Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/779

BOOK REVIEWS 743 no suggestion by which any different standard of "justice and righteousness" than has prevailed in the past, namely, the will of the victors, shall now be applied; and it may be remarked that the statesmen of those days in con- cluding peace treaties appear not to have doubted that they were the apostles of justice and righteousness. The author speaks of the "purely selfish inter- ests" which mark earlier settlements; but aside from our own contribution, the influence of any other than selfish "interests" in the draft of the settle- ment now proposed is not conspicuous. It is, however, to the second defect, namely, the absence of executive ma- chinery to enforce the lofty aspirations of peace treaties, that the major portion of the volume is devoted. To illustrate this want of executive authority the author has classified into three different groups or types, according to the de- gree of power exerted by the central executive organ, the various international unions which states have created for the administration of some common eco- nomic or social interest. English readers had already been acquainted with the operation of these organizations through the work of Professor Reinsch on "Public International Unions, Their Work and Organization" (1911). Mr. Sayre has classified the administrative organs of some of these unions and of some recent examples of joint governmental administration into (i) those having little or no power of control over the member states, e. g., the Postal Union; (2) those having a measure of control over some local situation, such as the Danube, Congo, and Huangpu River commissions. International Sani- tary Councils, the Albanian Commission, the Moroccan Police, the Suez Canal and Congo commissions, and the Spitzbergen and New Hebrides ad- ministrations; and (3) those having some power over the actions of the member states, among which he cite? the International Sugar Commission and the Rhine River Commission. The author analyzes the powers of these executive bodies and their internal organization, such as methods of voting, representa- tion of states, etc. From his study it appears but too clearly that in the few rare cases where these bodies have been intrusted with duties other than in- formational, statistical, or purely formal and have had duties which bore a shadow of political power they have practically always failed. The nearest analogy to political functions involving some impairment of state sovereignty the author finds in the Rhine Commission and in the International Sugar Com- mission, which was designed to prevent the grant of sugar bounties by states. Its determinations of fact were to result in an obligatory change of tariff laws by member nations, much like Presidential power under the reciprocity pro- visions of the McKinley tariff. To deduce from such a commission an analogy for an executive organ such as the proposed League of Nations embodies, re- quires well-developed powers of projection. The difference in degree amounts to a difference in kind. The author has no illusions in this regard, but is hope- ful that the illustrations given and the analysis of the underlying reasons for success or failure will offer encouragement to the belief in and the creation of an "international government" by a League of Nations. From the evidence offered, however, such encouragement is more than doubtful. The author deprecates (page 151) the conception of sovereignty by which "each state is the unrestricted arbiter of its own fate, and that no state therefore can be bound against its will." The unnecessary abandonment of this conception, however, upon adherence to which we have become a nation, and a committal of our fate to the determination of nations whose interests may, on the whole, be opposed to ours is possible of even greater deprecation. Especially is this so when the document on which our fate is to rest is drawn in such vague terms — occasionally, as in Article XV, indicating a deliberate vagueness inspired by compromise — that perhaps the leading English authority on international law confesses to having read it six times without having grasped its full meaning. Mr. Sayre's book is written in a clear and concise style, and is entertaining