child Emperor begun the exercise of his sovereign functions. It was indeed fortunate for him and for his country that in those critical and turbulent times he was able to surround himself by that group of young and broad-visioned statesmen who confronted with him the problem of the rehabilitation of Japan.

It was in 1853 that Commodore Perry had appeared off the shores of Japan with his four ships of war, and in 1854 that he returned to the United States carrying the first treaty that Japan had negotiated with any foreign country in modern times. We may trace to Perry's statecraft and determination the beginning of the friendly relations between the two nations which have remained unbroken. Our country is thus forever associated, in the minds of the Japanese people, with their emergence from the traditional isolation which marks the beginning of the new era. In the meanwhile Japan's ports still remained closed to foreign countries, until it fell to the lot of another citizen of the United States, Townsend Harris, the first American consul-general to Japan, who secured a treaty in 1857 under which Yokohama was opened in 1858, and thereafter commerce between the United States and Japan was freely carried on there. It was not until February 14, 1868, that an imperial decree announced to the world that "it had been definitely resolved, after a court council, to have treaties of amity with foreign Powers." By that decree, the "hermit kingdom," the sacred face of whose Emperor had been hidden from all men for centuries, proclaimed her entrance into the family of nations; from that date began her rapid absorption and assimilation of the best features of Occidental civilization. Looking back upon these events, having in mind the tremendous antipathy to all things foreign which had so long been the distinguishing characteristic of the Japanese mind, it seems incredible that the about-face should have been accomplished with so little disturbance, and that it could have been so rapidly and so quietly followed by other innovations equally startling. The long struggle which followed, before Japan succeeded in wresting from the reluctant Occidental nations the full recognition of her right to participate in international relations upon an equal footing with all other countries, constitutes one of the most interesting, dramatic and epoch-making events in international history. The commercial treaties that Japan subsequently negotiated exempted foreigners residing within her borders from the operation of her criminal laws and secured to them the privilege of being arraigned solely before tribunals of their own nationality. This was held to be a necessary condition, as regards the

citizens of Christian states residing in non-Christian countries, and it led to the establishment of the consular courts. It was this implication that the nation was unfit to exercise one of the fundamental attributes of every sovereign state, that of judicial autonomy, that the Japanese so bitterly resented; and it may be said in passing that it was the determination to prove herself worthy of this function which led to the complete reorganization and reform of the Japanese judicial system and procedure, to the founding of law schools and to the training of a bar that is to-day the equal of those of other lands. Japan first asked for the revision of the treaties and the abolition of consular jurisdiction, in 1871. Never yet had an Oriental state received at the hands of the Occident the recognition thus demanded; and the negotiations dragged along through eleven years before she finally secured it. It constitutes another tie of peculiar significance between Japan and the United States that our government was the first nation in the world to recognize the justice of Japan's demand. This was in the treaty of 1878; but the condition was attached that the treaty should not become operative until the other treaty Powers had also accepted the principle. It is authenticated history that this condition was inserted at the request of Japan, whose statesmen were wise enough to recognize the necessity of making haste slowly, while the reorganization of her judicial system was being tested. It thus became the fact that the United States dictated the terms of the first treaty conceding consular jurisdiction to Japan.

And so the marvelous panorama of Japanese regeneration continued to unroll itself before the astonished eyes of a skeptical world. Feudalism was abolished, or rather, abolished itself, in 1869, by the voluntary surrender by the samurai of their fiefs, praying the Emperor to reorganize and bring them all under the same system of law, a sacrifice which alone averted a bloody internal upheaval, and was indeed a noble act of patriotism, which stands without any parallel in history. A recent writer explains it by reference to the "deference of the Japanese samurai to certain canons of almost romantic morality."

Acting always under the guiding hand of the Emperor, the army and navy were rehabilitated and reorganized on European models. The banking system was revised. Private railways were nationalized and rapidly extended. The gold standard was established in 1885, thus placing the rapidly developing commerce of the country on a stable basis of exchange. The educational system was fundamentally remodelled on the basis of free compulsory primary education, and chiefly

under the sympathetic guidance of trained American experts. The first president of the Imperial University at Tokyo was our own adopted son, Dr. Guido Fridolin Verbeck. Tariffs were established under which the industrial development of the country was enormously stimulated along Western lines. Side by side with all this economic and educational advance, had been going on a finer, subtler, popular uplift, which Griffis summarizes: "A nation moved, toleration won, fanaticism received its death-blow, a Christian Church organized, persecution abandoned, priestcraft rebuked, Buddhism disestablished, and civilization in its thousand forms adopted."

