Whereas only a few years before many publicists thought that the Hague Peace Conferences had ushered in a new era in international relationships, during which mankind could look forward to long periods of unbroken peace and steady material progress, and while they were unanimous that the respect for international law was firmly based upon a public opinion whose censure would be sufficient to deter the potential lawbreaker, the war had made it necessary to abandon these doctrines, which were in fact no more than a late outcrop from a School of Jurisprudence whose underlying philosophy was the progressive evolution of the human race towards increased law-abidingness.

The generations of the Second World War can hardly realise what a shock that earlier event [the First World War] was – they had been prepared for violence and conflict by years of Hitler and Mussolini, of Bolshevik Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. For us 1914 followed a long period of stability and of liberal optimism, of expanding international trade and cultural intercourse, of pacifist movements and efforts – like the Hague Conferences at the turn of the century.