The Jus Solis prevails in the canton of Geneva, Switzerland, and in Argentina.

The Jus Sanguinis combined with the Jus Solis is found in Belgium, Greece, Italy, Luxemburg, Russia, Spain, Turkey.

The Jus Solis modified by the Jus Sanguinis prevails in most of the states of the Americas, and in Bulgaria, Denmark, Egypt, Great Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland.

THE SUBJECT vs. THE ACTIVE MEMBER

In thought and writing on the subject of citizenship, two concepts of the word "citizen" persist, and usually are treated as to such an extent interchangeable as to produce a fatal confusion. For they are not interchangeable. They differ in essence, and it is of the utmost importance that they should be clearly distinguished. In the distinction lies all the difference between Liberty and Autocracy. Something, if not all, of this difference lies in the distinction between the Law of the Blood and the Law of the Soil.

The first and commonest of these concepts is that which must have colored the thought of the feudal lord as he looked upon "his" people, belonging to him because they belonged to the soil which his sword controlled. This concept contemplates the citizen or subject as invested with the character of a national body politic, bound by an obligatory allegiance to it and its political institutions because he is there, born there, or led there by the circumstances of his life.

The other concept, which we like to think constitutes the basis of what we call "America," for it is of the essence of anything worthy of the name of Democracy, contemplates the citizen as a participant in the fact of sovereignty, one who owns an undivided and indi

visible share in the community title, and whose right and duty it is to take a definite part and acknowledge a definite responsibility in the business of government. In this study of naturalization and political life of the foreign-born citizen it is with this second concept that we have most to do.

ESSENTIALS OF CITIZENSHIP: ANCIENT AND AMERICAN

What, then, are the essentials of that citizenship to which an alien aspires and addresses himself when he seeks to become an active member in the American community whose members are something more than mere chattels of the sovereign?

"There is nothing that more characterizes a complete citizen," says Aristotle, "than having a share in the judicial and executive part of the government. . . . He, and he only, is a citizen who enjoys a due share in the government of that community of which he is a member." But Aristotle was speaking from the point of view of a community in which not all individuals there resident were the sort of citizens he was talking about. According to that great Greek the bestordered states did not include in the term "citizen" mechanics or others who worked for wages, and utterly unmentionable in any such connection was the great mass of slaves who had virtually no human rights at all. Aristotle's "citizen" was one of the relatively few endowed with political rights and responsibilities. In the Greek city-states and in the early Roman Republic, citizenship was at first restricted to certain of the older houses (phylos, gentes), but with the development of economic intercourse the few dominant families gradually lost their exclusive power, and other free inhabitants were included in participation in the affairs of state.

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In Rome the right of citizenship was conferred at first upon the leading families in allied cities, and later upon whole communities. By the year 100 B.C., nearly all Italians were citizens. But the Empire brought about great restrictions in this matter; a gradual narrowing of the limitations took place; along with a great extension of the name 'citizen" came a great decrease in the actual participation of the "citizen" in the business of government; so that by the time the Emperor Caracalla was extending something called "citizenship" to all Roman subjects, he actually was doing little more than to make certain intolerable taxes universal.

So the old Greek and Roman idea of "citizenship" will not answer our purpose. We have, however imperfect our realization of the fact, something quite different to offer, something vastly greater to demand.

In the modern world citizenship has come to mean membership in a political community. It involves the status of an individual with reference to a particular state. And that status is determined by the laws of the individual states, for everywhere it is stoutly maintained that the right to determine how and when a person may become and remain a citizen is one of the first prerogatives of sovereignty. In a number of recent works on citizenship the question has been raised whether the bond of citizenship is by nature contractual. The affirmative is held by Prof. Andrew Weiss of the University of Paris; he declares it to be "generally recognized that the bond of nationality is a contractual one; and that the bond uniting to the state each of its citizens is formed by an agreement of their wills, express or implied." This view is rejected as unsound by various English and American publicists.1

1 F. T. Piggott, Nationality, London, 1906, and E. M. Borchard, Diplomatic Protection of Citizens Abroad, New York, 1916.

These writers assert that whatever may be the theory of the origin of the state, the fact is that the relation of the citizen to the state is a relation sui generis, and that the admission of a person to membership in a state is an act of sovereignty. The law of the state is supreme.

The reasonable fact is that there is an element of truth in both of these contentions. The great increase in facilities for international communication and travel has made emigration a common thing, and the law in practice, whatever it may be in letter, has recognized in varying ways the fact that the human individual can, does abjure his "contract" with the state where he has lived, and seek admission to one which for this reason and that he thinks likely to be more salubrious for the pursuit of what he regards as his happiness. For, after all is said, the fact remains that men stay here or go there in that pursuit. A crowd goes home when it begins to rain not because the crowd is getting wet, but because each individual of it, in his separate personal eachness, so to speak, has water running down his neck and desires to find a place where he can get dry. Waves of emigration represent countless individuals each of whom believes that elsewhere, or in some particular place, he can be more comfortable in the practices and activities which constitute his life by day and by night, and maybe find a broader and richer field in which to grow and raise his family.

The offer of just this kind of opportunity has induced many hundreds of thousands of human beings from all parts of the earth to dissolve the bond, contractual or what you will, between themselves and the land of their birth or previous habitation, and come to these shores. We have invited them, and devised elaborate machinery by which to welcome them into our fellowship. Not only has the invitation been definitely ex

pressed; we have opened wide gates in our bars, and placed premiums upon entrance therein.

BASES OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP

The bases of citizenship in this country are two, established in the Constitution of the United States and the legislation and decisions explanatory thereof:

I. Every person, of whatever race descended, born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, including children of American fathers born abroad, is ipso facto a citizen of the United States.

II. All other persons eligible for citizenship in the United States must acquire that citizenship through the legal process known as Naturalization.

It was in the great case of Wong Kim Ark1 that the Supreme Court, in 1897, established the right of citizenship by birth on this soil, regardless of race or descent. The question in this case involved a child born in California, of Chinese parents who, because of their race, could not themselves become citizens. In this decision, a classic in the law of American citizenship, the court set forth the following fundamental principles to be observed in determining citizenship by birth in the United States:

1. The Constitution of the United States must be interpreted in the light of the Common Law, under which every child born in England, even though of alien parents, was a natural-born citizen.

2. The qualifying words in the Fourteenth Amendment, "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," exclude two classes of persons-children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation, and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign state. (The latter, from

1 United States vs. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S., 649.