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for a parliament. The first commission sent abroad advised, on its return, fixing the time at five years for the complete adoption of a constitutional system. Finally in 1908, on August 27, the constitution was definitely promised to be completed within nine years, or by 1917, at which time the lower, or representative, body should be convoked.

Numerous voluntary political associations quickly sprung up whose purpose is to aid in the task of educating the masses for their political duties. Such are the Association for Preparing Constitutional Citizenship, Association for the Study of the Constitution, and others. The Imperial edicts had exhorted all the people to unite in the effort to prepare for the new regime.

By the autumn of 1909 the Provincial assemblies created in pursuance of the constitutional decrees of the previous year were chosen. The electorate was narrow. The qualifications were either experience in public office, high educational attainment, or the possession of 5,000 taels worth of property. The councils are for the present consultative only. Their purpose is to discover and voice public opinion as to the needs of the people. The first meetings were in October. The subjects open for their discussion were limited. Procedure was on western models. Reporters had their places. Debates were recorded. Members received payment and traveling expenses.

Thus the promised constitution bids fair to be completed and in operation by the promised year 1917. Much pressure has been brought to bear during the last summer to shorten the period of preparation and even to convoke the popular branch of parliament immediately. But so far it has been successfully resisted. China. will probably do better to bide her time, wait patiently the seven years longer, and be the better prepared to enjoy the privileges and responsibilities of a constitutional regime.

This is, in the barest outline only, the story of the wonderful progress of the last few years. It is briefly summed up in the following words closing a lecture delivered last autumn by Harlan P. Beach:

Those who, like myself, can compare the China of twenty-five years ago with the China of this year of grace can scarcely believe our senses.

Steam navigation extending to shallow streams; railways, telegraph lines, and telephones even in the Imperial capital; silk filatures and miniature South Bethlehems belching out occidental pillars of smoke; groaning presses pouring forth books by the million and periodicals without number; waterworks and sanitation for many great cities; a modern army and a navy of occidental type; old examination halls, where within five years as many as 25,000 students have competed for degrees in a single center, demolished to make room for colleges of the modern sort; hundreds of thousands of boys and girls, many in natty uniform, attending the lower schools, from the kindergarten up; opium dens under the ban and footbinding about to leave the home; thousands of students back from Japan and the Occident to leaven the new nation; the tortures of the old law court disappearing while new codes are evolving; great numbers gathering in orderly lecture halls night by night to hear politics, history, education, and reform discussed; (and) a constitutional government promised for a near date.67

WILLIAM R. MANNING.

67 Blakeslee, China and the Far East; Clark University Lectures, 275. This collection of twenty-two lectures presents in a very interesting form much useful information about the recent history and present conditions and problems of the Far East.

BOARD OF EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL

OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

CHANDLER P. ANDERSON, New York City.

CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY, State University of Iowa.

AMOS S. HERSHEY, Indiana University.

CHARLES CHENEY HYDE, Chicago, Ill.

GEORGE W. KIRCHWEY, Columbia University.

ROBERT LANSING, Watertown, N. Y.

JOHN BASSETT MOORE, Columbia University.
GEORGE G. WILSON, Brown University.
THEODORE S. WOOLSEY, Yale University.

Editor in Chief

JAMES BROWN SCOTT, George Washington University.

Business Manager

GEORGE A. FINCH, P. O. Box 226, Washington, D. C.

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The Tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague handed down its award on September 7th in this long-standing and vexatious dispute between Great Britain and the United States and both countries are to be congratulated that the controversy and principles involved in it have been decided after a prolonged and careful examination for the purpose of determining the rights and duties of each litigant. But the great importance of the arbitration can hardly be said to lie in the award: the example of two great and powerful nations submitting to judicial determination an acute controversy involving a question of sovereignty and its exercise is likely to influence

1 A critical and detailed examination of the arbitration and the award will appear later in the JOURNAL.

other nations to resort to this peaceable method of settling intricate disputes dangerous to their peace, and the award is calculated to create confidence in the method. Within three weeks of the present award the United States and Venezuela submit their difference in the Orinoco Steamship Company case to arbitration at The Hague and two other arbitrations are in the course of preparation. Every war, it is said, carries with it the seeds of future wars; it may be said with greater confidence that each arbitration leads inevitably to arbitration and accustoms the world to the peaceful settlement of international disputes.

In the present instance the award determines the rights of the United States under the convention of 1818 and enables the Government to inform American fishermen of their rights and duties, thus settling old controversies and preventing new ones, and in determining the rights of Great Britain under the same convention enables the British Government to hold the colonies to the strict observance of their duties as defined by the award without the suggestion of undue Imperial interference or dictation. The award is therefore mutually beneficial to the two countries so recently contending at The Hague, even although it may not have given to either the full extent of its claims. The example to the world is greater than the benefit to either litigant and the advantage to each transcends the terms of the award.

2

It is not the purpose of the present comment to state the origin or nature of the controversy, with which the reader is already sufficiently familiar, but to express in brief and summary form the questions submitted to the Tribunal and its decisions upon them as they appear in the award which is printed in full in the judicial decisions of the present number of the Journal.3

In the final position assumed in submitting the case to arbitration, the Government of Great Britain contended for the right directly or indirectly through Canada or Newfoundland, to make regulations applicable to American fishermen in treaty waters without the consent of the United States, in respect of (1) the hours, days, or seasons when fish may be taken on the treaty coasts; (2) the method, means and implements to be used in the taking of fish or in the carrying on of fishing operations on such coasts, provided such regulations were "reasonable, as being for instance, appropriate or necessary for the protec

2 See JOURNAL, 1:963.

3 Page 948.

tion and preservation of such fisheries; desirable on grounds of public order and morals; equitable and fair as between local fishermen and the inhabitants of the United States."

The United States, on the other hand, denied the right of Great Britain to make such regulations "unless their appropriateness, necessity, reasonableness, and fairness be determined by the United States and Great Britain by common accord and the United States concurs in their enforcement."

The fishing regulations were thus by the submission of both parties to be reasonable; who was to pass upon the question of reasonableness? The Tribunal has affirmed the right of Great Britain "to make regulations without the consent of the United States " but lays down that "such regulations must be made bona fide and must not be in violation. of the said treaty;" and that "regulations which are appropriate or necessary for the preservation of such fisheries, or desirable or necessary on grounds of public order and morals without unnecessarily interfering with the fishery itself, and in both cases equitable and fair as between local and American fishermen, and not so framed as to give an advantage to the former over the latter class, are not inconsistent with the obligation to execute the treaty in good faith, and are therefore not in violation of the treaty."

So far the award is squarely in favor of Great Britain, but the award goes further and holds that, if the reasonableness of a regulation is. contested, Great Britain is not to be the judge of what is or what is not reasonable. The language of the award on this crucial point is as follows:

By reason, however, of the form in which Question I is put, and by further reason of the admission of Great Britain by her counsel before this Tribunal that it is not now for either of the parties to the treaty to determine the reasonableness of any regulation made by Great Britain, Canada, or Newfoundland, the reasonableness of any such regulation if contested, must be decided not by either of the parties, but by an impartial authority in accordance with the principles hereinbefore laid down, and in the manner proposed in the recommendations made by the Tribunal in virtue of Article IV of the agreement.

But the present purpose is not necessarily to examine the recommendations drawn up by the Tribunal and inserted in the award; it is sufficient to state that Great Britain is no longer the judge of the reasonableness of a contested regulation and that the reasonableness or unreasonableness of future regulations is henceforth to be determined by impartial authority instead of by partial authority as in the past.

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