ELIHU ROOT'S SERVICES TO INTERNATIONAL LAW1 BY JAMES BROWN SCOTT RECORDING SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF INTERNATIONAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW During the American Revolution, and before the surrender of Yorktown, a hard-headed, worldly-wise philosopher and benefactor of his kind assured our Washington that the view of him current in Paris would be the judgment of posterity, as in such a matter, “a thousand leagues have nearly the same effect as a thousand years." The hundred and fifty years which have passed seem to confirm Franklin as a prophet as well as a man of science. One of Mr. Root's colleagues in the Senate has recently ventured the opinion that when Mr. Root's countrymen are as far from him as he is from the Fathers of the Republic, they will look upon him as we look upon them. This was said as a matter of fact—and after some reflection, the Senator added that a more powerful intellect had never appeared in America. It is not for us of the American Society of International Law to concur in, or to dissent from, one or other of these views. It is perhaps safer to stand by Franklin, whose prophecy of Washington is in the course of fulfilment, and to adopt his standard by which to forecast the verdict of posterity. In 1913, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Mr. Root, and in announcing the award, the Secretary of the Nobel Committee delivered an address, in which he said: In August, 1899, he [Mr. Root] was appointed Secretary of War by President McKinley and remained in office during Mr. Roosevelt's administration until February, 1904. Upon the death of Secretary of State John Hay, in July, 1905, Mr. Root succeeded to that office and directed the foreign affairs of the United States up to the expiration of Mr. Roosevelt's term, in March, 1909. As Secretary of War, it was his task to lay the bases for the organization of the relations of Cuba and the Philippines with the United States after the Spanish-American War. 1 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, 1924, DD. 2-41. As Secretary of State, he made a notable journey to South America in 1906, during which he visited the Third Pan American Congress at Rio de Janeiro. In 1907, he visited Mexico. The object of these visits was to remove the longstanding distrust of their Anglo-Saxon sister on the part of the Latin Republics, and to further the efforts made in the interest of Pan Americanism. In 1908 there was founded at Washington the Pan American Bureau, which is under the direction of the Secretary of State of the United States, in coöperation with the Ministers of the American Republics accredited to Washington. Mr. Root took the initiative in calling a Central American Peace Congress at Washington in 1907. The following year a permanent court of arbitration for the Central American states was created at Cartago, Costa Rica. The most difficult task that fell to Mr. Root as Secretary of State was the settlement of the great dispute between the United States and Japan on the question of Japanese immigrants in California, in 1906-07. It is impossible to give here the history of this great question, which assumed a very disquieting aspect in the winter of 1907. It will suffice to say that the peaceful settlement of the dispute, clinched by the action of the Congress at Washington in passing the Immigration Act of March 19, 1907, followed by the identic note of November, 1908, was due to the efforts of Mr. Root. As a Senator, he labored, but in vain, for the ratification without amendments of the treaty of obligatory arbitration between the United States and Great Britain, which was concluded by President Taft and Ambassador Bryce. Long alone among American statesmen in his stand on the question, he vigorously attacked the Act of August, 1912, providing for the free passage of American coastwise vessels through the Panama Canal. His eloquent speech in the Senate on January 21, 1913, was distributed among the friends of peace throughout the entire world. Since his retirement Mr. Root has been recognized as the leader of the peace movement in the United States. He is President of the American Society of International Law and of the great Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.2 At least the first of Franklin's requirements is met, in this analysis and eulogium, for Christiania is even more than a thousand leagues from the city of Washington, in which Mr. Root made good his claim to remembrance. As for the years. Well, we must wait. It is to be remembered that the Secretary of the Nobel Committee 2 Extract from address of Mr. Moe, Secretary of the Nobel Committee, December 10, Translated from Les Prix Nobel en 1913, Stockholm (1914), pp. 64–65. 1913. was speaking of Mr. Root's career as it was in 1913. Had he been speaking today, he would at least have added the arbitration between Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal, concerning Church property, 1920; the meeting of the Advisory Commission of Jurists at The Hague, 1920, and the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armament, 1921-22. Mr. Root has told us how he became Secretary of War-his first step in a career which is not yet ended. Sixteen years ago, in the month of July [1899], having just finished the labors of the year and gone to my country home, I was called to the telephone and told by one speaking for President McKinley, "the President directs me to say to you that he wishes you to take the position of Secretary of War." I answered, "Thank the President for me, but say that it is quite absurd, I know nothing about war. I know nothing about the army." I was told to hold the wire, and in a moment there came back the reply, "President McKinley directs me to say that he is not looking for any one who knows anything about war or for any one who knows anything about the army; he has got to have a lawyer to direct the government of these Spanish islands, and you are the lawyer he wants." Of course I had then, on the instant, to determine what kind of a