rman, whatever his calling, how profound
soever his debt of gratitude to a foreign people, considers himself
first and always a member of his own country, works for its interests
to the detriment of all others, and does not scruple to violate moral
laws and social traditions in order to betray his new friends, we may
well ask in virtue of what precept we should abstain from ostracizing
him from the British Empire. His second nationality is so often a mere
mask to enable him to perpetrate black treason, and it is so openly
thus regarded by his own Government, which upholds and solemnly
sanctions the principle, that it would be inexplicable folly on the
part of the British nation to aid and abet its enemies by admitting
them to the freedom of the community without taking effective
precautions against treason.

And yet there is a large body of men in this country, as in France and
Italy, who condemn the demand for these precautions as un-Christian
and impolitic. Such laxness is the soil in which thrives the upas tree
whose shade has so long darkened the organs of our empire and now
threatens to blight the whole organism.

An all-important feature in the controversy which has arisen over the
naturalization of German subjects is the utterly amoral view of it
which underlies the attitude of the Kaiser's Government. According to
these authorities, whose utterances and acts are decisive and final, a
German, unlike every other subject, may swear allegiance to two
states, of which one is his Fatherland, without being bound by his
oath to the other. Various reasons, including material interests, may,
it is argued, make it desirable that he should acquire citizenship in
a foreign land; and the Kaiser's Government, for the good of the
empire, recognizes this necessity and facilitates the process by a
law. This law, which was enacted in July 1913, authorizes the born
German subject, having first made known his intention and motive, to
swear allegiance to a foreign state without forfeiting, or intending
to forfeit, the rights or escaping from the duties which flow from his
German citizenship. Now this is a privilege which not even the Pope
has ever claimed the faculty of according.

From the point of view of international law this double naturalization
is inadmissible. Every individual in the community of nations is the
subject of a certain state, and only of one, and whenever the
interests of that state run counter to those of any