made his case a little stronger. The expansion of municipal powers is perhaps as likely to come through the doctrine of common-law powers inherent in corporate personality as through a fictitiously broad interpretation of a written instrument. The currency which Dillon gave to Shaw's early dictum, that a municipal corporation can exercise only express powers, and those "necessarily or fairly implied in or incident to" express powers is responsible for much bad reasoning and some bad law; only by recognizing that a city, in its capacity as legal person, can do what any legal person may do except when restrained by law, can we get a clue to the cases, and lay down a principle consistent with modern requirements.
The various translations and reprints which the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has been publishing during the last few years have proved very convenient to students of international law. None will be more so than the present work. Much of the most valuable work of the First and Second Hague Peace Conferences did not appear in the finished conventions. The proposals submitted by different states and the discussion upon them, have heretofore been concealed in the ponderous, unindexed, French tomes, known for the 1899 Conference as the Proces Verbaux, and for the I907 Conference as Actes et Documents. The present work contains in a single volume translations of the more valuable of this material, arranged and indexed both by persons and by topics, so as to be readily available. Footnote references give the position of the material in the official publications mentioned above.
The editor states in the introduction that the official English translations of the texts have not been followed where a more literal translation seemed possible, and where an inconsistency in the translation of an identical French phraseology in the conventions of the First and Second Conferences existed.
The volume includes the opening and closing addresses, the final act and M. Renault's report upon it, for both conferences. Each convention is given in its final form in heavy type, with tables of signatures and ratifications, followed by the report of the commission which presented the convention to the full conferences, and which according to the European custom is regarded as an official commentary. The draft proposals on the topic, submitted by the various national delegates, are appended, and more important statements contained in the discussions either in commission or in plenary session have been selected for insertion.
In the discussion of many topics, especially those connected with naval warfare, the diversity of opinion is striking. The suggestions relating to automatic mines are especially interesting in this connection, and also as relating to a subject which will require further discussion in future conferences.
It is interesting to note that Germany proposed in 1907 that a belligerent power be responsible for all acts of its armed forces in violation of the laws and customs of war on land (p. 528), a provision inserted in the convention on this topic (art. 3), and that the same country thought consideration of the subject of obligatory arbitration "premature" (p. 388). It is also interesting to read the declaration of Great Britain in 1907 favoring the abandonment of the principle of contraband in maritime warfare (p. 622).
The merit of such a work as this is to be judged by its accuracy of translation, its adequacy and compactness in selection and exclusion of material,
