and extensive compromises. The several clauses of the Declaration are discussed in order under the heads of contraband, blockade, and the right of search, together with the now familiar head of "unneutral service." Later in the work (Appendix C) a considerable portion of the text is devoted to the criticism, from the point of view of England as a belligerent and as a neutral, to which the Declaration has been subjected. As to this it may truthfully be said that if Great Britain, under the new convention, finds herself hampered both as a belligerent and as a neutral by the terms of the new Declaration, other states may readily accept it as a reasonable statement of the rights of belligerents in time of maritime GEO. B. DAVIS.

war

War Rights on Land. By J. M. Spaight.
London: Macmillan and Co.

1911.

Preface by Francis D. Acland. pp. xii, 520. $3.75 net.

The author's purpose in writing this book is best given in his own words.

He says:

My aim is to follow the operations of war, from the moment of the declaration to the final peace, in the guise of one who might be called upon to advise upon questions of war law; in short, to fulfil the functions which were assigned to the Japanese legal counsellors who accompanied the armies in the field in the war with Russia. I have therefore purposely confined myself to the consideration of such questions only as would probably come under the purview of such an adviser. The questions I deal with are those which might arise (they have not all arisen in any one war) and require to be answered on the spot, without reference to the home Government.

Into the nicer questions of legal theory arising, for instance, under Military Occupation, the author does not attempt to go. One object of this book is to present the war law to officers in an attractive form, which he considers might have been done "if the writers had insisted on the historical, human, and practical side, rather than on the legal and theoretical one." As we might expect from this statement, the style is not that of the conventional law text but is enlivened by occasional references to and quotations from literature, including poetry. If, at times, the manner of presentation is lacking in the dignity to which we are accustomed in law books, there are compensations in the freshness and vividness with which the matter is presented. The early writers on the law of nations secured its acceptance by appealing to the interest of the educated layman. Had they written otherwise their influence would By using a similar method the author is likely to

have been slight.

appeal to officers and educated laymen generally and such a result is much to be desired.

The work is a commentary on the Hague Règlement, the Geneva Convention, the Hague Convention of 1907 relating to Neutrality in Land War and such other of the Hague conventions as come within the scope of the work. The articles covered by a particular chapter are given at the beginning of the chapter, and although this makes reference less easy than if the commentary followed each article, it possibly interferes less with the easy flow of the text.

The author has covered in a manner that is astonishingly thorough the incidents in war practice bearing on war law from the Crimean War to the present time. And this makes the work of great value, not only to the layman, but to the technical jurist as well. In his account of the "Fort Pillow Massacre" he has, however, probably shot beyond the mark. He has accepted Draper's account of that incident based on the Report of the Committee of Congress on the Conduct of the War as accurate, whereas that report goes even beyond the general run of statements given out by a belligerent as to the conduct of its adversary in partisanship and inaccuracy. A more accurate account of the affair may be had in Wyeth's Life of Gen. Forrest and Mathes' General Forrest.

There is evidence of an occasional slip in the proofreading, and on page 477 reference is made to the "Italian Jurist, Calvo," but the book is a valuable one, both in its historical references and its discussion of the views of legal writers, and should be of interest, not only to officers and laymen generally, but also to those more specially versed in the technique of international law. PERCY BORDWELL.

The First Book of World Law. By Raymond L. Bridgman. Boston: Ginn & Co. 1911.

If it were possible to separate the theoretical statements contained in the present volume from the texts of international conventions which. form the great body of the work, the compilation might perhaps be of service to those who are interested in the progress of the world towards relations of a closer and more pacific character. Unfortunately, however, the legal significance of the documents printed has been so mistakenly commented upon that attention must be called to the unscientific character of the publication. It is difficult to find out precisely what the author. means by "world law" as distinguished from international law. The statements that "world law is the will of the world expressed officially"

(p. 7), that" on the basis of international law must rise world law as a higher expression of the agreement of the will of nations" (p. 8) would seem to indicate that by "world law" the author means such parts of the body of international law as have been formally ratified by nations. In assigning a "higher status" to this "world law" the author shows a strange partiality for formal declarations over long-established custom. It is like assigning a higher status to the statute law of a state than to its common law, however more fundamental might be the rights embodied in the latter. The misuse of the term "world law" becomes more serious when there are included under it such conventions as those providing for the Universal Postal Union, the Bureau of Weights and Measures, the Union for the Protection of Industrial Property, etc. As being formal agreements between the nations of the world they are part of the body of international law, but inasmuch as they relate to mere matters of mutual convenience they bear rather the character of international administrative regulations. To assign to them a "higher status" than to the unwritten law defining the fundamental rights of nations is as erroneous as it would be to regard patent rights defined by statute as more important than property rights defined by the common law of centuries. Moreover, although the conventions adopted at the Second Hague Conference deal with matters of political significance, the fact that they were signed subject to a total of sixty-two reservations, and the fact that any Power may denounce a given convention upon due notice, would seem. to deny to those conventions a "higher status" than is possessed by those rules of international law which, though unwritten, are in universal acceptance among nations.

