The increase of popular control over national conduct, which marks the political development of our time, makes it constantly more important that the great body of the people in each country should have a just conception of their international rights and duties.

A novel case has recently arisen involving the liability of a foreign government to indemnify an American corporation (a missionary board) for the death of its employees by mob violence. The case grew out of the assault in 1905 of a mob of native Chinese upon the American Protestant Mission Station at Lienchou, province of Quantung, China, resulting in the death of four missionaries and one child.

In entering upon the publication of a new journal, professedly designed not only to advance the knowledge of, but also to improve, the principles of international law, it is not inappropriate to make an estimate of the present state of the system and to consider its future needs.

International law owes much to American judges and to American jurists. The list of those who have contributed to its advancement is not short and includes the names of Marshall, Story and Field, Kent, Wheaton, with his able commentators, Dana and Lawrence, Halleck and Lieber and, among recent writer’s, Taylor, Moore and Snow. Although his name is not connected with a general treatise on the subject of public international law, it may be doubted whether any of his fellow-workers in that field have rendered a more important service to humanity and to international good neighborhood, than has Dr. Francis Lieber in his memorable “Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field.”

Among the subjects scheduled for discussion at the third Pan-American conference, which met at Rio de Janeiro during July and August, 1906, was a resolution that the second peace conference at the Hague be requested to

War in the full sense, according to international law, can exist only by declaration or recognition of belligerency by a state. War in the material sense of an actual contest of armed forces may and does often exist without such declaration or recognition. However desirous a party using armed force within a state and in opposition to it may be to be regarded as a belligerent, such a party has not the legal capacity to raise itself to a belligerent status. This status can be gained only by action of the parent state or of a foreign state. An armed contest may, nevertheless, exist and of this fact others must often take notice.

The doctrine of continuous voyages was developed by the English courts to defeat the devices by which American merchantmen endeavored to avoid the rule denying to neutrals in time of war the right to engage in a commerce from which they were excluded in time of peace. Under the system of colonial monopoly which then prevailed the trade with colonial possessions was confined to the ships of the home country. Colonists were regarded as the property of the mother country and as existing exclusively for her use and benefit. They were expected to supply markets for her manufactured goods and products for her markets. With respect to other countries colonies in a commercial sense had no existence. In theory, it has been said, the English colonies were no more to France than as if they were settlements in the mountains of the moon. For commercial purposes they were not on the same planet. Had they been annihilated it would have left no chasm in the commercial map of Germany. Had they been submerged the fact would have found its way into the chronicles of other countries as an interesting event but nothing more.

The following notes aim, in a tentative way, to discuss and analyze the source and nature of sovereignty in its relation to mankind, and to the institutions created and developed as a result of man’s desire for social order and peace. The term notes excludes the idea of an exhaustive or comprehensive treatment of sovereignty; the sole purpose in view is to direct attention to the wide-reaching importance of the subject and to suggest a line of thought somewhat different from that usually followed by publicists.