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work of Mr. Hoover and Mr. Brand Whitlock. The personal picture given of Mr. Hoover is not without its interest. The writer says:

Mr. Hoover possesses in a high degree the theatrical art, and he loves to look beyond the end sought so as to be sure of reaching it. Each time that he arrived in Belgium during the occupation, the Germans feared bombs of which, according to Monsieur Francqui, he always had his pockets full. How many times these bombs constrained them to yield upon points to which they had theretofore offered an irreducible resistance! Notwithstanding the coldness of his demeanor, which accentuates his truly American phlegm, Mr. Hoover, according to those who know him intimately, has a heart of gold.

Cardinal Mercier speaks of Brand Whitlock as a man of exquisite sensibility, personified uprightness, and an intelligence open to the most elevated problems of the moral conscience, displaying toward Belgium a profound sympathy and a constant desire to render aid.

The volumes, which may be considered complementary to each other, offer interesting and valuable views of the Belgian situation during the

-war.

JACKSON H. RALSTON.

Collected Legal Papers. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe. 1920.

The collection has been made by Mr. Harold J. Laski, to whom Mr. Justice Holmes, in a brief but characteristic preface, expresses "thanks for gathering these little fragments of my fleece that I have left upon the hedges of life."

There are twenty-eight papers and addresses, starting with one on "Early English Equity" which appeared in the Law Quarterly Review of London in 1885, and ending with one on "Natural Law," which was printed in the Harvard Law Review in 1918. The papers are brief, they average about eleven pages each. They are written with autocratic assurance, as becomes the brilliant son of "The Autocrat." They have, as might be expected, quite as much a literary as a legal turn, and by no means avoid paradox. There is a light touch, unusual and exotic erudition and somewhat of philosophy. None of the topics strictly belong to international law, and it is not a branch with which Mr. Justice Holmes has been especially identified, as he has been with comparative law.

Perhaps the two papers which are most interesting to the international lawyer, simply because of their topics, are those on Montesquieu (1900) and John Marshall (1901). The former appeared as an introduction to a reprint of the Esprit des Lois in 1900. In Montesquieu, Justice Holmes finds a congenial spirit, for, as he says, "Montesquieu was a man of the world and a man of Esprit," and he places him "in the canonical succession of the high priests of thought." He quotes with full appreciation Montes

quieu's saying that the society of women spoils our morals and forms our taste, and again that "he never had a sorrow which an hour's reading would not dispel." Montesquieu was an international wit, scholar and critic, as his Lettres Persanes evidence no less than his Esprit des Lois. He was internationally accepted, and he noticed with pleasure that the sale of wine from his vineyards was increased in England by the publication of his great work. Justice Holmes says of him:

He was a precursor of political economy. He was the precursor of Burke when Burke seems a hundred years ahead of his time. The Frenchmen tell us that he was a precursor of Rousseau. He was an authority for the writers of the Federalist. He influenced and, to a great extent, started scientific theory in its study of societies, and he hardly less influenced practice in legislation, from Russia to the United States. His book had a dazzling success at the moment, and since then probably has done as much to remodel the world as any product of the eighteenth century, which burned so many forests and sowed so many fields . and this was the work of a lonely scholar sitting in a library.

This is high praise when we remember that the French Revolution, the Revolution of the Thirteen Colonies, the Constitution of the United States, Rousseau, Voltaire, Goethe, Burke, Pitt, Fox, Adam Smith, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and Marshall, all were products of the eighteenth century. However, considerable kindly latitude is allowed to a preface and to a grave-stone.

It is for us to remember that the Esprit des Lois is a work often cited by the great writers on international law, at least in the past. Thus our own classic in international law, Wheaton, writes "Montesquieu, in his Esprit des Lois, says that every nation has a law of nations—even the Iroquois, who eat their prisoners, have one. They send and receive ambassadors; they know the laws of war and peace; the evil is, that their law of nations is not founded upon true principles,"-which may be admitted, even if we are progressing toward the same principles.

Sir Robert Phillimore quotes him in his compendious Commentaries on International Law no less than thirteen times, Calvo twice, Taylor twice, etc. As precedents and authorities have increased, writers on international law quote Homer and Theocritus, Virgil and Horace less often than in former generations and they likewise pass over the Esprit des Lois.

Montesquieu found general causes, moral or physical, for the grandeur and decadence of nations, and was among the earlier observers and recorders of such causes. Every one has been his follower, and later writers have had much more exact and abundant facts but none have excelled in wit.

The paper on John Marshall is simply Mr. Justice Holmes's remarks from the bench on February 4, 1901. That was the hundredth anniversary of the day on which Marshall took his seat as Chief Justice. It was kept by concerted action as "John Marshall Day" all over the country, a fine

lesson in respect for great minds and patriotic service. The five pages which Mr. Justice Holmes prints are his observations in answer to a motion that the court adjourn.

