engagements, the continuance of which would be harmful to his country. Is it better that a nation should perish, or that a sovereign should break his treaty?

3. "Statesmanship can be reduced to three principles: First, to maintain your power and, according to circumstances, to extend it. Second, to form an alliance only for your own advantage. Third, to command fear and respect even in the most disastrous times.

4. "Do not be ashamed of making interested alliances from which you yourself can derive the whole advantage. Do not make the foolish mistake of not breaking them when you believe your interests require it.

5. "Above all, uphold the following maxim: To despoil your neighbors is to deprive them of the means of injuring you.

6. "When he is about to conclude a treaty with some foreign Power, if a sovereign remembers he is a Christian, he is lost." "

Such is our enemy, scorning the ideals which we cherish and vaunting those that we loathe. And yet there are today in this land of ours men high in office whose mission it seems to be to induce our government again to enter into treaty engagements with Prussianized Germany, a nation in which the philosophy of hate, and the creed of the Hohenzollerns are still in force. We do not need to hark back to the ancient statements. Recent German authorities have restated for us Germany's view of treaties.

"There is," says Lasson, "no legal obligation upon a state to observe treaties; but there is a dictate of far-sighted prudence. . . . A state cannot commit a crime." 15

"There is," he adds, "but one sort of right-the right of the stronger this right of the stronger may be said to be moral."

18

"No right," adds Professor Joseph Kohler, "is so inviolable that it must not yield to necessity; and in action dictated by necessity there is no violation of right." "

And Bethmann-Hollweg, at the most critical moment in modern history, declared that, "just for a word, neutrality, a

14 These quotations are taken from Posthumous Works of Frederic II, king of Prussia. Translation by Thomas Holcroft. London, 1789. Copy in New York Public Library.

"Out of their own Mouths." Appleton, 1917, quoted from Lasson's "Das Culturideal und der Krieg." 1868 edition, pp. 15-16.

16 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

word which in war time has so often been disregarded-just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation." "We are liable to the error of thinking of this expression as the fruit of an incautious impulse; but it was not. The Imperial Chancellor, whether consciously or unconsciously, was but repeating the words of an ancestor of his Imperial Master. On April 11, 1847, in a speech from the throne, King Frederic William IV, of Prussia, declared: "All written constitutions are only scraps of paper "; " and Karl Schurz and other liberal spirits turned their backs upon their homes and become loyal citizens of America, whose ideals of government Washington has formulated for all time in the words: "Observe good faith and justice towards all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. . . . . Give to mankind the . . . . example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence." "

What hope is there from treaties with a nation which regards them as binding only so long as they are to her advantage? "The state has no superior judge over itself," said von Treitschke, "and it will conclude all its treaties with this tacit reservation." "

"The German people," Otto Richard Tannenberg philosophises, "is always right, because it is the German people, and because it numbers eighty-seven millions."" To such an argument only one reply is possible, "We must make you less than eighty-seven millions, and then, by your own logic, you will be wrong." That now is the task before us; and it is one which will demand the power of a united America. Until that task is accomplished, every real American should forget that he is Republican, Democrat, Prohibitionist, Socialist or Suffragist, and remember only that he is an American.

"Only those states," says Frymann," "can assert a right to independence that can secure it, sword in hand." Our mission is

18 Goschen to Grey. Collected Diplomatic Documents relating to the outbreak of the war. London, 1915, p. 111.

19"Out of their own Mouths."

20 Writings of George Washington. Ford edition, 1892, Vol. 13, p. 311. "Treitschke, "Politik," I, p. 38.

22 66 Gross-Deutschland."

p. 231.

By Richard Tannenberg. 1911 edition,

23" Wenn ich Kaiser wär." By Daniel Frymann. quoted by "Out of their own Mouths."

1915 edition,

to prove this statement wrong also for we fight, not only to defend our land and her liberties, but to insure "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to weak nations as well as to strong; to give to weak nations, as our ancestors gave to weak individuals, the majestic protection of a law which operates even in their weakness.

Why then do we fight? Because we have been attacked? Because our peaceful citizens-men and women-have been deliberately murdered on the high seas, in contemptuous disregard of the rights of man and of the rights of nations? Because we believe that if we do not fight our enemy upon the bloody fields of heroic France, our children will have to fight them on the soil of America? We fight for these reasons, of course. Any great, free, powerful and independent nation must fight under such provocation. But we have other and more compelling reasons, reasons which add the touch of glory to the grim fact of war; reasons which forbid us to sheathe the shining sword until our mission is accomplished, our trust fulfilled. "Those whose lifted eyes have caught the vision of a liberated world, have said that of the policy of blood and iron there shall be an end, and that equal justice which is the heart of democracy shall rule in its stead." These are the words of our President, interpreting the heart, not of America alone, but of all peoples who have resolved that the world shall not be Prussianized by force of arms. We fight to insure peace. We bear arms today that in future the world may enjoy unarmed, those institutions which have made us great and prosperous and happy; and we fight today to defend a sacred inheritance which free peoples hold in trust for all humanity. And we must continue to fight until its safety is assured.

The Fathers of the American Revolution, facing as royal despot, declared, in effect, that the territory which had been known as the 13 British Colonies in America must be safe for democracy, and they fought until they had made it safe. Today, in this land, the children of the oppressed of all nations rest happy in that safety, breathing the air of liberty and equality.

In December, 1823, James Monroe, in his famous message to Congress, applied that declaration to a wider sphere announcing, in effect, that the American continents must be safe for democracy and America has kept that pledge also.

And now the time has arrived when the welfare of mankind demands the application of this same principle to a still wider area. President Wilson's bold statement, "The world must be safe for democracy," means that our trust cannot be fulfilled until the representative idea is free to develop in every land, unterrified by the menace of an armed and predatory autocracy.

A HOT-HOUSE CONSTITUTION: THE MEXICAN CONSTITUTION OF 1917.

BY

WILLIAM H. BURGES.

The expression "a scrap of paper" is not of recent mintage, though it has but recently become current and will doubtless be stamped upon many documents destined to receive the attention of the historian and the student of government.

I seriously doubt whether there can be found, even among Germany's most sacred treaty obligations, a more worthless scrap of paper than a Mexican Constitution. And yet any constitution is worthy of the consideration of a thoughtful lawyer. The proponents of this constitution claim for it the merit that it represents the latest thought in constitutions, and on account of our proximity to that country and the fact that the American people will be more affected by it than any excepting the Mexican, it has seemed to me that a consideration of its provisions would not be without interest to this Association.

I have called it a "hot-house" constitution because it is not of natural growth. Constitutional liberty itself is not indigenous to Mexico.

The language of this constitution is the language of the schoolroom or of the social, ethical or political propaganda, rather than of the law. Article 17, Chapter I, Title I, declares: "No one shall take the law into his own hands, nor resort to violence in the enforcement of his rights." In Article 18 of the same chapter and title is this command: "The federal and state governments shall organize in their respective territories the penal system-penal colonies or prisons, on the basis of labor as a means of regeneration."

The conception of constitutions of American lawyers is, generally speaking, that of John Marshall. "A constitution from its nature deals in generals, not in detail. Its framers cannot perceive minute distinctions which arise in the progress of the nation