The revolution in Germany strikes the observer as different in essential respects from revolutions which have taken place in other countries. One looks, in such events, for a few short days of blood and battle; for power wrested by force from the grip of those who have held it; for popular turmoil, the citizenry waging conflict behind street barricades against the disciplined but gradually disintegrating and increasingly disaffected troops of the established government—in short, for a journée in which the overturn is speedily accomplished and the new régime quickly set up. But the German revolution affords no such spectacle. There has been, to be sure, street-fighting and bloodshed, but they have been incident to the attempt of the extremists to overthrow the revolutionary government or to compel it to undertake a more radical program. The revolution itself was bloodless, and the establishment of the provisional government under Ebert was only the last step in a crumbling process which had been evident during the latter part of the administration of Count von Hertling and the whole of that of Prince Max.

The embargo upon commerce which Congress at the suggestion of President Jefferson decreed in 1807 was more than an experiment in practical politics. It was the test on a magnificent scale of a theory of international law long maturing in the President's mind, and the fitting contribution of a new nation to a body of doctrine which owed its revival, if not its inception, to the need of curbing the international anarchy which accompanied the rise of modern states. The law of nations was a new development. Less than two centuries had passed since Grotius put forth the pioneer work De jure belli ac pacis (1625). The interval between the publication of Grotius' book and the issuance of the embargo decree was, in fact, the classical period in international law. The labors of Leibnitz, Wolff, Vattel, and Bynkershoek built up a system popular, not only with doctrinaires and philosophers, but even with enlightened despots in their more subjective moments. By the close of the eighteenth century, the law of nations had acquired as much prestige as it could ever hope to secure without the support of its own guns and navies. It was the highest political expression of an age which believed in the perfectability of human relations through sheer intellect. And if its dicta sometimes failed to govern the actions of courts and cabinets, its infringement was not a matter of indifference. Nations broke treaties, to be sure, but they did not call them “scraps of paper.”

The conception of “external” sovereignty was well established in the Hindu philosophy of the state. The Hindu thinkers not only analyzed sovereignty with regard to the constituent elements in a single state. They realized also that sovereignty is not complete unless it is external as well as internal, that is, unless the state can exercise its internal authority unobstructed by, and independently of, other states.

“Great misery,” says Shookra, “comes of dependence on others. There is no greater happiness than that from self-rule.” This is one of the maxims of the Shookra-neeti bearing on the freedom of the rastra, or the land and the people in a state. Kautilya also in his remarks on “foreign rule” expresses the same idea in a negative manner. Under it, we are told in his Artha-shastra, the country is not treated as one's own land, it is impoverished, its wealth carried off, or it is treated “as a commercial article.” The description is suggestive of John Stuart Mill's metaphor of the “cattle farm” applied to the “government of one people by another.”

When the American government decided for the first time to try the experiment of colonial government in the Philippine Islands, they had no light to guide them save the experience of other European nations which had colonies in Far Eastern Asia. Ignorant of Philippine conditions, the American statesmen at first thought that the problem of governing the Islands was similar to the task of the European powers in governing our neighbors, Java, the Malay States, and India. Their first idea was, therefore, to study the colonial systems of these countries. One of the first public documents printed by the American Congress, in 1899, accompanying the Treaty of Paris, was devoted to the study of the colonial systems of the Orient with a view to their application in the Philippines. But upon a closer observation of Philippine conditions they found that the principles of European colonization would not work in the Islands, not only because American aims were more altruistic but because political conditions were entirely different. Roughly, colonial government in the neighboring countries is based on the existence of native rulers, rajahs or princes, whose authority has been for centuries recognized by the natives themselves. Apparently and ceremoniously the native princes still rule, but in reality it is their respective European “advisers” or “resident-generals” who are the actual rulers. Instead of establishing a new form of government, abolishing the rajahs and native rulers, the Dutch and the English simply improved the native institutions, using these same rulers as instrumentalities through which to impose their own governments.

Observations on Soviet Government. Over a year and a half has passed since soviet government was declared in Russia. That is not a long period of time in the history of a great revolutionary movement. Developments which loom large during these years and which impress even thoughtful men and women may prove to be of little consequence in the final determination of things, while the still small voices which are often unheard and usually unheeded by contemporaries swell into the chorus of decisive opinion which settles the course of affairs. It is a matter for trepidation, therefore, when one ventures to search mid the political and institutional debris for the foundation stones upon which a new democracy is to rest, or to attempt to appraise the undried, rough-hewn timbers hastily thrown into the erection of a temporary political superstructure. Only the hope that the tentative observations of one who was there may assist others to interpret this titanic movement justifies the present note.