tions to the contrary and seeks to show that even in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars the French privateers captured 410 English ships as against 316 lost by France. He seeks to show that the enormous loss of English commerce by the system of capture at sea averaged about 500 ships per year from 1804 to 1813 and that this is not mentioned in English school books; that peace has seldom or never been accelerated by naval victory; that war is most common when most cruel and unrestrained, and that thus the argument fails that the hardships of war must be insisted on as deterrents.

He says

Whom do we dream of invading? What Power fears to be invaded by us? and who, given immunity of commerce, is likely to rebuild a formidable fleet solely on the chance of invading us? Let every conceivable contingency be faced and the sanity of the abandonment of booty right with proportionate restriction of armaments becomes the more clear (p. xxxv).

Dr. Wehberg discusses the law of prize on land as to national property, railways and private property, but devotes most of his pages to arguing the necessity for abolition of the law of prize at sea. Perhaps his chapter on "England and the Law of Prize at sea, particularly in comparison with Germany" is as interesting as any portion of the work.

He seeks to show that all English ships of less than twelve knots speed would have to be laid up on the outbreak of war, and that this probably means 10,000 vessels. As to this argument the reviewer would suggest that no such result would follow if England's fleet kept control of the seas, and it sometimes seems as if Dr. Wehberg's arguments cut both ways. He argues that the English merchant marine is much more vulnerable than that of Germany; that the Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd lines are the strongest existing maritime companies, able to meet and to bear losses as no others, as is shown by their suffering nothing even from the American trust, which powerfully affected the English lines; that England is dependent mainly, both for food and raw materials of manufacture, on marine imports to an extent unknown in Germany; that interruption to her commerce means idleness and starvation for her people as was shown in the sixties when the cotton supplies were cut off by our blockade of the Southern Confederacy; that the abolition of the law of prize would therefore be overwhelmingly advantageous to England, where even in a war like that of the Crimea, when not one English ship was captured, the disturbance to trade increased the cost of wheat 50 per cent.

He says in closing:

In spite of all past failures one may, believing in the continued evolution of all humane institutions, express the hope that at no very distant date under the firm guidance of North America the Powers will pursue the course laid down for them not only by humane considerations, but also by modern conceptions of the nature of war.

The work is, of course, not a text book for reference like Bordwell's Law of War or a brief compendium like Phillimore's excellent monograph on booty, but a strong, learned, radical and useful (if not in all parts wholly convincing) plea for the abolition of capture in war on land and sea, and much that is presented is valuable, original and impressive. A small slip occurs on page 113 where he quotes Wheaton as an Englishman. We, in the United States, are unwilling to give him up. As an argument for the safeguarding of commerce, even in war the work must take an important place. Mr. Norman Angell has lately called attention to the way in which Germany thrives on trade relations with countries which Spain sought to win and dominate by war, while Spain languishes. The world must adjust itself more and more to peace and less and less to war, and all international codes must be revised to that end, even those of war. Successful industrial competition is plainly to be the basis of future national success and not capture on land or sea. CHAS. N. GREGORY.

Il Significato Della Guerra Nella Scienza del Diritto Internazionale. By Dr. Andrea Rapisardi-Mirabelli. Rome: Stabilimento Tip. Giuseppe Civelli. 1910. 72 pp. L. 3.

Dr. Rapisardi-Mirabelli in the pamphlet before us continues his series of studies in " Fundamental Questions of International Law." The subject is sufficiently indicated by the title: "The meaning of war in the Science of International Law;" always keeping in mind that the question in view is primarily one of system and classification, and that the author is bent mainly upon laying the foundations of his science broad. and sure and providing against the errors that arise from a faulty scheme.

To be more precise, the question is whether a publicist constructing a system of public international law ought to deal with war as among the means of solution of international controversies and whether as such a solution it falls within the scope of the science in the same sense as

The

arbitration, diplomatic negotiation and other peaceful measures. author finally answers these questions in the negative. War is a fact to which we can not close our eyes, but it is strictly an exceptional fact, to be treated as abnormal and dealt with apart, say in an appendix to the system.

The approach to the subject is, in accordance with the plan of these studies, historical. The tradition of the older writers, as we see in the very title of the great work of Grotius, placed war and peace on an equal footing as subjects of international law. A place is claimed for war under the law of nature; it is true that the conception seems to be present that some wars can hardly be brought under any law, the criterion. of the justice or injustice of the war in its inception, or of bona fide belief in its justice is introduced, but gives little assistance towards clarifying the situation.

