A Joint Resolution was unanimously approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States on July 6 and 8, 1959, respectively. It was proclaimed by the President on July 17 and he designated the week beginning July 19, 1959, as “Captive Nations Week” to be observed “with appropriate ceremonies and activities.” The resolution cited, among other things that “the enslavement of a substantial part of the world's population by Communist imperialism makes a mockery of the idea of peaceful coexistence between nations” that “since 1918 the imperialistic and aggressive policies of Russian Communism have resulted in the creation of a vast empire which poses a dire threat to the security of the United States and of all the free peoples of the world” that “the imperialistic policies of Communist Russia have led, through direct and indirect aggression, to the subjugation of the national independence” of twenty-two states; that “these submerged nations look to the United States, as the citadel of human freedom, for leadership in bringing about their liberation and independence” and the enjoyment of “religious freedom” and “individual liberties” that “it is vital to the national security of the United States that the desire for liberty and independence on the part of the peoples of these conquered nations should be steadfastly kept alive” that “the desire for liberty and independence by the overwhelming majority of the people of these submerged nations constitutes a powerful deterrent to war and one of the best hopes of a just and lasting peace” and that “it is fitting that we clearly manifest to such peoples through an appropriate and official means the historic fact that the people of the United States share with them their aspirations for the recovery of their freedom and independence.”

Friedrich Nottebohm was born at Hamburg, Germany, a German national by birth and remained a German national until 1939. Since 1905 he had resided in Guatemala, where he carried on prosperous activities in the fields of commerce, banking and plantation. At the end of March or the beginning of April, 1939, he left for Germany and applied in October, 1939, after the outbreak of the second World War, for naturalization in the Principality of Liechtenstein and was naturalized on October 13, 1939. From this moment on he conducted himself exclusively as a national of Liechtenstein, particularly with regard to Guatemala, where he returned in 1940. On October 19, 1943, he was arrested by Guatemalan authorities and turned over to the armed forces of the United States in Guatemala. He was deported to the United States and interned there for two years and three months. During his internment in this country, in 1944, fiftyseven legal proceedings were commenced against him in Guatemala, designed to confiscate all his movable and immovable properties. When he was released from internment in the United States in 1946 and wanted to return to Guatemala to take up the defense against all the litigations pending against him there, he was refused readmission to Guatemala. In 1946 he went to Liechtenstein, where he has resided ever since. In 1949, three years after he had made Liechtenstein his effective and permanent domicile, his properties in Guatemala were confiscated under Guatemalan law.

In an age in which trading activities of the state are increasing everywhere, in which the economic progress of underdeveloped countries has become the object of international and national concern, but in which, on the other hand, the rights and legitimate expectations of alien investors have in many countries suffered more frivolous and alarming setbacks than at any other time—in such an age the problem of the state’s international responsibility for losses arising out of contractual relations between states (or other international persons) and aliens is clearly of great actuality.

During the past thirty years there has been an increasing awareness that in order to achieve the maximum utilization of available water resources the development of each river basin should be considered as an entity. One instance in which the concept was thoroughly applied, whether or not properly, was the Tennessee Valley Authority. Effective conservation and flood control practices must begin in the upper reaches of a watershed in order to be effective. Normally the best dam sites are located in the more mountainous terrain, distant from the cities and irrigated farm lands.

The press release issued by the Department of State in announcing the filing of an application with the International Court of Justice on July 7, 1959, in a damage suit for the destruction of an aircraft by a fighter aircraft of the Soviet Union stated: