At the Conference on the Limitation of Armaments at Washington in 1921 one of the subjects considered at the request of the Chinese delegation was a proposal that the Western Powers give up their extraterritorial rights in China. This led to the adoption by the conference at its ninth meeting on November 29th of a declaration that the Western nations “ are prepared to relinquish extraterritorial rights when satisfied that the state of Chinese laws, the arrangement for their administration and other considerations warrant them in doing so.” This was doubtless a great gratification to the Chinese delegates, but the foreigner in China may have experienced less satisfaction at the menace therein involved to a system which tens of thousands of foreign residents in China regard as the sine qua non of their welfare.

Because of the deficiencies in her laws and judicial administration, China has for eighty years passively accepted the arrangement, sanctioned by treaties, under which foreigners found within her territory are clothed with extraterritorial rights. The privileged status thus accorded to foreigners virtually established in that country an anomalous system of foreign jurisdictions.Now that the Chinese laws and judicial machinery are being improved in accordance with modern requirements, what was once a Chinese attitude of silent acquiescence toward the restriction of sovereignty has today become one of active and energetic protest against its further continuance.

On August 6, 1924, nearly six years after the Armistice of Mudros, the state of war which had existed in the Near East since 1914 was terminated as between Turkey, on the one hand, and the British Empire, Italy and Japan, on the other hand, by the drawing up of the first procès-verbal of the deposit at Paris of the ratifications of the settlement concluded at Lausanne on July 24,1923. The state of war between Greece and Turkey had already been terminated a year ago, pursuant to the settlement of Lausanne, and under the terms of the same settlement the Allied forces of occupation had been withdrawn from Turkish territory; the prisoners of war and interned civilians detained by Greece and Turkey, respectively, had been mutually restored; the compulsory exchange of certain portions of the Greek and Turkish populations had been effected; and a general amnesty for political offenders had been declared. The portions of the settlement brought into force by the recent ratifications are the Treaty of Peace, the Straits Convention,the Commercial Convention and the Convention respecting Jurisdiction and the Conditions of Residence and Business. Certain instruments which did not require ratification, including the Declarations relating to Sanitary Matters and to the Administration of Justice and the Protocol and Declaration relating to Concessions, may now also be expected to be given practical effect.

The phrase “ outlawry of war” has come into current usage during the past few years. It has appeared in a resolution submitted to the United States Senate,1 in speeches by Presidents of the United States2 and in a draft treaty submitted by the Council of the League of Nations to its members.3 As giving focus to a widespread popular demand for the elimination of war, the phrase doubtless has propaganda value, but some of its legal implications seem to invite examination. Thus, if we are called on to “ outlaw war,” that is, applying Bouvier's definition, to put war out of the protection of the law, we must assume that war is now within the protection of the law, that it is legal to make war. In fact, in Senator Borah's resolution of February 13, 1923,4 we read in the preamble:

The Dawes plan for recovering the reparation debt of Germany to the Allies under the Treaty of Versailles was accepted by all of the interested parties at London on August 16, 1924, and certain agreements necessary to enable the plan to be brought into operation were drawn up and initialed.Formal signatures to them were attached on August 30th after the French Parliament had approved the work of the conference on August 24th and 26th, and the laws for carrying the plan into effect had been passed by the German Reichstag on August 29th. The process of putting the plan into operation was thereupon promptly started. Immediately after the signatures had been attached on August 30th, the French Government issued instructions for the evacuation of a section of the Ruhr, and the Reparation Commission on the same day announced the appointment of the principal officials who are to administer the plan, namely, the Agent General for Reparation Payments, Mr. Owen D.Young of the United States, ad interim,(the appointment of Mr. Seymour Parker Gilbert, formerly Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury, as the permanent Agent General was announced September 4th); Trustee of the Railway Bonds, M. Delacroix of Belgium; Trustee of the Industrial Debentures, Signor Nogara of Italy; Commissioner of Controlled Revenue, Mr. Andrew McFadyean of Great Britain. Two days later, namely, on September 1st, the first instalment of twenty million (20,000,000) gold marks, due from Germany under the plan, was paid to the Agent General for Reparation Payments, and the second instalment was promptly paid ten days later. On September 4th,the restrictions placed upon the movement of persons, goods and vehicles between occupied and unoccupied Germany were removed, and four days later the eastern customs line between the same territories was abolished. On September 10th, the first of the Ruhr political prisoners were set at liberty.

