Most of the discussion of our citizenship relations with Germany has centered latterly about the German Citizenship and Nationality Law, better known as the “Delbrück Law,” enacted in July, 1913--a year before the outbreak of the Great War. Attention has focused especially on Section 25 of the statute, which reads as follows: A German who has neither his residence nor permanent abode in Germany loses his citizenship upon acquiring foreign citizenship, provided the foreign citizenship is acquired as a result of his own application therefor or the application of the husband or legal representative; but in the case of a wife of one having a legal representative, only when the conditions exist under which expatriation may be applied for according to Sections 18 and 19. Citizenship is not lost by one who, before acquiring foreign citizenship, has secured on application the written consent of the competent authorities of his home state to retain his citizenship. Before this consent is given the German consul is to be heard. The Imperial Chancellor may order, with the consent of the Federal Council, that persons who desire to acquire citizenship in a specified foreign country may not be granted the consent applied for in paragraph 2. It was charged, and widely believed in this and other countries at war with Germany, that this law was a device, deliberately conceived by the German autocracy with the war in view, to enable Germans living in other countries malevolently, or with ulterior motives and mental reservations, to acquire naturalization there and go through the forms of allegiance, without in fact ever losing, or being able to lose, their German citizenship. The text of the statute certainly gives more than plausible color to such an interpretation.