ill be, differences of opinion as to the _legal_ right
of secession under the Constitution of the United States, but the
inherent right of a people of a State to throw off at will their
allegiance to the Federal Union and resume complete sovereignty over the
territory of the State was never urged as a conclusive argument. It was
the legal right and not the natural right which was emphasized as
justifying those who took up arms in order to disrupt the Union. But if
an American citizen denies that the principle of "self-determination"
can be rightfully applied to the affairs of his own country, how can he
consistently maintain that it is a right inseparable from a true
conception of political liberty and therefore universally applicable,
just in principle, and wise from the practical point of view?

Of course, those who subscribe to "self-determination" and advocate it
as a great truth fundamental to every political society organized to
protect and promote civil liberty, do not claim it for races, peoples,
or communities whose state of barbarism or ignorance deprive them of the
capacity to choose intelligently their political affiliations. As to
peoples or communities, however, who do possess the intelligence to make
a rational choice of political allegiance, no exception is made, so far
as words go, to the undeviating application of the principle. It is the
affirmation of an unqualified right. It is one of those declarations of
principle which sounds true, which in the abstract may be true, and
which appeals strongly to man's innate sense of moral right and to his
conception of natural justice, but which, when the attempt is made to
apply it in every case, becomes a source of political instability and
domestic disorder and not infrequently a cause of rebellion.

In the settlement of territorial rights and of the sovereignty to be
exercised over particular regions there are several factors which
require consideration. International boundaries may be drawn along
ethnic, economic, geographic, historic, or strategic lines. One or all
of these elements may influence the decision, but whatever argument may
be urged in favor of any one of these factors, the chief object in the
determination of the sovereignty to be exercised within a certain
territory is national safety. National safety is as dominant in the life
of a nation as self-preservation is in the life of an individual. It is
even more so, as nations do not respond to t