was married in Paris to a citizen of Germany, Alfred von Oberndorff. At the time of her marriage she was a subject of Holland, although with strong American affiliations, as she herself by birth was half Dutch and half American, and she had been brought here by her mother and knew and liked her American relatives. They had three children, Marie Theresa, now aged 15 years; Carl Alfons, now aged 13 years; Elizabeth, now aged 2 years.

At the outbreak of the war she was unable to leave Germany. As soon as possible after the armistice she got out with her three children to Switzerland, thence to Paris, and thence to Holland, where she resides with her father's people. Her two girls are with her and her boy is in Holland at a Dutch school.

From her mother's side of the family she and her brother inherited some real estate on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Seventeenth Street in New York City, of which she owns eight-fifteenths and her brother seven-fifteenths. It is business property, consisting of stores and lofts, and is leased to different tenants. The value of her eightfifteenths is about $250,000. This property of hers and the rentals have been taken by the Alien Property Custodian. In 1867 her grandmother's brother, a resident of New York, put some property in trust, the trustee to pay the income to himself and wife, and upon his death to distribute the property among his heirs. He and his wife died in 1917. Margaret de Stuers is one of his heirs, and her share is worth about $240,000. This also has been taken by the Alien Property Cus todian. In addition there was a trust fund of $60,000 held here for her benefit by a relative; this also has been turned over to the Alien Property Custodian.

This lady was the daughter of the ambassador, marrying Alfred Oberndorff in 1904. They were married in Paris, and they were married when relations between the various countries were peaceful. In this whole transaction there was no thought or idea that anything might happen such as happened when the war broke out. Her marriage with Mr. Oberndorff was purely a love match.

Mr. SIMS. Mr. Oberndorff was a citizen of Germany and has so remained?

Mr. THURSTON. Yes, sir; he is now a German citizen.
Mr. BARKLEY. Have they separated?

Mr. THURSTON. No, sir; she is living in Holland. She left him and went to Holland after the armistice was signed.

Mr. BARKLEY. He is still in Germany?

Mr. THURSTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. SIMS. In the case which the attorney general of Pennsylvania just presented to the committee the lady involved never was a citizen of Germany, but only had that status by reason of being the wife of a German citizen. The same thing is true in this case?

Mr. THURSTON. Yes, sir. I merely wish to say

Mr. JONES (interposing). In your case the husband was a resident

Mr. THURSTON (interposing). Of Germany.

Mr. JONES. And lived in Germany.

Mr. THURSTON. And lived in Germany.

Mr. JONES. And his employment was in Germany?
Mr. THURSTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. JONES. In the case presented by the attorney. general of Pennsylvania, the husband, while a German citizen, was living in America and employed in America.

Mr. THURSTON. So I understand.

Mr. SIMS. But he was technically a German citizen.

Mr. THURSTON. Yes, sir. This bill provides for neutrals. This bill is also broad enough to cover the American girls who have married Germans. It is a very broad bill in its provisions.

Mr. BARKLEY. How do you construe your client to be a neutral? Mr. THURSTON. I do not. The property which she inherited was originally American property. She came of neutral parents.

Mr. BARKLEY. I thought you made the statement awhile agoMr. THURSTON (interposing). Pardon me. She came of neutral parents. Her father was a neutral and her mother was an American before she was married. They were married in the United States.

Mr. BARKLEY. Your client, as a matter of fact, was never an American citizen?

Mr. THURSTON. No; she was not. She was the daughter of a neutral and an American citizen.

Mr. BARKLEY. Her father happened to be a neutral, and that placed her citizenship in that country?

Mr. THURSTON. Her citizenship followed that of her husband, in Germany, according to the Dutch law.

This bill takes in the cases of a great many of the American girls who have married foreigners; and I want to say, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, at the very outset, that this is not a special bill, this bill would take in, so far as the neutral aspect of it is concerned, as I understand it, the neutral cases. I understand there are not very many of those cases.

I do not know whether it will be the disposition of the committee to consider individual cases or the general principle, but I wish to call your attention to the fact that this was not a war of individuals. This was a war between countries. The property was seized by the Alien Property Custodian under the act at once. There was not time. to consider or differentiate. The purpose of the act was to prevent the use of this money against us. It was to be kept out of the fight, and was to be held during the war.

Mr. COOPER. I am not just quite clear in regard to this case. Your client married a subject of Holland?

Mr. THURSTON. No; she married a subject of Germany. My client, a resident of Holland, married a German and became thereby an alien enemy, following her husband's citizenship. She came of parents, one of whom was an American, and the other a neutral.

The principle involved in this whole matter is whether or not this country intends to take the property of private persons to pay the debts which really are debts of the German Government.

