At a time when the subject of arms embargoes and arms export control is arousing considerable interest both at home and abroad, it is not untimely to examine the system of control which has developed in one of the chief arms producing and exporting countries of the world—Great Britain. Much attention has been devoted to the alleged evils of the international traffic in arms, and to the desirability of an effective government control over all armaments exports. Little consideration, on the other hand, has been given by writers to the question of how such control should be administered by a government, and what measures are actually involved. Taking the experience of Great Britain as a case study, the writer proposes in the following pages to trace the development of arms export control in that country, to examine the ways in which it has been administered, and to point out some of the difficulties which have been encountered. The present article may be looked upon, therefore, as a case study in the broader subject of national controls over the export of war materials.

The first thirty years of the nineteenth century saw the beginnings of a great revolution in transportation and communication. Improvements were introduced which in time greatly changed the daily lives of people throughout the world, and made it possible for their efforts to reach out as never before in human history. The change was nowhere more significant than in its effect on international society. A century ago, the railroad, the steamship and the telegraph so extended the range of human action that national organization ceased to correspond with the activities of many peoples, and the state system upon which the nineteenth century dawned was greatly modified by the progress made in international organization before the century had passed. Certainly no period up to that time had produced such changes as those which began in the decades between 1800 and 1830.

Much controversy has raged for a long period of time over the precise nature of what Wormser refers to as the “anatomy” of a corporation. Wormser himself defines a corporation as a “group of one or more persons authorized by sovereign authority to act as a unit and a personality in the eye of the law.” The definition indicates, on the one hand, that the act of incorporation creates a new person or entity, on the other that this new entity is in fact composite, made up of one or more pre-existing entities. The question arises, at what times will the court regard the corporate entity, and at what times will it look to the real persons who compose it ? A key to the solution of the problem is offered by Lord Mansfield. “A fiction of law shall never be contradicted so as to defeat the end for which it was invented, but for every other purpose it may be contradicted.” By the separate entity theory is meant that a corporation is to be regarded as an entity separate and apart from its corporators and that it is to be treated like any other independent person. That this is the theory of corporations generally accepted by the courts need hardly be proved. It will only be noted that the ruling English case on the subject is that of Salomon and Co. v. Salomon. In his opinion in that case Lord Halsbury said: “Once the company is legally incorporated it must be treated like any other independent person.”

It is a truism that the science of law proper – the science dealing with the United States or the law of Great Britain, one finds the whole science based on the fact of the existence of a political society known as the United States or Great Britain, which formulates, applies and enforces the law which governs these nations in their internal relations. When one enters upon the study of what is called international law, one finds himself expected to accept as a fundamental proposition that there is no political society which formulates, applies and enforces the law which he is told governs all nations in their external relations, and that this law is formulated, applied and enforced among or between the nations. This difference in fundamentals leads to corresponding differences in the derivative notions. Practitioners of law proper take little or no interest in what is called international law. From their point of view, that which is called international law is only a collection of the rules of a highly interesting game, success in which depends largely upon “face ” and personality; nor can it be denied that there is much to justify this opinion. Students of law reflect the attitude of mind of the practitioner, and the great majority of students end their legal education when they finish the courses in national domestic law, giving no consideration to the law which governs the actions and relations of the nations.

The Seventh of the Pan American Conferences was held at Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, from the 3d to the 26th of December last, so that it was impossible to have comments upon its activities appear in the January number of the JOURNAL. The undersigned is taking advantage of this opportunity to say a word on certain phases of Pan-Americanism, and the observations, in so far as they concern treaties or conventions, will be in the order in which they appear in the Final Act.