The idea, of course, was that war was to be considered as a means for the enforcement of legal rights not otherwise protected; but the conception immediately involves us in an inextricable maze of difficulties. The solution furnished by the issue of a war is no solution at all of any legal question in controversy. But the most important point is that, looking broadly at the matter and more particularly at modern times, it is not legal questions that lead to war, but conflicting national interests and aims. A distinction may be drawn between so called juridical controversies which arise out of the violation of a right and political controversies provoked by the conflict of interests. As a matter of fact in most modern wars, the reasons are political, while the pretexts are juridical; still the distinction is soundly based on fact and the author proceeds to draw from it certain inferences, particularly in regard to the extent to which peaceful means can be substituted for the arbitrament of war. A court of arbitration is the natural and proper means for the solution of a question arising from the violation of a right. It is ill-adapted to the settlement of a conflict of interests. Now it is the latter class of questions that gives rise to war. Even as things now are, there is little danger in controversies involving a legal right.

Running through various modern theories which seek to determine the place and office of war, the author reaches the conclusion that the right to make war is a necessary inference from the recognition of the personality of the state; but once commenced, it is idle to talk of juridical relations where force has become the deciding factor. War is a means of pursuing and attaining interests not juridically protected. The field of man's interests is always wider than that part of them which is gov

erned by law. It may very well be possible to provide by treaty and otherwise that questions soluble by law shall no longer furnish a pretext for war, but there will still remain a wide and much more dangerous field of conflict. War is an exception, an abnormality, which can not be completely brought within the field of law.

If a word of criticism may be added, the argument does not seem to be entirely satisfactory. It may be true that a conflict of national interests and aims is something different from, and much more dangerous than a controversy based on the violation of a right. But neither party can pursue its own exclusive interests and aims very far without infringing some right of the other party. Thus the question of the violation. of a right will inevitably present itself early in the difference. It is hard to see how the position of two warring nations differs essentially from that of two litigants who have come to blows in the street over the object in dispute. One may be right and the other wrong, or both may be partly right and partly wrong; in any case, the claim that the interest at stake is too important to risk the issue on a law suit, will hardly put the aggressor right in the eyes of his neighbors, nor convince them that the forms and methods of law are necessarily inadequate for the solution of the controversy. JAMES BARCLAY.

Some plain reasons for immunity from capture of private property at sea. By Sir John Macdonnell. London: John Murray. 1910. 20 pp. Price, 3d.

In a recently published pamphlet of twenty pages, Sir John Macdonnell has given his reasons why, wholly apart from ethical and humanitarian considerations, the interests of peace in general and those of England in particular demand that the principle of immunity from capture of private property at sea should be recognized as a general rule of civilized warfare.

He places his argument squarely on the ground of practical advantage to England, and in the adoption of the principle of immunity he sees the only remedy for the reduction of the huge naval armaments which he describes as not the least of the white man's burdens."

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The principles advocated by Sir John have been, as he says in his pamphlet, logically advocated by the United States ever since 1856, when it declined to accede to the Declaration of Paris abolishing privateering and regulating blockade unless it were amended by the addition of a further provision establishing the immunity of private property.

The United States has indeed consistently and persistently advocated

the general adoption of the rule not only since 1856, but since 1783. At nearly every international conference which has had jurisdiction to consider it, the subject has been advanced, and the adoption of the principle of immunity has been urged by representatives of the United States. Presidents have constantly called the attention of Congress to the subject, and in response to a message of President Roosevelt in 1903, quoting from an earlier message of President McKinley in 1898, Congress, on April 28, 1904, by resolution, expressed the desirability of incorporating into the permanent law of civilized nations the principle of exemption of all private property at sea not contraband of war from capture or destruction by belligerents.

The United States carried its advocacy of the principle to both the Hague Conferences. At the First Conference in 1899 the subject was presented by Andrew D. White, and at the Second Conference by Joseph H. Choate. The address made by Mr. Choate is one of the notable addresses of the Second Conference. It is an historical review in clear and concise language, not only of the position taken on this subject by the United States, but of those taken by England, Germany and Russia. As the result of his forceful presentation, the vote by nations was overwhelmingly in favor of immunity. Majority votes, however, do not control in conferences of that nature, and although twenty-one of the fortyfour states represented voted yea and only eleven voted nay (twelve refrained from voting), there were not a sufficient number of acquiescing states to insure unanimity, and no agreement was reached either on the principle of complete immunity or on those of assimilation to land warfare, sequestration for confiscation, or on other near-immunity principles which formed the bases of the propositions advanced by Brazil, Belgium and other Powers. Nevertheless the general result was a step forward.

Sir John Macdonnell disposes of many of the arguments advanced against exemption, notably those of use of captured vessels, and the advantage of making war as destructive as possible as an incentive both to preventing it and terminating it.

In answer to the former, Sir John says that while every vessel may indeed be a potential transport and every merchant sailor a potential effective combatant, still this is true only in the limited sense that every able-bodied subject of a belligerent is a potential soldier and every part of his property is a potential aid to his government.

As to the latter, the author of this review confesses that it has never appealed to him, although he has heard it advocated on many occasions and sometimes in all sincerity by able men, and he sees no reason for not