national Law* By MUNROE SMITH, LL.D., Professor of Roman Law and Comparative Jurisprudence, Columbia University, President American Political Science Association. O describe as "imperfectly de- territory. In American mining Tveloped" a law that is applied in national and international tribunals, that is based not only on precedents, but also on formal resolutions of international congresses, and that has a literature at least twenty times larger than that used in compiling the law books of Justinian, seems paradoxical. Many writers, however, deny that international law is law at all, except insofar as its rules are imposed by each State on itself. In controversies between States there is no law, because there is no superior organized force to constrain obedience. Rules of conduct, however, may to some extent be enforced by superior power, although that power is not politically organized. This was the case in early tribal society. This is also the case whenever political authority breaks down. In continental Europe, in the middle ages, law was effectively enforced by extemporized agencies, like the Vehm, which was a great central European vigilance committee. Rules of conduct are similarly enforced when men push beyond the pale of State authority, as in the settlement of our western Abstract of presidential address at the fourteenth annual meeting, December 27, 1917, to be printed in full with proceedings of the convention in The American Political Science Review, for February. camps, law and order were measurably maintained by a reversion to primitive processes, by lynch law. In California, law and order were maintained for a considerable time. by a vigilance committee. In early society most wrongs were redressed by feud, as in international society most wrongs are redressed by war. The tribe, however, acted directly when a wrong was done to the whole tribe. That was the beginning of criminal law. To-day the world is acting collectively to punish a crime against civilization. The redress of an international wrong by the concerted action of individual States is a significant step. Such action has been taken more than once against small States or against nations imperfectly organized or temporarily disorganized by internal conflicts. The most recent illustration (before the outbreak of the World War) was the concerted action of the Powers to protect their legations in China against the Boxers. That such concerted action is possible against more powerful offenders has been demonstrated in this war, in the gradual extension of the alliance against the Central European Powers. Germany and Austria expected to fight two European Powers and two or three small European States. To-day they see arrayed against them States containing the majority of the inhabitants of the civilized world. This vast league of nations has been called into being and into action by Germany's disregard of treaties and of international law. The moral reaction began with the rape of Belgium. More decisive, however, than any other offense Germany has committed-clearly decisive in bringing the United States into the war-was the German use of submarines against enemy and neutral commerce. It is chiefly in consequence of Germany's indiscriminate destruction of merchant vessels-a method of warfare which is not only illegal and inhumane, but which also imperils to an unprecedented degree the chief means of international intercourse that the civilized world has organized itself into something very like a great vigilance commit tee. International law has not broken down in this war. Some of the rules of war have been overridden, but the international law of peace is intact. It cannot be said that even the law of war has broken down, when it is realized that the United States and other States at first neutral have been drawn into the war by Germany's violations of the rules of warfare and are fighting, in part at least, for the maintenance of these rules. After the war it will be necessary to fill some gaps in the law of war. The use of submarines and of aircraft must be regulated. "Military necessity" and the right of retaliation must be defined and limited. Reprisals cannot be pushed to the point of destroying all neutral rights, nor can it be tolerated that belligerents should overbid each other in the illegality and inhumanity of their military measures. Serious efforts must be made to lessen the chance of future war. It must be recognized that minor disputes are to be settled by arbitration, and that even where an important national interest or the national honor is involved, hostilities shall not be opened until sufficient time has been given for mediation. It is proposed by many speakers and writers that a nation that rejects arbitration and refuses to delay hostile action. until mediation is attempted shall be punished by the joint action of disinterested States. It is suggested by some that the punishment shall consist in discrimination against the offending State as regards commercial intercourse, export of munitions, and loans. It is suggested by others that the joint action against the offending State shall be military. Plans have been formulated for a league of nations to enforce peace, which shall have not only legislative and judicial, but also executive powers. It is even suggested that such a league shall have at its disposal a permanent military and naval force, composed of State contingents. Many of these plans involve the establishment of something approaching a world government. Such a government may be developed in the future, but there is little prospect that it will be established soon or easily. Similar proposals have been made from time to time during the past six centuries. What is new is the wide support given to these plans and the endorsement they have received from responsible statesmen. The crucial question is that of sanctions. We shall gain relatively little, it is urged, by establishing new international organs unless it is possible to give something more than moral authority to their decisions and mandates. The decision that a controversy is justiciable must be followed by some joint action of the civilized world against the State that refuses to submit its case to arbitration. The prohibition of hostile action in other cases, until reasonable time has been given for mediation, must be followed by some joint action against the State that refuses to obey the injunction. The first question is: What shall be the nature of the joint action? When this question is answered, a second arises: Can the joint action required be secured? Who shall coerce unwilling neutrals to join in coercing their quarrelsome neighbors? This last question needs only to be stated to be answered. In the society of nations, as it exists to-day, any such general coercion is unthinkable. All that can be deemed feasible is to affirm the legal right and the moral duty of nations not primarily interested to join in penalizing breaches of the proposed rules. How far they will recognize such a duty and exercise such a right will depend in part upon the nature of the action they are expected to take. development On this point, there are many proposals. . . That some confederate world organization will ultimately be