The Future of International Law (eBook)

From time to time Professor Oppenheim has ventured into the same field. In 1918, in the performance of his duty 'to lay down such rules and suggest such measures as may tend to diminish the evils of war and finally to extinguish war between nations', he delivered three lectures on The League of Nations and its Problems, as holder of the Chair of International Law, founded by Dr. Whewell in the University of Cambridge. As in The Future of International Law, so in the lectures, he started from the Hague Conferences and made the work of The Hague the foundation upon which he would base any scheme of international organization. The epigraph which he put upon the title-page, Festina Lente, indicated the spirit in which he approached his task and the advice which he felt called upon to give to the most casual of his readers. In the lectures he took a step in advance—or backward, according to the point of view—advocating that all members of a league of nations should 'agree to unite their economic, military, and naval forces against any one or more States which resort to arms without submitting their disputes to International Courts of Justice or International Councils of Conciliation'.

In the course of 1919, and after the signature of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28 of that year, Professor Oppenheim contributed to the Revue générale de droit international public an article in French on The Essential Character of the League of Nations. And what may be considered as his final views on the subject are contained in the third edition of his Treatise on International Law (vol. i, pp. 264-310), the first volume of which appeared in 1920. Professor Oppenheim accepted the League of Nations, but his eyes were open to its defects as well as to its merits.

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