With the proclamation on October 1, 1949, of the establishment of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese Communism formally passed into its constitutional phase. Prior to that date, the Chinese Communist Party had been the only political organization exercising authority throughout all of the territories held by Communist armed forces; thereafter, to all external appearances, it became but one of several political parties and groups participating in the coalition government of the “people’s democratic dictatorship.” Nevertheless, the new constitutional fagade does not alter the political realities in Communist China.

In an address before the 1949 annual meeting of the American Society of International Law this writer remarked that the laws governing captured enemy property have never been codified or collected in one place and are very difficult to find and apply. The lack of a handy tool in the field of captured property has been noted at times by others, including Professor H. A. Smith, formerly a colonel with the British 21st Army Group, who observed that the “law of booty is almost unwritten” and Judge Manley O. Hudson, who wrote some years ago in an editorial in this JOURNAL that the “literature on captured property and war booty seemed inadequate.”

On September 28, 1945, the President of the United States issued two proclamations asserting jurisdiction and control for certain purposes over areas of the high seas. These proclamations suggested the introduction of a new element into United States policy with regard to high seas jurisdiction even though the press release of September 28, 1945, which accompanied the proclamations, indicated that they did not purport to “extend the present limits of the territorial waters of the United States.”

The Mixed Courts of Egypt closed their doors on October 15th, 1949. At their inauguration in 1875, the Khedive Ismail had used these words: “This day, gentlemen, will mark the commencement of a new era of civilisation in the history of Egypt.“ This was a bold prophecy to make for an institution to whom the Powers had given only five years of life. The event, however, amply justified the Khedive's prediction, and proved once more the truth of the Egyptian proverb, “Only the provisional endures.” The institution survived every test. Twenty times its life was successively renewed for periods varying from two to five years. The well-known words of Sir Maurice Amos, spoken in 1925, when the Courts were rounding the half-century mark, might still challenge contradiction a quarter of a century later, as they reached the end of their life: “I have often taken occasion to remark that next to the Church, the Mixed Courts are the most successful institution in history.”

One function of the British Foreign Office has been to promote the universal abolition of slavery, the slave trade, and analogous forms of involuntary servitude. It has been said that “International co-operation for the suppression of the African slave trade was one of the most significant developments of the nineteenth century.” If this is so, it should not be a superfluous task to consider the legal aspects of the principal methods which the prime mover, Great Britain, employed to achieve this effect. The literature of international law contains excellent material on certain features of the problem, but little material on the most productive and decisive phases of the policy. The object of this article is to show what those phases were, without dealing with their political side any more than seems absolutely necessary for clarity.

In his note on “The Venezuela-British Guiana Boundary Dispute,” (this JOURNAL, Vol. 43 (1949), pp. 523–530), Judge Otto Schoenrich publishes a memorandum by the late Severo Mallet-Prevost which, if it were the only evidence upon which the fairness of the arbitration of 1899 could be judged, would bring the justice of the award seriously into question. Fortunately, however, it is not necessary to rely either upon the recollections of Mr. Mallet-Prevost or upon the construction placed upon these and other facts relating to the boundary dispute by Judge Schoenrich in order to learn the truth of how the Tribunal came to make its award. There are the voluminous files of the British Foreign Office on the arbitration to which reference may be made and there is the verbatim record of the Tribunal, taken down by six shorthand writers, printed day by day as the Tribunal sat, and then issued in 54 parts. There are also the files —often most informative—of contemporary newspapers (for the arbitration took place at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the watchful eye of the press).

The right of an alien to inherit real estate or the proceeds of its sale in any of the States of the United States is specifically provided for in a number of treaties currently in force between the United States and other countries; but the right of an alien to inherit personal property from a deceased American citizen is left for the most part to the discretion of our States. That is the rather surprising conclusion to be drawn from a study of the existing treaties of the United States in the light of the decision of the Supreme Court in Clark v. Allen.