By an act of Congress passed at the last session the United States has followed the example of a number of European states since the war and provided for the reorganization of its foreign service. The act was passed after long discussion and it embodies recommendations made by various recent Secretaries of State, including Mr. Bryan, Mr. Lansing, Mr. Colby,and Mr. Hughes; by Mr Wilbur J. Carr, formerly Director of the Consular Service and now an Assistant Secretary of State; by the Hon. John W.Davis, former ambassador to Great Britain, and other persons interested in the reform of the foreign service. The author of the act was the Hon.John J. Rogers of Massachusetts, to whose deep interest and untiring zeal the passage of the law was mainly due.

The most significant feature of the development of international arbitration during the past generation has been the gradual widening of the field of controversies to which the obligation to arbitrate should apply. The plan of a comprehensive agreement to arbitrate all disputes without restriction seemed at the time of the First Hague Conference the ideal of a fardistant millennium, and to many, indeed, not even an ideal, but an unwarranted restraint upon national progress. At the moment of present writing (September 17) the plan seems to have come within the range of practical possibilities and the Assembly of the League of Nations is discussing ways and means of giving it definite actuality.

The present issue of the Journal contains two enlightening articles dealing with the question of the abolition of extraterritoriality in China,1 written respectively from the American and the Chinese viewpoint.