EIGHT
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
SUNDAY, JANUARY )G, 193'6
IN THE WORLD OF BOOKS
SUNJ.1AY~, JANUARY 26, 1936
Coltumbia Pro fes
Scholarly Analy
NEUTRALITY: ITS HISTORY, EC-
ONOMICS AND LAW. Volume I:
THE ORIGINS. By Philip C. Jes-
sup and Francis Deak. Prepared.
under the auspices of the Colum-
bia University Council for Re-
search in the Social Sciences. New
York: Columbia University Press,
1935. $3.75.
By PROF. LAWRENCE PREUSS
(Of the Political Science Dept.)
At the present time there are
strong indications that the United
States is preparing to abandon its
traditional policy of " the "freedom
of the seas." The American public,
for the first time during a period of
general peace ,is giving serious con-
,Adergtion to the attitude which the
United. States should take in event
of widespread belligerency between
other states. Many of the current
mrisconceptions as to the nature of
neutrality and the means by which
it may be preserved would be dis-
pelled if the results of the careful
historical investigation appearing in
the present work could be made gen-
erally known. The attempt to find a
magic formula for neutrality, valid
semper et ubique, would be shown to
be futile, and the commonly-held
assumption that the experiences of
the World War were wholly novel,,
without foundation.
The rights and duties of neutrals1
developed historically as a compro-
mise between the claims of belliger-
ents to cut off trade with their ad-
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ssors Present A
ysis Of Neutrahty
versaries, and the conflicting claims
of third states to continue their
peace-time trade without interfer-
ence. In this development, Profes-
sors Jessup and Deak observe, "logic
has found practically no place." Bel-
ligerents have gone as far in limiting
neutral trade as they have deemed
possible without drawing the neu-
trals into the war against them; neu-
trals, on the other hand, have as-
serled their rights up to the point at
which appeared to be danger of in-
volvement. The rules of neutrality
are, therefore, the resultant of op-
pcsing forces. They represent a
working balance between conflicting
claims and interests. The content of
the rules evolved is determined at
any particular period by the relative
strength and resources of the bel-
ligerent and neutral nations. A
compromise reached at one time,
whereby a non-belligerent nation is
conceded the right to remain neutral
in return for restriction of its com-
merce, will not necessarily be ap-
plicable during a later war.
As the authors clearly demonstrate,
in their exhaustive analysis of bel-
ligerent practice in the Fourteenth
to the Eighteenth Centuries, the law
is essentially relative. The measure
of neutral rights, determined by the
situation in 1793-1812 in which the
American conception of neutrality
was formed, proved to be inapplicable
to the changed situation of 1914-191.
The belligerents in the World War
refused, as Mr. Asquith stated, to
allow their "efforts to be strangled
in a network of juridical niceties."
Too frequently neutrals have been
drawn into war through a miscalcu-
lation, based on past experience, of
what belligerents would permit. The
American public is now apparently
coming to the realization that the!
LAVISONI
-
His Breathless Months
In Death Row ...
WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE, By
David Lamson. Charles Scribner's
Sons. $2.50.
By ARNOLD S. DANIELS
David Lamson, having been found
guilty of murdering his wife on Mem-
orial Day, 1933, was sentenced to be
hanged, and was sent to San Quentin
prison to live in the Condemned Row.'
For 13 months he lived within a
few yards of the gallows, and then
the California Supreme Court re-
versed the case on appeal, and or-
dered a new trial. The second trial
was brought to close by a divided
jury, and a third trial was ordered.
Today, in San Jose jail, Lamson
is awaiting that trial. While his life
still hangs in balance, he has writ-
ten a splendid, vivid, living book,
and has described, in We Who Are
About To Die, the last, breathless
months in the lives of a few men,
all of them labelled "murderers," who
price of pjeace is a voluntary restric-
tion of the rights of trade which our
nationals are entitled to claim under
rules of law developed in past and
vastly different circumstances.
