Naval fleets are maintained by development and replacement because their possessors dare not fail to make provision for a maritime war in which they may be participants. No means yet devised and accepted for the amicable adjustment of international differences have removed from responsible statesmen a sense of the necessity of anticipating such a contingency. Despite increasing efforts in every quarter to cultivate wills for peace and abhorrence of armed conflict, as well as a desire to adjust grave differences by judicial process or through commissions of conciliation, war is still regarded as a contingency which must be reckoned with, and as one which is as dangerous as it is seemingly remote. In making provision as against a contingency which none would welcome or hasten, the governments of maritime states do not necessarily encourage war or indicate approval of recourse to it. A particular conference of maritime states may in fact uplift the hopes of prospective belligerents which resent and oppose agreements restricting recourse to measures and instrumentalities on which they expect to rely. On the other hand, general arrangements respecting belligerent activities may serve to lessen a zeal for war and to remove its very approach further from the horizon. Everything depends upon the ambitions of the states which consent to confer. The point to be observed is that agreements for the regulation of maritime war in so far as they purport to proscribe or check the use of particular instrumentalities or recourse to particular measures, are not to be deemed bellicose in design or effect. Such regulatory agreements are advocates of peace rather than of war. Moreover, as will be seen, they may be the means of encouraging states to reduce armaments which would otherwise be maintained.

Many times inquiry has been made as to the legal status of the Pan American Union. Its friends have often wished that an opportunity might be afforded a court to determine that question. For the first time in its history, a court of the United States recently had occasion to pass on the matter.

The Syrian insurrection culminating in the bombardment of Damascus in October, 1925, is an incident of a kind which has frequently marred the relations of western Powers with less advanced peoples. Thus it may be of more than passing interest to examine the conduct of the parties concerned from the standpoint of international law.

In 1903 the United States, by treaty with China, agreed to give China every assistance in the reform of her judicial system, and stated that it would also be prepared “ to relinquish extraterritorial rights when satisfied that the state of the Chinese laws, the arrangements for their administration, and other considerations warrant it in so doing.”

Austen Chamberlain, British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, declared in the House of Commons, December 15, 1924, that Great Britain would “ regard as an unfriendly act any attempt at interference in the affairs of Egypt by any other Power, and would consider any aggression against the territory of Egypt as an act to be repelled with all the means at their command.” Similar statements have frequently been made by the responsible ministers of the Powers when discussing “ spheres of influence.” It is probably not possible to give a precise meaning to the phrase “ sphere of influence” because, as Hall says, “ perhaps in its indefiniteness consists its international value.” Nevertheless, the phrase has been applied specifically to characterize the control of portions of Asia and Africa, certain islands in the Caribbean, and of regions in Central America. In these regions are to be found in operation arrangements, some secret and some public, stipulated either by treaty, diplomatic declaration, “ gentlemen's agreements,” or effected, ofttimes, by military or economic penetration, varying greatly in degree and intensity, which enable Powers and their citizens to enjoy advantages in these regions without exercising, necessarily, sovereign control.