A few extracts from Dr. J. M. Spaight’s important work, “War Rights on Land,” will be useful as an introduction to this section. “Resident enemy nationals,” runs Dr. Spaight’s marginal summary, “are not interfered with” (l.c., p. 28). The text proceeds: “The treatment of resident enemy nationals has undergone a great change for the better in modern times. Ancient theory and practice regarded them as enemies, individually, and admitted the right to arrest and imprison them. The last instance of this rigorous rule being put in force is Napoleon’s detention of British subjects who happened to be in France when war broke out in 1803. Present usage allows enemy nationals to depart freely, even when they belong to the armed forces of the other belligerent.” The State has the right to detain such subjects, but usage is against it. Again, “‘Present usage,’ says Professor LeFur, ‘does not admit of the expulsion _en masse_ of enemy subjects resident in a belligerent’s territory, save when the needs of defence demand such expulsion....’ The bad precedent set by the Confederate Government in 1861, when it ordered the banishment of all alien enemies, has not been followed in subsequent wars. France and Germany allowed enemy subjects to continue to reside in their respective territories during the war of 1870-1, but the former country was led by military exigencies to rescind the general privilege so far as Paris and the Department of the Seine were concerned, at the end of August, 1870. A Proclamation was then issued by General Trochu which enjoined ‘every person not a naturalised Frenchman and belonging to one of the countries at war with France’ to depart within three days, under penalty of arrest and trial in the event of disobedience. The incident is instructive as showing usage [viz., non-interference with resident enemy nationals] in the making; for though there were 35,000 in Paris alone, and their expulsion was clearly justifiable as a measure of defence, the general opinion in Europe was that they were harshly treated, and a sum of 100 million francs was claimed, as part of the war indemnity, in respect of the losses they sustained in being driven out. It shows, as Hall observed, that public opinion ‘was already ripe for the establishment of a distinct rule allowing such persons to remain during good behaviour’ (_Hall, International Law_, p. 392). The usage has been strengthened by the precedents set in the Russo-Turkish War in 1877-8, the Chino-Japanese War of 1894, and the Russo-Japanese War, in all of which enemy residents were suffered to remain.” ORIGIN OF GENERAL INTERNMENT. How did it come about that this more humane usage was in the present war departed from? The average Englishman, I fear, assumes that all the blame is in this case due to the enemy. The following correspondence should make the matter clearer. [See Miscel. Nos. 7, 8 (1915).] _Memorandum communicated by American Embassy,_ October 17, 1914.