In the history of the American Society of International Law since its beginning no one was more active or more enthusiastically represented its aims and its purposes than Doctor James Brown Scott, despite a life of very exceptional activity in connection with almost every phase of international relations. Perhaps none of these other relationships, so faithfully and assiduously carried on, was as close to his heart as the success of our Society and of its Journal, of which he so long held the Editorship. As a Founder, as Secretary, as President through a decade, there was no activity of the Society that did not receive his full-hearted, enthusiastic support and leadership. For him international law was more than a study or a profession; it was, in fact, a religion.

On February 29, 1892, a treaty was celebrated between the United States and Great Britain providing for the submission to arbitration of the issues which had arisen between those countries respecting the preservation of the valuable herd of fur seals of the Pribilof Islands in Bering Sea. These issues had come to a head in 1886 under President Cleveland, had remained very active throughout the whole of the succeeding administration of President Harrison and had lasted into the second administration of President Cleveland. During part of this period the feelings of the two governments ran high while the issues held the attention of the thinking public. Today, however, they have been largely forgotten and it would not have occurred to me to revive them during these stirring times had not my friend Mr. Frederic R. Coudert, who accompanied his distinguished father to Paris in 1893 as a youthful but very keen observer, requested that as the sole surviving member of the American delegation I review the salient features of this great effort to compose international controversies by reason rather than by a resort to arms. In complying with this request I shall at the same time seek to correct an impression held by many that the United States had a poor case, whereas in respect of one of the two principal issues, namely that of its ownership in the seals, it had a very good case, and in respect of the other, namely the regulations necessary for their preservation should ownership be denied by the tribunal, it had an unanswerable case on which it won what our opponents considered at the time to be a substantial victory though it turned out to be an inadequate one. The position of the United States on this second issue was fully vindicated several years after the arbitration.

Non-recognition by the United States Government of the absorption of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1940 has confronted our courts with a series of questions reminiscent of the period of our non-recognition of the Soviet Government.

Too little attention has been given to the remarkable development of international arbitration in the Union of International Transport by Rail. Within the limited field of this Union arbitration has been organized on a solid and continuing basis, and a permanent tribunal for the settlement of disputes has been maintained for half a century.

When faced with the problem of how enemy property should be treated in the present war the belligerents have evidently followed in general the procedure of examining the measures taken during the last world war and the application of the provisions in the treaty of peace, in conjunction with their own national laws. They have apparently also considered how closely they should hold to the time-honored principle that during a war the property of enemy individuals and companies should be merely sequestered and not confiscated. Their decision on this point has in some cases apparently been influenced by the nature and extent of enemy property within their territories and by the degree to which it had been and could be utilized for carrying on economic as well as political warfare against the state which had given the property its protection.