On August 15, 1921, the Secretary of State of the United States acknowledged receipt from the Secretary General of the League of Nations of a certified copy of the protocol of the Permanent Court of International Justice opened for signature on December 16, 1920, by members of the League and states mentioned in the annex to the Covenant. On February 24, 1923, President Harding submitted the protocol and the accompanying statute to the Senate with a request for its consent to American adhesion with four “ conditions and understandings” explained in an attached letter from Secretary of State Hughes, dated February 17, 1923. President Harding continued to speak for the court until his death, and on December 6, 1923, President Coolidge commended the proposal to the Senate. Resolutions on the subject were introduced in the Senate by Senators Lenroot of Wisconsin (December 10, 1923), Pepper of Pennsylvania (April 7, 1924), Lodge of Massachusetts (May 5, 1924), Swanson of Virginia (May 5, 1924), King of Utah (May 20, 1924), and on May 26, 1924, Senator Pepper submitted a report from the Committee on Foreign Relations endorsing his proposal for Senate consent with radical amendments to the statute.

In the course of its fifth year, the Permanent Court of International Justice has builded a record of constructive work which may perhaps excite less interest than the records of previous years but which constitutes a substantial addition to the new foundations of international jurisprudence which the court is laying. The judges were at The Hague for two sessions: the tenth (extraordinary) session from February 2, 1926, to May 25, 1926, and the eleventh (ordinary) session from June 15, 1926, to July 31, 1926. It is notable that all of the eleven judges were present at the latter session, for the first time in the history of the court. At the extraordinary session early in the year, the court handed down its seventh judgment, and at the ordinary session during the summer, its thirteenth advisory opinion. In addition, the court undertook the very important task of revising its rules of procedure, and the experience of the past four years has been embodied in the new Rules of Court which became effective as from July 31, 1926. Outside the chambers of the court itself, some questions have arisen which may affect its future; so that on the whole, it has been a significant year in the court's history.

These two careful and elaborate studies of the problem of disarmament have attracted wide attention among its students in Europe and the United States. Both have appeared in the year in which probably more definite thought than ever before has been given to the subject by men earnestly striving to find the entrance to some path that may lead to the solution. These volumes plainly show that the writers—than whom no one can have thought more deeply—are convinced that it is not a problem for abstract reasoning. It is not like an equation in mathematics where the application of definite rules leads to one exact conclusion. In such a problem, if there are unknown factors, they are inert things; they are subjected, without evoking protest, to any sort of torturing process of analytical reasoning to determine their value, and that being done the problem is solved. But in this other problem the factors are living, sentient things; human beings acting of themselves in the mass or under the influence of individuals; swayed by every sentiment of the mind, fear, suspicion, greed, ambition, and by the highest and purest as well; sentiments perhaps dormant at one time, at another in intense activity, sometimes thinking and reasoning and again appearing as a wild outburst of senseless passion, and at all times subject to direction towards purposes good or ill according to the character of some guiding mind. No wonder that so many think it a waste of time to study the problem at all while, at the best, it seems to be one the solution of which can be arrived at only by a long slow process of empiricism.

The Supreme Court of the United States, by Mr. Justice Brandeis, recently handed down its decision in Tutun v. United States, and Neuberger v. United States. This is the latest of the important Supreme Court cases determining the law of naturalization, of citizenship, and of expatriation. During the past fifteen years they have comprised Johannessen v. United States, Mansour v. United States, Luria v. United States, Maibaum v. United States, Mackenzie v. Hare, United States v. Ginsberg, United States v. Ness, United States v. Morena, Ozawa v. United States, Yamashita v. Hinkle, United States v. Thind, Kaplan v. Tod, and Toyota v. United States.

In the present study the phrase “ foreign policy ” will be used to refer to the purposes or objectives and the corresponding program of action held in view by one nation in carrying on its relations with other nations. More especially it is intended to refer beyond the surface current of events which constitute the foreign affairs or diplomatic relations of a nation in an objective sense, and which are frequently confused with the rules or tenets of policy followed by the nation in conducting its foreign affairs, and to indicate solely the principles guiding the nation in this activity. Without interpretation in terms of principle, a record of the discontinuous incidents in the foreign affairs of a nation is as meaningless as a list of the names of the kings of England.

Writers on the history of the law of nations, in dealing with neutralization as an accepted practice, have seldom given a satisfactory account of the development of the ideas underlying this unusual phenomenon in international law. They have, in general, been inclined to treat it in a rather fragmentary manner; merely to note in passing certain scattered instances as of minor importance and to devote their major attention to the more outstanding occasions on which the European Powers have settled some given problem by the use of the formula of neutralization. It is thus rendered exceedingly difficult to form an objective appraisal of the ideological forces back of the movement, or effectively to analyze and weigh the constituent elements entering into it. In consequence, the movement has for the most part escaped scientific evaluation.