“A treaty entering the Senate is like a bull going into the arena; no one can say just how or when the final blow will fall—but one thing is certain—it will never leave the arena alive.” When John Hay put this in his diary he had been secretary of state for six years. During this period he had seen seventeen treaties borne from the Senate, lifeless or so mutilated by amendments that they could not survive. We can pardon the harassed secretary's earlier statement. “The fact that a treaty gives to this country a great, lasting advantage, seems to weigh nothing whatever in the minds of about half the Senators. Personal interest, personal spites, and a contingent chance of petty political advantage are the only motives that cut any ice at present.”

It is, however, with the objective aspect of Secretary Hay's statement that we are primarily concerned. Statesmen, as others, may occasionally express impatience, but if the practical function of the Senate in treaty making is that of the matador at a bull fight, there are more serious grounds for concern. If its duties resemble those of picadors or banderilleros, the matter is serious enough, and of its goading tactics we have early evidence. Thus, John Quincy Adams writes in his diary: “Mr. Crawford told twice over the story of President Washington's having at an early period of his Administration gone to the Senate with a project of a treaty to be negotiated, and been present at their deliberations upon it. They debated it and proposed alterations, so that when Washington left the Senate-chamber he said he would be damned if he ever went there again. And ever since that time treaties have been negotiated by the Executive before submitting them to the consideration of the Senate.”

In 1871 France was defeated in a six-months' war, by a rival seeking revenge for the humiliations of Jena and Auerstadt. In 1918 France emerged the victor from a fifty-one months' struggle with the same foe. But, unhappily, the spoils reaped from her victory offered slight compensation for the sacrifices she had recently been compelled to make or for the penalties she had paid forty-seven years before. The year 1918, indeed, saw the return of Alsace-Lorraine and the complete restoration of the territorial unity of the French nation; it witnessed no upheaval of government; it experienced no communist revolution. But it found France socially, politically and morally disorganized and exhausted; it found her finances upon the verge of bankruptcy; it found her manhood decimated by some fourteen hundred thousand, and one-tenth of her richest provinces scourged by the flame of war. The year 1918 found France with a form of government which in many respects was regalian and unrepresentative; it found profiteers not only preying upon the necessities of the people but systematically evading the payment of taxes; it found labor tremendously powerful and wielding its strength not so much to force the adoption of economic reforms, as to achieve distinct political privileges. The year 1918 found France confronted with a revengeful Germany, whose recuperative powers seemed far greater than her own, in a position likely to become more tragic with the developing antagonism of England and Italy and the probable withdrawal of the United States from European affairs. In fact, to many her situation appeared desperate: internal discord was undermining the social structure, while, across the Rhine, Berlin seemed preparing to fall upon a decadent state.

From the historical point of view no more interesting case was decided last term than that of Missouri v. Holland, in which a bill in equity brought by the state of Missouri to prevent a game warden of the United States from attempting to enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of July 3, 1918, and the regulations made by the secretary of agriculture in pursuance of this act was finally dismissed, Justices Van Devanter and Pitney dissenting without opinion.

The objectors to the statute and the underlying treaty based their argument upon the Tenth Amendment, supplemented by the proposition that the control of migratory birds within their respective limits is a power reserved to the states, and from these premises they proceeded to draw the conclusion that “what an act of Congress could not do unaided, in derogation of the powers reserved to the states, a treaty cannot do.” But, Justice Holmes answers in his opinion for the court, the treaty-making power is expressly delegated to the United States, treaties made under the authority of the United States are the supreme law of the land, and by article 1, section 8, Congress may pass all laws necessary and proper to carry valid treaties into effect.

Rules of procedure in legislative bodies, once a matter of convenience, have now become weapons of political and personal warfare. Nowhere is this more evident than in the American Congress. In the house of representatives individual members are ready to seize every opportunity afforded by the rules to make themselves prominent and embarrass those who have the pending measure in charge; and when action is to be taken by the house, guillotine is almost always used. The proposed program is reported by the committee on rules and the house proceeds to a cut and dried decision determined upon by the leaders.