Gentlemen: The address that I am to make, in response to the gracious invitation of our eminent President, on this too burning and too present subject, will be a very simple and a very modest endeavor. Do not expect a doctrinal study, an exposition, or a critical appreciation of the conduct of the belligerents in the struggle that is being so desperately waged on both sides. The time has not yet come to pass reasoned judgment upon the acts which have been committed by certain belligerents and which are of such a nature as to humiliate us as men and to distress us as Frenchmen. I am speaking here in the name of the Institute as a whole. In addition, the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, which is particularly well qualified in such matters by reason of the nature of its studies, has expressly commissioned me, as one of its members, to lay before you its protest against these abominable acts. Can it be possible that mankind, whom we have considered civilized through the efforts of many centuries, has come to such a pass? I do not wish to say anything of a polemical nature, which is not in keeping in this place and at this time. I wish to confine myself to statements of a purely legal character. The brevity of the exposition may incline you to excuse its dryness.

International law is at once on its trial and in the moulding as it has never been before. It is just a hundred years since the last world-wide war was fought; and to that period one must go back to trace the source of the principal rules and practices of the law of war, and especially of maritime warfare. In the interval, the form of international law and much of its substance have been entirely changed. From indefinite practice and varying usage, imperfectly systematized by text writers, it has passed into the condition of definite rules and uniform law, formulated by international conventions. But most of this definite law has not yet stood the test of practice. So far as the rules of maritime warfare are concerned, it is largely consolidated in conventions made at international conferences during the last seven years. These conventions have indeed been already applied in the war of Italy and the Balkan Powers against Turkey, but they were not searchingly tried in those contests, which were determined by land operations. Strictly, the conventions are not binding in this war, because they are intended to apply only in wars in which all the belligerents are parties, and Servia and Montenegro have not ratified any of the 1907 agreements; but, in fact, the great Powers are professing* to act according to the international legislation.

Introductory. At this time nearly all serious minds are preoccupied with the problem how, after the European war, peace may be most effectively promoted and maintained. Thoughts are turned toward the question what is the best international system for the sustenance of higher international justice—a revitalized Concert of Europe, or of the world, or some new application of the “balance of power” principle. There are those who consider the “balance of power” doctrine to have outlived its usefulness, and to have shown itself productive of mischief; others would retain or reconstruct existing alliances in a form more efficacious for the preservation of international peace. Statesmanship will have to face many other difficult problems of international relationship after the war, and internationalists will be impelled to give a greatly increased share of their attention to the sanctions of international law and to the political conditions essential to its maintenance and development. Such questions call for an understanding of aspects of the life of the international community that are now much more strongly accentuated than they were before the war, and that can scarcely fail to attract scientific study to factors in the general situation the importance of which till recently was underrated. These practical problems demand in some degree philosophical study of the structure of the international community; as pure science precedes applied science, the communal life of States must be analyzed before light can be thrown on the issues of practical statecraft. The question how international force is to be organized, so as to render most effective aid to the cause of justice, presupposes for its satisfactory solution an inquiry into the actual constitution of the international society. States, moreover, can wisely order their future only by acting with full knowledge of the lessons of history. The interpretation of history is a necessary point of departure for the statesman and the publicist, if they are to offer sound proposals for practical action. But one is powerless to extract any meaning from history without understanding the social processes of which conspicuous historical events are but the surface manifestations. One must read history in the light of political science to grasp its meaning. Thus we are led inevitably, as a preliminary to any practical program, or to any interpretation of recent history, to the task of surveying the actual distribution, transformation, and organization of international force, and of stating in analytical terms the relation between these processes and the maintenance of international right—that is, order and justice. The conceptions of international force and of international power are so closely related as to be almost identical, but in this investigation we prefer the concept of force as something more positive and more tangible than power, which is latent force, or that which may develop actual force. For this reason the propositions here elaborated apply equally to the organization of international power—to the establishment of that authority through which the supremacy of law is effectuated and secured.

The invasion by German troops of the territories of Belgium and Luxemburg and the occupation by Japanese troops of Chinese territory to facilitate their attack upon the German forces at Kaio-Chau have raised one of the most fundamental questions of international law, namely, under what circumstances, if any, is a belligerent justified in violating the territory of a neutral for the purpose of prosecuting his military operations against the enemy. The German and Japanese offenses differ somewhat because in the one case the neutrality of the violated territory had been guaranteed by a special convention of long standing to which the violating belligerent was himself a party; in the other case the neutrality of the violated territory, although protected by a long established rule of international law, as well as by one of the Hague conventions, had not been made the subject of a special and solemn guarantee by a group of Powers. This fact, together with other circumstances, places the two acts upon a different moral if not a different legal footing.

