In a preceding article has been described the first edition of the De Jure Belli ac Pacis, printed in Paris by Nicholas Buon in the spring of 1625. It would appear that this first edition was soon exhausted and Grotius set about the preparation of a second edition. He wrote to his brother William, August 29,1625, as follows: “Buon says that the edition of the Apologeticus is exhausted and that he has few remaining copies of the Law of War and Peace. Therefore he is preparing to reprint them both. I shall await the advice of my friends as to what they think ought to be changed or added.” How far he went with this is not clear. It was planned that the second edition would be printed by Buon, but delays intervened and Buon's death, April 22, 1628, took place probably when about half of the printing had been done. In writing to his brother William July 27, 1628, Grotius said: “My books concerning the Law of War and Peace have been revised by me in many places. Buon has died. His heirs are continually at odds. In the meantime I am considering whether I should send these books to Leyden.” At the end of 1628 he sent his brother a copy in which were noted emendations and additions. He said: ”I send you the books on the Law of War and Peace with not inconsiderable additions. I submit the care of these to you and your friends as, if I judge correctly, it is the most important of my works.”

The prolonged interval during which the United States declined to recognize the government functioning in Mexico, and the still more protracted period during which recognition has been withheld from the de facto government in Russia, have produced some unusually interesting problems with respect to the appropriate judicial attitude toward an unrecognized de facto foreign government. In Mexico the recognized Carranza regime was overthrown by revolution in the spring of 1920, and General Obregon was inaugurated president on the first of December in the same year, yet it was not until August 31, 1923, that the Obregon Government received recognition from the United States. In Russia the recognized Provisional Government of Kerensky fell before the onslaughts of the Bolsheviki in December, 1917, and the Soviet Government established by the Bolsheviki soon acquired virtually undisputed control of most of the old empire, yet the Soviet règime remains unrecognized by the United States even at the present day. During intervals thus abnormally prolonged it has become increasingly difficult for the courts to resolve the cases which arise by applying the simple arbitrary formula that all matters of recognition are for the political departments to decide. More and more it has become evident that cases may arise in which the courts, without deprecating in any way the general principle which the formula is conceived to express, may be justified in taking account in some degree of de facto foreign governments from which recognition has been withheld. It is proposed to consider here only the more recent English and American cases. The cases considered may be grouped under three heads.

In late 1917, when the Soviet Government of Russia published various documents from the archives of the Russian Foreign Office, an insistent demand was created throughout the world for the abolition of secret diplomacy. A volume of secret treaties was published in England in 1917 and in the United States in early 1918, and the consequent reaction of public opinion greatly influenced the current statements of the aims of the belligerents. In his address of January 8, 1918, President Wilson put the subject of secret diplomacy at the forefront in the “program of the world's peace” embodied in the Fourteen Points: “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always openly and in the public view.” It has since developed that these words may have been written without a knowledge of the contents of the secret treaties made by Allied Powers during the war; but they were largely responsible for the crystallization of the revulsion which followed the publication of the secret treaties into a determination that the end of the war should signalize the beginning of a new era in the conduct of international relations.

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.

The relations existing in the various states of the world, and particularly in the various states of Europe and America, between international law and municipal law, or, as it might better be called, national law, have been made the subject of several studies in recent years. In view of the probable necessity for many years yet to come of relying for the development and application of international law upon national legislatures, courts, and executive or administrative officials, in the absence of any adequate system of international legislatures, courts, and executive officials, this borderland between international law and national law deserves the most thorough attention. But the attention given to the way in which international law is enforced by national courts, the way in which international treaties are supplemented by national statutes, and to other similar phases of the general subject, has led to some neglect of the central question in the problem, or, at least, has not afforded an adequate answer to that question. It is the purpose of this paper to state this question as it has arisen in cases tried in American courts, to attempt to find the proper solution for it, and to compare that solution with ruling case law on the point in the United States.