tion sought to avoid. The tendency to centralization is due immediately and consciously to the fact that the Federal Government is more efficient in the exercise of its powers than is the State Government.

Moreover, State Governments often fail or refuse to act in matters where action is highly desirable. Large social interests are not bounded by State lines. Child labour in the South or in the West is as abhorrent to the resident of New York as is child labour in New York itself. The refusal of certain States to enact appropriate legislation on this subject has resulted in a nationwide propaganda for action by the Federal Government. In holding the recent child labour legislation by Congress unconstitutional, the court applied a fundamental principle of law which has been asserted and reasserted times without number throughout our history; but because in this instance its assertion frustrated what is thought by many to be a laudable purpose, the court is severely criticised. Already there is on foot a proposal that an amendment to the Federal Constitution be adopted conferring upon Congress the right to legislate in this field, thus still further extending the jurisdiction of Congress in the domain of the purely police power. This situation, perhaps as vividly as any, illustrates the reason for continuing appeals to Congress for relief from what are largely local conditions. The matter of child labour is not affected by transportation as was the traffic in intoxicating beverages, which was in a way thus beyond the power of the States. Each State has ample power to deal with this subject. Many States refused to deal with it and other States failed to deal with it effectively; hence the appeal to Congress.

If further increase of Federal power is to be avoided, it can only be accomplished by efficient action on the part of the States concerning questions that are of vital interest not only to the people of a particular State but to the people of the surrounding States. Such action can be brought about only by arousing intelligent public sentiment on such questions. Men of business. and training in various lines have in recent years paid all too little attention to the affairs of government. Lawyers as a class still take an active and intelligent interest in public affairs.

Physicians and clergymen have a more limited interest, and this is true of all the learned professions. The leaders in the commercial and industrial world, as a class, have withdrawn themselves almost entirely from the public service. Men of experience, position, and training no longer offer themselves for service either in the executive or legislative departments of our Government. The writer has no patience with the criticisms that are made upon those persons who do undertake this arduous and unrewarded service. But unless our leaders in industry, in commerce and transportation (not merely presidents and heads of great enterprises, but their subordinates who have any responsible administrative duties) take a more intelligent and active interest in public affairs, governmental authority will be exercised more and more by the Federal Government. Powers which need to be exercised will be exercised by some one; if not by those who should exercise them, then by someone else. What this country needs most is more willingness on the part of men of affairs to sacrifice their individual interests to the general welfare.

If the increasing burden of taxation which has necessarily followed the war has the effect of arousing on the part of our leading men in commerce, industry and transportation, a live interest in public affairs, great good to the country as a whole will result. It is not enough that our leading men interest themselves only in killing off measures proposed by others; they should come forward with a constructive programme based upon the welfare of the State and nation as a whole. It is not enough for them merely to care for their own selfish interests. If they are not willing to give of their time, energy and ability in unselfish service to the State, the time will come when they will sincerely regret it. A business or enterprise which finds itself hampered or restrained by Federal law is bound as with bands of steel. If one regulatory measure after another is to be adopted, making our laws more rigid and inelastic, the time will come when civil liberty, in the sense in which our grandfathers understood that term, will have been lost.

When Mr. Gladstone said, "The American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain

and purpose of man," he ignored the fact that the Constitution was in reality the natural growth and development of English law and colonial self-government. It was in fact an evolution out of the colonial experience of the thirteen States plus their experience under the Articles of Confederation. The construction, interpretation, and amendment of the Constitution have likewise been a part of an evolutionary process which is still going on. The result has demonstrated the genius of the Anglo-Saxon people for self-government. We must be a part of and direct the evolutionary process along right lines if we are to avoid revolutionary changes in the future.

MARVIN B. ROSENBERRY.

JAPAN AND NATURAL RESOURCES

IN ASIA

BY W. W. WILLOUGHBY

RECENT years have given great importance to the question of the right, as determined by international law or international comity, of one State to have access to or the use of the natural resources of other States. Especially is this a question of vital interest to Japan and China-to Japan because of her need to obtain supplies of foodstuffs and raw materials from abroad; and to China because of the danger lest other nations will be tempted to overstep the limits of international law and international comity in the effort to obtain for their own use the natural resources which China's soil supplies. The recent conference in Washington cast some sidelights upon this question which deserve careful consideration.

Japan finds herself in the following situation: The population of her homeland has already reached a considerable degree of density, and is still increasing. Just how rapid this increase is does not certainly appear from the authentic figures that are available, but it is probably in the neighborhood of half a million annually. The amount of additional land that it is practicable for Japan to bring under cultivation is not great, although it is probable that, if more scientific modes of irrigation were introduced, the food-producing capacity of the homelands could be somewhat increased. Also, if the Japanese could be trained or persuaded to rely less exclusively upon rice, their food problem would be rendered less perplexing to them. However, do what they will, the Japanese are undoubtedly confronted with an increasingly serious situation, unless their increase in numbers can be checked.

It now seems fairly clear that the Japanese themselves recognize that they cannot hope to solve their population problem by means of emigration. There is no reasonable hope that they

will be received in any considerable numbers by those countries, like the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, where they can successfully compete economically with the native populations. It is equally clear that the Japanese are not able to compete upon anything like equal terms with the natives of Asia or Polynesia. Even in Korea, despite the encouragement given them by colonization societies and the favoring aid of their own Government, they have had little success as settlers upon the soil. It is evident, therefore, that future increases in the Japanese population must be taken care of in Japan itself. This of course means that Japan must continue that process of industrialization and commercialization of her economic life which has already made such considerable progress. This in turn means that she must be able to import foodstuffs and raw materials in increasing quantities, for, unfortunately for her, she has within her own borders small supplies of coal and minerals.

This situation has led Japanese statesmen of recent years to lay great emphasis upon what they have termed Japan's "economic right to existence". This doctrine appears with significant emphasis in the correspondence leading up to the establishment, in 1920, of the new International Banking Consortium, as well as in certain declarations made by the Japanese delegation in the Washington conference. It has also found statement in a remarkable paper prepared by the late Premier of Japan, Takashi Hara only a few weeks before his most lamentable assassination. The importance of these declarations or statements of right justify a review and critical examination of them.

As is well known, Japan, in her correspondence with the British and American Governments, strove to have excepted from the activities of the proposed banking consortium for the making of foreign industrial loans to China, loans relating to Manchuria and Mongolia where, it was declared, Japan had "special interests". In its argument in support of this exception, the Japanese Government several times referred to the matter of Japan's national economic existence and asserted, in effect, that her interests in Manchuria and Mongolia were essential to her own economic existence and constituted, as it were, an integral part of that existence. Thus, in its memorandum of March 2,