WRIGHT— POSITION OF FOREIGN RELATIONS 121 



lows that discussions of international responsibility can hardly be 

 fruitful unless the organ for discussing is itself free of municipal 

 restrictions. Thus, in a protest to Great Britain against alleged 

 violations of neutral rights at sea, Secretary of State Lansing 

 answered the British contention, that American citizens deeming 

 themselves aggrieved could get relief in the prize courts, by calling 

 attention to the restrictions placed upon these courts by orders in 

 Council : 



" The United States government feels," he wrote, " that if cannot rea- 

 sonably be expected to advise its citizens to seek redress before tribunals 

 which are, in its opinion, unauthorized by the unrestricted application of 

 international law to grant reparation, nor to refrain from presenting their 

 claims directly to the British government through diplomatic channels." i* 



This requirement that states maintain a definite representative 



authority is, however, specifically evidenced by the authority of text 



writers^^ and by practice. Thus where no such representative 



Ralston, International Arbitral Law and Procedure, pp. 29, 310; Borchard, 

 op. cit., pp. 197, 342; Dana's Wheaton, sec. 391 et seq., note, p. 483; Bluntschli, 

 Le Droit International Codifie, 4th ed., Paris, 1886, sec. 851 ; Oppenheim, 

 Int. Law, 2d ed., London, 1912, 2: 557; Lawrence, Principles of Int. Law, 

 4th ed., p. 479; Earl Grey to Mr. Page, Ambassador to Great Britain, July 

 31, 1915, United States White Book, European War, No. 2, p. 182, par. 9. 

 See also supra, note 30. 



1* U. S. White Book, European War No. 3, p. 37. The force of Secre- 

 tary Lansing's argument was evidently felt by the British prize courts, for a 

 few months later the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council handed down 

 the decision of the Zamora which held prize courts competent to apply inter- 

 national law irrespective of conflicting orders in council. " It is obvious, how- 

 ever, that the reason for this rule of diplomacy (that aggrieved neutrals 

 should exhaust his remedies in belligerent prize courts before appealing to 

 the diplomatic intervention of his own government) would entirely vanish if a 

 Court of Prize, while nominally administering a law of international obli- 

 gation, were in reality acting under the direction of the Executive of 

 the belligerent Power." (L. R. 1916, 2 A. C. 77.) The difficulty arising from 

 the fact that even the representative organ is necessarily restricted by the 

 Constitution has been referred to (sec. 4), but this organ must be free of 

 other municipal law restrictions. 



15 " As a state is an abstraction from the fact that a multitude of in- 

 dividuals live in a country under a sovereign Government, every State must 

 have a head as its highest organ, which represents it, within and without 

 its borders, in the totality of its relations. . . . The Law of Nations pre- 

 scribes no rules as regards the kind of head a State may have. . . . Some 

 kind or other of a head of the State is, however, necessary according to 

 International' Law. as without a head there is no State in existence, but 

 anarchy." (Oppenheim, International Law, vol. i, sec. 341.) " Sovereigns 