On the 23d of August the English official press bureau issued the following public statement:

The Admiralty wishes to draw attention to their previous warnings to neutrals of the danger of traversing the North Sea. The Germans are continuing their practice of scattering mines indiscriminately upon the ordinary trade routes. These mines do not conform to the conditions of the Hague Convention. They do not become harmless after a certain number of hours; they are not laid in connection with any definite military scheme, such as the closing of a military port, or as a distinct operation against an invading fleet, but appear to be scattered on the chance of touching individual British war or merchant vessels. In consequence of this policy, neutral ships, no matter what their destination, are exposed to the greatest danger. * * * The Admiralty, while reserving to themselves the utmost liberty of retaliatory action against this new form of warfare, announce that they have not so far laid any mines during the present war and that they are endeavoring to keep the sea routes open for peaceful commerce.

Balloons have been employed for more than a century for purposes of observation, signalling, transmission of dispatches and as a means of escape from besieged places. During the siege of Venice in 1849, two hundred small balloons charged with explosives were directed against the city, though without success. As is well known, they played an important part in the siege of Paris in 1870, and were employed by the Japanese in the battle of Liao-Yang in 1904. Aeroplanes, as contradistinguished from balloons, were employed in the recent Turco-Italian and Balkan Wars, though mainly for purposes of observation and signalling, transportation of dispatches and the location of mines. In the present war they are being used for the first time on an extensive scale for the purpose of dropping bombs on towns and cities of the enemy, and with so much effectiveness that Tennyson’s vision seems almost on the point of realization when he

Heard the heavens fill with shouting and there rained a ghastly dew

From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.

With the possible exception of the violation of Belgian neutrality, no acts have provoked wider criticism than the burning of Louvain with its university, its cathedral, its library, including its books, manuscripts and scientific collections, the partial destruction of the cathedrals of Rhcims and Soissons, the alleged “massacre” at Aerschot, the “sacking” of Senlis, including the partial destruction of its cathedral, and the “atrocities” at Linsmeau, Termonde and Orsmael. The British Prime Minister, in his Guildhall speech of September 4th, characterized the burning of Louvain as “the greatest crime committed against civilization and culture since the Thirty Years War—a shameless holocaust of irreparable treasures lit up by blind barbarian vengeance.” Sir Frederick Pollock also declared that “it exceeded in horror and calculated wickedness any military crime committed since the Thirty Years War.” The London Times denounced it as “an atrocious act without a parallel even in the Dark Ages and one which would turn the hands of every civilized nation against the Germans.” These expressions fairly represent the opinion of the English and, to a large degree, the American public in regard to the character of the act.

Any attempt to discuss the international responsibility of the State for injuries sustained by private individuals in time of war immediately encounters the difficulty of establishing any definite rules in the practice of awarding indemnities or compensation for private losses arising out of war. Nevertheless, an examination of the subject in the light of precedent and principle may not be without some useful results.

In a general way, this responsibility of the State may be measured by the State’s obligation as a belligerent or a neutral to observe the rules of international law and of war. As it is obviously, however, beyond present possibilities to undertake a detailed review of these rules—which indeed have been ably treated in numerous works on the subject—the discussion here will be confined to the more important classes of cases in which pecuniary claims have been or are likely to be brought for injuries sustained by individuals or private property in time of war.

How to regulate social, political and commercial intercourse between the people and Government of the United States and the peoples and governments of the other republics on the American continent so as to establish and maintain perfect cordiality and mutual confidence and respect, is a problem which has never been satisfactorily solved.

In considering this question, which is often to the front and some times discussed with acerbity, certain disagreeable facts must be faced. In the process of understanding it American vanity will be hurt, but that is no reason for avoiding the effort to do so. There is abundant reason for believing that Americans are not popular in Mexico and other Latin-American countries. It is not the purpose of the writer in this brief essay to undertake to show why this is so. Suffice it to say that the people of the United States are viewed with suspicion, and this doubt of them and their purposes has militated against the development of American trade in the southern republics, and is a cause of irritation which ought to be cured. Diplomatic friendship has existed and does exist, but that is a relationship which can always be counted on until an open breach is imminent. Less than thirty days before the outbreak of the greatest war in all history there was an assumed—a diplomatic— cordiality between the monarchs of Russia, England, Germany and Austria. There is no danger of a cataclysm in America such as is deluging Europe with blood; but that unparalleled disaster shows that something more than formal friendships, something far more than diplomatic amenities, is desirable in the intercourse of nations.

The subject of training for public service in the foreign field has recently been attracting renewed interest. Committees of the American Political Science Association and the American Economic Association have been collecting information and recommending measures in the whole field of training for public service, including the diplomatic and consular service. A comprehensive report upon the teaching of international law in American universities has been published by the Division of International Law of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. During the eighth annual meeting of the American Society of International Law a conference of teachers of international law was held, leading to the adoption of a series of sixteen resolutions on various phases of this important matter. A review of prevailing conditions and a statement of present tendencies, in view of these developments, is the purpose of this article.