the military and naval program of either party unless danger from a third power should compel a change, in which case a confidential written statement of the fact by the party menaced was to release both parties from the obligation.

Salvador was the first power to sign the plan in treaty form. She accepted it in its entirety, including the clause as to military and naval programs, as did Guatemala, Panama, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Treaties, without this clause, were concluded with various powers. Up to July, 1917, the ratifications of treaties embracing the essentials of the plan have been exchanged with Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Great Britain, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Uruguay. They do not, as sometimes is apparently supposed, bind the parties to arbitration, but expressly reserve to them entire freedom of action after the report of the commission shall have been made. The underlying thought of the plan is threefold: (1) That it furnishes an honorable means of suspending controversy; (2) that the suspension of controversy will tranquillize the minds of the disputants; and (3) that the report of the commission of investigation probably will point the way to a fair and equitable adjustment. The plan, it may be observed, makes no distinction between different kinds of rights. It embraces "all disputes" as to “questions of an international character," no matter

what may be the nature of the right asserted or denied. A point which it apparently does not cover, a point which it is indeed very difficult to meet in advance by any specific provision, is that of what may be called a continuing injury, consisting of a wilful and persistent aggression upon substantial rights either as to persons, or as to property, or as to jurisdiction, or as to commerce, rights in whose deliberate and prolonged invasion other governments cannot lawfully or properly be asked to acquiesce.

When we consider the future of international arbitration, whether in America or elsewhere, we are at once confronted with the question as to its limitations. Is it possible to fix any precise bounds, beyond which this mode of settling international disputes may be said to be impracticable? If we consult the history of arbitrations during the past hundred years, we are obliged to answer that no such lines can be definitely drawn; but this is far from affirming that the use of force in the conduct of international affairs will soon be abolished. It signifies merely that phrases such as "national honor" and "national self-defence," which have been employed in describing supposed exceptions to the principle of arbitration, convey no definitive meaning. Questions of honor and of self-defence are, in international as in private relations, matters partly of circumstance and partly of opinion. When the United States, in 1863, first proposed that the differences that had arisen with Great Britain, as

to the fitting out of the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers, should be submitted to arbitration, Earl Russell rejected the overture on the ground that the questions in controversy involved the "honor" of her Majesty's government, of which that government was declared to be "the sole guardian." Eight years later there was concluded at Washington the treaty under which the differences between the two governments were submitted to the judgment of the tribunal that met at Geneva. This remarkable example serves to illustrate the fact that the scope and progress of arbitration will depend, not so much upon special devices, or upon general declarations or descriptive exceptions, as upon the dispositions of nations, dispositions which, although they are subject to the modifying influence of public opinion, spring primarily from the national feelings, the national interests, and the national ambitions.

References:

See Moore's History and Digest of International Arbitrations, Washington, 1898. 6 vols.

As to The Hague Conferences, see the works of Holls and James Brown Scott (the latter covering both conferences, 1899, 1907); also The Memoirs of Andrew D. White. See also the Reports of the International American Conferences.

IX

THE TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES

As conventionalized in the annual messages of Presidents to Congress, the American people are distinguished chiefly by their peaceful disposition and their freedom from territorial ambitions. Nevertheless, in spite of these quiet propensities, it has fallen to their lot, since they forcibly achieved their independence, to have had, prior to that whose existence was declared April 6, 1917, four foreign wars, three general and one limited, and the greatest civil war in history, and to have acquired a territorial domain almost five times as great as the respectable endowment with which they began their national career. In reality, to the founders of the American Republic the question of territorial expansion did not present itself as a matter of speculation, or even of choice. There was not a single European power having possessions in America that did not lay claim to more territory than it had effectively occupied, nor was there a single one whose claims were not contested by some other power; and these contests were interwoven with the monopolistic struggle then in progress for colonial commerce and naviga

tion. The Spaniards and the Portuguese, the English and the French, the Swedes and the Dutch, contended with one another in Europe as well as in America for empire on the American continents. Their colonists knew no rule of life but that of conflict; and they regarded the extension of their boundaries as a measure of self-defence rather than of aggression. We have seen that, by the treaty of alliance with France of 1778, the remaining British possession in North America, if they should be wrested from the mother-country, were to be “confederated with or dependent upon" the United States; and in harmony with this stipulation, provision was made in the Articles of Confederation (Article xi.) for the full admission of Canada into the Union. No other colony was to be so admitted without the consent of nine States; and unless they consented, the colony, if seized, was to remain in a "dependent" position. With the independence of the United States, a new force entered into the territorial contests in America, but it did not stay their course. On the north of the new republic lay the possessions of Great Britain; on the west, the possessions of France; on the south, the possessions of Spain. With all these powers there were questions of boundary, while the colonial restrictions in commerce and in navigation were as so many withes by which the limbs of the young giant were fettered. It was in order to obtain relief from such condi