In the first study devoted to the World Court, Manley Hudson was largely concerned with the formal steps leading to its establishment and its organization. He placed the Court in historical perspective by linking it with the fruitless efforts at the 1907 Hague Peace Conference to set up a Permanent Court of Arbitral Justice.

“We await a jurist with the mastery of the legal materials, the philosophical vision, and the juristic faith which enabled Grotius to set up a law of nations almost at one stroke,” declared Dean Pound in concluding his address before the Thirty-Third Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law on “The Idea of Law in International Relations.” That is a statement which challenges the attention and arouses the curiosity of a present-day international lawyer. Although accustomed as such a lawyer is to the notion of Grotius as the founder and father of the law of nations, it is a little startling to be told that the answer to the current dilemma of international law is contingent upon the advent of a jurist with his accomplishments. What is there in his De Jure Belli ac Pads to warrant such confidence? What would he have to offer as a guide to a lawyer seeking to extend and to reenforce the domain of law in international relations?

The idea of a league of nations is one with which the United States has been familiar since the very beginning of its history. The form in which it first appeared to this country was in the Armed Neutrality of 1780. The purpose of this league, which has sometimes been called the League of Neutrals, was the protection of neutral trade. Having its origin at the court of Catherine II, Empress of Russia, the Armed Neutrality set forth a body of rules respecting the freedom of commerce in time of war which must prove highly favorable to the United States when that country, in a future conflict, should change its status from that of a belligerent to that of a neutral. It is not surprising, therefore, that the inclusion of the United States among the membership of the league which the Tsarina was forming to enforce these principles was not without its advocates.