Address

Ambassador and Mrs. Dyess, distinguished guests, it is a pleasure and honour to join in welcoming you to this reception in honour of Grotius and to welcome those who have come together in a Commemorative Colloquium in celebration of the 400th birthday of Grotius.

I wish to join forces with the Ambassador in thanking Dr. Voskuil and his colleagues of the Asser Institute, and the Grotiana Foundation, for their initiative in the organization of the Colloquium. May I also thank their colleagues in the United States who have taken a notable initiative, or series of initiatives, through the medium of the Committee to Commemorate the 400th Birthday of Hugo Grotius. Particular thanks are due to Mrs. Ruth Steinkraus Cohen, Chairman of the United Nations Association of Connecticut, who has taken the lead in the United States in organizing and directing that energetic Committee. We are delighted that she is here, as indeed she should be, and that her most distinguished collaborator in this and a thousand other good causes, Professor Myres McDougal, is with us as well. We genuinely regret that Judge Philip Jessup was not able to join both them and us.

We have heard a number of splendid and learned speeches about Grotius over the last few days, which praise and appraise that great genius and his seminal contributions to international law. I shall accordingly confine these remarks to recalling the influence which Grotius has had in the United States, a topic of special topicality not least because of the place of this reception.

In 1899, at the First Hague Peace Conference, an extraordinary ceremony took place on the Fourth of July.