redraft of the Covenant, the proper way to emphasize those objections would be through a qualifying resolution adopted with the ratification of the treaty. Mr. Root expressed himself in favor of the Knox resolution, but in the event of the Covenant not being separated from the treaty he advised a qualifying resolution. The reservations which he suggested were: that in ratifying the treaty the Senate repudiate Article X of the Covenant; that the United States ratify the treaty with the understanding that it should have the right to secede from the League on two years' notice whether its international obligations under the Covenant had been fulfilled or not; and that the United States ratify with the understanding that in so doing it would not relinquish its traditional attitude toward purely American questions, or deem it necessary to submit its policy regarding purely American questions to the decision or recommendation of other powers. With Mr. Root coming into the breach, the attack of the opponents of the Covenant shifted from the attempt to separate it from the peace treaty to the attempt to modify it when the President should see fit to submit it. On July 8 President Wilson returned from Paris and two days later, in an address devoted almost wholly to the League of Nations, formally presented to the Senate the peace treaty signed by Germany. He claimed that a league of free nations had become a practical necessity, to which the framers of the treaty felt obliged to turn "as an indispensable instrumentality for the maintenance of the new order it was their purpose to set up in the world". The fact that the Covenant of the League was the first substantive part of the treaty to be worked out and agreed upon had helped to make the formulation of the rest easier. The Covenant was "not merely an instrument to adjust and remedy old wrongs under a new treaty of peace; it was the only hope for mankind". In opening his address the President placed his services and all the information he possessed at the disposal of the Committee on Foreign Affairs “any time, either informally or in session", as the committee might prefer. He announced that he would presently lay before the Senate the special treaty with France. The peace treaty was at once referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. Debate over the ratification of the treaty began on July 14 with a speech by Senator Swanson of Virginia in support of the League. The senator urged that the Covenant be accepted without reservations and insisted that if any were adopted the entire treaty would have to go back to the Peace Conference. He thought reservations would have the effect of amendments which would not be binding until subscribed to by the other powers. The reservations proposed he held to be unnecessary. He denied that the Covenant surrendered our sovereignty, defended Article X and insisted that the Covenant safeguarded the Monroe Doctrine.—During the debate over the Shantung settlement, on July 15, Senator Lodge

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spoke of the Chinese-Japanese treaty of 1915 as extortion". Senators Norris, Borah, McCormick and Fall, Republicans, bitterly attacked the Shantung settlement, while Senators Hitchcock and Williams, Democrats, defended it. On July 16 it was announced that President Wilson would begin a series of conferences with Republican senators on the following day at the White House, his purpose being to lay before the opponents of the Covenant information on those provisions to which objections had been made. — On July 17, in the Senate, Senator Borah proposed a referendum vote on the League Covenant and the Shantung award as a guide to the Senate.-On the following day President Wilson addressed a letter to Senator Lodge, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, asking the committee's approval of a provisional appointment of a United States representative on the Reparation Commission (see supra, p. 55). On July 22 the committee rejected the proposal.-On July 23, a plan of ex-President Taft for "interpretations" in the Senate's acceptance of the Covenant was made public. Mr. Taft's suggestions created a sensation in the Senate because of his well-known advocacy of unreserved ratification. His suggestions, which were put forward in a letter to Will Hays, were similar to those proposed by Mr. Root, except that they provided that self-governing dominions be not represented on the council with the mother country and for the possible withdrawal of the United States after ten years. Mr. Taft's suggestions utterly failed to bring together the President and his opponents, or even the Republican opponents of the Covenant, who seemed as far from agreement at the end of July as they had been when the treaty was submitted to the Senate. The President was making preparations at the end of July for an extended speaking tour in behalf of the League of Nations. On June 6 the House Committee on Military Affairs completed the annual Army appropriation bill carrying $800,000,000; the bill sent to the Senate during the previous session had carried $1,117,000,000. On June 16 the Secretary of War and the Chief of Staff appeared before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs and advocated an army of 500,000 men. The Senate voted a week later for an army of 400,000. The House had provided for only 300,000, but on June 27 conferees agreed to compromise on an army of 325,000 and an appropriation therefor amounting to $772,300,000. On June 12 the naval appropriation bill carrying $601,500,000 was reported to the House; the Senate bill reported on June 23 carried $646,272,000. The bill as approved carried $616,000,000. The other appropriation bills left over by the Sixty-fifth Congress and passed before July 1, the beginning of the fiscal year, were: Agricultural, $33,900,000; District of Columbia, $15,364,000; Indian, $11,131,000; Sundry Civil, $605,160,000; Railroad Deficiency, $750,000,000; Third Deficiency, $24,305,000, exclusive of $45,000,000 urgent deficiency appropriations for the Bureau of

