There is another course. Do not proclaim the neutralization of these islands. Do not ask a group of the Powers to insure their immunity. Nor would it be wise to cut them adrift as an independent state. They would soon find themselves within the sphere of influence of some other Power serving as a convenient naval base for extensive operations in the Pacific. Along with their independence and selfgovernment, for which we are diligently preparing them, instruct them in this prerogative of a sovereign state. Then we may turn them off. Immediately upon their emancipation, the Philippine Islands can proclaim, in their own right, their permanent neutrality. As an independent nation, they can assume the plenitude of their powers.

Such a course obviously puts all nations in a new relation to this island state. The United States, then, could logically and with good grace acknowledge this condition, and adequate recognition would be straightway forthcoming. As a traditional sponsor for the political aspirations of a people desiring individual autonomy, states like France and England would be inclined to recognize the new nation, and there would be a well defined proclivity to recognize its neutralization, as well as its existence and independence.

Such an event, by itself, may seem entirely too ideal and academic. Like the economists' island, there is no such thing. But, with the example before them, would not other nations see a suitable way of treating certain of their own isolated possessions, where there is already a flourishing indigenous economic and political life? Why should not England, whose colonial policy since the Quebec Act has been increasingly individualistic, feel impelled to treat certain of its dependencies in this way?

The formation of a state in this manner, coupled with its subsequent autonomous neutralization, would be a boon to the cause of individual liberty; and, small though it was, it would add to the number of little states, neutralized and existing solely for the economic and moral welfare of the people dwelling therein. Such little states are ultimately to be the cement by which any larger system of world union will be bound together. One writer has expressed it thus:

Neutralization would recognize the individual right of the nationality to its own existence and to its own progress, though that progress

might be less rapid than expected by the civilized world, and certainly much slower than would be desired by the greed of the exploiter. It is for the law of nations, like the ordinary laws of society, to recognize, to respect, and to secure individual liberty."

This process could be applied to several outlying colonial possessions of the present larger states of the world. With a few cases existing, the acknowledgment of the right would become increasingly more natural, till it finally was a matter of course. With that sort of sentiment lies the opportunity to lay the foundations for a world neutralization, carried out by the larger Powers, which is the great desideratum. World peace must be reached through a chain of events. Disarmament, when every nation is tensely sensitive, is out of the question. Witness Winston Churchill's proposition to Germany, and its effect. Disarmament is the last step in the chain. Men lay aside their weapons when they feel that they need them no longer. When colony after colony has been made, first, independent, then, at its request, been recognized as neutralized by its mother country and other countries; and this has been done in various cases, and made to include most of the colonial possessions of the world, armaments will of necessity disappear. In other words, a new custom will have sprung into existence. A principle of international law will have become sanctioned by usage. This is a natural process, needing only the idealist among the nations to spread it. The United States has played this role before. In the case of the Philippines she might illustrate this new conception of right and vindicate its validity. Such a step would not entail any added danger, for it would only continue our responsibility over these islands which would be shared, in theory, by other nations, and at worst would be no more arduous than it is at present.

STEWART MACMASTER ROBINSON.

5 Winslow, Erving, "Neutralization," this JOURNAL, April, 1908 (Vol. II), p. 376.

EDITORIAL COMMENT

THE UNITED STATES AT WAR WITH THE IMPERIAL

GERMAN GOVERNMENT

On the second day of April, 1917, President Wilson appeared before the Congress of the United States and, after setting forth the lawless actions of the Imperial German Government and the impossibility of protecting the lives and property of his fellow countrymen engaged in pursuits which have always "even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate" advised the Congress of the United States to declare the existence of a state of war between the Imperial German Government and the United States. On the sixth day of April, 1917, the Congress, after grave deliberation and with a full sense of the responsibility which it would thus assume, declared a state of war to exist between the Imperial German Government and the United States.1

What were the reasons which caused the President of the United States to advise the Congress to declare the existence of a state of war between the Imperial German Government and the United States; what were the reasons which caused the Congress to act upon the adIvice of the President to declare the existence of a state of war between the two countries; and what are the consequences which the President, the Congress, and the people of the United States consider as likely to follow from this state of war and its effective prosecution? We do not need to speculate as to the reasons, for the President himself has stated them, and if he had not they would be sufficiently in evidence, as the actions of Germany since the first day of August, 1914, in so far as the United States is concerned, speak louder than words; and we do not need to indulge in prophecy in order to forecast the consequences of this declaration on behalf of the United States, for the President himself has stated, in clear and unmistakable terms, that the autocracy which made these acts possible should end with the war.

