This, be it understood, is an expression of regret, not a criticism. The reviewer believes that the legal world and this particular field of law has lost much by the author's omission to use his powers to correct as well as record the English decisions on this subject. And he feels it the more because of his conviction that this recently developed branch of jurisprudence should be launched along the right roads of principle, and that now is the time to lay the foundations of those principles in impregnable reason rather than in arbitrary and local rules.

The book is divided into four parts, as follows:

Under Part I (Persons) are discussed matters of status, including nationality, domicil, capacity, legitimacy, marriage, divorce and foreign corporations. It is worthy of note that the author regards and treats domicil as a status rather than as a situs,-as presenting a personal relation rather than as constituting a place of residence.

Under Part II (Property) are examined matters relating to jurisdiction as to property, and the various modes of transfer and alienation of immovable and movable property, voluntary and involuntary, inter vivos and post mortem.

In Part III, Contracts and Torts are the subjects of discussion. Contracts are treated from the standpoints of jurisdiction and of the proper law governing them as to (a) Capacity to contract; (b) Formalities of the contract; (c) Legality of the contract; and (d) Essentials of the contract as to its construction, nature and incidents, performance, and discharge, respectively.

Torts are discussed under the heads of jurisdiction, measure of the wrong done and measure of the remedy.

In Part IV, under the head of Procedure Generally and Evidence, the text considers: (a) Parties to the action; (b) Time within which the action is to be brought; (c) Mode of suing and enforcing process; (d) Evidence necessary and admissible; and (e) Proof of facts peculiarly foreign.

Next follows a discussion of foreign judgments (a) in personam; (b) in rem; (c) in statum; and (d) lis alibi pendens.

The book concludes with quite a full index. The mechanical structure of the work leaves nothing to be desired. It is beautifully printed on attractive paper, with running titles, broad margins, and marginal headlines to each paragraph, all of which are great aids to the reader.

RALEIGH C. MINOR.

Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars. Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 1914. pp. 417, maps, il.

It is not for a reviewer to judge whether this inquiry was worth. attempting, but only to describe how it was made, how far its conclusions are likely to guide the world's actions and conscience, also whether it is calculated to raise the standard of conduct in future wars or to discourage war altogether.

Let us say at the outset that there is much matter of a valuable and informing nature, bearing upon the social and religious differences of the Balkan people and upon the causes of the two wars which they have recently given rise to. Here were Greece and Servia under the Patriarchate, the orthodox Greek church; hard by was Bulgaria with her national church, in bitter feud with the Patriarch and excommunicated by him; adjoining all three lay Macedonia and Thrace under the sovereignty of the decadent Government of Turkey; while Austria and Russia as next friends but with unhallowed ambitions of their own, intrigued, tempted, restrained and advised in the distance. Given hundreds of towns and villages in Thrace and Macedonia settled jointly by Greeks, Serbs, Bulgars and Turks, each race regarding the others with deadly hatred; and you have a powder mine only awaiting the spark. A temporary coalition against the Turkish oppressor was certain to be followed by a quarrel over the spoils.

Now the Bulgars were predominant in Macedonia; through agitation and revolutionary clubs they sought to oust the Turk. For a moment, the Young Turk movement was regarded with hopefulness, but the policy of Ottomanization, boycotting the Greeks, and striking at Bulgarian clubs, churches and schools, by restrictive laws and by assassination, in spite of promised reforms, showed how vain hope of betterment was. Then Servia, Greece and Bulgaria began to think of alliance. The Turkish-Italo war gave them an opportunity. But first how should territory if won be divided. They agreed in appearance, but subject to the Czar's arbitration, and concluded agreements for joint military action secretly. Montenegro nothing loath came into the combination and actually began the war. The others followed, but apparently each distrustful of its allies, and determined to so manœuver as to gain a favorable position in the outcome. In prosecution of this war atrocities were committed, by Turks and Bulgars alternately as they had opportunity. Moreover, no sooner did the Greek and Servian armies enter

Macedonia than they began to join their nationals in the jointly settled villages and drive out the Bulgar residents with the idea of securing racial and religious homogeneity and bettering their chances of territory in the final settlement. Then came this sequence of events. Unlooked for Bulgarian success; cries for help from their co-religionists in Macedonia; friction between army and state department at Sofia; the need of prompt decision between hostilities and demobilization; Savov's sudden determination to attack; Bulgarian defeats by both Greeks and Serbs; Turkish advance and seizure of Adrianople; hostile action threatened also by Roumania; humiliation of Bulgaria surrounded by a ring of enemies. This was the second Balkan war. Savov's blunder was fatal. So much of history was necessary to the report, as a preliminary to its inquiry into war methods. This investigation was based upon first hand information gathered by the commission as individuals in various places; upon the letters of war correspondents, consuls, and other persons of prominence entitled to credence; upon Servian and Greek official statements, Bulgaria failing to set forth her case; upon certain captured letters of Greek soldiers which were of an extraordinary nature; and so on. The value of this mass of evidence must depend upon the acuteness of the commissioners, their ability to discount the prejudices of witnesses and interpreters, their impartiality in the presence of such a mass of revolting detail. But no one is likely to find fault with their conclusions, for the outside world had already come to the same opinion.

