The diplomatic protection of citizens abroad is a comparatively modern phenomenon in the evolution of the state, in constitutional and in international law. Not until the legal position of the state toward individuals, both its own citizens and aliens, and of states between themselves, had become clearly denned in modern public law, did diplomatic protection become a factor in international intercourse. A discussion of the subject therefore involves a preliminary study of three distinct legal relations, first, between the state and its own citizen; secondly, between the state and aliens resident within it; and, lastly, the relations of states among themselves with respect to their rights over and their international responsibility for delinquencies toward aliens.

The recent appropriation, made by Congress, to reimburse those American citizens who suffered property damages and losses by reason of the unlawful and unjustifiable bombardment of Apia, Samoa, by the British and American warships during the year 1899 has revived an interest in the unusual controversy then pending over the election of a native king, and aroused a curiosity as to the reason of the appropriation at this late date, over a decade since the damages were committed.

There is probably no branch of the laws of war which stands in greater need of explanatory comment than do the chapters relating to prisoners of war. The generation preceding the great peace conferences at The Hague was marked by a number of important wars of which continental Europe was the theater; during these conflicts the number of persons reduced to captivity surpassed all experience, as did the number of problems which arose in connection with their safe-keeping and repatriation; but during the entire period the regulations governing their administration and detention remained substantially unchanged. It is true that several European states caused their regulations in that regard to be revised, but as those regulations were strictly internal in character and had no external operation, save in the territory of the enemy which they held in military occupation, the condition of prisoners of war remained substantially unchanged. Indeed, until the condition of this unfortunate class was made the subject of conventional regulation at The Hague, but few important ameliorations had been brought about in their status since the activity of the Emperor Napoleon was brought to a close at the battle of Waterloo.

The Final Act of the Second Hague Conference “recommends to the parties the assembling of a Third Peace Conference, which might be held within a period corresponding to that which has elapsed since the preceding conference,” and recommends the appointment of a “preparatory committee” which (in the language of the.Final Act), shall be “charged by the governments with the task of collecting the various proposals to be submitted to the conference, and of ascertaining what subjects are ripe for embodiment in an international regulation,” and of preparing a program for the conference and a plan for its organization and procedure. This recommendation, in the absence of some catastrophe, such, for instance, as the outbreak of a great European war, means the meeting of the Third Hague Conference some time in 1915, or thereabouts, and already many of the great nations of the world, among them the United States, have appointed their members on the preparatory committee.

In a previous study I had occasion to state that the pacifist idea, as well as that of the juridical settlement of international conflicts, dates much farther back than is generally believed, and that it has had sincere advocates in all nations. And what is of even greater importance, international arbitration was practiced to a large extent, both in the Middle Ages and at the time of the Renaissance. I would now present to the enlightened readers of this Journal an Italian personage as one of these advocates, by stating however at the outset, that he lyas not the first among his compatriots, since four centuries before his time, the Venetian Marin Sanudo had consecrated his life to that idea, while the adherents of pacifism can even claim a Dante Alighieri among their number! For many reasons, however, which will be convincingly set forth in the course of these pages, Cardinal Alberoni is deserving of especial attention. The German Gerhoch, the Frenchmen Pierre Dubois and Eméric Crucé, the Czech king George Podiebrad, the Englishman W. Penn, the Portuguese Suarez, the Spaniard Vittoria, the Hollander H. Grotius, and many others, have in him a worthy associate, a fact which I hope will be made clear by the publication of his scheme, as an appendix hereof.

Until the great goal of the peace movement, that is to say, the world peace treaty without reservation of any kind and extending to all nations, shall at some future time have been concluded, two periods in the development of arbitration, each of which is in turn marked by three successive stages of growth, are clearly discernible. The first embraces the development of special treaties; the second that of the world treaty. In point of time, these two periods follow one another; yet the world treaty is ushered in even before the special treaty has reached its highest stage.

At the Antwerp meeting of the International Law Association in 1903, a paper was presented by Mr. Justice Phillimore indicating the desirability of having Great Britain participate in the Hague Conferences on Private International Law. At the same meeting, a resolution was adopted on the motion of Mr. Justice Kennedy to the effect that the Association “should take steps respectfully to lay before the British Government the points dealt with in that paper” with a view to its participation in the conferences. Although not referring in terms to America, the resolution was seconded by Dr. Gregory, an American member, and the discussion showed plainly that it was the sense of the meeting that the resolution was intended to apply also to the United States.

As a result of the continual development of the northwest provinces of the Dominion of Canada, the railroad is advancing slowly closer and closer to the Hudsonian Sea. The Canadian Northern Railway aims to extend its system to Port Nelson, and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway proposes to build a line to Fort Churchill, both suitably protected harbors on that great sea. If during a short portion of the year the breadstuffs harvested in Saskatchewan and Alberta could be transported to either or both of these points on the Hudsonian Sea, and then by steamer to Liverpool or some other European port, the length of the route between the northwest prairies of Canada and the markets of Europe would be considerably shortened.

The following Scheme requires no other Recommendation, but to say, it was design’d by Cardinal Alberoni, a Genius form’d by Nature for the greatest and most extensive Enterprizes.