crime against the state, and a private wrong or a tort against an individual, as for instance, where private property is appropriated.

One of the essential or fundamental rights of a state flowing from territorial sovereignty is that of jurisdiction over all things and persons within its territory, and its merchant vessels on the high seas, including all persons and things thereon. An act that denies to a state its right of jurisdiction over its merchant vessels on the high seas and the goods thereon, such as the unlawful seizure of those vessels and the requisition of their cargoes, is a violation of the sovereign right of that state. Such an act, being a public offense, is analogous to a crime.

So, too, just as a citizen or subject of a state has property rights under the common and civil law, he has property rights at international law, the invasion of which by a sovereign state is a wrong in substance no more nor less than a tort for which international precedents have already applied the remedy known to the municipal law in cases of tort.

In view of what has been said it would appear that the omission of the principle of liability in tort at international law on the part of a sovereign state is not only illogical and anomalous, but positively disadvantageous. Therefore, in order to correct what appears to be a glaring fault in the established system, it is here suggested that some such express amendment to the existing law as the following might well be incorporated in the next Hague convention:

Hereafter each state that is a party to this convention shall hold itself liable in its own courts for the consequences of such wrongs as it may do the nationals of the other signatory parties, in accordance with the principles of liability in tort known to the municipal law of the offending state.

Since such an amendment would only serve to make international law equally as logical and consistent as the various systems of municipal law known to the sisterhood of nations, what valid reason can there be why an offense should not be held to possess the same dual aspect at international law that it possesses at municipal law?

This inquiry is not one of mere academic interest. An amendment to international law that would render justice to the individual more certain and expeditious, thereby enhancing the respect in which the law of nations is popularly held; that would remove from the jurisdiction of diplomacy the cause of many international vexations and misunderstandings; that would not only make the whole system of international law more logical and simple, and consequently more workable, is indeed a matter deserving of the most thoughtful consideration on the part of international jurists. It will hardly be denied that the results mentioned are worthy of any effort that may be required for their attainment.

RUSSIA IN THE FAR EAST

BY BARON S. A. KORFF

Professor of Political Science and History, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown

University.

I. PENETRATION INTO SIBERIA

Slow, but very steady, was the advance of Russia into Siberia. For centuries did the Russians move onward, gradually driving back, conquering or assimilating the Mongolian aborigines. For a very long time Siberia seemed only a vast wilderness and a happy hunting ground for the fur trader and trapper. Later, and mainly on account of its great distance from European Russia, the Siberian country was used by the Tsars for purposes of penal colonization. Thus, there grew up that sad reputation, which clung to Siberia for many generations, of a bleak land of exile, where human suffering attained its very limit. The famous book of George Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, helped much to popularize these ideas, bringing home to the outside world the worst sides of the former autocratic régime of Russia. Yet this conception of Siberia is a very wrong one. Behind and around the penal settlements there developed a most healthy colonization by some of the best types of Russian Slavs. The peasant of European Russia was attracted by the fertile soil and agricultural resources and possibilities of Siberia and by the relative individual independence of his political and social life there; so he willingly migrated eastward, taking possession of the best land and forests he could find. But very naturally, such a pioneer movement called forth the selection of the best type of individuals, the most enterprising, most energetic and intellectually alert citizens, who thus soon constituted in Siberia a very progressive and flourishing population of settlers. Then too, political exiles were nearly always the pick of the Russian educated classes, carrying away with them into the wilderness such an amount of intellectual energy that, toward the end of the nineteenth century, many Siberian provinces could boast of having the best intellectually developed elements of the Russian nation. It is important to note in this respect that racially the Siberian settlers belonged all, or nearly all, to the purely Russian stock; only among the political exiles do we find a small percentage of Poles and of other nationalities, sent out after the Polish insurrections of 1831 and 1863. The Mongolian, Tartar and Finnish aborigines were and remained mostly nomads, of a low type of culture, and never succeeded in influencing the Russian colonists either culturally or politically. The hardships of life in Siberia quickly taught the local population self

reliance and self-confidence, strengthening the individual will and character, adding, in other words, just those traits that were conspicuously lacking among the Russians in the West. Since the Siberian territory was so unusually spacious, there always remained sufficient room for further expansion. The local population, outside the penal colonies, could move about freely in all directions, choosing the best location and richest land for their farms. There was no land-lordism nor any local aristocracy to hamper their movements or restrict their freehold. The government administration for many reasons was not interfering much with their individual life, tolerating thus the establishment and development of the fundamental principles of local autonomy and self-government. All this naturally tended to create a remarkably prosperous, but also individualistic and liberty-loving, type of citizen, which soon crystallized into a very independent class of people, thoroughly Russian in their culture and way of thinking, yet Siberian in their self-reliance and love of their homes and of their personal freedom.

Finally, one must mention the fabulous natural wealth and resources of Siberia, superior in some respects to the American and Canadian West of the former pioneer days. On the Siberian plains there grows the finest wheat and barley of the world. The virgin Siberian prairies are wonderfully suited for cattle grazing; in some places in addition there have been started extensive cultures of alfalfa. Some of the Siberian districts have vast forests, with splendid timber, still untouched by human hand. The Altai mountain range is well known for its mineral wealth, including most of the precious metals, and gold is found in many of the eastern river deposits.

