On August 2, 1946, the United States Senate approved the Morse resolution by the overwhelming vote of 62-2, thereby giving its advice and consent to the acceptance on the part of the United States of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. It was the same Senate which, just one year and one week earlier, had cast a vote of 89-2 in favor of the United Nations Charter. On August 26 Herschel Johnson, acting United States representative on the Security Council, deposited President Truman’s declaration of adherence with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. At long last the United States assumed far-reaching obligations to submit its legal disputes to an international court.

It has been remarked that the Government of the United States “seldom loses an opportunity to profess its loyalty to international arbitration in the abstract. … The expression of this sentiment has become so conventional that a popular impression prevails that it accords with the actual policy of the United States.” This ambivalent attitude is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in a memorandum addressed by Mr. John Foster Dulles on July 10, 1946, to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. “The United States, since its formation,” Mr. Dulles states, “has led in promoting a reign of law and justice as between nations. In order to continue that leadership, we should now accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. If the United States, which has the material power to impose its will widely in the world, agrees instead to submit to the impartial adjudication of its legal controversies, that will inaugurate a new and profoundly significant international advance.” Although the initial step of accepting the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court would in itself be “of profound moral significance,” it would, Mr. Dulles continues, “assume greatly increased practical significance” only when “limiting factors” have been removed, for the “path is as yet so untried that it would be reckless to proceed precipitately,” the Court “has yet to win the confidence of the world community,” and “international law has not yet developed the scope and definiteness necessary to permit international disputes generally to be resolved by judicial rather than political tests.”

In the April issue of this Journal, Colonel Archibald King contributed, under the title “Further Developments Concerning Jurisdiction over Friendly Foreign Armed Forces,” a study designed to bring down to date his previous article on the same subject which appeared in the issue for October 1942.

The Second World War inflicted countless sufferings and misfortunes on mankind. At the same time the war put to the test, in the sacrifice and heroism at the battlefronts and in the rear, many peoples and states, social forms and political systems, doctrines and theories.

The Arab countries long ago aspired to form some kind of union and the movement towards that ideal came to be known as Pan-Arabism. The roots of the movement go back to the time when the various nationalities of the Ottoman Empire rose in revolt against Turkish domination and aimed at eventual separation from Ottoman sovereignty. Some of the Arab countries actually defied Turkish authority and were separated, at least for a definite period of time, from the Ottoman body politic: such were the Arabian Peninsula under the Wahhabis and Egypt under Mohammed Ali.