cent times. People from all parts of it in great numbers have migrated to America and become citizens of this country. Most of them have been very readily assimilated in the body politic, and no serious disorders have resulted from the mixture of all nationalities. In the generation born in this country and educated in the public schools all children of parents coming from northern Europe appear as Americans, usually with little or nothing to indicate the nationality of their parents. The Latin races are assimilated more slowly, but without serious difficulty. Africans and Asiatics are also here, the former in great numbers, yet notwithstanding their differences from the European stock, their relations to the whites. become quite readily adjusted and all live together in peace. Freedom of movement and of industrial and economic adjustment and a general disposition to treat every one according to his personal capacity and worth and to apply the law impartially to all are the most potent influences which combine in producing the happy situation. The fundamental difficulty in preserving the good relations of the people of Europe to each other arises from their segregation into small nations, speaking different languages, and under governments in the hands. of ambitious rulers who seek personal and national aggrandizement at the expense of neighboring people. Political barriers there prevent the freedom of personal and commercial movements that binds the different states of the American Union together so closely. Permanent peace is dependent on general confidence of the nations and of individuals in their ability to obtain substantial justice by peaceable methods. No condition of society has ever existed, and perhaps none ever will exist, under which all people are entirely satisfied of the justice of the laws and of the distribution of the burdens and rewards of public and private enterprises and activities. But if all can come to have confidence in the agencies through which the people collectively may themselves right their wrongs, they may patiently bear what they regard as injustices until there is a chance to correct them. If the supervising force is one created by the people themselves for the purpose of enforcing justice among them, and one which they may change when they

find it necessary to do so, in an orderly and peaceable manner prescribed by law, there is no need of war or mob violence. There is no theoretical difficulty in framing a constitution for all the nations of the world under which all ultimate power will be retained by the people. The practical difficulty, however, of creating agencies adequate to preserve the peace and promote the general welfare, yet with powers so limited and counterbalanced that they cannot become instrumentalities of oppression, is quite obvious. The farther public agencies are removed from the people whom they are designed to serve, the more the need of strict limitation of their powers, and of publicity in all their official acts. The needed publicity would hardly have been possible a hundred years ago. It is entirely practicable now. The telegraph and the printing press, working together, place before the reading public at night all matters of great interest that have occurred during the day. When there is an overwhelming public sentiment on any question it finds immediate expression in all the leading countries through the press and public meetings.

The need of clearly expressed laws, binding on all the nations, becomes more and more apparent as commercial and social intercourse increases. The people of the manufacturing and commercial states of Europe are dependent on the agricultural countries for both their food and raw material for their industries. In the great war which has just ended ability to obtain supplies from America was regarded as the determining factor in the contest. The present economic adjustments cannot continue without general conditions of peace. Warfare renders it necessary for each country to be either self-supporting or allied with an accessible neighbor from whom the deficiencies of home products can be supplied. The United States is perhaps best able to supply all the wants of its people from its own products of all the countries in the world, yet the scale of living demanded by all classes from common laborers to multi-millionaires calls for coffee, tea, spices, drugs, sugar, rubber, silk, tropical fruit and manufactured articles of many kinds and minor articles too numerous to mention. To live as we are accustomed to live and as we

wish to continue to live we must have access to many distant markets. To enable us to buy all these things we must have markets for our surplus products. This market we find in Europe. The manufacturing nations there must have our cotton, grain and meat products as their business is now adjusted. The value of the merchandise passing to and from the several grand divisions of the world in normal times and without inflated valuations is fairly indicated by the trade statistics of the United States for the year 1911 which are summarized as follows:

From this showing it appears that in ordinary times a little more than fifty per cent. of all the imports of the United States come from Europe, on which we are not necessarily dependent for any product of the earth. We are, however, strictly dependent on Europe for a market for our surplus products, of which it bought nearly sixty-four per cent. Trade with South America, which bears much the same relation to Europe that we do, is of relatively small importance. We get much of our coffee from Brazil, and rubber, cinchona and many other products from other parts of the continent. Exports to South America are mostly of manufactured articles. It would be exceedingly unpleasant to be deprived of our trade with the people of that continent, but the main lines of both travel and commerce are east and west instead of north and south. Trade with our immediate neighbors in North America exceeds in volume that with any other continent except Europe.

Considering ties of blood between our citizens and those of Europe and commercial relations it is apparent that we are more deeply and directly interested in the maintenance of peace there than anywhere else in the world. All the states on the American continents have the same theory of government. Statistical Abstract, 1911, pp. 722, 723.

5199

They have each had hard struggles to establish their institutions on a firm and durable basis, but now have little occasion for turmoil within or conflict without their dominions. The mother countries, however, are not so happily situated, and it seems necessary for the now mature children on this side of the water to take a friendly interest in the affairs of their cousins there. The relationship of the people of Europe and America is not a mere theoretical or ideal relation, but an actual, easily traceable blood connection. The general situation at the close of the war is that the people of all eastern Europe and Germany and what was Austria-Hungary are now in the turmoil which has always followed the overthrow of despotic military governments, while those of the western part, which had democratic institutions before the war, are able to maintain internal order. No great military nation now remains to oppose its will to the organization of the entire world on a basis of popular government at home and justice and equality of right among all the states great and small. Disarmament can go forward in all countries as fast as the great League of Nations is able to inspire a sense of security and confidence in the just purposes of those who are entrusted with the solution of international problems.

The formulation of rules of international law designed for universal observance is not a matter of great difficulty. There is no danger that a body representing all the nations would by even a bare majority vote enact any general law that would be fundamentally unjust. It might do so if a large number of the great nations were still ruled by military leaders, but representatives of the people cannot truly represent the wishes of their constituents unless they seek the just and true rule. But if the world can have a permanent organization with a general legislative body, made up of representatives holding for short terms, and having power to correct its own errors, bad laws would soon disappear and their evil consequences be little felt. Unwise legislation may always be expected in popular governments, but evil influences when detected and exposed soon pass away and their works with them.

The approaches toward international legislation which have

been made by the conferences at which the great conventions hereinafter considered were formulated exhibit a most encouraging tendency for representatives of many nations to apply both sound moral principles and practical wisdom in their work. The quality of this work is not open to criticism. It fails however of universality of application and lacks instrumentalities for its enforcement, even as between the parties to it. The Universal Postal Union is now a complete world-wide organization of all the nations for the transmission of the mails. Its methods of legislation are adapted to its peculiar needs. It connects the postal administration of each country with that of every other country, and international business is carried on through the cooperation of the postal organizations of all the countries. The conventions for the regulation of navigation on the high seas and to prevent the spread of infectious diseases cover fields requiring regulation by positive. laws of universal application. For efficiency they require the aids of judicial and executive force. They apply to people, ships, and merchandise of all nations, and the authority of the courts and officers charged with the enforcement of them needs to extend over all alike.

COMPOSITION OF THE NATION

As the government of a nation speaks for its people as individuals, as well as for all of them collectively, in all dealings with other states, the relations of the state to the people within its boundaries are of great importance in considering the subject of international relations. Within each of the great modern nations there are cities far greater and more populous than any of the Greek city states ever were, yet these are mere creatures of the sovereign power of the nation of which they are a part, possessing such corporate powers as the state has conferred upon them. In the United States they do not even derive their powers from the general government, but from the state in which they are located. While the states are sovereign in all matters over which no power is conferred on the general government by the Constitution, the power to deal with foreign nations is expressly conferred on the President