Within the last year the output of designs for perpetual peace has attained something like flood proportions. Exhortations on how to make this the last war and how to win the peace outnumber the unofficial guides to victory. The volume of these publications, and their sales figures, attest a healthy general interest in the purposes for which we are fighting and the ways and means of achieving them. Inevitably, there is much clash of counsel, and some resulting bewilderment among the reading public. But there is one characteristic uniformity; whether they describe themselves as mere “approaches” to peace, or dogmatically present a fixed “blueprint,” most plans of post-war settlement advocate curtailment of national sovereignty and propose extensive and vigorous supranational organization.

With the enactment on December 19, 1942, of the misnamed “Settlement of Mexican Claims Act of 1942,” American nationals with claims based upon the international responsibility of Mexico for acts or omissions in contravention of international law appear likely to receive long-delayed satisfaction. Some of the claims are more than 60 years old. Awards were made by the United States-Mexican General Claims Commission in favor of some of the claimants more than 15 years ago, but to date no money has been paid to the beneficiaries of these awards. Various factors appear to have made this claims arbitration one of the most dilatory, inefficient, and unfortunate in our history. Claimants were notoriously lax in presenting evidence to the State Department, although in some cases they appear to have been hindered by the Mexican Government from obtaining necessary evidence in Mexico. The preambles to three conventions extending the life of the General Claims Commission allege that “it now appears” or “it has been found” that the Commission could not hear, examine, and decide the claims within the time limit fixed; but Judge Fred K. Nielsen, American Commissioner on that court, has pointed out with some vigor that it was not the Commission, so much as the failure of American counsel and the Department of State, to prepare cases for presentation to the Commission, which caused the delay and paucity of decisions. Resignations of Commissioners, protracted delays in replacing them, antagonisms between Commissioners, and lack of cooperation by the Mexican Government were other factors contributing to the 19-year delay in effecting a settlement.

The process by which Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania attained legal sovereignty is typical and serves as an example of the process whereby other new States in post-war Europe came into being. There is no doubt that after World War II the important lessons presented by the Baltic case may be drawn upon in planning future European international relations.

The Italian Code for the Merchant Marine enacted in 1865, four years after the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, and which in part is still in force, was intended to regulate all legal aspects of navigation in peace and wartime. It therefore contained provisions (Arts. 225–229) dealing with prize jurisdiction. Article 225 provided: “Judgment on the lawfulness of captures and on seizures shall be pronounced by a special commission which will be appointed by royal decree according to the rules to be enacted by special regulation.”

Writers on international law agree that its development in its present form began in the 16th century among the Christian States of Europe, when the feudal organization of the continent gave place to its modern organization in the “sovereign, independent” States of the traditional terminology, and that originally it was considered as not applying, or as not fully applying, to States outside the pale of Christian civilization. At the end of the 18th and until well into the 19th centuries it was common for treatises on the subject to bear titles referring not to “International Law” but to “European International Law,” although such a title had ceased to be appropriate after the attainment of independence by the United States. It is also usually said that Turkey, the first Mohammedan State to join the family of States between which international law is in force, was brought into the family and made for the first time a subject or “person” of international law by Article 7 of the Treaty of Paris of March 30, 1856, which terminated the Crimean War. This view has, however, been disputed by A. H. Smith who argues that “for many centuries Turkey had maintained diplomatic intercourse and concluded treaties with Great Britain and other European Powers and … the general body of international law was considered to apply,” and that the alleged recognition appears to have made no practical difference; and who accordingly suggests the meaning of the article to be that Turkey was formally “admitted to the specifically European group of nations which was deemed to have been established by the Vienna settlement of 1815.” Smith gives no details regarding the evidence on which his view is based, and other writers habitually content themselves with quoting the text of the article. It may be interesting to consider what light contemporary evidence throws upon the matter.