ernment does not doubt that the German Government will appreciate the circumstances determining this resolution and will recognize that Spain, in holding to the neutrality she has practiced since the beginning of the war, has sacrificed many of her rights and legitimate conveniences when it has been possible without affecting the dignity of Spain and her national life.

The decision of the government to assure for itself sufficient tonnage, which is indispensable to its existence, does not affect its firm resolve to maintain strict neutrality."7

On August 31, 1918, the Spanish Government took over all German vessels lying in Spanish ports. About ninety vessels were affected.68

The action of the Spanish Government furnishes a clear-cut example of a neutral seizing vessels of a belligerent, and unlike Portugal, Spain remained neutral throughout the war. The Spanish note makes clear that neutrality was to be maintained, that no change of title, but temporary use was contemplated, and that the seizure is "indispensable to its existence." Nothing is said of indemnity, but it appears from the note that the Spanish Government regards the requisitioned vessels merely as substitutes for its own vessels sunk by Germany, and hence that no indemnity is to be paid.69

VIII. THE QUESTION OF INDEMNITY

The Associated Governments requisitioned the Dutch vessels upon the following conditions: (1) That an effort to arrive at an agreement as to rate of payment, values for insurance, etc., would be made; (2) that at the end of the war the vessels would be returned to the owners, who are to be compensated for any losses caused by enemy action; (3) that, subject to mutual agreement, the Dutch Government might have ships lost in the danger zone replaced by the Associated Governments as soon as possible after the conclusion of peace.

67 New York Times Current History Magazine, October, 1918, p. 115. 68 Ibid.

69 EDITOR'S NOTE: The act of the Spanish Government may perhaps be better understood as in the nature of reprisal than as an exercise of the right of Angary.-C. N. G.

As to the amount of compensation which will be given, the correspondence does not furnish any light. Indeed, the fixing of this amount will be a considerable task, and many factors must enter. Will the value of vessels which have been lost be fixed for the time of requisitioning in March, 1918, or will it be for the time of fixing the compensation? Obviously, there would be a considerable difference in value for the two periods. When the very existence of Great Britain depended upon vessels and food, it is clear that a ship was worth much more to her and other nations as well than it will be when the compensation is determined.

The only precedent which furnishes a guide as to a probable method of fixing compensation is that of 1871. From Earl Granville's note of April 24, 1871, we find that the value of the seven British vessels was determined as follows: Lloyd's Association, an expert body on naval affairs, were employed by the British Board of Trade to make an appraisal of the vessels, the assumption being made that they were in good condition at the time of destruction; the Board of Trade considered the circumstances in the case similar to a forced sale and comparable to a case of collision. As was customary, something over the actual value should be allowed the owners, and the Board fixed this at 25 per cent. to be added to the estimate of the expert surveyors; on the amounts determined in the categories given above, interest at 5 per cent. was to be paid, those sums being considered as unemployed capital. Other items presented by the British Government and paid by Germany included expenses to the seamen for consular certificates, claims for loss of employment and personal effects, and the expense of transporting the crews to their homes.

Just what the "liberal chartering rates" to be paid to Holland will be, are yet undetermined. The suggestion of Bismarck in 1871, that if Prussia and Great Britain could not agree on a fair amount, it should be submitted to an arbitrator, is a sound one. The rights of two or more states are involved, and the fact that international law gives one state the privilege of exercising the right of angary, does not justify that state in proceeding unilaterally and arbitrarily to fix the compensation which it undertakes to make by the exercise

of the right. In view of the experience of the present war, it would seem to be well, for the sake of the sanctity of treaties, that treaty clauses providing that indemnity be fixed in advance might give way to clauses allowing indemnity to be fixed by a disinterested commission of experts or by arbitrators. This should be done after the emergency is passed.

J. EUGENE HARLEY.

EDITORIAL COMMENT

SELF-DETERMINATION

THIS is no new thing, though the phrase is new. A plebiscite to determine the consent of a population to a proposed cession of its territory and the sovereignty over it justified the reunion of Avignon and the Venaissin with France in 1791. Rivier (II, 210) mentions other cases. A portion of Savoy and Nice were ceded to France in 1860 by the Treaty of Turin, subject to this condition. "The plebiscite was also applied on a large scale by Sardinia in the creation of the modern kingdom of Italy," writes Hershey, who adds that the usage has never found favor in the eyes of either Great Britain or the United States. It was a condition subsequent in the case of North Schleswig in 1864, a condition never fulfilled, Austria speciously releasing Prussia from the obligation in 1878. The isle of Saint-Barthelèmy was ceded by Sweden to France in 1877 "sous la reserve expresse du consentement de la population de Saint-Barthelèmy." Rivier also cites the application of the principle in a treaty of 1883 between Chile and Peru. But the cession of the Virgin Islands by Denmark to the United States so recently as 1917 contains no such condition.

The plebiscite principle, then, up to the present has been infrequently applied, and no such action has been deemed necessary to the validity of a cession. What has been usual is to permit the inhabitants of ceded territory to elect whether they will transfer allegiance or not, by a declaration retaining their former citizenship if so disposed. The plebiscite principle was a fad or device of Napoleon III, yet in 1867 Thiers said of it, "The new principle of the consent of peoples is an arbitrary principle, frequently a deceptive one, and only an element of disturbance when one wishes to apply it to nations." It is not a little curious that the principle of self-determination, hitherto rarely used, never employed by the United States even so late as the cession of the Danish West Indies, looked at askance by

nearly all publicists, should suddenly at the present assume such an importance.

What has brought the principle into such prominence and made a practical question of it?

President Wilson in his Fourth of July address, last year, laid down this ideal in international affairs:

The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery.

Did this pronouncement originate the application of the selfdetermination principle to present conditions? I do not know, but if so, it is not being consistently used, for Trieste and the Trentino, Alsace and Lorraine, the German Colonies and the new states carved out of Austria, are apparently not to be subjected to it. Nor is the new Poland. Mr. Wilson's thirteenth point, relating to Poland, is more specific than any other of the fourteen.

An independent Polish State should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

Surely this did not mean that little enclaves of German race could be excluded from Polish allegiance. Access to the sea is essential to the commercial independence, even to the political integrity of such a state as the new Poland. Now granting that the Danzig port and corridor furnish the only satisfactory "free and secure access to the sea," such as the President speaks of, and granting that its population is overwhelmingly German, how far is the principle of self-determination to bar its cession, as against the "material interest or advantage" of Poland itself? In other words shall we put a strict or a liberal construction upon the principle. A similar problem must be faced in the case of Fiume, which is Italian in population, but claimed to be essential to the economic independence and future growth of the new state of Jugo-Slavia. There is an added complication here in war promises to Italy.

Should not the lesser right yield to the greater? The compromise