In these days of wars which have engulfed almost all Europe it is a satisfaction to recall that thirteen nations sent their delegates to an international conference relating to safety of life at sea, no longer ago than December, 1913, and that they signed on the 20th of January, 1914, a convention which has been adopted by many of the nations and which was transmitted to the Senate of the United States by the President on the 17th of March. All the resources of human skill and science are now being used to destroy life. It is a pleasure to reflect that man has at one time been engaged in a more humane and, shall we not add, a more Christian undertaking.

International law, perhaps more than any other branch of the science, is progressive. In its study, the elements of this progress should be traced to their origin. International law has been a growth of mutual understanding between nations, developed out of necessities of particular situations, ripening gradually from precedent to precedent and finally formulated and codified in international conventions and treaties. Of these the most notable are the conventions adopted at the two conferences held at The Hague in 1899 and 1907.

It is not surprising to find that times of war have given rise to many of the rules which nations have gradually come to recognize and embodied in the system which has become common to them all. In times of peace the situation adapts itself more readily to the requirements of each nation. War necessarily displaces the ordinary course of business and human conduct.

When the thirteen colonies became a nation and formed the Constitution of the United States of America, their population was chiefly on the Atlantic seaboard. Their ships sailed to every port of the civilized world. They were alive to the importance of foreign commerce. The wars of the Napoleonic epoch and the controversies to which they gave rise, led the American people to feel that it was for their interest, not only to abstain from entangling alliances with the powers of continental Europe, but to limit their activities as far as possible to their own territory. The acquisition of Louisiana from the French in 1803 gave to the United States a fertile and almost boundless domain and afforded an opening for national growth, which of itself tended to withdraw the thought and enterprise of our people from foreign business. Undoubtedly our foreign commerce did increase down to the time of the Civil War, but it did not keep pace with the development of ^he country or with the growth of interstate commerce. Since the Civil War, however, the current has turned. The wealth of the United States has enormously increased. Its capital is found invested in foreign countries, and it has acquired territorial possessions not only in the Atlantic, but in the Pacific, which have changed entirely the attitude of the American people. It must inevitably be the case that in the future the number of American citizens who go to foreign countries and take up a residence there will far exceed that of any other period of our history. A few of these no doubt will become citizens of the countries to which they go, but experience shows that the great majority both of English and American citizens who reside in foreign countries still retain their citizenship. The relation borne by the home government to these citizens domiciled abroad is, therefore, a matter of great and increasing importance.