742 HARVARD LAW REVIEW heim does not point out. Many forward-looking thinkers may be inclined to question the advisability of having a majority of the court of first instance com- posed of advocates, i. e., of citizens or representatives of the nations in dispute, rather than oi judges, — a feature of the 1899 Hague Arbitration Convention which was discarded as objectionable in the light of arbitration experience when the Hague Conference came to remodel the Arbitration Convention in 1907. (Compare Article 24 of the Arbitration Convention of 1899 with Article 45 of the Arbitration Convention of 1907.) The trend of thought to-day is perhaps in favor of having no parties in interest sitting as judges but as in ordinary law courts, letting the interested parties appear as advocates to plead their cases before impartial and unbiased judges. To his system of inter- national courts Professor Oppenheim adds a further scheme for the constitu- tion of international councils of conciliation for the settlement of non-justiciable questions. One cannot help feeling throughout that Professor Oppenheim's mind is too firmly fixed in the ways of the past. He would have a League which, so far as legislation is concerned, would amount to httle more than a periodically meet- ing diplomatic gathering. His conception of sovereignty seems to be the old- time idea that a sovereign state's most sacred and precious duty is to maintain an utter independence of any external control (p. 33). No law can be possible without obligation; and international obhgation of necessity presupposes a certain external restriction. As Kant long ago pointed out, it is the obligation and restriction of law that gives real freedom and independence. Although in his conclusion Professor Oppenheim struggles to free himself from the popular bugbear of the sacredness of national sovereignty (p. 75), yet, at least so far as legislation is concerned, it seems essentially to imderly his whole conception of the League. It would be only carping to point out certain inaccuracies of statement and minor errors. We live at a time which calls for large constructive thought rather than for small destructive criticism. Professor Oppenheim's lectures are readable and thoughtful, and contain much that is worth while. Per- haps Americans are hoping for too much; perhaps it is a sense of disapp)oint- ment rather than of criticism which wiU prompt many American readers to feel that the constructive suggestions contained in the book are grounded upon the conservatism of the past rather than upon a large-visioned and practical-minded conception of the future. Francis Bowes Sayre. Experiments in International Administration. By Francis B. Sayre. New York: Harpers. 1919. pp. 201. The author of this interesting little book, having found that after former great wars the victorious allies, in Peace Congress assembled, solemnly dedi- cated themselves to "the repose and prosperity of Nations, and . . . the maintenance of the peace of Europe," and other lofty sentiments significantly like those enunciated to-day, seeks to discover the reasons for the failure of realization cf those pious wishes and finds them (i) in the fact that previous peace treaties ending great wars were "founded essentially upon injustice," and (2) in the fact that nations in the past "have been unwilling to submit to a sufiicient amount of external control to make an effective international execu- tive organ possible." The author then presents suggestions for curing, in the forthcoming League of Nations, the defects thus diagnosed. In deprecating the first he points out that "no treaty founded on injustice can endure; no possible effort to retard the irresistible progress and triumph of justice and righteousness in the world can succeed" (pages 7, 160). He offers, however,
