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of Embassy or Legation," "Present Diplomatic Service of the United States," "Regulations governing appointments and promotions in the Consular Service," "Regulations governing examinations," "Sample examination papers," "Present Consular Service of United States,"

"Forms."

This is followed by an index of 28 pages, mainly printed in capitals. The preface points out that the act of Congress of 1906 placing appointments and promotions in the Consular Service " on a civil service basis" and the application of like principles to certain diplomatic appointments by presidential order of 1905, make possible attractive and honorable careers in our foreign service; that this book is designed for the general reader and for those desirous of entering the foreign service and those newly appointed thereto. The author hopes it may be found useful and interesting also to the legal profession and diplomatic and consular officers generally.

The text is divided into five heads dealing, first, with the Department of State; second, the Diplomatic Service; third, the Consular Service; fourth, Citizenship; fifth, the Literature of the Subject.

Mr. Van Dyne held first a clerkship and later the place of Assistant Solicitor in the Department of State from 1891 to 1907, when he was appointed Consul at Kingston, Jamaica. He was arbitrator in the claim of Solon vs. San Domingo and he is the author, as appears, of two books, one on Citizenship published in 1904 and one on Naturalization in 1907, and now, after two years, of the present work.

The writer of this review has read the text with care and interest. The long acquaintance of the author with the routine of the Department of State and of a consular office is apparent and these are valuable assets.

Mr. Van Dyne has given, as he evidently purposed and his title indicates, a very elementary account of the department and the foreign. service. The book is evidently written currente calamo with very limited research. The statements are seldom supported by references and, if at reference is given, it is often too vague and general to be of use; page and volume are habitually omitted. Various anecdotes, often humorous. and seldom new, are freely introduced. Some digressions are indulged which seem of little avail in a work of instruction as that on "Female Diplomatists," page 74. The works referred to and quoted are often, though not always, of a light and popular character.

Some statements if not absolutely inaccurate are it seems slightly incor

rect and misleading. Thus on page 40 we are told, "among our Secretaries of State who were particularly qualified by experience for the work of conducting our foreign affairs were the following: Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, John Marshall, Lewis Cass, Elihu B. Washburne, each of whom represented the United States in Paris." Mr. Jefferson succeeded Franklin as our minister at Paris in 1785 and became Secretary of State in 1790. Monroe was named minister to France by Washington in 1794 and became Secretary of State in 1810. Marshall was minister to France in 1797 and became Secretary of State in 1800. Cass was minister to France for five years in the thirties and became Secretary of State in 1857 under Buchanan, retiring in Mr. Washburne however was appointed Secretary of State by his intimate friend, President Grant, at the beginning of the latter's administration, but resigned almost at once to accept the mission to France which he filled most efficiently during the Franco-Prussian War and through the time of the Commune. It is submitted that he ought hardly to be classified with those whose services as minister "qualified". them "by experience" for the Secretaryship as his diplomatic services were later in time than his services in the Cabinet.

The style of the book is highly colloquial and the author does not disdain such terms as " a good mixer" in speaking of the social qualifications of a diplomat.

The chapters give the impression of haste, as if compiled from notes gathered at random and with very limited time or labor, as a basis for lectures before classes of somewhat unsophisticated students. Yet it should be added that Mr. Van Dyne's long practical acquaintance with his subject and his frank and natural handling of it, his good sense, good temper and his facility make the work distinctly readable and undoubtedly valuable to beginners in this line.

The compilations in the appendix are convenient and some of them not easily accessible elsewhere.

The work seems worthy of a careful and severe revision, in which ancedote should be pruned and authenticated, exact citations habitually given, as in Mr. Van Dyne's earlier works, condensation, definiteness and authority sought for and the disposition toward expansion and popularity somewhat restrained.

Thus modified it might well become a lesser classic on a most interesting subject.

CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY.

L'ordine pubblico nel Diritto Internazionale. Andrea Rapisardi-Mirabelli. Catania (Niccolo Giannotta, Editore). 1908. L. 4.

This is a somewhat elaborate discussion of the place and meaning of the conception of "public order" in international law.

The general significance of the phrase as employed by the author can perhaps be best ascertained by reference to the preliminary articles of the Civil Code of Italy, which in this regard is followed closely in language and ideas by the Spanish and other civil law codes. In sections 7 to 11 the general rules are laid down which determine the law, national or foreign, to be applied; then follows section 12 with its exception. No foreign law or judgment and no private agreement is in any case to take effect when it conflicts with an Italian law that is prohibitory or which in any way touches l'ordine pubblico e buon costume. "Public policy and good morals" may not perhaps furnish an entirely accurate translation of either member of the phrase; taken as a whole it seems to cover pretty nearly the same ground.

It is then "public order," as a ground of exception to the logical and generally approved rules applicable to the solution of ordinary questions of private international law, that engages our attention.

