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cannot safely become a member of the Permanent Court of International Justice until the law to be applied by the court has been formulated and agreed upon by the leading states, and shows that the objection is not only immaterial so far as the policy of the United States is concerned, but that it is also inconsistent with the general character of international law and with the position of the Supreme Court of the United States in its application of the principles of international law in cases before the court. Attention is called to the appointment by the Council of the League of Nations of a Committee of Experts charged with the duty of preparing a provisional list of the subjects of international law in respect to which codification might seem feasible, and to report to the Council upon ways and means by which international conferences might be held to secure the adoption of the rules recommended. Considerable discussion is given over to the meaning of "American International Law" and the proposals for its separate codification.

3. COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, November, 1925.

Occupation under the Laws of War, by Elbridge Colby (pp. 904-922), is a careful study, with copious references to adjudicated cases, of technical questions connected with belligerent occupation. This instalment deals with the general law of occupation, its purpose and methods, the restrictions imposed upon the military occupant, and the relations between the occupant and the citizen body of the occupied territory.

4. THE ROUND TABLE, December, 1925.

The Locarno Treaties (pp. 1-28), is a very clear and forceful estimate of the strength and weakness of the new situation resulting from the agreements signed on Oct. 16, 1925. Hopeful as is the outlook in Europe from certain points of view, there are also grave dangers attending the ratification of the treaties, both in respect to the relations of Great Britain to the political problems of eastern Europe and in respect to the relations of the members of the British Commonwealth to the obligations assumed by the mother country. The conclusion is reached that, however dangerous certain features of the Locarno settlement may be, the alternative of rejecting the treaties would create such a grave situation, fraught with far greater dangers, that the treaties should be ratified forthwith and attention then be given to the question of interpreting or amending them.

5. FOREIGN AFFAIRS, January, 1926.

After Locarno: the Security Problem Today, by Eduard Benes (pp. 195– 210), points out that most of the political events in Europe during the last six years have been connected with the problem of security, and outlines the three stages through which it has passed: the attempted guarantee pact

between France and Great Britain, to which the United States would have been a party had the agreement signed by President Wilson been ratified; the Treaty of Mutual Assistance and the Geneva Protocol drawn up under the auspices of the League of Nations, which were to bring about the coöperation of the whole body of states for their mutual protection; and finally a partial guarantee pact limited to the small group of states more particularly concerned, including Germany, and carrying with it the admission of Germany into the League of Nations. The author looks upon these regional pacts as but a step towards "one great world convention guaranteeing world security and peace." The Codification of International Law, by George W. Wickersham (pp. 237-248), points out the relation of international law to the constitutional law of the United States and shows the sources from which the existing rules of international law are drawn. The need of a more comprehensive and exact code of law to be applied by the Permanent Court of International Justice is next discussed together with the steps taken by the Council of the League of Nations to provide for the codification of international law by the appointment of a committee to draw up a list of provisional subjects in respect to which codification might seem feasible. The difficulties of codification are adverted to and comparison is made with the work of the American Law Institute, organized in 1923 to reduce our American common law to written form in order to secure an orderly and systematic exposition of the law enforced in the several States of the Union.

THE PART OF INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE FURTHER LIMITATION OF NAVAL ARMAMENT

BY CHARLES CHENEY HYDE

Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy, Columbia University 1

1

Naval fleets are maintained by development and replacement because their possessors dare not fail to make provision for a maritime war in which they may be participants. No means yet devised and accepted for the amicable adjustment of international differences have removed from responsible statesmen a sense of the necessity of anticipating such a contingency. Despite increasing efforts in every quarter to cultivate wills for peace and abhorrence of armed conflict, as well as a desire to adjust grave differences by judicial process or through commissions of conciliation, war is still regarded as a contingency which must be reckoned with, and as one which is as dangerous as it is seemingly remote. In making provision as against a contingency which none would welcome or hasten, the governments of maritime states do not necessarily encourage war or indicate approval of recourse to it. A particular conference of maritime states may in fact uplift the hopes of prospective belligerents which resent and oppose agreements restricting recourse to measures and instrumentalities on which they expect to rely. On the other hand, general arrangements respecting belligerent activities may serve to lessen a zeal for war and to remove its very approach further from the horizon. Everything depends upon the ambitions of the states which consent to confer. The point to be observed is that agreements for the regulation of maritime war in so far as they purport to proscribe or check the use of particular instrumentalities or recourse to particular measures, are not to be deemed bellicose in design or effect. Such regulatory agreements are advocates of peace rather than of war. Moreover, as will be seen, they may be the means of encouraging states to reduce armaments which would otherwise be maintained.

Agreements for limitation of naval armament are at times deemed to be feasible not primarily because war is regarded as a remote or fanciful contingency, but rather for the reason that the proposed limitation does not appear to change the existing relative naval strength of the contracting Powers. If it can be shown that when war ensues no one of them will be in a relatively worse position on account of what it has undertaken to give up, the general advantage from the limitation is not offset by any detriment which any contracting party may assert to be peculiar to itself. Respect for this principle was the decisive factor which rendered acceptable to the Powers 1 An address delivered under the auspices of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, January 21, 1926.

concerned the proposal of Secretary Hughes for the scrapping and replacement of capital ships which he presented at the Conference on the Limitation of Armament at Washington in November, 1921.

The maintenance of an existing ratio of naval strength in the form of a reduction in particular kinds of tonnage, such as capital ships, is simplified when it can be shown that encounters of such ships are likely to be chiefly those with vessels of the same general class, and that they are needed for conflict with their own kind. Again, naval advisors have something concrete to work upon when the particular form of tonnage sought to be reduced, such as that of capital ships, is regarded as the primary test of the measurement of naval strength.

The maintenance of an existing ratio of naval strength presents a much more complicated problem when the forms of tonnage sought to be reduced, such, for example, as submarine craft, are likely to be employed for a variety of purposes, and against ships of every class. Again, submarine naval vessels may be in fact of greater relative importance to one state than to another; and a particular state may contend that a reduction which respects the existing ratio of submarine tonnage will produce a relative detriment to itself. Thus it may assert that its minimum requirements cannot be fairly measured by recourse to any existing ratio.

Whether a particular instrumentality is of peculiar value to the possessor in the prosecution of war must be determined by the soldier or sailor rather than the lawyer. Again, whether such an instrumentality is of relatively great importance to a particular state will, in its judgment, depend invariably upon the opinion of its own technical advisors. The lawyer may, however, reasonably examine the causes which impel the military expert to reach his conclusions; and if those causes are removed, there is reason to demand of the latter a reconsideration of the problem.

It is believed to be of utmost importance to observe with great care some reasons which may encourage military or naval opinion to look askance at proposed reductions by the principal maritime Powers of auxiliary naval craft, embracing obviously submarine tonnage. There are two which merit special attention. The first is seen in the broad objectives which a belligerent may not unlawfully seek to accomplish incidental to the successful prosecut on of a war. The second is the problem of combatting successfully methods and instrumentalities which the enemy may not unlawfully employ. It is the scope of what the law of nations permits, or differences of opinion as to what that law does not denounce, which necessarily encourage naval advisors of some countries to oppose the abandonment or the limitation of the use of certain instrumentalities of maritime warfare.

Another consideration plays its part. The difficulty which the principal maritime Powers have heretofore encountered in visualizing future wars, as by anticipating the primary activities of belligerents, or the methods by which conflicts are likely to be waged, has made its impression on military

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