If the committee will permit me, I have prepared a very brief statement which it seems to me might well go into the record in connection with this matter.

The CHAIRMAN. We will be very glad to have it inserted into the record. Can you tell us the substance of it?

Mr. THURSTON. The substance of the argument which I should like to present to the committee is based on the theory that private

property, and particularly fixed property, like real estate which has been taken by the Alien Property Custodian should not be held to pay the debts which Germany is responsible for during the war.

I wish to go one step further and say that the Alien Property Custodian himself, in his report, has differentiated between the two classes of property, friendly property and unfriendly property, and by unfriendly property he means those great aggregations of capital financed by the German Government, which he claimed to be nests of spies, and the steamship companies, and enterprises of that sort, which have been liquidated. The friendly property was that property consisting of real estate and individual personal property which was not in any way used for the purposes of the war. For years before the war the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and, I think, other roads had fiscal agents in London and Berlin selling their securities, and the people in those countries bought those securities and invested their money in this country in those securities because we wanted them to.

They were seized and held by the Alien Property Custodian so that the income could not be used for war purposes during the war. It was not property in the sense that munition factories or concerns making materials to be used in the war were property; factories and concerns which had been established here with hostile design.

It seems to me, in looking at the whole proposition as to the kind of bill the committee will desire to report, at the very outset it might be well to consider these two classes of property, the friendly and the unfriendly, and in the friendly property, I assume, comes the property represented by the gentlemen who have preceded me here this morning. It consists of the property of women who lived in this country largely and who married these people abroad at a time when we were encouraging those marriages, and in many cases-in fact in all cases represented here was left in this country, and probably most of it will remain in this country. It seems to me that it was not in the contemplation of the act that property of this kind should be taken to pay these claims.

I understand the Alien Property Custodian has something like $600,000,000 or $700,000,000 worth of property in his possession.

I may say, speaking in behalf of my own client, that I assume the property which the Alien Property Custodian is keeping, the property of women such as my client, persons who were neutrals before they married Germans, would be a very small amount, and to restore it would make no difference whatever, and I assume that repaying the property of these women would not in any way leave the department in such shape that claims could not be taken care of. He has a lot of property which came from sources which I assume this Government will eventually use for the payment of debts.

The CHAIRMAN. You notice the two bills differ in the point of time as to marriage.

Mr. THURSTON. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you any suggestions as to that?

Mr. THURSTON. The time mentioned in the Winslow bill, July 28, 1914, marked the outbreak of the World War. I think that a woman who married a resident of Germany before this date and at a time when all countries were on friendly terms with Germany could not be fairly held to have anticipated what came afterwards.

(The statements referred to by Mr. Thurston are as follows:)

STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY EDWARD A. THURSTON, FALL RIVER, MASS., IN RE H. B. 12884, BILL RELATING TO NEUTRAL AND AMERICAN WOMEN INTERMARRIED WITH ALIENS.

The Alien Property Custodian statute became law on October 6, 1917. By section 6 of this statute, the Alien Property Custodian was authorized to hold, administer, and account" for the property taken under the general direction of the President, as provided in the act. It was also provided, by section 9, that after the end of the war the disposition of this property should be settled as Congress should direct. Congress has the power to determine at any time what shall be done with it, as the Sixty-fifth Congress which enacted the statute had no power to take away from its successor, the Sixty-sixth Congress, the power to legislate upon this subject any time that it chose, either before or after the technical end of the war.

The reason why individual alien enemy property was seized under this statute was stated on November 14, 1917, by the Alien Property Custodian, in the Official Bulletin, as follows:

"The purposes of Congress are to preserve enemy-owned property in the United States from loss and to prevent every use of it which may be hostile and detrimental to the United States. The duty of the Alien Property Custodian is to protect the property of all owners under legal disabilities to act for themselves. When a license to permit enemy-owned business is not granted, the Alien Property Custodian exercised the authority of a common-law trustee : There is no thought of a confiscation or dissipation of property thus held in trust."

This declaration of the purpose of the act was merely declaratory of the modern civilized theory of the treatment of private property taken in war time. The modern theory of war is that war is waged, not against individuals but is a relation between State and State; that individuals are enemies only accidentally, and that their private property is immune from capture and confiscation. One of the Hague conventions categorically provides that "private property can not be confiscated." (Hague convention VI of 1907, arts. 1-5.)

This modern theory that private property should not be confiscated is not in conflict with the theory that it should be seized at the outbreak of the war. It is rightly seized and sequestered for the purpose that it or the income from it may not be used by the enemy as one of its resources during the war. But to confiscate it when the conflict is ended is a different matter. If when the war is ended it is confiscated for the purposes of paying the war costs of expenses or claims of the victor, it places the penalty of the war on the indi viduals whose property was taken, and to that extent it lets go free the Government or State against whom the war was made. It changes the nature of the war from a war against the State into a war against certain individuals. Acting upon the thoroughly just theory of seizure and sequestration, the Alien Property Custodian, under authority of the statute of October 6, 1917, seized and sequestered alien property aggregating in value approximately $500,000,000 or over.

