With nationality problems continuing to occupy a prominent place in both international and municipal practice, expressions of opinion of our highest tribunal upon the subject are received with peculiar interest. This is particularly true where the rule announced is one which governs the validity of naturalization judgments. In a recent sweeping naturalization decision which upholds the government’s views at every point, the United States Supreme Court has again stressed the rule that when doubt exists concerning a grant of citizenship, the statutes must be strictly construed in favor of the United States and against the alien. On October 22, 1928, the court handed down its opinion in the case of Anna Marie Maney, Petitioner, v. The United States of America, in which it affirmed, on writ of certiorari, the judgment of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The latter court had directed the cancellation of the applicant’s certificate of naturalization as having been “illegally procured” because of her failure to file, at the prescribed time and in the required manner, the certificate of her arrival in the United States.

The U.S. refusal to permit Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to attend the 43d annual meeting of the General Assembly in New York was almost universally condemned as a violation of international law. Because Arafat publicly complied, on December 14, 1988, with the conditions the United States had long prescribed as prerequisite for direct contacts with the PLO, many have tended retroactively to validate the refusal to grant the visa, as a pragmatic and legitimate technique of diplomatic suasion. Consequently, it is all the more urgent that the record of international legal violation be confirmed, lest the refusal be cited, in the idiosyncratic fashion of international law, as precedent for future violations. Such a development would hasten the deterioration of the regime of restraints on the discretion of host states and reduce the effectiveness of resident international organizations.

The motive force back of immigration into the United States has shown interesting variations. Appealing first to victims of religious tyranny as a haven, the United States of America assumed a new importance in the middle of the nineteenth century as a refuge for victims of political tyranny, and somewhat later for individuals seeking relief from economic poverty. Its democratic form of government offered an undreamed of freedom to millions of politically oppressed people, and its marvelous stores of natural wealth held forth fabulous opportunities for an immigrant to improve his material well-being. The cumulative and collective effects of these inducements resulted in an increasing annual influx of immigrants seeking surcease from oppression of one kind or another which culminated in the most extensive movement of people from one continent to another ever recorded by history.

According to the theory accepted by the American and English courts, and by nearly all the American and English writers on international law, war between nations is war between their individual citizens. It makes of the citizens or subjects of one belligerent, enemies of the citizens or subjects of the other. The whole nation is embarked in one common bottom and must be reconciled to submit to one common fate. The government at war is the representative of the will of all the people and acts for the whole society. According to the rival theory, which, though first put forward by Rousseau merely as a philosophical principle, has been accepted by a large number of Continental jurists as a fundamental principle of international law, war is a relation between states in which individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men nor even as citizens, but simply as soldiers. Under the Anglo-American theory, the private property of the nationals of each belligerent, on land or sea, is in principle subject to capture and confiscation by the other belligerent.

It has always been urged, both by sceptics and by believers, that the test of the practicability of international arbitration stands on the question of sanctions. And yet, by a striking inconsistency, the same authors who agree on the primordial importance of this problem have constantly failed to resolve it. In fact they have hardly ever attempted to explain its terms.

In spite of my reluctance to quote my own work, I am obliged to say that the only book ever devoted to this one great problem was my comprehensive treatise on “ Sanctions of International Arbitration,” the French edition of which appeared in 1905, with a preface by Baron d’Estournelles de Constant. President Roosevelt, whose great energies and high statesmanship were then devoted both to the negotiations of the Peace of Portsmouth and to the preparation of the program of the Second Hague Conference, courteously permitted me to dedicate the book to him, and therefore I dare say that, though the study of all the great European authors who, since Grotius, have led the way to the present state of international law was my constant guide, I did not lack of American inspiration.

France has had a richer legislative experience in matters of nationality than any other country. Scarcely a decade has passed since the Revolution in which some project for legislation has not been proposed, and during the intervals between these projects the subject has been kept alive by very intelligent discussion on the part of statesmen and writers. A resumé of French legislation will indicate the trend of thought in France and throw light upon the policies behind the present law. In so brief a summary as is here presented it will be impossible, however, to refer to the numerous proposals which never passed beyond the stage of debate. We shall confine ourselves to the laws as adopted, and these will suffice for our purpose.

The law existing in France immediately anterior to the Revolution conferred French nationality on persons (1) born on French soil; (2) born in a foreign country of a French father who had not established his domicile in that country nor lost his intent to return, provided the person so born returned to France.