IT was more than a fortunate coincidence that as the League of Nations lost its effectiveness as an agency for the development of international law during the decade preceding the recent war, the inter-American regional system increased in internal unity and moral strength. While the disruptive forces of fanatical nationalism in Europe and Asia were preparing for a worldwide conflict, the American States were drawing closer together, reaffirming fundamental principles, promoting the development of their common interests, and creating new machinery to make their cooperation more effective. The resulting advantages were felt when the test of war 'came; and they are being felt even more now in the period of reconstruction.

No greater tribute could be paid to the inter-American regional system than the record of its contribution to the formulation of the United Nations. When the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals were submitted to them the American Governments took seriously the task before them. They analyzed with minute care the juridical principles upon which the new organization was to be based; they examined the machinery set up to attain the objectives. of the organization; and they proposed modifications of the charter drawn from their own continental traditions and from their practical experience in inter-American cooperation. The Charter is today a better document in consequence. It is to be expected that the inter-American group

will continue to exercise a beneficial influence upon the development of the United Nations as an effective agency of law and order; and it is equally to be expected that the universal organization will in turn influence the development of the inter-American regional system.

What are the principles of law which must find their application in the relations between the two groups? The American Republics, each and all, began their existence by revolting against governments which they believed had no inherent or moral right to govern them. It was natural, therefore, that throughout their history they should stress the right of man. as man, to be free from arbitrary restraint. States, their leaders proclaimed, were no endowed with a mystic personality trans cending the fundamental interests of the individual men who established them Government must be by consent of the governed, if it was to have legal or mora justification. Self-determination was no so much a principle of international lav as of natural law, a fundamental condition of social life. Unhappily, self-determina tion became confused at times with th right to particular national boundaries and the high moral principle of huma liberty was occasionally lost in the struggl to exercise control over a few extra squar miles of territory. That day, it is believed is now past. The Act of Chapultepec re affirms the proscription of territoria conquest and the nonrecognition of acqu

sitions of territory made by force; and the will of the inter-American community is now squarely behind the principle.

Under the conditions that prevailed at the time the American States declared their independence, the principle of selfdetermination could only be maintained by individual measures of defense. Hence the American Republics welcomed the principle announced by President Monroe, that any interposition by European powers for the purpose of oppressing or controlling in any way the destiny of the new American governments would be resisted by the United States. The effect of the Monroe Doctrine was to make the Atlantic Ocean a true barrier of defense; and so long as the Latin American States had confidence in the good faith of the United States their

own defense was assured. When, at the close of the century, the policies of the American Government seemed to them to be in conflict with its own traditional principles, jurists were for a time bewildered. The Monroe Doctrine was still an ideal; but of what avail was it to exclude European powers from the American continent if the United States was now to replace them on this side of the Atlantic?

The answer to this critical question was long delayed; but it came at last in 1936. The defense of the Western Hemisphere had become too big a problem to be undertaken by the United States alone. The United States now offered to share the obligation and the responsibility with the other American States. Happily the offer was accepted in the same spirit of good

neighborliness in which it was made; and the Monroe Doctrine became "continentalized." A threat to the peace of America was now of common concern to all of the American States, and the machinery of consultation was set up in order to facilitate the adoption of ways and means tending to preserve the peace of the continent.

The principle proclaimed at the conference of Buenos Aires in 1936 was made more specific and definite at Lima in 1938, when the shadow of the coming conflict in Europe had now grown darker. War in Europe brought the American Republics closer together; and out of the procedure of consultation in the presence of threats to the peace developed the present interAmerican security system, the principles of which were set forth in the Act of Chapultepec. These principles in turn served as the basis of the provisions of

Chapter VIII of the Charter of the United Nations, in accordance with which regional groups undertake the responsibility of bringing about the pacific settlement of local disputes and may, with the authorization of the Security Council, take enforcement action against a state guilty of acts of aggression.

The American States have reiterated with tireless insistence the great principles of the sovereignty and independence of the members of the international community. No occasion is overlooked to reaffirm once more, as at Mexico City in 1945, these constituent elements of the structure of the inter-American system. The very existence of the state carries with it an affirmation of these attributes of its international personality. But the problem now before us is to determine how these principles may be reconciled with the urgent need on the part of the inter

national community to formulate constructive rules of law for the regulation of the conflicting interests of states. Already it has been recognized that the principles of sovereignty and independence must be subordinated to the right of the community as a whole to maintain law and order. No longer may a state, in the exercise of its sovereignty, claim the right to be the judge in its own case. Sovereignty must yield to the obligation to resort to procedures of pacific settlement. No longer may a state claim the right to take the law into its own hands and have recourse to force against a neighboring state that refuses to accede to its claims. The old sovereign right of the individual state to declare war, once regarded by jurists as the supreme test of sovereignty, has now been abandoned in favor of the exclusive right of the community to have recourse to force to uphold the law. Only in the emergency of self-defense may a state meet force with force, and then only until the agencies of the community have taken the necessary measures to maintain peace and security.

