once more came together at Paris, a protocol was executed under date of November 3, 1815, by Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia in order to confirm the dispositions of the Vienna Congress touching Switzerland, and these dispositions with others were made part of the second Treaty of Paris, concluded on the twentieth of the same month; as an annex to these identical treaties there was signed on the same day on the part of Austria, France, Great Britain, Portugal, Russia, and Prussia a declaration of the recognition and guarantee of Swiss perpetual neutrality and the inviolability of its territory:

The accession of Switzerland to the Vienna Declaration on March 20, 1815, on the part of the signatory Powers of the Treaty of Paris having been duly notified to the ministries of the Imperial and Royal courts by the Swiss Act of May 27 following, there remains no obstacle to the making of an act of recognition and guarantee of perpetual neutrality of Switzerland in its new frontiers in conformity with that declaration. . . . Accordingly the signatory Powers of the Vienna Declaration hereby set forth in the present act a formal and authentic recognition of Swiss perpetual neutrality and guarantee the integrity and inviolability of its territory within its new limits as settled not only by the Congress of Vienna but also by the Treaty of Paris of this date and as they are intended to remain in conformity with the protocol of November 3, hereby annexed, which contemplates in favor of Switzerland a fresh addition of territory to Canton Geneva to be taken from Savoy. . . . The Powers signatory to the Declaration of March 20 authoritatively recognize by the present act that Swiss neutrality and inviolability and independence of any foreign influence are to be considered as in the true interest of European policy. The Powers further declare that no conclusion unfavorable to Swiss rights as touching its neutrality or the inviolability of its territory can, or should be, drawn from the passage of the allied troops over Swiss soil. . . . The Powers take pleasure in recognizing that Swiss conduct under these circumstances of stress have shown that it knew how to submit to sacrifices in the interest of the general welfare and in the maintenance of a cause defended by all the Powers of Europe; and that, finally, Switzerland was worthy to obtain the advantages now assured to it as well by the arrangements of the Congress of Vienna as by the Treaty of Paris and by this present Act to which every European Power is invited to accede.

Thus Switzerland was clothed with a distinctive international personality and assumed a place amid other nations of equal independence, though supported by solemn guarantees. Such a position,

however, presents, in its development, many features of importance. An account of these must be reserved for another occasion.1

GORDON E. SHERMAN.

1 Authorities: Recueil International des Traités du XIXe Siècle (Descamps et Renault), tome premier, 1801-1825; La Suisse, Étude Géographique Démographique, Politique, Economique et Historique; Geschichte der schweizerischen Politik (Professor Schollenberger, of Zurich); Au Congrès de Vienne, Journal de JeanGabriel Eynard (ed. by Édouard Chapuisat); La Suisse au Dix-Neuvième Siècle (ed. by Professor Seippel of Zurich); Geschichte und Texte der Bundesverfassungen der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (S. Kaiser u. J. Stricker); Die Bundesverfassungen der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (Professor Hilty); La Suisse et les Traités de 1815 (É. Chapuisat); Notre Neutralité, (Lucien Cramer); La Vérité sur la Neutralité de la Savoie du Nord (F. Marullaz); La Vérité sur la Zone Franche de la Haute-Savoie (F. Marullaz); Les Zones Franche de la Haute-Savoie et du Pays de Gex (Henri de Grix); Das Bundesstaatsrecht der Schweiz (Professor Schollenberger); Les Conséquences Juridiques de la Guerre en Suisse (E. Kuhn, of Zurich; éd. Française par H. Bonnard et P. Secretan); Die Neutralität der Schweiz (Professor Hilty).

THE PRUSSIAN THEORY OF THE STATE

SINCE the outbreak of the Great War in the summer of 1914 the conviction has deepened that whatever may have been the conflict of interests between the nations of Europe due to their efforts to maintain or increase their political influence and territorial extent, this calamitous struggle would not have been precipitated, and certainly England and the United States would not have felt forced to become parties to it, had there not existed in Germany a controlling political philosophy which marked her off from other States and made her a menace to the rest of humanity. It is true that the proximate cause that brought Great Britain into the war was the invasion of Belgium by the German army, which jeopardized her own security from invasion; and it is equally true that it was the disregard by Germany of our own commercial rights as a neutral nation that was the immediate cause of our own declaration of war. But back of these proximate or immediate causes was a real efficient cause which impelled both Great Britain and the United States to enter the contest and to pledge to its successful prosecution their entire manhood and material resources.

