respondence and official announcements which have settled international law and procedure.

The orderly and lucid marshaling of the facts derived from the very widest historical survey of the subject is a most successful feature of the book, as in the discussion of "The commencement of war between the belligerents," including "Declaration of war" (pages 18 to 26), in which, starting with the rules of Grotius, we see the whole tableau of procedure unrolled down to the communications between the Spanish Government and General Woodford, the United States minister at Madrid, on April 21, 1898, and the ultimatum delivered on behalf of President Krüger to the British agent at Pretoria on October 9, 1899, and the communications between Mr. Kurino, Japanese minister at St. Petersburg, and Count Lamsdorff in 1904.

The clearness, fullness, and succinctness of these statements illustrate a chief merit of the book consistently displayed throughout on the vexed question of "Pacific blockade." Professor Westlake sums up by concluding that "as against the quasi enemy it is too well established as a recognized institution to be longer attacked with serious hope of success."

Professor Westlake very stoutly opposes the German doctrine of Lueder and others that the laws of war are liable to be overridden by necessity on the plea "that commanders will act on it, whatever may be laid down." "This ground," he says, "reduces law from a controlling to a registering agency" (see page 115).

This writer is constantly struck by the fullness of knowledge displayed in the thousands of illustrations introduced from actual practice where the incidents, poured in a steady stream of narrative from the well-filled. mind of Professor Westlake, give a more complete understanding than standard works which have assumed to discuss the question at some length, as witness the account of the sinking of the British ships at Rouen by the Germans during the Franco-Prussian war (page 118).

In discussing the immunity of coast fisheries from capture he finds evidence of its existence in the Middle Ages in a pleasant passage from Froissart that "fishermen on the sea, whatever war there were between France and England, never did harm to one another, so they are friends and help one another at need."

The book is throughout remarkably free from ill temper or partisanship (so noticeable in Hall's otherwise admirable work), even in the discussion of such tempting topics for acrimony as the taking of Mason

and Slidell from the Trent, and that of "continuous voyages," though as to the latter he says:

In the United States during the civil war the carriage of contraband was generally presented to the courts in connection with blockade running, to which the doctrine of continuous voyages does not apply. The offense of blockade running, consisting in the attempt to communicate with a prohibited port and not in the introduction of a prohibited class of goods, is essentially one of the ships and not an offense of the goods, except as derived from that of the ship.

The reviewer, as a teacher of international law and a humble writer thereon, welcomes Professor Westlake's volumes as wonderfully luminous and, in short space, encyclopedic. He finds in them a happy contrast to those works, so often produced by the publishers with ample advertisements, where an unlearned but assiduous person has been hired to produce, at small cost, a string of citations, animated and guided by no depth of knowledge and no general conception as to the matter in hand. Professor Westlake's ipse dixit has more weight than many pages of such hack work. The writer is glad to add that he has recent assurances in personal letters from Professor Westlake that the activities of his pen are to continue, and he ventures to express the hope that the History of International Law which Professor Westlake included in his original plan may follow. No one is better equipped to undertake it. One slight criticism ought to be made. The indexes, as is so often the case in English books-as, for instance, in Phillimore's famous Commentaries are very much curtailed, quite inadequate, and might, it is submitted, with great advantage in a work whose every page contains so much of value, be greatly expanded.

CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY.

The Elements of International Law, with an Account of its Origin, Sources, and Historical Development. By George B. Davis, JudgeAdvocate-General, United States Army, Delegate Plenipotentiary to the Geneva Conference of 1906 and to the Second Peace Conference at The Hague, 1907. Third edition. Revised to date, including the results of the Second Peace Conference at The Hague in 1907, and other new material. Harper & Brothers, publishers: New York and London. 1908.

The first edition of this work appeared in 1887. The second, and last edition before that here considered, was issued in 1903 and contained 612 pages.

The present (third) edition contains 673 pages, a growth of 61 pages in five years.

an in

The general text in the former edition covered 497 and in the last edition but 501 pages, an expansion of 4 pages only. The appendices in the former edition covered 79 pages; in the new edition 138 crease of 59 pages- - and this increase is more than covered by "Appendix F," containing 70 pages, devoted to some brief introductory remarks concerning and transcripts or abbreviated statements of the agreements of the Second Hague Conference. In a few places these are annotated.

General Davis in his preface says that

The labors of the Second Peace Conference were so fruitful of important results and touched the practice of international law at so many points as to make it imperative to recast and amplify the text of several chapters.

He adds further:

So far as it has been practicable to do so, the text of the present edition has been brought up to date and into harmony with the existing rules governing the relations of sovereign states in both peace and war.