War Risk Insurance and Pensions. These eight bills as passed by the Sixty-sixth Congress carried $940,610,598 less than they had as they stood at the end of the previous session. During the debates on appropriation bills attempts to strike out the appropriation for the United States Tariff Commission and to cut down the appropriation for the work of the Federal Trade Commission were unsuccessful.-The agricultural appropriation bill as passed by Congress contained a rider repealing the daylight saving law. Because of this, President Wilson vetoed the entire measure. The House failed to pass the bill over the veto and then passed it without the rider. The President also sent back to Congress the Sundry Civil bill on the ground that it did not adequately provide for vocational rehabilitation. Several millions were then added.-The Senate and House agreed upon August I as the date for the transfer of the "wire" systems to their owners Federal control lasted just one year. On July 29 the House, after a partisan debate, adopted a resolution directing the Secretary of War "to place on sale, without delay, the surplus food products in the hands of or under the control of the War Department.-The Volstead Prohibition Enforcement bill passed the House on July 22 by a vote of 287 to 100, practically as reported from committee. The bill defines intoxicating beverages as those that have one-half of one per cent. or more of alcohol, forbids the possession of liquor evidently for the purpose of sale in violation of the law and places the burden of proof on the possessor, permits the possession of liquor in private homes but only for personal consumption of the owner, his family and bona fide guests. It provides for the enforcement of the constitutional amendment and the war-time prohibition act in practically the same manner, such enforcement in both cases resting with the Internal Revenue Bureau and the Department of Justice, and gives the officers under the search-and-seizure section the right to enter a dwelling in which liquor is sold and seize it together with manufacturing apparatus. Punishment for the first violation is $1000 or six months' imprisonment. A strong attempt was made by the radicals to make all possession of liquors an offense. It failed, however, on account of the prevailing sentiment against offensive searches and seizures in private houses. On June 6 the Senate by a vote of 60 to I adopted Senator Borah's resolution asking the American delegates at the Peace Conference to secure a hearing for the Irish delegates, headed by Eamonn de Valera, and expressing sympathy for the Irish people in its aspiration for “a government of its own choice ".-Among the important bills pending in Congress at the end of July were the Lane-Mondell land bill for returning soldiers, the Kenyon-Anderson bill to regulate the packing industry and a number of important bills providing for the establishment of a budget system. Shortly after the assembling of the new

Congress the House appointed a select committee to investigate expenditures of the War Department with Congressman Graham of Illinois as its chairman. Many regular committees also were given special investigative powers.