Despite the important role played
by the United States in the develop-
ment of neutrality, the present work
is the first attempt made in this,
cour.try to furnish a thorough an-
alysis of the subject. It is the first
of a series of four works intended to
provide a survey of the legal, political,
and economic problems of neutrality
from the origins to the present. Vol-f
ume I deals with the early law of
contraband, blockade and prize pro-
cedure from the Thirteenth to the
close of the Eighteenth Centuries;
Volume II, by Professor W. Alison
Phillips, will cover the period marked1
by the French Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars; and Volume III,
by Edgar Turlington, will complete
the historical survey with a study
of the problems raised by the World
War. In a concluding volume Pro-
fessor Jessup will provide an analysis
and synthesis of the series, together
with a study of post-war develop-
Zent and the present anddfuture
status of neutrality.
Professors Jessup and Deak are
well-qualified by their previous im-
portant legal contributions to under-
take the present wrk. They have
examined the available sources, both
published and unpublished, with in-
dustry and discernment, and have
placed the science of international
law deeply in their debt by a mono-,
graph which should be a model of1
its kind. It is perhaps inevitablet
that certain inaccuracies shouldr
cieep into a work of this scope, but1
the very complexity of the sources>
should have made obvious the neces-
sity of collaboration with an his-1
Ici ian specially qualified in the me-z
dieval and early modern period. Itf
is difficult to understand how such
a glaring anachronism could have
esar ed the writers as that which ap-
pears on page 14, where there isc
cited a treaty of 1394 between France1
England, Navarre, Aragon, Rou-
mania, and others. "Roumania" is a
name of Nineteenth Century origin,
and Roumania came into existence '
as a state only in 1859. References
to the source shows that the con-c
tracting party indicated was ther
King of the Romans, - "le Roy desc
Rommains!"
await, each in his own way, the gal- sticks to his hot, damp flesh. His
lows and death. hands start to tremble as he tugs at
David Lamson had lived an or- the stiff new buttonholes and slip-
dinary life; in 1925 he was grad- pery buttons. He swears a little
uated from Stanford, and he lived and tries to make it sound casual,
among typical Americans, all of them but it doesn't sound casual because
having pretty much the same idea! his voice has begun to tremble, like
gled to hold the cool impartiality of
his offcial manner.
"All right, Callahan. Get your
things together. You're going back
to the Row."
This waiting for death was a tre-
mendous experience, and Lamson's
writing has done it full justice. He
has handled capably the huge job of
picturing men's souls, and his be-
side, carefully studied the relation-
ship between the prisoner and so-
ciety. And his conclusion is only
what it could have been. He says,
"But, perhaps, some day, more of us
will realize that people are people."
BEST SELLER OF 1719
Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe,"
was high up on the English best-
seller list of the early 18th century.
In fact it was so popular that there
were no less than four "pirated" edi-
tions of it in the first year of publi-
cation - 1719.
K i
., ..,,
Leading the List in Our
LENDING LIBRARY
_-1NON-FICTION
WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE ........ David Lamson
THE WOOLLCOTT READER.... Alexander Woollcott
LIFE WITH FATHER .................Clarence Day
SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM ....... T. E. Lawrence
NORTH TO THE ORIENT .......... Anne Lindbergh
I WRITE AS I PLEASE .............Walter Duranty
-IFICTIONI
IF I HAVE FOUR APPLES....... Josephine Lawrence
DUST OVER THE RUINS............. Helen Ashton
THE LUCK OF THE BODKINS.....P. G. Woodehouse
FLOATING PERIL .............E. Phillips Oppenheim
IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE ............. Sinclair Lewis
EDNA, HIS WIFE ..............Margaret Ayer Barnes
Wia Drug Store
South University at Forest
about prison and prisoners. The
first, and most lasting impression,
which he got when he was introduced
to his neighbors in the Condemned
Row. therefore, was that they were
just human beings, no different from
himself, or his friends on the Stan-
ford campus.