General Davis's book has especial importance as it is the text in international law used at the United States Military Academy at West Point, from which our army officers especially derive their ideas as to the law of nations. It is a limited handbook, quite elementary in its treatment, very general and miscellaneous in many of its citations, and "was originally intended" for "undergraduate students of American colleges and law schools." It formulates the rules of law somewhat more positively, perhaps, than the more ample and advanced works, but adds reference to standard texts for fuller discussion.

The appendix containing the results of the Second Peace Conference is of distinct value and seems absolutely necessary in a text-book intended to be used at the United States Military Academy, since the action of that conference (as ratified) settled or modified numerous rules as to topics of vital importance to army men, as "The opening of hostilities," "The laws and customs of war on land," "Rights and duties of neutral persons," and "Discharging projectiles from balloons," besides quite as extensively regulating the rights and duties of belligerents and neutrals in naval warfare.

The text of the conventions and recommendations can be found much

more amply in many places, as Document No. 444 of the United States Senate, Sixtieth Congress, first session, or in the admirable volume edited by Dr. James Brown Scott of the State Department and published by Messrs. Ginn & Co., 1908, giving the texts of both peace conferences in French, with English translations and related documents, but its presence as an appendix in a convenient and inexpensive handbook of international law is certainly desirable and is ample excuse for the new edition.

It can not be said that the text of the book in general seems to have been revised or adequately brought up to date. There is no table of cases, which omission is felt by one used to law books, but a search of the general index indicates that such an important case as Mortenson v. Peters, decided by the High Court of Justiciary of Scotland (full bench) as to the jurisdiction of Great Britain over the Moray Firth in 1905 (see AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, vol. 1, p. 526) has escaped attention. Even such an important and decisive case as The Paquette Habana, The Lola (175 U. S., 677), holding in 1899, in one of the late Mr. Justice Gray's cyclopedic opinions, that certain fishing boats are exempt from capture, seems to have escaped citation. The subject is treated on page 61, but this authoritative case is not cited; neither is the provision adopted by the Second Hague Conference to like effect cited in that connection, though of course it is found in the appendix (p. 598). A much more thorough revision of the text and modernization of the citations would certainly have added to the value of this new edition.

Even the index seems not to have been thoroughly revised so as to conform to the very slight change in the pagination, as, for instance, in the index to the new edition we find the title "Fishing boats, exemption from capture, 374, 375, 597." There is nothing on the subject at any one of the three references, but the subject is treated at pages 374 and 375 in the former edition.

A small error is apparent even in the prefaces as printed in the last edition. The preface to the second edition purports to be reprinted. That preface originally contained this passage:

In the systematic study of the subject it is suggested that Doctor Francis Wharton's exhaustive and invaluable digest of the international law of the United States be habitually used in connection with the excellent volume of cases in international law prepared by the late Prof. Freeman Snow of Harvard University.

Where this is reprinted in the last edition the eulogistic adjectives are very slightly modified, but " Professor John Bassett Moore's valuable and exhaustive digest" is substituted for "Doctor Francis Wharton's exhaustive and invaluable digest,"

As Mr. Moore's digest appeared in 1906, three years after the second edition of General Davis's book, it of course could not have been referred to in the preface in question and a reprint of the preface with such an alteration yet still given as " preface to the second edition" is certainly an error. In the same way the cases by "Dr. James Brown Scott, Solicitor of the Department of State," are mentioned in this reprint of the old preface. Those quite invaluable cases were published in 1902 and might have been very properly referred to in the preface published in 1903, but were not, and moreover Dr. Scott was not Solicitor of the Department of State until 1906, three years after that preface was published. The preface which assumes to be reprinted seems to have been revised and the text which assumes to have been revised seems to have, in the main, been merely reprinted. It may seem ungracious to mention these, perhaps minor, inaccuracies in the work, but they give the impression that the learned and distinguished official whose name gives reputation to the work has, in the pressure of affairs, trusted the revision to a somewhat negligent or hurried assistant and it is hoped these blemishes may disappear from later editions of so widely used a handbook.

CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY.

Treatise on Private International Law. By George Streit. Athens: 1906.

One of the most valuable contributions to private international law published recently is the Greek work of Prof. George S. Streit, of the National University of Greece, which appeared in Athens in 1906.

Modern Greece ever since her independence has striven for the revival of Greek literature, both within and without the narrow boundaries of her territory which were assigned to her by the "protecting powers" of Europe, who contributed to her regeneration. The establishment of the National University of Athens gave a great impetus not only to learning in general, but also to the study of the law, and particularly of the Roman law, which was the law of the land before the Turkish conquest, it being now simply revived. Notwithstanding the existence of a law school at Athens, it is in the European centers of learning, and particu