FEDERAL JUDICIARY.-Among the important decisions of the United States Supreme Court were the following: The First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of speech and of the press, does not protect an individual convicted under the Espionage Act for printing and distributing in time of war a document calculated to cause insubordination in the military and naval forces and obstruction to the recruiting and enlistment service. "When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right" (Schenck v. United States, 39 S. C. R. 247). Nor does it protect a person convicted of conspiring to violate that act by means of publishing and circulating, in a newspaper, articles attempting to cause disloyalty, mutiny and refusal to do duty in the military and naval forces, since the amendment obviously was not intended to give immunity for every possible use of language (Frohwerk v. United States, 39 S. C. R. 249). Nor is it a valid defense against conviction under that act for delivering a speech opposing war and so expressed that its natural effect is to obstruct recruiting (Debs v. United States, 39 S. C. R. 252). The Harrison Narcotic Drug Act, which seeks to confine the handling of narcotic drugs to certain specified dealers by requiring registration with the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and the payment of an excise tax and by prohibiting the sale of such drugs except upon written order upon blanks furnished by the commissioner, is a valid exercise of the power of Congress to impose excise taxes and is not a mere attempt to exercise the reserved police power of the states. The motives of Congress in passing the act are not subject to judicial inquiry (United States v. Doremus, 39 S. C. R. 214).—A state law imposing a penalty for the sale of condensed milk unless made from unadulterated full cream milk does not contravene the Fourteenth Amendment nor does its indirect effect on interstate commerce invalidate it (Hebe Co. v. Shaw, 39 S. C. R. 125). — A city ordinance restricting the area of billboards to 400 square feet, the height to 14 feet, requiring a space of 4 feet between them and the ground, forbidding them nearer than 6 feet to any building or side of a lot etc., does not constitute an unreasonable and unconstitutional limitation on liberty or property but is a valid police regulation in the interest of "safety, morality, health and decency". Nor do certain trifling details having æsthetic considerations in view render the ordinance invalid (St. Louis Poster Advertising Co. v. St. Louis, 39 S. C. R. 274). An order of a State Railroad and Warehouse Commission re

quiring a railroad company to extend a side track from its main line to a manufacturing plant, partly at its own expense, does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment as taking the company's property for private use, nor does such order violate said amendment as taking the company's property for public use without due compensation, a hearing before the commission and in the district court having been allowed (Chicago & N. W. Ry. Co. v. Ochs, 39 S. C. R. 343).—A city acting under state authorization may, without violating the Federal Constitution, impose a license tax restricted to the right to do local business where such tax does not burden or discriminate against interstate business and when the local business is so substantial that it does not clearly appear that the tax is a disguised attempt to tax interstate commerce. Such a tax is a valid exercise of the police power for revenue purposes even though it may necessitate a contribution from interstate business (Postal Telegraph-Cable Co. v. Richmond, 39 S. C. R. 265).—A state may under its police power pass proper inspection laws for oils brought within its borders in interstate commerce and charge a fee reasonably sufficient to pay the cost of inspection (Pure Oil Co. v. Minnesota, 39 S. C. R. 35); but inspection fees when grossly in excess of the cost of inspection are unconstitutional in that they impose a direct burden upon interstate commerce (Standard Oil Co. v. Graves, 39 S. C. R. 320). — A state law allowing insurance brokers' licenses only to residents of the state who have been licensed insurance agents of it for two years does not, as to a citizen of another state, violate the constitutional guarantee that citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states, since there is no discrimination on account of citizenship at all, citizens of the state and of other states alike being obliged to meet the same residence requirements (La Tourette v. McMaster, 39 S. C. R. 160).—A railroad company whose charter provides that its property shall be taxable only in a certain way and to a certain amount cannot be burdened with additional taxes by a subsequent constitution of the state without impairing a contract obligation (Central of Georgia Ry. Co. v. Wright, 39 S. C. R. 181).— A city may require a street railway to remove the tracks of lines the franchise for which has expired but cannot without denying due process require the continuance of service thereon on terms not allowing a reasonable return on the investment. Moreover, the obligation of the franchise contract for a company's line, fixing the fare at five cents without transfer, is impaired in the case of a continuous trip beginning on a non-franchise line and extending over it and a franchise line by an ordinance requiring all this service for five cents (Detroit United Ry. Co. v. Detroit, 39 S. C. R. 151).—Though authority to place a railroad track on a street constitutes a vested property right, it is subject to police regulations reasonably necessary for public safety; hence an