The Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace began its sessions on December 1, and came to a close on December 23,1936. During a period of less than three weeks of working time its activities might be said to have established a world's record in scope and intensity, except that records in such matters are more to be avoided than emulated if the activities of the Conference are to be logically integrated and if the participants are to live to serve any useful purpose in the future.

Insurrections and civil wars in Spanish territories during the past century have uniformly been productive of international complications and problems of international law. The present disturbance in Spain has been no exception to the rule. It is not strange perhaps that these crises have had such results considering the strategic locations and economic values of the Spanish domains, the maritime frontiers, the sizable merchant marine and navy, and the passionate and reckless manner in which arms have always been employed.

It is not surprising that works on aggression have abounded during the past several years. As the author of a recent noteworthy contribution to the subject has said: “The problem of aggression is … intimately connected with that of international security.” Our present-day society, which seeks above all to stabilize its precarious security, is therefore compelled to preoccupy itself with the problem of aggression. It may, perhaps, seem unprofitable to add to the numerous pages which have already been devoted to this problem. We propose to do so only because we believe that we have established the existence of serious gaps in the doctrine of the subject, and, what is of greater importance, in its practice. Everyone admits, more or less explicitly, that the problem of aggression is inseparable from that of the prevention of war. However, when it is a question of defining the relations of the two or of showing how the solution of the former influences the practical construction of the latter, we find either a complete silence or fragmentary and empirical solutions which lack even the merit of leading to satisfactory positive results.

The so-called “neutrality laws” of the United States are statutory provisions, a part of the penal law of the United States, and should be clearly distinguished from the obligations imposed upon the United States by interyt national law. They may be regarded as an instance of the enforcement of international law by municipal law in the United States, and originated in the endeavors of the administration of President Washington to discharge the duties owed by the American Government as a neutral nation during the war between England and France in 1793. They punish criminally the commission of acts forbidden by the law of nations. As was well said by the Joint State and Navy Neutrality Board in 1916, “The doer of the wrongful act is accountable only to the United States, while the United States is itself accountable to a foreign government for the commission of the act. In this respect the neutrality laws differ from ordinary penal statutes, because the prohibited acts affect the international relations of the United States in addition to any effect they may have upon domestic tranquillity and order.”

Written agreements record much that has been accomplished toward setting up a specific law between states. If international law is still essentially a customary law, with the weaknesses characterizing any such law, it is also true that through a process of transmutation many customary rules have at length been given more or less precise form through their inclusion in conventions. The opinion has been expressed that only by such a process will this law escape from being “a junk heap of antiquated and perverted forms of justice that has been brought about by the supremacy of power.” It is of course possible to have treaty provisions which merely incorporate by reference, and perhaps emphasize without stating, the rules generally accepted by civilized states.

The reference may be to international law in terms, or to the established body of the law by plain implication. Even if an existing rule is referred to for the purpose of waiving rights under it as between the parties, there is ordinarily an implied recognition of what has become established through custom.

Presidential address: Elihu Root. JAMES BROWN SCOTT, President of the Society.