He expressed a wish, which is often apparent in his utterances, "to see things and people judged by more cosmopolitan standards," saying very finely "A man is bound to be parochial in his practice-to give his life, and if necessary his death, for the place where he has his roots. But his thinking should be cosmopolitan and detached. He should be able to criticise what he reveres and loves." He doubts whether "Marshall's work proved more than a strong intellect, a good style, personal ascendency in his court, courage, justice and the convictions of his party."

Perhaps, if Mr. Beveridge's vivifying life of the great Chief Justice with its four volumes of splendid vindication, had then been published and had made plain the long unfaltering labors and achievement of Marshall and the vast effect of those labors on the development of our government, the estimate might have been more wholly generous, and the words of diminution might have been stricken out; but before he closed and declared "the court will now adjourn," Justice Holmes spoke some words of great breadth of view, justice and significance. He said:

The setting aside of this day in honor of a great judge may stand to a Virginian for the glory of his glorious State; to a patriot for the fact that time has been on Marshall's side, and that the theory for which Hamilton argued, and he decided, and Webster spoke, and Grant fought, and Lincoln died, is now our cornerstone. To the more abstract but farther reaching contemplation of the lawyer, it stands for the rise of a new body of jurisprudence, by which guiding principles are raised above the reach of statute and state, and judges are entrusted with a solemn and hitherto unheard-of authority and duty.

The little volume of collected legal papers could have come from no American jurist except Justice Holmes. They will do quite as much with the bar to maintain his intellectual reputation as his official opinions, and they will do far more with the public.

CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY.

A New Principle of International Law. By A. M. M. Montijn, LL.D. The Hague: Belinfante Brothers. 1919. pp. 56.

This pamphlet, devoted to the cause of lasting peace, is an appeal to a new arbiter and servant of man, science, and to a new science, AnthropoGeography. The author reviews the various projects and programs, from the time of ancient Greece down through Roosevelt to the very present moment, for the prevention of war, only to find them all futile "so long as the states persist in the principle of their unlimited sovereignty there can be no question of even the slightest possible organization amongst them."

The deepest cause of war is found in the varying density of population in European states, which fixed political boundaries emphasize more and more. The "New Principle" is a redistribution of territory periodically, about every fifty years, so as to increase the territory of the more densely populated states. The smaller states, like Belgium, need not be considered, since they are not likely to fight to extend their boundaries, nor Britain, as an island state. Eastward expansion is inevitable, France into Alsace and Lorraine, Germany into Russian Poland, Italy into Serbia, and Serbia into Greece. Existing inhabitants in each case would have to be moved out to make room for the newcomers. But this would be no worse than the results of the existing method of altering frontiers by war. And strategic frontiers have lost their real importance since the advent of the airplane. Besides, such migration would be a small matter, "seeing that by this means the calamities of war are avoided."

This little work furnishes another example of the constant agonizing revolt of the spirit of man against the world-anarchy which is war. That its "new principle" is almost fantastically impracticable does not seem to the author conclusive, nor does he seem to realize that the machinery to carry out his plan would necessitate the very world organization of which he despairs.

FRANK H. WOOD.

The Three Stages in the Evolution of the Law of Nations. By C. Van Vollenhoven. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1919. pp. 102.

The striking feature of this interesting booklet is its assertion that Vattel demoralized international law by grafting into it the idea of sovereignty. "Vattel may possibly have been a good man in the opinion of his relations and domestic servants; but he gave a Judas-kiss to Grotius's system," says our author; "he sides with Richelieu and calls his unbridled, arbitrary dealings 'sovereignty.' In Vattel we find the cheap finery of a theoretical equality of all states; for are not all equally sovereign?" "Grotius is the apostle of the rights of nations, perhaps the prophet of an ultimate League of Nations. Vattel is the absolute negation" of both. "The unbridled liberty to wage war for the sake of paramount power was not exposed and not renounced." In short, Grotius's distinction between just and unjust wars was abandoned, and all wars were alike good, i.e., legal.

The author is skeptical about "this perfectly voluntary arbitration to which a sovereign state can never be forced to submit, but to which a prince's conscience delights to lead him-provided, of course, that the interests of his country will allow him." Vattel's "monstrous conception of "sovereignty" destroyed the work of The Hague Peace Conferences, and denied that states could commit crimes. Recent examples of such crimes

are cited, and the law that tolerated them is termed "this misshapen conglomeration of hypocrisy and cynicism."

The "third period," since 1914, is marked by a return to the spirit of Grotius. War is either a crime, or else the punishment of a "crime of the country that sets it ablaze." Our author would abolish the term and the thing, "neutral," a word Grotius never uses, though it was used in his day. Offensive and defensive alliances are also anathema in this new day, because they compel nations "to sustain their ally even when he commits the worst crime a state can commit, viz., the crime of assailing other nations."

High tribute is paid to the work of Bryan in his arbitration treaties. "Bryan's formula of 1913 is a treasure trove."

The style is vigorous, burning as it does with the glowing hatred of war which marked the year 1918, when it was written. The few typographical errors do not in any case conceal the meaning.

FRANK H. WOOD.

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