmerican Isthmian relations must continue to use some of the excellent manuals listed in Miss Williams's bibliography. EUGENE C. BARKER. Per Un Irredentismo In Fatto Di Scienze Giuridiche. By Giulio Diena Torino: 1916. Societa Tipografico-Editrice Nazionale. This slender pamphlet of some twenty pages by Professor Diena has as its theme "National independence in the legal sciences," more specifically, of course, independence of Teutonic theories and tendencies. Evidently suggested as it is by the reaction which the European War has produced in the Allied countries against the tyranny of German influences, we look with trepidation for a somewhat partisan development of the theme. Happily these fears are not justified; there is little in the article that could not be safely and usefully generalized and applied to other subjects far from Latin law or German science. If we may accept the author's statements (and a very limited acquaintance with the theoretical department of Italian legal literature goes to support them), the fashion of the day has led the latest generation of the younger writers into a somewhat slavish adoption of the ideas and mannerisms of the extreme German Schools. These ideas are characterized by the ruthless application of logic to premises founded on mere assumption or abstractions, and by the tendency to develop the subject along abstract lines and without reference to the facts of life. The mannerisms are the mannerisms of the German language so far as they can be transferred to the Italian by copious quotation, barbarous translation and unmerciful interjection of foreign terms. On the second count it may be said that the crimes committed under it are due in great part to a cheap parade of learning, to pedantry and to mere sloth. The German originals are certainly not to blame, and probably those who have been really gripped by the German ideas would be found to be the least guilty in this particular. It would seem that Italian jurisprudence has been suffering from a bad attack of a disease which is not unknown in other countries or other departments of science and of art. A new idea gains weight with a certain class of mind from its very vagueness, from its being only half understood. The very fact that it has to be sought and found in a foreign and unfamiliar language may supply this vagueness, which is all that is wanted to convert it into a religion. The natural history of most fads in art or pseudo science begins with the genius with defective power of expression, passes on to the enthusiasts with imperfect understanding and from them to the crowd of the faddists and the charlatans. However, in this particular case, it may well be doubted how far the genius appears in it at all. Professor Diena is not at all disposed to question the value of German jurisprudence. He does question very positively the manner in which it has been applied and the attempt to take it as a universal measure, and he supports his thesis by citations from German authorities. We might have wished that he had left Nietzsche and his virulent criticism of his fellow countrymen out of the matter. The countries of the Common Law do not seem to be in any particular danger from the tendencies that the author deplores. We could find there ample illustration of the same kind of over enthusiastic acceptance of foreign theories, some of them (in anthropology and in education, for example) native to Professor Diena's own country. However, it is fair to say that coming from that quarter they are at least in no great danger of barbarizing our language. Perhaps, the invasion of the Italian tongue by German sounds and idioms is the cruelest result of the condition that is described and the one that calls most loudly for the counter attack which is launched against it in the article reviewed. JAMES BARCLAY. l'Organisme des états-tampons gardiens de la paix. Essai d'une proposition de paix. By M. D. Horowitz. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff. 1915. pp. 120. This book may be an exegesis of the impossible, but it has certain distinctive qualities. The treatment is fresh, thoroughly well organized, and it defends a point of view which we have not seen presented heretofore. In brief, the author proposes the disarmament of the large Powers and the armament of the small buffer states with the advice and cooperation of the large Powers of Europe. The brochure was written in Antwerp, September last. Every page rings with the sincerity of one close to the war. Summarizing the conditions which provoked the present war, the author concludes that the one great cause was a developing international mistrust (méfiance internationale). Since this mistrust is the direct cause of war, the remedy must therefore lie in overcoming this mistrust. Disarmament, as ordinarily understood, offers no hopeful solution of the problem; neither do armaments. The thousand and one frictions arising between the great states of Europe are principally due to their propinquity and to the uncertainties engendered by the unstable situations in the smaller states. The remedy, therefore, lies in the organization of the buffer states of Europe as follows: In the north, Scandinavia, Sweden, Norway and Denmark; in the south, the Balkans, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece; in the west, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Lorraine and Portugal; in the east, Rumania and Poland. If these groups were organized by common consent, financed in the main by the large states themselves, and given police powers to defend themselves from invasion, while the large European states would be practically disarmed, it stands to reason that there could be no such war as is now devastating Europe. The author's analysis of the causes of the war are as excellent as any. His program for avoiding another such a war is theoretically perfectly sound. That it is practically unworkable is more of a criticism of human nature and of the political ways of men than of the author. ARTHUR DEERIN CALL. PERIODICAL LITERATURE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [For Table of Abbreviations see Chronicle of International Events, p. 610] Adriatic. Italia und die Adria. Deutsche R., 41(3):258. March. Aeronautics. Aircraft in war. Quarterly R., 225:334. April. Aliens. Need of federal legislation in respect to mob violence in case of lynching of aliens. Charles H. Watson. Yale Law J., 25:561. May. American Institute of International Law. American Institute of International Law. James Brown Scott. Advocate of Peace, 78:8. Jan. Austria-Hungary. Graf Julius Andrassy und die österreichish-ungarische Orientpolitik. J. P. Busz. Grenzboten, 75(1):257. Baralong Incident. Vorgeschichte (Die) und die Lehren des Baralongmordes. Suddeutsche Monatshefte, 13:858. March. Belgium. Belgium. Elihu Root. Outlook, 112:418. Feb. German law in the occupied territories of Belgium. Gaston de Laval. International Law Notes, 1:20. Feb. How the great war began. Official narrative of the momentous scenes which led to the invasion of Belgium. Albert de Bassompierre. N. Y. Times Current Hist., 4:526. June. April. Imposed (The) neutrality of Belgium. By En Vedette. Fort. R., 99:659. Occupation (L') allemande en Belgique et l'Article 43 de la convention de La Haye, 1907. Albert Leurquin. International Law Notes, 1:54. April. Blockade. Blockade and honor of England. F. T. Piggott. 19th Cent., 79:988. May. British blockade methods. Official statement of how England's sea power is used in the present war. N. Y. Times Current Hist., 3:110. March. British enemy trading acts. N. Y. Times Current Hist., 4:243. May. Defense of the British blockade. Great Britain's reply to protests of the United States on interference with neutral trade. N. Y. Times Current Hist., 4:516. June. May. Efficacy (The) of the blockade. J. M. Kennedy. Fort. R., 99:872. May. Food (The) blockade and Dutch difficulties. Economist, 82:740. April. Russia, Sweden and the blockade. Economist, 82:506. March. Submarine and torpedo in the blockade of the Confederacy. Oswald Garrison Villard. Harpers, 133:131. June. Relaciones de Estados Unidos e Inglaterra y la obstaculización del comercio neutral. El Foro, 12:44. Feb. China. Chino-Japanese (The) question. Ralph E. Harbold. World Court, 1:540. June. |