The incidents of the great war now raging affect so seriously the very foundations of international law that there is for the moment but little satisfaction to the student of that science in discussing specific rules. Whether or not Sir Edward Carson went too far in his recent assertion that the law of nations has been destroyed, it is manifest that the structure has been rudely shaken. The barriers that statesmen and jurists have been constructing laboriously for three centuries to limit and direct the conduct of nations toward each other, in conformity to the standards of modern civilization, have proved too weak to confine the tremendous forces liberated by a conflict which involves almost the whole military power of the world and in which the destinies of nearly every civilized state outside the American continents are directly at stake.

The history of the naval operations of the present war is quite without parallel, not only on account of the large number of enemy merchant vessels that have been destroyed without warning and the consequent loss of life of both neutral and non-combatant persons, but also because of the destruction on a large scale of ships of neutral Powers. According to the press dispatches, about one hundred and fifty neutral merchantmen, American, Danish, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Swedish, have already been sunk by one or another belligerent—in most cases by German cruisers and submarines. The merchant marines of Denmark, Holland, Norway, and Sweden have been the heaviest sufferers. In a few cases the destruction was the resuit of error due to the alleged inability of the captor to distinguish the markings of the vessel, but in the majority of cases the reason alleged was that the ships were carrying contraband of war. In view of the extensive and unprecedented scale upon which this practice has been resorted to during the present War, the conditions under which the destruction by belligerents of neutral merchant vessels is permissible, if at all, well merit consideration in the light of international law and practice. Mr. Thomas Baty, an English authority of high standing, writing in 1911, thus states the practice of the past:

If any one having an elementary acquaintance with the law of nations had been asked, twelve years ago, what were the rights of belligerents and neutrals in naval warfare, he would not have been at a loss for a reply. Subject to one or two minor points of unsettled detail, he would have been quite clear and certain as to the position. A continuous series of cases and textbooks made it plain. If some went further than others in claiming extended neutral immunities, that was a point of academic argument which was perhaps of interest, but of no particular importance, except as showing that the trend of thought was on the whole unfavorable to the belligerent.

Although the development of international law has tended more and more to confine the operations of war to such as are directed against the armed forces of the belligerents and to relieve the peaceful population from their immediate effects, nevertheless a number of practices employed principally for the purpose of bringing economic pressure to bear upon the general mass of enemy non-combatants, still survive in full vigor and are well recognized as legitimate. One of the most important of this class of operations is blockade. The end of blockade is to cut off trade and intercourse with specified ports or with a specified coast line in possession of the enemy.

The question relative to the legality of the acquisition of Porto Rico by the United States involves the consideration of two different propositions: (1) the right of the United States, as a nation, to acquire territory generally; and (2) the power of the Federal Government to exercise that right according to the provisions of the Constitution. Looking at the question from this point of view, the legality of the acquisition may be considered under two different aspects: (a) the external or international, and (b) the internal or constitutional. Each of these two aspects of the question requires, of course, a separate study if not a complete and exhaustive discussion. We shall therefore examine them in their order, although to such extent only as the peculiar character and limitations of this article will permit.

There is probably no principle of American politics, which has exercised a more powerful influence or has impressed itself more forcibly upon the American imagination than the Monroe Policy. Throughout our diplomatic history it has set the standard by which our whole foreign policy has been tested. In its defense we have risked war with the most powerful of European nations. It has come to be regarded with a sort of religious veneration, and in the popular mind it ranks in importance with the Declaration of Independence.

But in these latter days irreverent scoffers have endeavored to prove that this principle that we have worshipped is unsound. There has been more discussion of the Monroe Policy in the last two years than ever before. Is the Monroe Policy an “obsolete shibboleth” as charged by Professor Bingham? Is our devotion to this cardinal principle of American diplomacy “mere slavery to rhetoric and sentiment”? Is this lamp which has guided our feet for almost a century nothing more than a will-of-the-wisp, an “ignis fatuus”? It is high time that we should settle this question, for if all these years we have based our foreign policy on a false principle, assuredly the day is at hand when we shall reap the results of our errors.