This real and efficient cause was this conviction of which I have spoken, a conviction which has strengthened as Germany has continued to reveal herself in her methods of warfare, and to demonstrate that her political ideals and standards of conduct are such as, if unrestrained in their application, would render impossible a comity of life and a reciprocal friendliness and coöperation among the nations of the world.

The present great struggle is, therefore, properly termed a world war, not merely because a large number of nations are parties to it, but because, in their essential character, its issues are of vital importance to all the civilized peoples of the world. In other words, these

aims transcend special national interests and concern the spiritual as well as the material interests of all humanity.

This interpretation of the significance of the war is one with which we are all familiar, and I would perhaps not be justified in again explaining its implications, except for the fact that it is my hope that I can show in a somewhat more systematic manner than is ordinarily shown the premises upon which the maleficent German political philosophy rests, and exhibit the manner in which its several parts and conclusions are knit together into a logical whole.

In carrying out this purpose it is not my intention to review the acts of which Germany has been guilty, acts which cry aloud the infamy of those who have authorized them, and, I may add, of those in other countries, including our own, who have attempted to excuse them. But it will be my effort to show that the reasons which have been brought forth to justify them have been drawn from a political philosophy whose premises support, as, by the Germans, they have been made to support, acts which the rest of the civilized world has deemed inconsistent with national honor and the demands of justice and humanity.

I shall first set out the postulates of this false political philosophy and then attempt to show how it has been possible to obtain for them the acceptance and support of an educated, and, outside of political life, a moralized people. It is further necessary to say that in this paper I shall be concerned only with the Prussian conception of the State. With the Teutonic doctrines of government, which will include a consideration of German theories of constitutional law and political liberty, I shall deal in my second paper.1

Considering first, then, the postulates of the ruling German political philosophy, we find placed in the forefront the conception of the State as an entity of such an exalted superpersonal and mystical character as to warrant the attribution to it of divine qualities.

At all times since first men began to speculate regarding the nature of the institutions to whose controlling authority they have found themselves subjected, the idea of divinity has played an important part. Among primitive and uncivilized peoples all rules of conduct, whether

1 Printed infra, p. 266.

of law or custom, obedience to which was socially demanded, were regarded as divinely decreed. Among many Oriental nations to this day a view substantially similar prevails. And among not only these peoples but those of Europe and of England the doctrine was for long asserted and widely held until comparatively recent times that the persons who hold the reins of supreme political power were, if not themselves Gods, at least the vicegerents of God. And in the political philosophy of Democracy, also, the divine element has not been wholly absent, the doctrine being frequently declared that the voice of God is to be heard speaking in the voice of the people when authentically expressed-vox populi, vox Dei.

That, however, which distinguishes this State doctrine of German political philosophy from these other divine-right theories is that it is supported by abstract and metaphysical, rather than by theological or dogmatic, principles, and that the divine or superpersonal characteristics which are dealt with are ascribed not to the government, nor, primarily at least, to its rulers, but to that abstract and mystical entity which is termed the State, and which is conceived of as employing the government and its rulers as but instrumentalities for carrying out its ends.

In juristic philosophy it has been found convenient in all countries, in order to give formal and logical consistency to their systems of public law, to envisage or picture the State as a political person or corporation possessing and uttering a legally supreme will, and thus, in a formal and purely juristic sense, as the ultimate source of all commands that may, in technical strictness, be termed laws. But this conception, which is nothing more than a convenience of thought, and which serves only as a peg upon which to hang other juristic concepts, or as a starting point from which to attempt a logical arrangement of public-law principles, is an idea wholly different from the German doctrine which postulates the real, albeit mystical and insubstantial, existence of a State-being to the commands of which, as a moral proposition, implicit obedience is due, and with ends of its own for the realization of which any and every sacrifice of individual well-being may rightfully be required.

Professor John Dewey, in his work, German Philosophy and