When I first heard this account of my father’s early motivation to take up international law I cannot remember, but it surfaces again, I believe, in the Columbia University oral history. His experience in the trenches in France towards the end of the First World War was the key. He was in the infantry, carrying a light machine gun, and fought through a number of the terminal battles with the American Expeditionary Forces. Although he was shipped back at the end of the war as a West Point candidate, he mustered out at the earliest opportunity to resume civilian life and complete his undergraduate degree at Hamilton College.