In taking up the invitation of Eli Lauterpacht, for which I am grateful, to compile a selection of my writings to be published by Grotius Publications in my sixty-fifth year, I have chosen a third of the legal articles and commentaries written since 1947 which may have a measure of continuing interest. They are republished as initially written. That is not to say that many of them would not benefit by revision, for hindsight is illuminating, particularly in a field which has developed as much as has international law in the last forty-five years. But to have brought these essays up to date would have been a time-consuming task inconsonant with more pressing demands. Thus whatever their limitations, these pieces are published essentially as they were. I do not today subscribe to all the views they express, but in the main, I do; it is chastening to acknowledge that neither the substance nor the style of my analyses has much improved over the years.

For their faithful typing onto a word processor of the considerable contents of this volume, my warm thanks to Jean van Hamel-Newall and Helen Jeffares. I wish to thank as well Robin Pirrie of Grotius Publications for able assistance in the planning of the publication of this compilation, and Mary Starkey of the Cambridge University Press and her colleagues for their exemplary editing and printing of it. The acquisition of Grotius Publications by the Cambridge University Press while this volume was in press has had the happy result that it is the first of what will be many books in the field to be published by the Cambridge University Press through its Grotius Publications division.