established is not improbable. The development of law has always been accompanied and conditioned by the subjection of smaller to larger groups—of kinship groups to tribes, of tribes to small States, of small States to national States-and the development of international law may well bring similar subordination of the single States now sovereign to the authority of a world league. That any such world organization will be developed in the near future, few students of history and of politics will deem probable. The subordination of smaller to larger groups has always encountered intense and obstinate resistance-a resistance based on that human instinct which is most essential to efficient cooperation, the instinct of loyalty. When we remember what stretches of time have been needed to transfer allegiance from each smaller to each larger group, when we recall that, in most cases, this transfer of allegiance has been accomplished only through war, we may well conclude that it will be no easy task to imbue the people of the great modern national States with the conviction that they owe any real allegiance to humanity, and that it will be even harder to convince them that this allegiance is in any respect higher than that which they owe to their own national States. It will be easier to carry resolutions through international con gresses and to secure their general ratification than to establish new methods for their enforcement. It will be easier to obtain general recognition of the right of disinterested States to insist on arbitration or on mediation, when war seems imminent, and to participate in joint action against an aggressive State, than to secure formal pledges of eventual participation in such action. It will be less difficult to secure pledges to join in a boycott against future offenders than pledges to take part in military action. It will be far less difficult to establish permanent boards for arbitration, for investigation and for mediation, than to clothe them with real powers. Plans for facilitating voluntary cooperation will encounter far less opposition than proposals that suggest the establishment of anything resembling a world government. In pointing out some of the obstacles that will be encountered in any effort to organize the society of nations and to give more efficient sanction to its law, it is far from my purpose to discourage such efforts. If they are wisely directed, I believe that substantial progress may be achieved. The temper of the world is far more favorable to such efforts than at any former period. Never before were the nations so closely knit together by material and spiritual bonds of every kind as in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of this war; never before has it been so convincingly demonstrated as during the past three years that the common interests im paired by war outweigh any separate and selfish interests that war can possibly promote; never before have neutrals so clearly seen that they have a vital concern in the maintenance of the world's peace. Until now, the attitude of neutral governments toward a war has resembled that taken in 1439 by the authorities of Namur toward a local feud. "If the kin of the slain man will and can avenge him, good luck to them, for with this matter the Schöffen have nothing to do, nor do they wish to be reported as having said anything about it." In the present war our Government found such a neutrality of thought and of word increasingly difficult, and neutrality in conduct was ultimately found to be impossible. For the successful working of any international organization to maintain peace it is essential that every civilized State should not only claim the right but should also recognize the duty of aiding in its maintenance. This involves the acceptance of the international point of view, the development of the international mind. In this matter all who teach and write in the fields of history, sociology, economics, politics and law, have grave duties. Never before, except possibly in the period of the French Revolution, have the dynamic potencies of what seemed abstract theories been so strikingly revealed. Many of the theories we have held are being tested, as never before, in the furnace of this greatest and most terrible of wars. Some of them have developed unforeseen and deplorable corollaries. It is our duty to-day to re-examine our theories from the point of view of the interests of humanity. Let us ask ourselves whether they work for the welfare and the progress of the world; whether they tend to further the immemorial effort of humanity to rise from the mire of brute struggle for survival to the clean heights of a noble rivalry in common labor for the general good. Ꮤ want? By DR. H. HINKOVIC Member of the Croation and Delegate to the Hungarian Parliament HAT is the Jugoslav problem? Who are the Jugoslavs, and what do they The Jugoslavs are the Southern Slavs. "Jug" is the word for "South" in the Slavic language. In history the Jugoslavs appear under three names-Croats, Serbs and Slovenes. But these are not three different nationalities. Sprung from the same stock, speaking the same language, inhabiting a continuous territory, having identical customs and, above all, identical national aspirations, the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes are one single nation, designated by one common nameJugoslavs. The Bulgars do themselves as Slavs. not look upon Their greatest poet, Cyril Hristov, boasts of it. When he signs his poems he adds to his name the words "Tartaro-Bulgar." However, in spite of themselves, they are Slavs, or rather slavisized. Still, they remain Tartars in spirit, they stay outside the Jugoslav family. Thus our appellation "Jugoslavs," embracing as it does the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to the exclusion of the Bulgars, has no real ethnical significance. It is a purely political expression. It was during the lapse of time from the 5th to the 7th century that the Jugoslavs migrated from the trans-Carpathian regions into their present home. They number about 13,000,000. Five million live in Serbia and Montenegro, seven-and-a-half in AustriaHungary, and about a half million are living-for the greater part temporarily in the two Americas and the British colonies and dominions. Others are settled in Northern Albania, in Greece they reach as far south as Salonica, in Bulgaria as far as the River Iskra and the Perin Mountains. About 40,000 Jugoslavs dwell in the Kingdom of Italy. The western part of the Jugoslav territory in Austria-Hungary is occupied by the Slovenes, the centre by the Croats, the east by the Serbs. But this is only a general statement. As a matter of fact the Croat and Slovene elements on the one hand, and the Serb and Croat on the other are intermingled in the various countries. THE VARIOUS JUGOSLAV STATES The Slovenes were the first who succeeded in founding an independent State. The ninth century saw the birth of a Croatian and a Serbian State. The Slovenes were the first to succumb to Charlemagne in 778. The Croats elected the King of Hungary to be their king, after the extinction of their native dynasty in 1102. Serbia, which reached its zenith under Tsar Dushan, was definitely conquered by the Turks in |