ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 37 



organization. Indeed, there are still states, portions of the United 

 States, in which aliens have the right to vote. 



The President: If a British subject resident in the United 

 States goes, luider his treaty right as an inhabitant, into British 

 waters to fish, would he be entitled also to the privileges which the 

 inhabitants of the United States have, and would he be exempt 

 from British fishery legislation ? 



Senator Root: Mr. President, that opens a pretty wide field — 

 a field upon which the Foreign Office of the United States and the 

 Foreign Ofl&ces in most of the countries of Europe have been 

 engaged in discussion for a good part of a century, as to the extent 

 to which old allegiance may be thrown off and new taken on, and 

 the effect of that change upon the rights and powers of control of 

 the country of origin over the person. 



The President: You mean the Bancroft treaties? 



Senator Root: Yes, and there have been a great many situ- 

 ations of this kind which have arisen. The problem still remains 

 to a certain extent in discussing the question of mihtary service. 

 It stiU remains in the discussion of the effect upon a Russian subject 

 who goes to the United States and becomes naturalized and then 

 goes home to Russia. There it is a criminal offense and he can be 

 punished still under their law, if they apply their law, for having 

 gone away. I do not think that on the spur of the moment I could 

 solve the question you ask, but, of course, these gentlemen, in 

 making these treaties, were not thinking about questions of that 

 kind. That whole subject was in a very vague and indefinite 

 position at that time, whether the original bond of allegiance 

 between the government of Great Britain and one of its nationals 

 would be so completely destroyed by his going to the United States 

 and becoming an inhabitant that, when he returned, he would not 

 be subject to the entire control of his original government, and 

 whether he could claim as a right under the treaty exemption from 

 that control, are questions perhaps not easy of solution. It is 

 quite clear he could claim no right whatever against the govern- 

 ment of Great Britain personally; no one could make any claim in 

 respect of it except the government of the United States. If the 



