constantly respond to the needs of those of our Latin-American neighbors who may find necessity for our assistance in their progress towards better government or who may seek our aid to meet their just obligations and thereby to maintain honorable relations to the family of nations." In his opening address to the Second Pan-American Scientific Congress on December 27, 1915, Mr. Lansing, as Secretary of State, observing that the Monroe Doctrine was "founded on the principle that the safety of this Republic would be imperiled by the extension of sovereign rights by a European power over territory in this hemisphere," said that the United States had "within recent years found no occasion, with the exception of the Venezuelan boundary incident, to remind Europe that the Monroe Doctrine continues unaltered a national policy of this Republic." Meanwhile, the American republics had "attained maturity"; and from the feeling that they constituted "a group, separate and apart from the other nations of the world" and "united by common ideals and common aspirations," there had resulted the "international policy of PanAmericanism." Addressing the same body on January 6, 1916, President Wilson, while declaring that the United States had proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine "on her own authority," and always had maintained and always would maintain it "upon her own responsibility," stated that it "demanded merely that European governments should not attempt to extend their political system to this side of the Atlantic." But, as it did not "disclose the use which the United States intended to make of her power," there had come to exist among the States of America an uncertainty which must be removed by establishing "the foundations of amity so that no one will hereafter doubt them." References: As to the Policy of Non-Intervention, see Trescot's Diplomacy of the Administrations of Washington and Adams; Schuyler's American Diplomacy; Wharton's Digest of International Law, I, 172 et seq.; Hodges, The Doctrine of Intervention. As to the question of Recognition, see Wharton's and Moore's Digests, supra, and Goebel's Recognition Policy of the United States (New York, 1916). As to the Monroe Doctrine, see Adams's (John Quincy) Memoirs (Diary); Moore's Digest of International Law, VI, 369 et seq.; Hart's (Albert Bushnell) Monroe Doctrine, an Interpretation; Johnson's America's Foreign Relations; Reddaway's Monroe Doctrine; Rush's Memoranda of a Residence at the Court of London, Second Series (1819-1825); Kraus's (Herbert), Die Monroedoktrin (Berlin, 1913); Pétin's Les États-Unis et la Doctrine de Monroe; Schouler's History of the United States; Tucker's Monroe Doctrine; Woolsey's America's Foreign Policy. VII THE DOCTRINE OF EXPATRIATION THE Declaration of Independence enumerates as among the "inalienable rights" with which "all men" are "endowed by their Creator," "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It has often been remarked that this dogma, like the associated affirmation that "all men are created equal," was evidently considered as an abstraction, since its announcement was not conceived to render inadmissible the continued holding in bondage of a large servile population. This criticism, however, cannot, certainly in its more sinister sense, be accepted as just. All general declarations of human rights to a large extent represent aspirations, for the perfect fulfilment of which conditions altogether ideal would be requisite. So long as human conditions are imperfect, the realization of the highest human aspirations will be imperfect. Even admitting, therefore, that the enumerated rights belonged to “all men" and were "inalienable," there yet remained the task of determining what they actually included and what were their practical limitations. No argument, beyond the common experience of daily life, was needed to demonstrate that the unregulated pursuit by each individual of his own will was incompatible with the existence of social order; and it was therefore freely conceded, even by the most extreme proponents of the theory of natural rights, that men, when living in society, must be considered as having yielded up a part of those rights for the sake of the common welfare. But the question still remained, to what extent had this been done? We are now concerned with the answer to this question in only one particular. Does the right to 'liberty" and the "pursuit of happiness," in the sense in which they may be called “inalienable,” embrace, incidentally, a right on the part of the individual to expatriate himself at will? This was a question that was destined, in the growth and development of American policy, to give rise to important international controversies, some of which yet remain unadjusted. In order to grasp the meaning of these controversies, it is necessary at the outset clearly to understand just what was the point at issue. The word expatriation is often employed to denote merely the giving up of one's country, and more particularly one's native country, by a permanent change of abode; but, as used in diplomatic discussions, it signifies the change both of home and of allegiance, and more especially of allegiance. By the laws of all civilized countries, provision is made for the admission of aliens to citizenship. The process by which this is done is called naturalization. What is the effect of this process? Does it confer upon the individual a new political character, without divesting him of that which he previously had, thus exposing him, unless his original sovereign consent to the change, to the conflicting claims of a dual allegiance? or does it of its own force not only invest him with a new allegiance, but also free him from the obligations of the old? By the laws of the United States the alien was required, at the time of his admission to citizenship, to forswear all allegiance to his former sovereign; and no inquiry was made as to whether that sovereign had, either by general or by specific permission, consented to the act. It might therefore be inferred that they were framed upon the theory that the individual possessed an absolute and unrestricted right to change his allegiance, without regard to the claims which his country of origin might assert, even within its own jurisdiction. This would, however, be a hasty inference, so far, at any rate, as the omission to inquire concerning the claims of prior allegiance is concerned. Other countries had naturalization statutes, by which no such inquiry was authorized; and yet those countries conceded to their own subjects the right of expatriation only with substantial |