The Suez Canal, opened for general use on November 17, 1869, more than justified the gloomy predictions of its opponents that it would become “un second Bosphore.” Abbreviating by hundreds or thousands of miles the transit distance between important parts of the globe, it wrought a kind of revolution in maritime activities and particularly in strategical concepts of peace and war. Its consummation brought to an end more than a score of years of controversy marked by the efforts of the British Government to quash a project certain to destroy the monopoly of sea access to East Africa and the Middle and Far East via the Cape of Good Hope. Until 1869 the protection of British interests in the East had required only the maintenance of naval supremacy among the European States and a close surveillance of the Eastern Mediterranean with Malta and Constantinople as points of vantage. The cutting through of the Isthmus of Suez instantly destroyed previous schemes of British strategy by giving an almost infinite extension to the shores of the Mediterranean. With a similar projection of the problems of the Mediterranean, fundamental changes in planning and procedure, both by Great Britain and by other European States having maritime interests, were unavoidable.

Political institutions attain their stature largely by organic growth, taking form through a process of evolving practice. In this connection the economic sanctions developed by the United States in the years immediately preceding Pearl Harbor have much significance. As the architects of a new world order now draw up plans for the defense of the international community against war, they can include economic sanctions with greater assurance of American approval than in 1919. For certain types of such sanctions have in the last few years taken their place among our precedents, and the United States may well be expected to view proposals for their use with a more friendly eye than at the close of the first World War.

A careful examination of the nature of international relations and the specific technique of international law shows a basic difficulty confronting every attempt to regulate relations between States. It is the fact that in case of disputes between States there exists no authority accepted generally and obligatorily as competent to settle international conflicts, that is, to answer impartially the question: which of the parties to the conflict is right and which is wrong. If the States do not reach an agreement, or do not voluntarily submit their dispute to arbitration, each State is left to decide for itself the question whether the other State has violated, or is about to violate, its right; and the State which considers itself injured is free to enforce the law, and that means what it considers to be the law, by resorting to war or reprisals against the alleged wrongdoer. Since the other State has the same competence to decide for itself the question of law, the fundamental legal problem remains without impartial solution. The objective examination and unbiased decision of the question whether or not the law has been violated is the most important and essential stage in any legal procedure. As long as it is not possible to remove from the States in dispute the prerogative to answer for themselves this question of law and transfer it once and for all to an impartial authority, namely, an international court, further progress toward the reign of law and order in the world will be slow indeed.

On January 13, 1942, eight governments-in-exile and the Free French National Committee adopted at London a resolution which pledges them to postwar punishment of every person guilty and responsible for certain criminal acts of violence committed by the German armies and their accomplices in occupied territories contrary to the law of war as formulated, in particular in the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907 concerning land warfare, or as generally understood by the civilized world. Several of the signers of this document spoke of the acts in question as social or international crimes and intimated that new legal conceptions would govern responsibility for and punishment of them. It seems opportune, therefore, to reexamine the established legal principles relating to these issues and to inquire whether any new rules of international law have been accepted recently with regard to the legal nature and punishment of criminal acts of violence committed by members of the armed services of a nation contrary to the laws and customs of war.

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.

The traditional system of international law is based on the distinction between the law of peace and the law of war. In the formative period of international law, thinkers were fully aware of the problems hidden behind this classification. Positivist writers took over these conceptions, framed against the background of a philosophical vista of society. Yet in their hands these terms lost their original significance. It is the purpose of this investigation to throw light on this process and to consider the relevance of this dichotomy into peace and war for the positivist and sociological approaches to international law.