of Nations and their nationals, notwithstanding the fact that the United States is not a member of the League of Nations. Vested American property rights in the mandated territory shall be respected and in no way impaired.

A duplicate of the annual report to be made by the mandatory. . . shall be furnished to the United States.

Nothing contained in the present convention shall be affected by any modification which may be made in the terms of the mandate as recited above unless such modification shall have been assented to by the United States.

The extradition treaties and conventions in force between the United States and France shall apply to the mandated territory.1

The first treaty with a mandatory power for the purpose of determining the rights of the United States in territory under an "A" mandate was signed on April 4, 1924, with France. It relates to Syria and provides:

that the United States and its nationals shall enjoy in the mandate territory all the rights and privileges assured to States members of the League of Nations under the terms of the mandate. It also provides that, subject to the provisions of local law for the maintenance of public order and public morals, nationals of the United States will be permitted freely to establish and maintain educational, philanthropic and religious institutions.

In the preamble to the treaty, which includes the text of the mandate itself, reference is made to the fact that the United States of America, by participating in the war against Germany, contributed to her defeat and to the defeat of her allies and to the renunciation of the rights and titles of her allies in the

1 Articles 1-6.

The conventions with France in regard to French Cameroons and French Togoland and with Belgium in regard to Ruanda-Urundi are in all respects similar. They were signed on February 13, 1923, February 13, 1923, and April 18, 1923, respectively, and were ratified by the Senate of the United States on March 3, 1924. The texts are set forth in the Congressional Record, March 3, 1924, pp. 3586, et seq., unbound issue.

territories transferred by them. In this connection it will be recalled that Turkey, an ally of Germany, under the Treaty of Lausanne renounces all right and title over certain territories including the territory comprising Syria and the Lebanon and that the frontier between Turkey and the new mandate state is defined in an agreement between France and the Angora Government signed October 20, 1921.

In an exchange of notes which is to take place at the time of the signature of the Syrian Mandate Treaty, the French Government undertakes to extend to the United States and to its nationals the benefit of any other agreements or conventions concerning Syria and the Lebanon which may be entered into between the French Government and any other governments.1

In its stand in regard to mandates, as in regard to the Open Door in China, the United States has set valuable precedents for the development of the policy of Section 317.

'Press Release, Department of State, for publication in morning newspapers of April 4, 1924. The convention on rights in Syria and the Lebanon was consented to by the Senate on May 14, 1924. Text: Congressional Record (unbound), May 14, 1924, pp. 8769 et seq.

CHAPTER X

THE GENERAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE UNCONDITIONAL MOST-FAVORED-NATION PLEDGE

The consistency with which the United States abided by the decisions of the Revolutionary Fathers in their conception and treatment of the most-favored-nation clause is not found in the history of European diplomacy. As times and statesmen and nations have changed, changes have also occurred in the form and interpretation of this cardinal feature of commercial agreements. More significant, however, is the fact that, for the last sixty years, generally throughout Europe and the greater part of the commercial world mostfavored-nation treatment has been given the simple, straightforward meaning that a nation to which it is accorded shall not be discriminated against, but shall stand on a footing as advantageous as any other, in the markets of the country which accords it.

59. DEVELOPMENT PRIOR TO THE WORLD WAR "The most conspicuous single event in the commercial history of the nineteenth century," says the United States Tariff Commission, was the conclusion of the Cobden Treaty of 1860 between England and France."1 By Article XIX the contracting parties mutually guaranteed to each other, so far as the articles mentioned in the treaty were concerned, every favor which they should grant to any

1Reciprocity and Commercial Treaties, p. 43. Text: British and Foreign State Papers, vol. 50, pp. 13 et seq. See table of principal sources at the beginning of this monograph.

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third power. In the supplementary convention of November 16, 1860, the following Article appeared:

Each of the High Contracting Powers engages to extend to the other any favour, any privilege or diminution of tariff, which either of them may grant to a third Power in regard to the importation of goods mentioned, or not mentioned, in the Treaty of the 23rd of January, 1860.1

England promptly generalized the concessions made to France, whilst the latter within five years had made similar most-favored-nation treaties with Belgium, Prussia and the Zollverein, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden-Norway, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal and Austria.

Thus was set on foot the great liberal commercial movement of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. In the view of Europe since that time the function of the most-favored-nation clause has been automatically to distribute or generalize advantages, a view which contrasted with the American policy that its function was to provide merely equality of opportunity to bargain for and obtain concessions by paying in every case an equivalent price. It was as the most efficient instrument for generalizing concessions that the unconditional most-favored-nation clause came at this time to assume its vast importance in European treaties. Great Britain has been the most perfect exponent of the European most-favored-nation policy. Following the Cobden Treaty, the desire for world markets uninterfered with by discriminating duties upon imports was gratified through the successful negotiation by Great Britain of numerous unconditional most-favored-nation agreements.

In 1884 the American Secretary of State submitted to Great Britain a proposal for a reciprocity agreement with the British West Indies which expressly provided that the

1Ibid., p. 55 (Article V).

privileges conceded should not be granted by either party to other nations by reason of the most-favored-nation clause existing in any treaty with such other nations except upon the giving of a quid pro quo. The British minister of foreign affairs replied:

The interpretation of the most-favored-nation clause involved in the United States' proposals is, that concessions granted conditionally and for a consideration cannot be claimed under it. From this interpretation Her Majesty's government entirely and emphatically dissent. The most-favored-nation clause has now become the most valuable part of the system of commercial treaties, and exists between nearly all the nations of the earth. It leads more than any other stipulation to simplicity of tariffs and to ever increased freedom of trade; while the system now proposed would lead countries to seek exclusive markets and would thus fetter instead of liberating trade. Its effect has been, with few exceptions, that any given article is taxed in each country at practically one rate only. . . . But should the system contemplated by the United States be widely adopted, there will be a return to the old and exceedingly inconvenient system under which the same article in the same country would pay different duties varying according to its country of origin, the nationality of the importing ship, and, perhaps at some future time, varying also with the nationality of the importer himself.

It is, moreover, obvious that the interpretation now put forward would nullify the most-favored-nation clause . .

1

In order, however, to be able to levy countervailing duties upon bounty-fed sugar and to accept preferential treatment from outlying portions of its empire, Great Britain was later led to modify somewhat the integrity of its original conceptions of the unconditional most-favored-nation clause.

On the continent of Europe, as in England, and as is,

1 Quoted in Moore, Digest, pp. 270-271. See table of principal sources at the beginning of this monograph.