483]] IN INTERNATIONAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 1 85 



the Treaty, Germany asserts that : " No territory shall be 

 separated from Germany where national adherence has 

 been proved to be indisputable by harmonious union with 

 the German State for centuries, or whose population has 

 not declared its consent to such a separation. "^^ This ad- 

 mission of the plebiscite as a means to determine popular 

 consent to the separation of German territory rests, how- 

 ever, on a negative premise. It is not said that German 

 territory may be ceded upon the recording of a popular 

 desire to that effect, but rather, that "no territory shall be 

 separated from Germany . . . whose population has not 

 declared its consent to such a separation." Furthermore, 

 even this concession is not made voluntarily. The separa- 

 tions here contemplated are those exacted by the Peace 

 Treaty, and Germany's consent to these territorial cessions, 

 no matter under what form, has been enforced. Lastly, 

 the paragraph of the German reply claims to be no more 

 than an expression of a policy which Germany desires to 

 have applied to the territorial settlements as provided in the 

 Treaty ; as such it has no legal validity. 



In the United States the constitutional right to annex 

 foreign territory has been, at various times, and by various 

 writers, derived from the following sources : 



1. The power to admit new states into the Union. 



2. The power to declare and carry on war. 



3. The power to make treaties. 



4. The power, as a Sovereign State, to acquire territory by dis- 

 covery and occupation or by any other methods recognized as proper 

 by international usage. ^'* 



Actual annexation of territory by the United States has 

 taken place "in three different ways: (i) by statute, (2) 

 by treaty, and (3) by joint resolution."^" 



The consent of the inhabitants of the territories annexed 

 need not and has not been asked. The act of annexation 

 derives its legal force " from the body which enacts it, and 



8^ Second part, IT, i, A. 



"* Willoiigiihy, The Constitutional Law of the United States, New 

 York, igio, vol. i, pp. 325-341. 

 a» Ibid., vol. i, pp. 344-347- 



