With this meeting we finish the first decade of this Society. How great is the change of conditions in the field of international law during that period. Ten years ago all the governments of the world professed unqualified respect and obedience to the law of nations, and a very small number of persons not directly connected with government knew or cared anything about it. In this country at least international law was regarded as a rather antiquated branch of useless learning, diplomacy as a foolish mystery, and the foreign service as a superfluous expense. Now that governments have violated and flouted the law in many ways and with appalling consequences, the people of this country at least have begun to realize that observance of the law has a real and practical relation to the peace and honor of their own country and their own prosperity. They are beginning to take an interest in the subject, to discuss it in the newspapers, to inquire how observance of the law may be enforced. There appears a dawning consciousness that a democracy which undertakes to control its own foreign relations ought to know something about the subject. If we had not established this Society ten years ago to study and discuss and spread a knowledge of international law it would surely be demanded now, and we may be certain that our annual public discussions and the publication of the admirable Journal which we have always maintained, with its definite and certain informa-lion upon international events, its interesting and well informed discussion of international topics, and its supplements, with their wealth of authentic copies of international documents, have contributed materially towards fitting the people of our country to deal with the international situations which are before them.

The course of the development and modification of exterritoriality in Siam is so little known that an account of it may not be without interest to students of international law.

One of the more heartening developments in the field of development economics has been the modest success of the United States investment guarantee program. It did not therefore come entirely as a surprise when Mr. Eugene R. Black, then President of the World Bank, told his Board of Governors at their Vienna meeting in September, 1961, that, following a suggestion by the Development Assistance Committee of the O.E.C.D., the Bank was “studying the possibility of devising a multilateral scheme for the insurance of private foreign investments against various non-commercial risks.”

It is sometimes stated that the question of state succession to treaties is a question more of treaty interpretation than of the existence or otherwise of general rules of law concerning the fate of treaties upon change of sovereignty. In general terms the proposition is true: a customary rule favoring or negativing devolution would tend to be either excessively comprehensive or excessively restrictive with respect to the category of treaties whose fate is in issue. Many treaties, upon interpretation, might be found to be inapplicable under the new circumstances, while many others might be deliberately drafted in anticipation of a change of sovereignty, and might incorporate a clause providing for the solution of the problem. A study of concrete issues is thus, generally, more instructive in determining the effect of change of sovereignty upon treaties than is the enunciation of general principles of succession.

The idea of obligation is of essential importance in any legal system: it is, in a sense, the sanction of law itself. But it is only in the last decade or so that the idea of the responsibility of states in international law has been detached from a subordinate or incidental discussion in connection with the rights of states, with treaties, or elsewhere, and given its proper position as an institute of international law. Only in the latest editions of texts has the legal significance of the word been recognized to such an extent that it is given a separate chapter treatment, upon a footing similar to that of equality, independence, or other accepted attributes of the state. As usual, more interest has been devoted to rights than to duties. Monographic treatment is very limited; and there is as yet no complete treatise. There are, of course, innumerable discussions of particular phases, especially in the case of injuries arising from civil war, but also for federal states, the acts of agents, the theories of risk and fault, et cetera.