* *

** * *

Such purely theoretical statements as that "sovereignty is an attribute of mankind as a whole [p. 10]. * Nations have no sovereignty over against world sovereignty [p. 11]. It is no longer a question whether the whole human race shall be one organized political body [p. 7]," are too far removed from the facts of international life to be worth serious discussion.

C. G. FENWICK.

By Norman Bentpp. xii, 204. Sometime scholar

The Law of Domicile in its Relation to Succession. wich. London: Sweet and Maxwell, Ltd. 1911. The title page of this volume describes the author as of Trinity College, Cambridge, and of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-Law," and the preface indicates that he is a former pupil of Dr. Westlake. The preface adds that "This book is founded on the Essay which was

awarded the Yorke Prize at Cambridge University in 1910, and is published in accordance with the terms of the Prize," and that the author's "primary authorities have been the reports of the English cases," to which he has been guided by the use of text books on private international law. The table of cases includes some 350 reported decisions, which are referred to more or less fully in the text.

In the first chapters there is traced "the rise and decline, as it were, of the principle of domicile in its relation to succession," whereby movables belonging to a deceased person devolve according to the law of the country where he last had his domicile. At first it was in the discretion of the court as a matter of comity to apply this rule or not, "but the practice gradually became so regular that it had the force of law" (p. 5). The earliest reported English decisions bearing on the subject date from about the middle of the eighteenth century, a time when, however, the notion of domicile as distinguished from residence was not clearly established. Not until 1801, in the case of Somerville v. Somerville, was the rule in “favor of the application of the law of domicile to the distribution of the personal estate" (p. 9) finally settled.

This case also raised the question as to what constituted domicile, and while the court on this point held correctly that the domicile of origin remains until it has been clearly abandoned, it indicated the now generally considered erroneous doctrine that two domiciles may be simultaneously acquired. The author states that

The more exact determination of the doctrine [of domicile] was largely worked out in another branch of law by Sir William Scott (afterwards Lord Stowell). That great jurist, as head of the Admiralty Court during the Napoleonic wars, elaborated the idea of domicile in his prize decisions upon enemy property (p. 10).

It will be recalled, however, that the question before Lord Stowell in these decisions was the national character of the claimant in time of war. Can it be said that the same considerations govern the determination of this question as that of technical domicile in time of peace? Query, therefore, whether mere residence for purposes of trade is not sufficient to establish national character in time of war, and how much Lord Stowell's decisions on this point really contributed to the definition of domicile.

As to testamentary succession at the time of Somerville v. Somerville, the law was not yet clearly established that a will must satisfy the formal

requirements of the law of the domicile. This rule, however, was finally settled in Stanley v. Bernes (1831), and from then on for many years the law of the domicile governed the distribution and succession to personal property in both testacy and intestacy. But the harshness resulting from the strict enforcement of this principle was ameliorated in 1861 by Lord Kingsdown's Act, which declared valid wills conforming to the law of the place where made or of the domicile of origin as well as of the domicile of choice.

The last ten pages of the chapter are devoted largely to a historical review of the question whether a change of domicile requires a change of nationality. While several judges had previously expressed views in the affirmativ, it was definitely decided in the famous case of Udny v. Udny (1869) that the two were entirely separate and distinct notions. The author says:

*

The decision is of great importance as defining the exact nature of a domicile of origin and its relation to a domicile of choice. when a different domicile of choice is acquired, the domicile of origin is only in abeyance, reviving immediately the other is abandoned, and it continues until a second domicile of choice has been acquired (p. 22).

This conception of domicile of origin constitutes, he adds, the specially English character of domicile. The doctrine of Udny v. Udny stood until the time of Huntly v. Gaskell (1906) and subsequent decisions, which indicate a tendency again to confuse domicile with nationality and to cloud the distinction between the two so clearly pointed out in Udny v. Udny. Upon the Continent, on the other hand, the principle of domicile, the author says, "has not been so much modified as abandoned in favour of the principle of nationality" (p. 29). The existence of these two different principles has led to confusion in the law of succession where the deceased leaves personal property both in England and on the Continent.

From this interesting historical introduction the author passes to a discussion of the nature and definition of domicile in Chapter II on "The English Conception of Domicile." After an incomplete attempt at developing the notion of domicile, the author takes up the subheadings "Domicile of Married Woman " and " Domicile of Minor." Under the latter he strangely enough treats the domicile of ambassadors, consuls, soldiers, sailors and persons entering the service of foreign states. Then, under the subheading "Domicile of Choice," the definition of domicile is resumed: