The question relative to the legality of the acquisition of Porto Rico by the United States involves the consideration of two different propositions: (1) the right of the United States, as a nation, to acquire territory generally; and (2) the power of the Federal Government to exercise that right according to the provisions of the Constitution. Looking at the question from this point of view, the legality of the acquisition may be considered under two different aspects: (a) the external or international, and (b) the internal or constitutional. Each of these two aspects of the question requires, of course, a separate study if not a complete and exhaustive discussion. We shall therefore examine them in their order, although to such extent only as the peculiar character and limitations of this article will permit.

There is probably no principle of American politics, which has exercised a more powerful influence or has impressed itself more forcibly upon the American imagination than the Monroe Policy. Throughout our diplomatic history it has set the standard by which our whole foreign policy has been tested. In its defense we have risked war with the most powerful of European nations. It has come to be regarded with a sort of religious veneration, and in the popular mind it ranks in importance with the Declaration of Independence.

But in these latter days irreverent scoffers have endeavored to prove that this principle that we have worshipped is unsound. There has been more discussion of the Monroe Policy in the last two years than ever before. Is the Monroe Policy an “obsolete shibboleth” as charged by Professor Bingham? Is our devotion to this cardinal principle of American diplomacy “mere slavery to rhetoric and sentiment”? Is this lamp which has guided our feet for almost a century nothing more than a will-of-the-wisp, an “ignis fatuus”? It is high time that we should settle this question, for if all these years we have based our foreign policy on a false principle, assuredly the day is at hand when we shall reap the results of our errors.

On July 29,1916, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia entered a decree to restore to the British claimants the steamer Appam, formerly an English merchant vessel, captured by the German cruiser Moewe upon the high seas and sent into Newport News to be laid up pending the war between Great Britain and Germany. In a very elaborate opinion, the court held that the Appam had no right under international law or the treaty with Prussia of May 1, 1828, to use an American port as an asylum; that it did not have a right under the circumstances to enter an American port at all; that by so doing it violated the neutrality of the United States, and was therefore, with the proceeds of the cargo, to be restored, according to the American practice, to the British owners at the date of capture. The case is a very interesting one from the standpoint of international law, and by reason of its importance, it is to be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States in order that, as far as the United States is concerned, a definite decision may be reached upon the points of law involved. The facts of the case and the reasoning of the District Court will, however, be set forth at this time and in this place.

In a recent editorial of one of the legal periodicals, the author quotes Alexander Hamilton’s statement in the Federalist, that “it is essential to the idea of law that it be attended with a sanction, or in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience,” and from this premise draws the following conclusion: “The law of nations, so-called, is a mere empty term or phrase, a high resounding name for something in and of itself vain and impotent.”

To most authorities and students of international law, the author’s conclusion is somewhat astounding, but the fact that the statement could be made by a prominent legal editor, illustrates the extent of the present popular distrust of the science.