We are all of us today, even we international lawyers, disciples of Heraclitus. The international world shows itself so clearly in a “state of flux,” that a doubt on the central doctrine of that philosopher is no longer permissible. We theorists have therefore to take heed to build our doctrines on tendencies rather than on “facts” ; otherwise when we have finished constructing our systems, it may happen that the facts are no longer what they were when we began building, and the system is out of date before it is established.

The Conference for the Codification of International Law which met at The Hague from March 13 to April 12, 1930, was the first international conference specifically called for that purpose.

In 1924 the League of Nations set up a Committee of Experts for the progressive codification of international law. The task of that committee was to select and propose for the first conference on codification a certain number of subjects within the field of international law. Three subjects, namely, Nationality, Territorial Waters and The Responsibility of States for Damage Caused in Their Territory to the Person or Property of Foreigners, were finally agreed on as the subjects to be considered by the first conference.

In modern times of war belligerents usually have need of exceptional facilities for transportation. The taking over of private means of transportation belonging to the citizens of the belligerents has been common. The seizure of means of land transportation, whoever may be the owner, has long been common and was often called the exercise of the right of angary. With the development of maritime transportation, vessels were appropriated for war use. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was little question as to the right of angary. With the opening of the nineteenth century the right was questioned, as treaties had begun to prescribe that the right would not be exercised. Some treaties made specific mention of the use of vessels, etc., for military purposes, as the treaty between Prussia and Salvador, 1870, Article VI:

The transarctic flights of 1926 and 1928 demonstrate the possibility of establishing communication by air across the Arctic regions between Europe, on the one side, and North America and the Far East on the other. Quite aside from the saving of time owing to shorter distance, the establishment of such communication presents considerably less diiSculty than air communication over the Atlantic: a conclusion derived from the transatlantic flights of the last three years. The experience of the airship Italia in May, 1928, does not at all nullify this conclusion. It serves merely to show that the organization of transarctic communication requires special prearrangements, such aa wireless stations, meteorological stations, landing-places, air-bases, the construction of which on the shores, islands, and even on the ice of the Arctic Ocean, appears to be quite feasible. The necessity for such stations has aroused in the governments of the North countries an increased interest in the Arctic regions which heretofore has been restricted to scientific circles.

The progress made in international organization during the course of the last decade is nowhere better illustrated than in the elections of members of the Permanent Court of International Justice. A generation ago, when the Permanent Court of Arbitration was created, following the meeting of the first Peace Conference at The Hague in 1899, no attempt was made to depart from the equal representation of all participating States; and the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes of that year provides (Article 23) that each State may name four members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Nor did it prove possible to depart from that system at the second Peace Conference at The Hague in 1907; in the projet for a permanent court of arbitral justice which was drawn up at that time, no provision could be made for the election of judges of such a tribunal, because agreement could not be reached. The International Prize Court, provided for in the Convention of October 18, 1907, which was never ratified, was to be composed of judges and deputy-judges appointed by each of the contracting Powers. It was to have fifteen judges sitting at any session; those of the eight “Great Powers” were to sit in all cases, and the judges and deputy-judges appointed by other Powers were to sit “by rota” ; but this provision was not accepted by at least ten of the signatories to the convention. Here was a recognition of the special position of the great Powers, and an attempted compromise with the principle of equal representation which failed. In the years following 1907, an effort to have the same system applied in the selection of judges of a permanent court of arbitral justice proved abortive. In the Central American Court of Justice, existing from 1908 to 1918, one judge was selected by each of the States maintaining the court. So that in our entire experience before 1914, there was no indication of any successful method by which the members of a permanent international tribunal might be selected, apart from the equal representation of all States concerned.

The State of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, or the State of Jugoslavia, is one of the creations of the World War (1914-1918). It is composed of the former Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro, of the Southern Slavic provinces belonging to the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (see the Treaties of Peace of St. Germain of September 10, 1919, and of Trianon of June 4,1920), and of a certain part of the Bulgarian territory (see the Treaty of Neuilly of November 27, 1919). The Jugoslav State was founded by the Pact of Union of December 1, 1918 n.s. (signed at Belgrade, capital of the former state of Serbia, and now capital of Jugoslavia) and was subsequently recognized by the Treaties of Peace (1919-1920) which liquidated the World War, a3 well as by the neutrals.1 It secured its Constitution on June 28, 1921, whereby the State of Jugoslavia was to be a monarchy, in its nature constitutional (with the Karageorgevitch dynasty), parliamentary (of the unicameral type) and hereditary.