Across the whole country there flow numerous navigable streams, forming easy and natural ways of communication between the different parts of the Siberian provinces. There is unfortunately one great impediment in this respect, namely, most of these rivers run from south to north. Consequently, for a long time Siberia was in great need of lines of communication going west-east, and this need forcibly and materially handicapped the normal commercial development of the country. This urgent necessity was ultimately met by the construction of the Great Siberian Railway, which gave Siberia a most important outlet to European Russia in the West and the Pacific Ocean in the East. The significance of this new channel of communications and the rôle it was bound to play can be judged by the stupendous development of the Siberian economical resources that took place from the very first days the cross-country railway was opened for commercial traffic.

"Siberia," or the vast Asiatic possessions of Russia, lying east of the Ural Mountains, is really composed of two very different parts, first, the endless plains which lie between the Urals and the Lake Baikal, and, secondly, the Far Eastern provinces, located east of the Baikal. These two sections are divergent in more ways than one; they differ topographically, economically, socially and even politically, and are bound to constitute in the future

separate political units. The Western provinces are, and always will remain, overwhelmingly agricultural, wheat-growing land, dotted here and there with magnificent timber. But in turn, they are divided into two groups of provinces, one northern one, the other one southern, without much contrast between them. The four Northern provinces, Tobolsk, Tomsk, Yeniseisk and Irkutsk, constitute "Siberia proper" and are at present the best developed section, with a steady rural population of thrifty and prosperous Russian colonists. The Southern provinces, or "Steppe country," Semipalatinsk, Semiretchinsk and Akmolinsk, though possessing also tremendous natural resources, are much less mature, mostly on account of the lack of railway communications, since the Central Siberian Railway has not enough southern branches to satisfy their growing needs. All these provinces, in the north as well as in the south, are colonized by purely Russian stock, with very few and insignificant exceptions, and are predominantly farmers, while the penal colonization is numerically small among them. The nomad aborigines are disappearing very fast and those of them who succeed in settling down acquire, without any difficulty, the Russian culture and modes of social and political life. In most places they were permitted to retain their local tribal organizations, and the most conspicuous among them are the Kirgiz tribes, who stand far above the other nomads in culture and political maturity.

The colonization of the second or eastern part of Siberia proceeded from the beginning on very different lines, first, for purely topographical reasons, and secondly, because of the distance that separated this section of the country from European Russia, intensified by the long continuance of utter lack of communication with the outside world. It is in these regions that we find concentrated the mineral wealth of Siberia and it was here in the mine fields that the Tsar's government settled many of the penal and political exiles; they were to work the mines and live as far away from Russia as possible. Very naturally these settlements developed on quite different social and political lines from the agricultural colonies of the Western Siberian provinces; their economic conditions of life were also quite distinct from the West. The steady eastward movement of the Russians brought them finally out to the Pacific and there they soon formed a commercial fringe of settlements along that coast, of an entirely divergent character from the rest of Siberia.

The process of colonization of Eastern Siberia reminds one very much of the development of the American Pacific coast, when for a long time California was separated from the Middle West and Eastern States by the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. In many other ways, too, the American movement westward developed on similar lines to those of Russia in Siberia, except that in the United States these processes of pioneer expansion had always a much more intense and potent character than the similar processes of Russian colonization of her Eastern Siberian frontiers. One of the more

important causes that constantly hampered the Russian colonization movement, as compared with America, was her inefficient autocratic form of government. Another reason for her lagging behind was the presence in Eastern Siberia of the penal colonies, which naturally could not take a full share in the economic development of the country.

Eastern Siberia is composed of four provinces and two separate districts, the Transbaikal, Amur, Maritime and Yakutsk provinces and the Kamchatka and Sakhalin districts. The Transbaikal province is rich in minerals and has a numerous Cossack and Buriat population, racially in many cases intermixed, as well as many of the penal settlements. The Maritime province, with Vladivostok as its capital, is on the contrary overwhelmingly commercial; it is the Russian California. Yakutsk and the vast territory of the Kamchatka Peninsula are yet very sparsely populated, though possessing important natural resources, promising mines, splendid fisheries and a huge supply of fur-bearing animals. The Island of Sakhalin is also rich in mines, coal and timber. The southern half of the island was lost to Russia, by the terms of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty, which ceded it to Japan. At present the Japanese have taken possession of the northern half of the island as well.

In considering the history of Siberian colonization one comes to the following conclusions: First, that Siberia, taken as a whole, has an exceptionally potential economic future, on account of its tremendous natural wealth. It is a land of great promise, marvelously rich, though hardly yet exploited to the limit of its possibilities. Secondly, Siberia consists of two very different parts, which are bound to constitute two distinct political units. On the one hand, there are the Western and Southern provinces, overwhelmingly agricultural, with a population of thrifty peasant farmers, an extremely individualistic, self-reliant and liberty-loving people, and in the main, with distinctly conservative leanings. These settlers own their land and are very jealous of their freehold, interested in local self-government, as long as the latter concerns their village or county, but not caring much for the outside world, as long as they can get a good profit from their agricultural products. The cooperative movement in all its forms is very strong among these Siberian peasants and has achieved remarkable economic and to some extent even political results. The Eastern or Far Eastern provinces, on the other hand, possess very different characteristics, commerce and industry visibly dominating. There exists, too, in these latter provinces a much stronger racial intercourse with non-Russian nationalities, which necessarily influenced the life and character of the Russian colonists.

These important differences lead to a third weighty conclusion, the different political status which these two sections of Siberia are bound to maintain in the future Russian commonwealth. Whereas Western Siberia will be perfectly content with firmly established local self-government (for instance, some form of well developed zemstvo organization), provided