The new system of collective security implies far-reaching restrictions upon the traditional conception of sovereignty and independence. But these restrictions are essential conditions of the survival of the state itself. They are the sole protection of the weak against the strong. They mark the triumph of law over force. Our problem today is not to calculate how much sovereignty and independence we have lost in establishing the new system, but to devote our energies to making the new system effective.

But the system of collective security, whether in its regional or in its universal form, is no more than a guarantee of the existing status quo. It contains only the principle of stability in its narrowest sense, not the principle of justice. If the inter

American community as a regional group and the United Nations as a universal organization are to succeed in maintaining law and order on a permanent basis they can only do so by taking constructive measures to regulate conflicts of interest between their respective members. These conflicts of interest have in the past frequently been settled by the arbitrary imposition of the will of one state upon that of another. In the absence of an international organization endowed with legislative and judicial agencies, the individual state relied upon its power to enforce the law. At times, it even asserted that in using its power to enforce the law it was acting on behalf of the whole community. But it was to be expected that the other members of the community would find it difficult to acquiesce in the assumption by a single state of a right to act either in its own behalf or in their collective behalf. In consequence resistance to such arbitrary conduct took the form of the doctrine of nonintervention, which ranks with sovereignty and independence as one of the fundamental principles of inter-American law. Beginning with the Montevideo Convention of 1933 down to the Act of Chapultepec of 1945 the American Republics have lost no opportunity to condemn the intervention of one state in the affairs of another.

But the principle of nonintervention is a negative principle. It proscribes arbitrary conduct on the part of an individual state, but it does not establish a rule of law by which the occasions for such arbitrary conduct may be avoided in the future. This obviously is the task of the interAmerican community as a whole in respect to problems arising with its regional group, as it must be the task of the United Nations for problems of a universal character. The distinction between inter-American problems and universal problems in this

connection is not a rigid one, and it is clear that the American Republics are free, within the scope of their obligations under the Charter, to formulate rules of law applicable among themselves until such time as the adoption of a universal rule may create a conflict with the regional rule. In some cases it may be possible for the regional rule and the universal rule to exist side by side. In the matter of nationality, for example, there is nothing to prevent the concession by the American Republics of special privileges to the nationals of their regional group which the United Nations as a world-wide organization might not be prepared to extend to the nationals of all of its members.

The formulation of these new rules of law is a constructive task of the highest importance. Happily there is reason to believe that its difficulties are not so great as they were believed to be a decade or more ago. For international law, like national law, falls into two categories. In the first category are the rules defining the respective rights of individual states, and in the second category are the rules providing for cooperation for the promotion of common interests. The experience of national law has long ago taught us that innumerable controversies between individuals, often of an acute character, may be removed by the simple process of adopting a general rule in the interest of the whole community. The adoption, for example, of sanitary laws for the protection of the public health may at a single stroke eliminate a thousand controversies between individuals resulting from the disposal of waste in a manner offensive to one's neighbor. The general prohibition. of commercial monoplies may put an end to a thousand controversies based upon unfair trade practices.

In like manner many of the conflicts between states, for which it is difficult to

formulate satisfactory rules of law between the two parties to the controversy, may perhaps be found to yield to general regulations in the interest of the welfare of the whole community. Indeed, it appears possible that even the more serious conflicts of states, which seem to resist stubbornly all attempts to bring them under fixed rules of law, may be found to yield to what might be called "cooperative treatment." By this process conflicts of interest are solved not by leaving competition unrestrained, and then seeking to induce rival states to submit their disputes to pacific procedures, but by marking out a given area of cooperation and thus limiting competition to an area within which it can be kept under control.

Obviously progress must be slow in this direction. But already a beginning has been made. On November 30, 1940, 15 American Republics signed an agreement providing for the orderly marketing of coffee. The principal object of the agreement was to allocate equitably the market of the United States and that of the rest of the world among the various coffee-producing countries through the adoption of basic annual export quotas for each country. The administration of the agreement was assigned to the Inter-American Coffee Board composed of delegates representing the governments of the participating countries. This Board, in addition to other powers, was given authority to increase or decrease the quotas for the United States market in order to adjust supplies to estimate requirements. The agreement was the first of its kind to be entered into, and it marked an important practical achievement in establishing cooperative regulation in place of mutually injurious competition.

There is every reason to believe that other conflicts of national economic interest between the American States may in