overnment
exclusively. It need not be so exercised as to conform to State laws or
State policies, whether they be expressed in constitutions, statutes,
or judicial decrees. And the policies of the States become wholly
irrelevant to judicial inquiry when the United States, acting within its
constitutional sphere, seeks enforcement of its foreign policy in the
courts." And while "aliens as well as citizens are entitled to the
protection of the Fifth Amendment," that amendment did not bar the
Federal Government "from securing for itself and our nationals priority
[against] creditors who are nationals of foreign countries and whose
claims arose abroad."[248]

THE HULL-LOTHIAN AGREEMENT, 1940

The fall of France in June 1940 inspired President Roosevelt to enter
the following summer into two executive agreements the total effect of
which was to transform the role of the United States from one of strict
neutrality toward the war then waging in Europe to one of
semi-belligerency. The first of these agreements was with Canada, and
provided that a Permanent Joint Board on Defense was to be set up at
once by the two countries which would "consider in the broad sense the
defense of the north half of the Western Hemisphere."[249] The second,
and more important agreement, was the Hull-Lothian Agreement of
September 2, 1940, under which, in return for the lease to it for
ninety-nine years of certain sites for naval bases in the British West
Atlantic, our Government handed over to the British Government fifty
over-age destroyers which had been recently reconditioned and
recommissioned.[250] The transaction, as justified in an opinion by the
Attorney General, amounted to a claim for the President, in his capacity
as Commander in Chief and organ of foreign relations, to dispose of
property of the United States, although the only power to do this which
the Constitution mentions is that which it assigns to Congress.[251]

On April 9, 1941, the State Department, in consideration of the fact
that Germany had, on April 9, 1940, occupied Denmark, entered into an
executive agreement with the Danish minister at Washington, whereby the
United States acquired the right to occupy Greenland for the duration,
for purposes of defense.[252]

WARTIME AGREEMENTS

That the post-war diplomacy of the United States has been greatly
influenced by such executive agreements as those which are associated
with Cairo, Teheran, Malta, and Potsdam, is evi