Until the year 1870, England held tenaciously to the doctrine of the indelibility of national allegiance. Everyone was free to emigrate at will and live where he pleased, but wherever he went, and whatsoever he might do in the attempt to acquire another citizenship, he was an Englishman still, in the eyes of the British law inalienably a subject of the British crown. Although the author probably did not realize it, there was a certain grimness underlying the lines in “Pinafore”:
But, in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He is an Englishman!
And although the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain was chiefly provoked by the insistence of England upon her slogan, “Once an Englishman always an Englishman,” and her refusal to mitigate her policy with regard to British-born sailors naturalized by the United States, the theory continued to be stoutly declared as a matter of principle, though perhaps with diminishing emphasis. Hall says, however,[29] that by 1876 it “had become an anachronism.” And after the report of a British royal commission on the subject, Parliament enacted a statute providing that a British subject might lose his British nationality by naturalization in another country. This long-maintained attitude of Great Britain undoubtedly goes far to account for the failure of many persons of English birth, long resident in this country, and for all practical purposes except political participation Americans, to seek formal adoption into our body politic.
GERMANY
Most of the discussion of our citizenship relations with Germany has centered latterly about the German Citizenship and Nationality Law, better known as the “Delbrück Law,” enacted in July, 1913—a year before the outbreak of the Great War. Attention has focused especially on Section 25 of the statute, which reads as follows:
A German who has neither his residence nor permanent abode in Germany loses his citizenship upon acquiring foreign citizenship, provided the foreign citizenship is acquired as a result of his own application therefor or the application of the husband or legal representative; but in the case of a wife of one having a legal representative, only when the conditions exist under which expatriation may be applied for according to Sections 18 and 19.
Citizenship is not lost by one who, before acquiring foreign citizenship, has secured on application the written consent of the competent authorities of his home state to retain his citizenship. Before this consent is given the German consul is to be heard.