The first phase of the dispute between China and Japan before the League of Nations began in September, 1931, when China, following upon the invasion of Manchuria by Japanese troops, invoked Article 11 of the Covenant and asked the Council to take measures to restore the territorial status quo and to determine the amount and the character of the compensation due to her as the result of the invasion of her territory. It ended in April, 1933, when, subsequently to the adoption by the Assembly of a report under Article 15 of the Covenant, it became clear that no effective action would be taken to implement the purposes of the Covenant. The charter of the community of nations organized in and through the League proved, to all appearances, to be of illusory value in its fundamental aspect, namely, in the undertaking to protect the members of the League from external violence and aggression. The prediction of the sceptics that the authority of the League would be unable to assert itself if challenged by one of the Great Powers seemed to have been amply confirmed. It seemed to have been fulfilled by a successful defiance of the Covenant so unprecedented in its magnitude, obviousness and persistence as to constitute a fair test case of the value and of the potentialities of the League.

There is confusion in the doctrine of the responsibility of states for denial of justice, particularly where the “denial” consists in failure to operate the machinery of criminal justice.

Henry Adams said in his Life of Gallatin that of all the portions of our national history, “none is more often or more carefully discussed than Jay’s Treaty.” All general histories and biographies of the period contain ample references to the treaty and the controversies over it. The same is true of many contemporary letters and memoirs. Several monographs of merit have been published concerning the treaty, the most complete dealing with the treaty negotiations, by Dr. Samuel Flagg Bemis. Judge John Bassett Moore has recently brought out seven valuable volumes dealing with the arbitrations which resulted from the treaty.

In the first half of the nineteenth century there was no dispute between Bolivia and Paraguay concerning the Chaco. During the long dictatorship of Francia, her first President, from 1811, when Spanish rule came to an end, down to 1840, Paraguay existed in a state of complete isolation and deliberately held aloof from the outside world. After Francia’s death, the Congress, assembled at Asunción, approved in 1842 the Act of Independence of the Republic. The communication of this act to foreign countries marks the recognition of the independence of Paraguay, who concluded with the Argentine in 1852 a Frontier and Navigation Treaty, Article 4 of which specifies that the “River Paraguay shall belong from bank to bank in full sovereignty to the Republic of Paraguay down to its confluence with the Paraná.”

The conventional law regarding fishing rights has had a long and complicated development. Beginning before the concepts of international law as we know them were at all defined, it has played its part in shaping that law and in influencing its development. Many of the earliest fishing treaties were concerned with insuring freedom from molestation while fishing. From that time when the sea was a place of “war of everyone against everyone” the conventional law regarding fishing rights passed through the period of the struggle between the rival claims of mare clausum and mare liberum and played a part in the solution of that controversy. It likewise has been significant in the development of the idea of territorial waters as we know it today. It has helped determine both the limits assigned to and the rights enjoyed within those limits. In any future development of maritime law it will undoubtedly play its part.

The international conventions to control the use of opium and narcotic drugs have been of interest to the United States (1) primarily from the standpoint of their efficiency in combating an acknowledged evil. They also have a more general interest in that they illustrate methods (2) of sumptuary regulation, (3) of economic planning, and (4) of international administration, perhaps capable of application in other fields. Finally, (5) the application of these conventions has raised some problems of general international law.

Since the reasoned decisions of international arbitral tribunals are tending constantly to influence, in larger degree, the development of a sound body of international law, a broad interest naturally attaches to the decisions resulting from any such general claims arbitration as that of the Governments of the United States and Panama which was concluded on June 30, last.

Derivative citizenship may be defined as acquired citizenship; it is a status of nationality not fixed by birth, but conferred thereafter through the act of another. It is a form of indirect naturalization by operation of law. In the United States, nationality is acquired derivatively by foreign-born resident minors whose parents are naturalized, and prior to September 22,1922, it was acquired by alien women whose husbands were or became citizens.

In the introduction to this report, reference has been made to the terms of the reports of May 20 and July 3, 1933, and January 20, 1934, in which the Council defined the Commission’s terms of reference.

The recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Factor v. Laubenheimer and Haggard has broken new ground with reference to the interpretation of the extradition treaties between the United States and Great Britain, and it seems to deserve special consideration as a contribution to the law of extradition. Factor's extradition was requested by Great Britain on a charge of receiving certain sums of money, aggregating £458,500, known to have been fraudulently obtained. On the complaint of a British consul, Factor was taken into custody in Illinois, and a United States Commissioner in Illinois issued a warrant for his commitment pending surrender. On a return to a writ of habeas corpus, the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ordered his discharge from custody, but this order was reversed by the Circuit Court of Appeals. Both the District Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals seem to have regarded extradition as possible only if the offense charged was a crime both by the law of Great Britain and by the law of Illinois; the District Court held that receiving money known to have been fraudulently obtained was not a crime by the law of Illinois, but a majority of the Circuit Court of Appeals, relying chiefly on Kelly v. Griffin, took the contrary view. On certiorari, the Supreme Court held that the offense charged was an extraditable crime even if it is not punishable by the law of Illinois, the opinion being written by Justice Stone. Justice Butler was joined in a vigorous dissenting opinion by Justices Brandeis and Roberts.

Discussion of the need for revising the peace settlement of 1919 has focussed attention on the methods and rules which in the light of past experience might govern such action should it be undertaken. As general settlements on such a broad scale as that of 1919 are made but seldom, the last preceding one having been in 1815, it is not to be expected that each will remain intact until the next. The problem therefore besets the parties to such treaties, as well as other states concerned, how to modify those parts the usefulness of which appears impaired.

In its draft treaty of peace, the Commission deliberately avoided any reference to the question of responsibility for the war.

The power of making laws with respect to immigration into Canada is given by the British North America Act to the Parliament of Canada. But under the provisions of the same act the legislature in each province may make laws in relation to immigration into the province which shall “have effect in and for the Province as long and as far only as” they are “not repugnant to any Act of the Parliament of Canada.” This power of a provincial legislature is not without restrictions, for the “Governor-General of Canada in Council within one year of the receipt of an authentic copy of an Act of a Provincial Legislature may disallow the Act, in which case the Act is annulled from and after the day on which the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province signifies the disallowance by Speech or Message to the Legislature or by Proclamation.”