Many recent comments have been made with respect to the wisdom of Congress in passing the Act of September 22,1922, entitled, “ An act relative to the naturalization and citizenship of married women, ” commonly known as the Cable Act, and which granted a form of independent citizenship to women.1 Among these comments we find the phrase, “ probably accidental reasons,” and an expressed sentiment that it is “ questionable whether the majority of the women of this country really wanted the new law, ” and simi- ‘lar suggestions. It has been intimated that the law was passed solely as the result of the persuasive efforts of a minority of women.2 In many instances little cognizance has been taken of the reasons for, and the actual facts involved in, the change.

The Immigration Act of 1924 is a novel piece of legislation in two respects.1 In it, for the first time, is a real attempt made to control immigration,measurably at least, at its source, and thus to reduce to a minimum the hardships and inhumanities that heretofore have prevailed to such an extent as almost to be regarded as a matter of course. And in it, for the first time also, are immigration and eligibility to citizenship recognized as related subjects, and ineligibility to become naturalized made a reason for the exclusion of aliens.2 While it is by far the most drastic immigration statute ever passed by the United States Congress,, it is in numerous respects the most humane measure yet devised.

On Friday, July 18, 1924, during a religious ceremony, Major Robert Imbrie, American vice–consul at Teheran, was attacked and done to death by a fanatical mob that misunderstood or resented his presence. The outrage was peculiarly atrocious in that the mob after severely wounding Consul Imbrie pursued him into the operating-room of the hospital where he had been taken for relief and there pounded him to death.

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.

On July 2, 1924, the President proclaimed two treaties signed with France on February 13, 1923, relating to rights in the French mandated territories of Cameroons and Togoland.1 A similar treaty was made with Japan on February 11,1922,2 and Secretary of State Hughes has announced the policy of securing “ fair and equal opportunities” in all the mandated territories.3

The Conference of Financial Experts held at Brussels in September,1920, recommended to the League of Nations as part of its scheme of financial rehabilitation “ that the activities of the League might usefully be directed towards promoting certain reforms,” the first of which was that progress should be made toward the unification of the laws of the various countries relating to bills of exchange and bills of lading. The International Chamber of Commerce and other trade bodies have likewise strongly supported a resumption of initiative in this direction, which was interrupted by the war. As a result, the Economic Committee of the League of Nations, acting in cooperation with the Government of the Netherlands,and with the approval of the Council and the Assembly, appointed four legal experts to report their opinions upon the attitude now prevailing in the various countries of the world toward the work of the two Hague Conferences on Negotiable Instruments and also as to whether further action toward unification was likely to meet with practical success. The following highly qualified experts were charged with the task: Sir Mackenzie Chalmers, well known as the author of the English Bills of Exchange Act of 1882; the late Professor David Josephus Jitta, formerly Councillor of State of the Netherlands; Professor Franz Klein, of Austria, and Professor Lyon-Caen, the well-known French authority on commercial law.

An admirable illustration of both just and generous treatment of an alien minority is to be found in a brief pamphlet recently published by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, entitled: The German Minority in South Jutland—A Summary of the Danish Legislation.

American traders acquired certain lands in the Fiji Islands by purchase from native chiefs years before the cession of the islands to Great Britain in 1874. After the cession, Great Britain established a board of land commissioners to pass upon the validity of titles to land in the islands, and by 1882 more than 1,300 claims were passed upon.