In case of international disputes between two parties of which only one is a State, the International Bureau of the Permanent Court of Arbitration is authorized to place its premises and organization at the disposal of the parties desirous of having recourse to either the arbitration procedure, or the conciliation procedure, or the conciliation procedure followed, in case of non-conciliation, by the arbitration procedure.

The seventh of the Hague conventions bears the title, “Convention relative á la Transformation des Navires de Commerce en Bâtiments de Guerre.” The convention really relates to vessels which have already been converted into war ships rather than to their conversion.

The fact is not very widely known that the League of Nations and governments acting in coöperation during a period of just over twenty years between the two world wars have built up an effective international drug administration spanning the entire world. It may perhaps be said that the general public has come to realize that a useful piece of work has been and is being done with good results, but only a few specialists know the main principles on which international coöperation in regard to narcotic drugs is based; and perhaps still fewer have any knowledge of the fact that to make possible effective control of narcotics it was necessary to create special international machinery with wide powers of supervision, regulation, and even sanctions. It should be mentioned at the outset that this international administration has survived the onslaught of the present world crisis which proved fatal to many other efforts in international coöperation. This signifies that the governments of countries of the free peoples of the world have maintained national control of drugs and have continued their coöperation with each other and with the League of Nations and the international drug organs. A proof of this is the fact that in January, 1943, one of these organs—the Supervisory Body—had received from governments of all the free countries in the world except one, Liberia, the estimates of the drug requirements for 1943 which governments are required to furnish under the terms of one of the drug conventions.

We are pleased to report that, on February 7, 1991, the International Court of Justice elected Judge Robert Yewdall Jennings to be its President and Judge Shigeru Oda to be its Vice-President. Both offices carry five-year terms. Given the growing role of the Court, these elections are a significant tribute to, and responsibility for, two outstanding scholars of international law. Both have published in this Journal and are Honorary Members of the Society.

Notwithstanding a letter by the Legal Adviser of the State Department suggesting that the act of state doctrine should not be applied to bar consideration of the defendant's counterclaim and set-off arising out of the expropriation of the defendant's property by the Cuban Government, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Banco National de Cuba v. First National City Bank of New York1 applied the doctrine and refused to review the merits of the counterclaim and set–off.