The form in which the conception appears in the Codes is indeed in the author's view by no means accidental or meaningless, but indicates. on analysis the position of these Codes in the development of law and their historical associations. And, on the other hand we might fairly say that the expression of the principle as found in his national Code has considerably influenced the attitude of mind with which the writer approaches the problem involved.

That problem, in a very few words, is the meaning and justification of such a class of exceptions. Upon what is it logically based? Does it represent an irreducible residuum that cannot be brought into a rational. system, or is it possible to define and rationalize the exceptions, relating them to a higher unity? Have we in fact in this case what is really and properly to be described as a conflict of laws, in which the strongest, i. e., that which has at its disposal the means of enforcement, wins; or is it still a matter of discovering and applying the proper law, though such law may, owing to special elements, differ from that applicable where no question of "public order" enters?

The historical aspect of the subject is treated at some length and not unprofitably, from the first faint shadowing of the doctrine which is detected in the theory of the real and personal statutes, to its definite

emergence in the pages of Savigny. So long as the territoriality of law was assumed as a principle, so long as and wherever conflicts were resolved or attenuated by means of the device of a voluntary and arbitrary comity, there was evidently little room for this conception. It was only when Savigny and his successors had reached the idea of a wide community of law existing among civilized nations, that anything resembling a system of private international law became conceivable, or that the residuum of unsolved conflicts which attach themselves to the public policy of the several nations, began to stand out in its real importance. The two ideas are bound together, and it is those writers (says the author in the last lines of his first chapter) who have contended most insistently for the international character of private international law, who have also sought for a criterion whereby to define the conception of "public order." These efforts, unremitting since the time of Savigny, to find an adequate and comprehensive definition, have ended consistently in failure. Others have sought rather to specify by enumeration the laws which fall under this heading. We meet utter confusion and uncertainty in what is pretty sure to be the first category, the laws relating to good morals. So absolute is the failure in this direction that certain authors have sought the remedy in a bold attempt to eliminate the conception of "public order" altogether. This may mean, in result, an abandonment of the conception of private international law, a return to the old idea of the comitas gentium voluntary and arbitrary concession on the part of the national law; or again, it may be rather the name than the conception that disappears. And, finally, an overbold idealism may simplify conceptions by merely ignoring facts as they exist.

In none of these directions, then, is any true and satisfactory solution to be found, and we look to the author with considerable interest to discover what his own answer to the problem may be. The essential features of this answer, based largely upon the views and theories propounded by Jellinek, appear to be as follows:

The state does not, by the mere fact of its existence, possess anv juridical personality. This it acquires only by becoming subject to the rule of law imposed by a superior will, which is to be found in the joint will of the states, realizing itself in the creation of regulations that govern mutual intercourse. But it is in the recognition of a state by its sisters that the rule imposes itself, that the state from being a physical entity becomes a subject of law. This recognition, it must be noted, is at mutual and bilateral act, not by any means the assumption by an existing

state or group of states of authority over the newcomer, but a mutual agreement by all concerned, implicit or expressed, to enter into a juridical relation.

Now this international recognition is accorded to the state as a state, in the fulness of its inherent functions and activities, subject only to the limitation that forbids trespass on the spheres of the other states. In a word, it is no series of rights and privileges that is recognized, but the simple right to be a state in relation with others. It is not the fundamental or essential rights of the state that demand to be defined, the important thing from the point of view of international law, the element. that gives rise to the problems of international law, is the limitation of these rights.

It is, therefore, an error to place in opposition the international order and the personality of the individual state as if they represented conflicting modes of thought; on the contrary, it is the international order that guarantees this individual personality and its free development. From the mutual recognition of the states as legal personalities, free to realize themselves within the limits imposed by coëxistence, we infer at once the rational system which impartially applies the national or the foreign law, and the sphere of the free will of the state which sets bounds to this system. The notion of public order, therefore, while still appearing as an exception to the rules ordinarily applicable, is nevertheless as truly as these rules themselves, a part of the general juridical order.

Finally, the sociological tendencies of the time are all in the direction. of limiting and reducing the field of arbitrary freedom. This tendency may be expected to prevail in the domain of international law, and the sphere of the exceptions created on the ground of public order may be expected to diminish as time goes on; not, however, to the point of extinction, for the conception of individuality and personal freedom, for the state as for the man, is bound up with the constitution of the civilized world as we know it.

Such is the argument of Mr. Rapisardi-Mirabelli, as we understand it; and it must be said that it is not entirely convincing or satisfying. It would seem that he has hardly done himself full justice in the presentation of his views. In the historical part, interesting and valuable as it is, the thread of the thought is hard to follow as we pass from theory to theory, from subject to subject. If we have been at all successful in indicating the course of the author's thought, it will appear that his proposed reconciliation of the contending conceptions the national or the

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