1 The President's address and the resolution of Congress are printed in the Supplement to this Journal, pp. 143, 151.

The first part of the President's address deals with the specific acts of the Imperial German Government as causes of the war. The second part deals with the motives and purposes of the United States in entering the war, for while the acts of the Imperial German Government would justify resistance on behalf of the United States, the President wished it clearly to be understood, and therefore he put it plainly, that the motive and purpose in entering the war which had been thrust upon the United States was not merely to secure redress for the loss of property, not even redress for the destruction of human life, but to secure the repudiation of the Prussian conception of state and government, which could force a people to commit such acts, and to secure some form of international organization calculated to guarantee peace among nations through the administration of justice.

As far as the United States is concerned, the cause of its war with the Imperial German Government is the submarine, for the disputes of a serious nature and of a kind calculated to produce war between the two governments related to the conduct of the submarine, which, because Great Britain controlled the seas, was the only form of maritime warfare left to Germany; and Germany was apparently as unwilling to renounce maritime warfare as it was unwilling to allow its surface fleet to put to sea and to give battle to the British Navy. The United States did not object to the employment of the submarine, recognizing it as a vessel of war, possessed of all the rights of a vessel of war and subject to all the duties of a vessel of war. But the United States insisted from the beginning that the submarine should conform its actions to the rules of law to which vessels of war were subjected, and that, if it could not or would not conform its actions to such rules, it should not be used; for the law could not be changed to suit the submarine, which should itself be changed to meet the law if it could not, as then constructed, comply with the law as it then stood.

The Imperial German Government, on the contrary, insisted that, because of its frailty, the submarine could not comply with the laws and customs of war controlling the acts of surface vessels, that it could not comply with the formalities of visit and search, because, to do so, it would have to comport itself as a surface vessel, and as a surface vessel it would endanger its existence if it approached within gunshot of ordinary surface vessels. The Imperial German Government claimed for the submarine the right to operate under the surface to protect itself from attack, and, thus protected, to attack any vessel approach

ing it because, under the surface, it could not distinguish the vessel of the enemy from the vessel of a neutral Power; it claimed the right to attack the vessel within range without warning because, if it gave warning, it exposed itself to danger; and finally, it claimed the right to torpedo and thus destroy the vessel without first putting its passengers and crew in a place of safety because the submarine was too small to take them on board.

If matters had rested here the question at issue between the two governments would have been academic. But matters did not rest here because the Imperial German Government put its conception of submarine warfare into practice, with the result, as the President informed the Congress in his address of the second of April, 1917, that "Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle."

In the report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives accompanying the text of the declaration of a state of war with the Imperial German Government, numerous instances are given justifying the President's indictment, and while these instances are but few of the many, they are given as a sample of the indiscriminate submarine warfare of the Imperial German Government.

After a brief reference to the diplomatic correspondence between the two governments, in which Germany stated that instructions had been given "to abstain from all violence against neutral vessels recognizable as such" and that "it is very far indeed from the intention of the German Government . . . ever to destroy neutral lives and neutral property," the official report to which reference has been made continues:

Nevertheless the German Government proceeded to carry out its plans of submarine warfare and torpedoed the British passenger streamer Falaba on March 27, 1915, when one American life was lost, attacked the American steamer Cushing April 28 by airship, and made submarine attacks upon the American tank steamer Gulflight May 1, the British passenger liner Lusitania May 7 when 114 American