It has been the peculiar glory of the United States in history to be a great neutral Power and the champion of neutral rights. From the earliest days of the republic, the sentiments of her statesmen, of Washington and Hamilton no less than of Jefferson and Franklin, were whole-heartedly for peace and neutrality, for the protection of the merchant against the soldier. And throughout the nineteenth century, the world acclaimed neutrality with her, and regarded the United States as the standing exemplar of a Peace Power. It was recognized that there might indeed be excusable wars, just wars, necessary wars. But the ideal of the nineteenth century was peace. Just and necessary as his cause might be, the belligerent was an ipso facto nuisance. He must be allowed to interfere as little as possible with the peaceful affairs of the world. On any doubtful question of interference with neutral commerce, the presumption was against him. He had always been a nuisance, and he was coming to be an anachronism. As an anachronistic nuisance, the scales were heavily poised against a belligerent.

The policies of the so-called great Powers toward China in the twentieth century have frequently given rise to serious diplomatic disputes. Fortunately, in many cases, these differences have tended to clarify conflicting interpretations of policy, and by so doing have led to a better understanding of principles on which more complete agreement might be achieved. Conspicuous among such cases is the policy usually referred to as the Open Door. From 1899 until 1922 the Open Door in China was a subject of almost constant international friction, due, in part, to a lack of common agreement as to the precise commitments to which the Powers were pledged. Specific cases of disagreement led finally to a better appreciation of the principles involved, and in 1922 the Open Door policy was given its first treaty definition. The following pages are an attempt to analyze a series of events in 1916-17 which demonstrated the wide gulf between American and European interpretations of the Open Door, and the imperative need of a new definition of the policy. The essential background of the discussion may be stated briefly.

The motive force back of immigration into the United States has shown interesting variations. Appealing first to victims of religious tyranny as a haven, the United States of America assumed a new importance in the middle of the nineteenth century as a refuge for victims of political tyranny, and somewhat later for individuals seeking relief from economic poverty. Its democratic form of government offered an undreamed of freedom to millions of politically oppressed people, and its marvelous stores of natural wealth held forth fabulous opportunities for an immigrant to improve his material well-being. The cumulative and collective effects of these inducements resulted in an increasing annual influx of immigrants seeking surcease from oppression of one kind or another which culminated in the most extensive movement of people from one continent to another ever recorded by history.

The advisability of permitting judges from litigant states to participate in hearings before international judicial tribunals has been a subject of disagreement on several occasions. It provoked serious controversy for the first time at the Hague Conference of 1907, when the proposed Court of Arbitral Justice was under discussion. Recently it has received even more attention in connection with the establishment of the Permanent Court of International Justice and in discussions of amendments to the Statute of the court and its rules.

The International Technical Consulting Committee on Radio Communication, commonly known as the C.C.I.R. from the initial letters of the French title, had its origin in the International Radio Convention signed at Washington in 1927. The conference which drafted that convention was closely divided upon the question of setting up the new committee. Those delegations which opposed the idea of creating any committee to meet between conferences succeeded in having the text of the article providing for the committee drafted so as to limit the powers of the committee far more than the proponents of the new body desired.

Recent tendencies toward the reduction of diplomatic privileges and immunities have been justified by the decreasing importance of the causes which have contributed to their establishment in their present exaggerated extent. The traditional distrust of diplomatic missions as instruments of espionage and intrigue has all but vanished, and has been supplanted by an appreciation of their functions as agencies for facilitating the pacific intercourse of states. The scrupulousness with which the diplomatic character is now respected and the growing security of the legal order in most states make possible a reduction of diplomatic prerogatives without jeopardizing the successful and independent fulfillment of the mission which it is their purpose to secure. The widest pretensions to exemption from the authority of the receiving state were advanced at precisely those times in which diplomats were in practice subjected to the greatest amount of interference and control. Doctrines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, inspired by a reaction against contemporary conditions, have been incorporated into the customary law, which has lost its raison d'Ure to the extent that the historical factors which influenced its growth are no longer operative. The need of the envoy for independence exists today no less than formerly, but it no longer requires, as a condition of its guarantee, that complete immunity from the law and jurisdiction of the receiving state which has found a figurative expression in the fiction of exterritoriality. As a subject involving few of the political factors which have thus far proved to be insurmountable obstacles in the way of codification, the law of diplomatic privileges and immunities is eminently suited for restatement and amendment in the form of a general convention. Such a restatement, if it is not to be retrogressive, must be based upon the conception that the receiving state has rights, and the sending state duties, which are correlative to the obligations of the state of residence and the rights of the appointing state, alone emphasized in the existing law.