There are at present armed forces of the United States in England, Northern Ireland, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, China, India, Iceland, in British possessions in the Western Hemisphere from Newfoundland to British Guiana, and in other friendly countries. There are troops of Great Britain or her dominions in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and a few of them in the United States. English forces were a few months ago in Greece, and ours in the Dutch East Indies and Burma. There are troops of various exiled governments in England. The armed forces of Germany are in Italy, Libya, Hungary, and Rumania; and those of Japan in French Indo-China and Thailand. In every case mentioned, the visiting forces are in the foreign country by invitation, or at least with the consent, of its sovereign or government.

The Alien Registration Division of the Immigration and Naturalization Service has announced that there are 695,363 alien Italians in the United States and 314,715 alien Germans. The census of 1940 indicated over eleven million white inhabitants born in a foreign country residing in the United States, and a recent release shows that about 65% of these became naturalized citizens.1 It can be calculated, therefore, that we have in this country, excluding orientals, a neutral alien population of about two millions. Are these persons protected by virtue of alien status from liability to military service? The issue has been confused by claims that rights under international law are violated by forcing neutral aliens to serve. In what follows, attempt is made to show that no controversial issue of international law need be raised, and that no such issue need interfere with the legal and domestic right of the United States to request alien service.

The Permanent Court of International Justice was not active during its twentieth year. The institutional framework of the Court was maintained, the personnel of its bench was kept intact, its officials were at their posts, and certain funds were available for current expenses; but no sessions were held during the year, and no progress was made with the two pending cases. Nor were there any significant developments during the year with reference to the international instruments relating to the Court, the attention of Governments being completely engrossed in other fields.

When the plan of consultative meetings of Foreign Ministers was first proposed at Buenos Aires in 1936, and later developed at Lima in 1938, few considered it as anything more than emergency procedure to meet situations in which prompt and decisive action might have to be taken. There was no thought that a new form of inter-American conferences was being created, that Foreign Ministers would come to the meetings attended by a corps of experts and assistants, that the range of the discussions would cover not a few restricted topics but practically the whole field of inter-American relations, provided only that the particular problem could be regarded as an “emergency” one in the broadest sense of that term. The original conception of a confidential gathering of Foreign Ministers began to break down at the first meeting at Panama in 1939; it broke down still further at the second meeting at Havana in 1940; and still further, indeed almost completely, at the third meeting at Rio de Janeiro in 1942.

The governments-in-exile present new problems created by the special circumstances of this war. During World War I, belligerent occupation played an important rôle. Disregarding smaller incidents, the following occupations may be mentioned: that of Belgium and parts of France by German troops; parts of White Russia by Austro-Hungarian troops; of Serbia and Macedonia by German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian troops; of Rumania by German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian troops; of parts of Italy by Austro-Hungarian and German troops; of parts of Austria by Russian troops; of parts of Alsace-Lorraine by French troops; and of Palestine by British troops. As a result of the invasion of its territories the Belgian Government exercised its functions in Sainte-Adresse, France, and the Serbian Government in Corfu, Greece, but it is not known that the activity of these sovereignties-in-exile has raised any significant legal problems. Since 1940 an increasing number of governments have been forced to flee their homelands in the face of hostile armed forces and have been invited by the British Government to establish themselves in the United Kingdom. We have now a “Miniature Europe” in London. There are at present eight foreign governments in England: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Yugoslavia.

On November 17, 1941, the President signed an Act repealing Sections 2, 3, and 6 of the Neutrality Act of 1939 and authorizing him during the unlimited national emergency proclaimed on May 27, 1941, to arm United States merchant vessels. The repealed provisions had required transfer of title of all goods before export to belligerents and had prohibited American ships from being armed, from trading with belligerent ports, and from passing through combat areas proclaimed by the President. With elimination of the arms embargo by the Act of November 4, 1939, practical elimination of the loan prohibition by the Lend-Lease Act of March 11, 1941, and elimination of the "cash and carry" and "combat area" provisions by the present Act, the experiment in a new type of neutrality which Congress originated in 1935 was practically ended.

At the beginning of the present war the belligerents, of course, set up prize courts. Germany enacted a new Prize Law Code and a new Prize Court Code. But no belligerent, with the exception of Great Britain, has yet published reports of prize cases. True, compared with the enormous amount of prize cases during the war of 1914–1918 in Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy, the number of British prize cases so far reported is comparatively very small. Yet it seems important to investigate these cases to which the science of international law has paid no attention up to now. It is proposed to give here a systematic study of these prize cases, from the points of view of substantive and formal prize law, and of the law of prize procedure.

When citizens of the United States propose a discussion of any subject of public policy which is specifically mentioned in the national Constitution, the constitutional provision is likely to be the most appropriate point of departure. The statesmen who framed the great charter of 1787 were on the alert in the public interest when, after providing that "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States,"1 they added that

The Congress shall have Power . . .

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries

Law, by whatever definition, is the authoritative voice of the community. Whether it be edicted by monarch or dictator, by representative assembly or the whole people, it speaks in the name of and binds the members of the community. It cannot rest upon the judgment of any member of the community; the essence of law is that it performs a group function. Law cannot speak upon the authority of an individual member; it must represent the authority of the group.