. 121 151 Some say we have no international law. Others declare we have. Many wonder how far the nations of the world have gone in their relations one with another. Tomes there are, of course, which give the facts. But ponderous volumes make difficult reading. Meanwhile the whole question of international law and international relations is beginning to bulk largely in our modern life, and there is a growing desire on the part of thousands of American citizens for authoritative information presented in simple form. To fill that place, this booklet is issued by THE AMERICAN FOUNDATION. It pretends to be nothing more than it is: a brief presentation of the most generally accepted principles that govern the intercourse of nations and the international cooperation thus far achieved. But it is authoritative. It has been carefully prepared and gone over by those to whom the question is thoroughly familiar. It seeks only to deal with what has been effected. What the future holds in changes and developments no one can predict. The hope is for much and always with a regard for a basis upon which to build peace for the world. September 1, 1925. iii EDWARD W. Bok. PREFACE PART I of this pamphlet, on the rights and duties of sovereign states under international law, is merely a statement of the most generally accepted principles in this connection. The statement does not purport to be exhaustive; it is only an attempt to set forth as simply as possible the fundamental principles that have come to be recognized as governing the intercourse of nations. The brevity with which it has been necessary to state them in a very limited space has naturally precluded any attempt to include the reservations and limitations that may legitimately be attached to these general principles, or to discuss the many interesting and highly important questions that arise in that wide twilight zone between what is clearly allowed and what is clearly prohibited. The wisdom and the usefulness of attempting to state the principles of international law, and of attempting to state them briefly, and of attempting to state them now, may be questioned. As to stating them briefly: it is true that the adequate treatment of any one of the topics discussed in PART I would fill a treatise; but the average reader or voter will not read a series of treatises. As to stating them now: there is at present a sharp difference of opinion between those who believe that the World War demonstrated that there are no principles of international law, and those who maintain that the previous regulations were adequate, but that one or another belligerent was allowed to violate them. V There is another difference between those who believe that the creation of the League of Nations has made it unnecessary to consider previous forms or stages of international agreement, and those who deny that even the 55 nations now in the League are competent to change the law of nations. And those who know how laborious a task it is to survey the history of the world may in good faith believe that any attempt to convey a general understanding of the outlines of international law to the average reader is not only useless but perhaps even harmful. In issuing this pamphlet, we have not been unaware of these difficulties, nor unmindful of them. In a democracy, where the control of foreign affairs is vested in Congressmen elected directly by the voters, it is essential that the voters have some basis for judgment between party platforms and between the statements of candidates. In the United States, thanks partly to our geographical isolation, partly to our cherished conception that our forefathers came to the New World to escape the tyranny of the old, partly to our great natural resources which have made us almost self-sufficient, we have been slow to feel except in calamities the bonds that unite us to the rest of the world. But the consciousness that we need the rest of the world is growing-not only in the sense that we need to sell it wheat and cotton and steel, and to buy coffee and rubber from it, but also in the desire for the interplay of the manifestations of mind and spirit. The average citizen, sharing in this consciousness, wants to know something of the bases of international vi |