These conclusions are briefly as follows. All the rules governing land warfare were violated by all the combatants, including Roumania. Non-combatants were slaughtered, women ravished, property looted and houses burned by the thousand by all the combatants. War in th Balkans had always been thus waged. Regular troops were less to blam than irregulars and hostile townsfolk. In much of the rapine, racia. unification was sought by the expulsion or extinction of alien elements. On the whole Bulgars were less guilty than Greeks and Serbs, but perhaps that was a mere matter of opportunity.

Besides atrocities, the economic effects of the two wars are reported upon and their moral and social consequences. The commission adds to its report a suggestion that a similar permanent commission be established by the Powers at The Hague to investigate subsequent military operations during their progress. Truly in this year of 1914, its hands would be full.

As to the methods and practical value of this report, the reviewer

writes with some hesitation. For one thing, its pictures of corpses and devastation are neither nice nor necessary. For another, its impartiality is not beyond question. Again, owing to the hindrances offered it by Servia and Greece, we have doubts as to its completeness. That war is a brutal, savage thing, we, watching another and greater war, are quite ready to admit. That needs no proof. But that an investigating committee can humanize war by reports upon past savagery or criticism of present brutality, involves a childlike credulity. The texts of the treaties of alliance and of the military conventions which prefaced the first war should have been given and an index would not have been amiss. The maps are not altogether easy to understand, and they do not clearly define the claims and their final adjustment in Macedonia.

But the idealistic spirit which originated and animated the whole plan was no doubt admirable.

T. S. WOOLSEY.

Polarized Law. Three Lectures on Conflicts of Law delivered at the University of London. By T. Baty. London: Stevens & Haynes, 1914. pp. xv, 210.

The title of this book may appear frigid when interpreted too strictly in the vernacular; the metaphor is not geographical but mathematical and is adopted because the author conceives the status of an individual to be susceptible of different polarities according as it is referred to the decision of one national tribunal or another (p. 29). The term might be acceptable were the problems of private international law simpler than they are. Delving beneath the surface, we soon find that the polarities are not stable but are deflected according as the status of the individual is involved in one or another class of transactions. The author loses sight of this when he assumes that domicile is the firmly established test of status in England and the United States (p. 31). His cases show that the status is not always determined by domicile. Thus, capacity to deal with real property is referred to the lex situs, the capacity of infants and married women to contract is usually referred to the lex contractus (pp. 38-39). Even the capacity to enter into marriage is not consistently referred to the domicile. English courts look to the domicile only when the domicile is English. Where the rôle is reversed and a person domiciled abroad enters into marriage with an English person in England, the marriage will be deemed valid. In the picturesque language of the author: "Apparently an Englishman takes his personal law abroad in

this matter and a foreigner deposits his in bond at the Dover Customs House" (p. 41). In divorce the domicile becomes important not as controlling the status, but as a standard of jurisdiction.

When the author says that the status of every individual is susceptible of different polarities according as it is referred to the decision of one national tribunal or another, it takes us nowhere, for the polarity of the status before an English or American tribunal is not always that of the domicile, but often varies according as the transaction occurred or the property was located in one or another jurisdiction. The "polarities" of the status in the sense of the author would not be constant for the same individual, nor for the same forum; it would vary according as the case concerned capacity to marry, to contract, to deal with property, to make a will.

In the third lecture, which we think by far the best, the author discusses the now timely subject of domicile in prize law. As coming from one who vigorously opposed the adoption of the Declaration of London by Great Britain, the statement of the test of enemy character from the extreme British point of view is interesting (p. 121):

War is an attempt to bring the antagonist to terms by crippling his powers of resistance. One way of crippling them is by laying hands on the goods of his subjects; they are always a resource for him. Another is by strangling the business concerns which are working in his territory; they give employment to his people and facilitate his commerce. Another is by seizing the goods of the people who are permanently resident in his territory, and de facto contributing to his support, if only by spending their substance on his subjects.

The book closes with a discussion of Continental theories of private international law and the Hague Conferences for the choice of law.

The author's style is seldom dull, often impulsive, resembling that of G. Bernard Shaw. Needless to say, then, that it is good reading. Sentences like the following, with veiled allusions to some of our own problems, are by no means infrequent: "You may keep out the Japanese, but it is a less easy matter to keep out the Japanese cottons" (p. 21). "Some adopt as their subjects all who were born in their territory, others, on the Irishman's plea that kittens in the oven would not be loaves of bread, prefer the test of race and descent."

We venture to state that the claim made by the author that he is the first to make the full text of the Hague private law conventions, much less any detailed comment of them, accessible in English form, is not justifiable; curiously enough, he believes it, "whether such a claim can