He suffered with them when the
time came to go to "The Cage," a
large cell where the condemned man
was kept for 24 hours before execu-
tion, and rejoiced with them when a
reprieve came, just as they rejoiced
when he left "The Row" by the front
door. He knew the torture of sus-
pense when his cell-mate Dan was
taken to "The Cage," and became al-
most hysterical with joy when the
last-minute reprieve came. He
learned to like "Hamlet's Ghost,"
the little man who had killed five
people with a butcher's knife because
he believed that they were plotting
against him.
All of these experiences he has set
down in his book with deep under-
standing, and brilliant clarity, and
he describes all of the routine of pris-
on life in detail. When he was
brought to San Quentin, he knew just
about what he would have to do be-
fore becoming a full-fledged prison-
er, but little incidents take on added
significance, and he steps aside for
a moment to observe himself.
"When he gets out of the tub, the
clothes he wore have disappeared.
He struggles into the prison. gar-
ments. They are stiff with newness
and cheapness, and the raw smell of
newness and cheapness and of moth-
balls is heavy in them. The cloth
D§IY
If You Haven't Read His
Portrait Of Papa,
You'd Better
Day. Alfred A. Knopf, $2.00.
By GUY M. WHIPPLE, Jr.
Clarence Day's father is the kind
of man Herbert Hoover would cher-
ish as a rugged individualist in the
truest sense of the word. Father is
rugged, kindly, blustering, and com-
passionate by turns. Mr. Day, ham-
pered as he was by the inroads of
arthritis and strictured life of an
invalid, made in God and My Father
and Life With Father two beautiful
and living portraits of what might
fairly be termed a gentleman of the
old school. And Mr. Day's recent
death robbed the book world all too
early of one who excels at the modern
belles-lettres.
Life With Father is not an intricate
or scholarly analysis. Mr. Day takes
little sequences of everyday life with
his father - his utter disgust with
sickness, his daily struggle with a
cantankerous horse, his mode of fur-
nishing his office, his childlike love
of ice-water and wines chilled to ex-
actly the proper temperature - and
makes of them possibly inconsequen-
tial, but certainly delightful, reading.
Perhaps the most revealing glimpse
into Father's mental constitution i;
afforded by the chapter on life at
the Days' summer house on the fate-
ful day when the iceman decided
to spare the horse and not climb a
long and dreary hill to provide the
Day family with artificial refrigera-
tion. The author (then a boy) made
two journeys to town with the coach-
man via pony cart, and was unable
to secure ice. The family, knowing
Father's bent for ice water and a
different wine with each course,
waited, panic-stricken, for his arrival.
When father did come-he stormed
downtown, berated the Coal and Ice
Office employees, then marched to
the butcher's to buy a huge cake of
ice, then purchased a refrigerator
on the spot from an amazed shop-
keeper. He had his ice water that
night, and his chilled wine, too, but
it had been a most hectic day for
the family. All father said that
night on the porch was, "I Like
plenty of ice."
And that's a sample of Life With
Father. Father was truly a rugged
individualist.
his hands. He feels himself slipping
towards panic, and grabs at himself
mentally.
"The convict orderly beside him,
stooping to pick up a shoe, his back
to the sergeant ,murmurs, 'Take it
easy.' The new man glances at him,
and gets the flash of a smile."
Later on, his cell-mate, Dan was
taken to "The Cage," but he came
back in the morning.
"Dan told me that the night was
pretty bad. He slept very little; the
lbght bothered him, and the bed was
hard, and his thoughts were dis-
turbing. Morning was long coming ...
"At dinner time, three o'clock, Dan
ordered chicken. Again he was
ashamed ofhisweak yielding to tra-
dition. And he didn't like the chick-
en when he got it.
"He heard the lock-up bell ring-
ing. Now, if it were coming at all,
this was the time.
"The minutes dragged.
"Feet on the stairs. The lieuten-
ant came in. He was out of breath
as if he'd been hurrying. He strug-j
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