As to the kind of property seized, owing to the necessity for haste and the impossibility of making any distinction in those days of confusion, everything was seized upon which the Alien Property Custodian could lay his hands. The act made no distinction as to the kinds of property which were to be taken, and no distinction was made in the taking of property. Property which might be used against us and property which could not be used against us was indiscriminately seized and sequestered. I find no fault with this seizure. Time was of the essence, and we could not stop to make distinctions between different classes of property.

It takes no more than a casual glance, however, to see that the property as taken could easily be divided into several classes. For example, ships if not immediately seized could be at once turned by the enemy into instruments of warfare to be use against our troops. It is possible also that there existed here subsidized German corporations planted in our midst and which, by the aid of Government assistance. were intended to undersell and undermine our own industrial development in the manufacture of articles necessary for use in time of war, or in those articles which come in direct competition with German industry. On the other hand, there was also seized land located in this country inherited from their American next of kin by women who, at a time when this

country was on the most friendly relations with Germany, had happened to marry a subject of the German Empire and thus technically acquired a German citizenship under the old common-law theory that the husband and wife are one and that the citizenship of the husband controls. Stocks and bonds in which such persons had invested their savings, trust funds inherited by them, all were taken.

In regard to the seizure of the latter class of property, the general modern custom is stated in Phillimore's International Law, third edition, volume 3, page 148, that with respect to immovable property-lands or houses of the enemy-the general rule of civilized States appears to be that this kind of property is never confiscated; but that in cases where the income of the estate would otherwise be sent out of the country to augment the resources either of the private or public wealth of the enemy, it may be sequestered during the pendency of the war. The same principle likewise applies to shares of stock, bonds, and other forms of investmnets in which individual foreigners have invested their savings in this country. Another writer (Hall, International law, p. 420), says that the principle of modern usage is that property can be appropriated of which immediate use can be made for warlike operations by the belligerent, or which if reached by the enemy would strengthen the latter either directly or indirectly; but that in property not so capable of immediate or direct use, or not capable of strengthening the enemy, is not appropriated.

I have in the preceding statement discussed this bill (H. R. 12884) on broad general principles. I appear, however, only in support of that portion of it which provides that the alien property custodian shall now return the property in this country which he has seized and sequestered, belonging to women who prior to their marriage were subjects of a country which remained neutral in the war, but who prior to the outbreak of the World War, and at a time when all countries were at peace, had happened to marry a subject of the German Empire or of the Empire of Austria-Hungary.

The amount of property sequested by the Alien Property Custodian is, as I have already stated, in value approximately $500 000,000 or more. If the property is now returned to neutral women, such as I have described above according to the best of my information it will probably affect less than onefifth of 1 per cent of this amount. The property was seized and sequestered by the Alien Property Custodian not for the purpose of confiscation, but so that during the conflict the income should not be sent abroad as a possible aid to the enemy. In this particular case in which I am interested, the property consists of real estate and personal property inherited from her American next of kin by a woman who, prior to her marriage, was a subject of Holland. Her mother was an American girl, her father a native of Holland. Unable to leave Germany upon the outbreak of the war, she was obliged to reside there up to the time of the armistice. As soon as it could be done after the armistice she, with her three children, the eldest 15 and the youngest 2, left the country and rejoined her father's people in Holland.

At the possible expense of repetition. I wish to say again that I have no quarrel with the public policy by virtue of which this property was seized at the outbreak of the war. It was taken so that the income could not run the chance of finding its way to aid and strengthen the resources of the State we were fighting. It is a different matter, however, now to retain it. If we do not return it we deliberately turn back our pages of history to the barbaric policy of placing the penalty of the war upon individuals and letting the State, against whom we waged the war, go free. In this particular case we turn our guns upon a helpless woman, who was an enemy only by a technicality, and we let off, without even a demand for reparation, the State against whom we waged the war. For these reasons I believe and hope that this property will be returned to its owner by the American Government.

Let me end by stating in summarized form the points which I wish to make: 1. The purpose of seizing and sequestering private alien property at the outbreak of the war was to prevent it, or the income from it, accruing to the enemy during the conflict, and thus adding to the resources of the nation with whom we were engaged in conflict.

2. There was no intention at the time of seizure not to return this property when the conflict ended. If this should not be done it will be a return to a barbaric principle now discarded by civilized nations, and which is contrary to the purpose of the act by virtue of which the property was sequestered.