One accustomed to the administration of municipal law who turns his attention for the first time to the discussion of practical questions arising between nations and dependent upon the rules of international law, must be struck by a difference between the two systems which materially affects the intellectual processes involved in every discussion, and which is apparently fundamental.

The twelfth convention adopted by the Hague Conference of 1907 provides for the establishment of an International Prize Court to which appeals may be carried in certain instances from the prize courts of the captors. The proposal for such a convention was presented very early in the proceedings of the conference.

Had the Second Hague Conference done nothing more than adopt the convention for the establishment of an International Prize Court, it would have sufficiently justified its being called together and refuted the criticisms of those who, because it did not accomplish all its most enthusiastic supporters desired, have sought to belittle its results.

The twelfth convention adopted by the Second International Peace Conference at The Hague provides for the establishment of an International Prize Court, to which appeals may be taken from the national prize courts of the various signatory powers, or such of them as shall approve the convention.

The purpose of this convention, as indicated in the preamble, is to harmonize the existing divergent views of states concerning the relations between neutrals and belligerents in the event of naval war, and to anticipate the difficulties to which such divergence may give rise, by framing rules of general application to meet the case where hostilities may have unfortunately broken out.

In the marked development which has recently taken place in aërial navigation, attention has not infrequently been directed to the practicability of “bombarding” fortified and unfortified places by dropping projectiles from balloons.

The Second Hague Conference accomplished many valuable results and failed in much that it attempted. Many of its failures have been attributed to a faulty method of organization.

The article on “Neutralization” in the April number of the American Journal of International Law, written by a prominent member of the New England Anti-Imperialist League, seems to furnish additional evidence of the change of mind which has occurred in recent years among the advocates of the policy of antiimperialism.

Although the Constitution did not provide in terms for the creation of Executive Departments of the Government, it spoke of them as things which would be established as a matter of course.