The recent report on Citizenship of the United States, Expatriation, and Protection Abroad, together with the work of Mr. Van Dyne on Citizenship of the United States, and the invaluable Digest of International Law, by Prof. John Bassett Moore, render easily accessible and readily comprehensible the principles of the American law with reference to the status of our citizens and of aliens for the time being within our territorial limits. At the same time, however, these publications make more evident the fact that, in many instances, the conflicting claims of two or more states upon the same individual are settled rather by mutual concessions than upon principle; that legal and political rights are asserted, but with an understanding, more or less explicit, that under given circumstances they will not be exercised. Thus, by a legislative act, legally binding upon our executive and judicial officers, we have declared the right of the individual to expatriate himself to be an absolute and indefeasible one, and that the naturalized American citizen is to have the same rights and is to receive the same protection as the native-born citizen, whether or not the state of original allegiance consents to the expatriation thus involved. In practice, this law, thus formally declared, has never been rigidly enforced, for the very good reason that to attempt to do so would lead to constant and serious international difficulties.

It has been my privilege during the past few months to conduct on behalfof the Government of the United States negotiations having for their object the promotion of the great ideal of world peace. Popular and governmental interest in the realization of this ideal has never been greater than at the present time. Ever since the World War, which spelled death to so many millions of men, spread desolation over so much of the Continent of Europe and shocked and imperiled neutral as well as belligerent nations, the minds of statesmen and of their peoples have been more and more concerned with plans for preventing the recurrence of such a calamity.