lawyer I wished to be, and there was but one answer to make, and so I went to perform a lawyer's duty upon the call of the greatest of all our clients, the Government of our country.3 Mr. Root, although no longer in public life, still holds a brief for this client. While our purpose tonight is to speak of Mr. Root's contributions to international law, we must perforce recognize that the limited time at our disposal will not permit us to discuss all his various activities of an international nature. We must adopt-to use an expression of which Mr. Root is very fond-a "self-denying ordinance," and confine ourselves on this occasion primarily to his services to international law as evidenced by the addresses which he has delivered as President of the American Society of International Law. We cannot, however, be unmindful of the "bill of particulars" -to use another phrase of which Mr. Root is fond-contained in the enumeration, or, as he himself would say if he were present, "indictment" of the Nobel Committee. 'The Military and Colonial Policy of the United States. Addresses and Reports by Elihu Root, Harvard University Press, 1916, p. xiv. By way of introduction, therefore, I shall ask your attention to some of these matters, which form an integral part of an ever-broadening career. In doing so, I shall step aside, as it were, and have Mr. Root, as far as time will permit, speak in his own behalf. The Nobel Committee first calls attention to "the organization of the relations of Cuba and the Philippines with the United States after the Spanish-American War." Of this, Mr. Root has said: It was a fascinating work. It was a work of applying to some ten millions of people in Cuba and Porto Rico and the Philippines, the principles of American liberty. They were living under laws founded upon the customs of their lives, customs drawn from old Spain and developed in social and industrial activity quite unlike that of the United States; and the problem was to apply those principles which are declared in our constitutions, which embodied the formative idea of the Declaration of Independence that all men are endowed with inalienable rights, among which are life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to the customs and the laws of peoples which had come down from the Spain of Philip the Second and the Inquisition." In his report as Secretary of War of 1899, Mr. Root stated some of the guiding and controlling principles applicable to Porto Rico and to Cuba. In his report for 1901, he expressed not merely in general but in precise and detailed terms, the principles upon which civil government in the Philippines should be organized. In speaking of the policy to be applied to these three different communities, he said: It is our unquestioned duty to make the interests of the people over whom we assert sovereignty the first and controlling consideration in all legislation and administration which concerns them, and to give them, to the greatest possible extent, individual freedom, self-government in accordance with their capacity, just and equal laws, and opportunity for education, for profitable industry, and for development in civilization. The people of the ceded islands have acquired a moral right to be treated by the United States in accordance with the underlying principles of justice and freedom which we have declared in our Constitution, and which are the essential safeguards of every individual against the powers of government, not because those provisions were enacted for them, but because they are essential limitations inherent in the very existence of the American Government.5 Porto Rico can only be referred to in passing, and only a principle or two mentioned, which are common to Mr. Root's entire policy. While the government was to be American, it was, as far as possible, to be carried out with the coöperation of Porto Ricans. Thus, "Wherever a Porto Rican can be found capable and willing to perform official duties he should be selected, and the aim should be to include in the civil service of the island no greater number of Americans from the United States than are necessary for the introduction of the methods of administration in which Americans have been trained and Porto Ricans have not." The Porto Ricans were to be trained as rapidly as possible for the responsibilities of government; therefore, the necessary element to success of any scheme of action in Porto Rico, and, indeed, in Mr. Root's opinion, elsewhere, is "the complete establishment of a system of education which will afford the opportunity for every child of school age in the island to acquire elementary instruction." Each community has its customs, and in Mr. Root's conception, "The customs and conditions of the people who are to be governed must furnish the true basis for the law under which they are to live, and any attempt to substitute in these southern islands a system of laws based on the experience and characteristics of a New England community would be both oppressive and futile." The policy of Great Britain in Canada in the matter of law, Mr. Root approved and followed. The private law in civil matters was left undisturbed, whereas the English law was introduced in criminal matters. Nothing, however, was further from his mind than the adoption in whole or in part of the economic policy of Great Britain, which had led to the estrangement and separation of the thirteen English-speaking colonies of America from the mother country. This phase of the subject was the most important: "The question of the economic treatment of the island"-he is still speaking of Porto Rico-"underlies all the others. If the people are prosperous and have an abundance of the necessities of life, they will with justice be easily governed, and will with patience be easily educated. If they are left in hunger and hopeless poverty, they will be discontented, intractable, and mutinous." Porto Rico is today to all intents and purposes an integral part of the United States. Its Military and Colonial Policy, p. 168. 'Ibid., pp. 169–170. |