Finally, and crowning the whole splendid edifice of nationalism, a constitutional representative government was established, not in response to any popular demand, but solely as the result of the Emperor's insight into the logical evolution of a government founded upon Western ideals. By a stroke of his pen, the suffrage was bestowed upon millions of Japanese citizens, the Diet was created, and the control of the local governments was placed in the hands of the people. The experiment was not undertaken without misgiving on the part of many; its ultimate outcome was long thought to be doubtful, but is so no longer. The first Japanese Diet opened its session on November 27, 1890, not yet a quarter of a century ago; and it can be safely said that in the dignity of its procedure, the quality of its legislation, and especially in the direct. and expeditious manner in which it accomplishes its work, the Japanese Diet is the peer of any Western parliament.

During the forty years in which this marvelous transformation was moving steadily forward, Japan was the victor in two wars. That with Russia was the greatest war of modern times; and was the method which Japan took, or was forced to take, to notify the world that she must henceforth be treated as an equal by the most powerful nations. The patience, the financial sacrifices, the skill and study with which army and navy were prepared for that titanic struggle; the astonishing courage and endurance of the Japanese soldiery in trench and in battle; and the marvelous seamanship and fighting capacity which accomplished the destruction of the Russian navy, opened the eyes of the world, and rank among the phenomena of history. It was as if Japan, like Minerva, had sprung full armed from the head of Jove.

The most important events in Japanese history since the war with Russia have been the annexation of Korea and the negotiation of treaties and agreements with Great Britain, France, Russia and the United States,

to insure the independence and integrity of the Chinese Empire, and the principle of equal opportunities for the commerce and industry of all nations in China, that is to say, of the American doctrine of the "open door." The exchange of notes between Japan and the United States, dated December 1, 1908, had all the effect of a treaty; was a final solution of the difficulties which had been pending for several years between the two countries; and was the happy culmination of plans inspired by Secretary Root some two years earlier, in continuation of the policy inaugurated by John Hay in 1900.

With the Emperor's death ended the Meiji era in the history of Japan, - meaning "the era of enlightenment." It covers a period of forty-five years and six months. No nation that exists has compressed so much history within a period so brief, or effected an evolution which bears such a momentous relation to the future history of the world. Whether the Occidental and the Oriental civilizations are to antagonize, and there is to ensue a titanic struggle for the supremacy of one over the other; or whether these two civilizations are to coalesce and intermingle and co-operate, for the development and the ultimate triumph of the idea of international unity, remains to be seen; but if "that far-off, divine event" shall ever come about, the career and the character of Mutsuhito will stand at the very front of the great things of earth that have made it possible.

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

On October 10, 1911, a proposition was made by Mr. Alejandro Alvarez, of Chile, and Mr. James Brown Scott, to establish an American Institute of International Law, which, if successfully launched, would do in a lesser degree for international law, as far as the American States are concerned, what the Institute of International Law has done for the states at large. A circular letter was prepared and sent to representative publicists in each of the American countries, in order to see whether the project met with the approval of those who might properly be considered as representative of public opinion in their respective states. The circular (a copy of which is appended to the present comment) called attention to the fact that, however the states of the American continent may differ in their origin, their forms of government are so similar and they are so separated from the Old World that they may well be considered as forming a distinct unit, as is indicated by the name.

Pan-America, which is commonly used to distinguish them as a whole. This identity of interest, or solidarity of interest, to use an expression much in vogue, is indicated by the fact that the American states have held at intervals since 1889 a series of reunions known as Pan-American Conferences, and there has been established in Washington as the organ of the states of the Western Hemisphere a bureau known as the PanAmerican Union. The Conferences are political and the Pan-American Union is a diplomatic body directed by a governing board, in which the states as such are represented. The Conferences and the Union are therefore official bodies, and the representatives act under instructions from their governments. They are not private or voluntary associations, in which the members discuss problems of common interest according to their individual judgments and reach conclusions based upon the individual views of their respective members. They render great services, and their influence in the future is bound to be greater than in the past. It was felt, however, that a strictly private or voluntary association, composed of representative publicists, untrammeled by instructions from their governments and free to exercise their individual judgments, would not only bring the representatives of enlightened thought of the different American countries into close and intimate contact, but that the various problems, which exist of necessity and which must arise in the mutual intercourse of the American nations, might properly be discussed in the light of the general principles of international law, and solutions proposed either consistent with the general principles or with necessary or logical development.

There is, of course, no American international law, in the strict sense of the word, for the essence of international law consists in the fact that it is universal, not the rule of conduct of one or two, or even of a group of states. There are, however, problems which may properly be considered as American, in the sense that they either do not exist elsewhere or are not of such importance. A scientific discussion of these problems and the formulation of principles of law by which they should be decided, whether such principles actually exist or are the consequence of existing principles, that is to say a development of existing principles, furnish ample employment for the best brains of Pan-America. Even if the proposed Institute were not in the beginning so successful as its proposers hope, the meeting at stated times of publicists from the different American countries would be in itself an unmixed good, and would go far to justify the creation of the Institute. Personal acquaintance