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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 Excerpt:...and it is asserted that the changes of conditions thus produced make the old rules obsolete. It is not my purpose at this time to discuss the right or wrong of these declarations and actions. Such a discussion would be quite inadmissible on the part of the presiding officer of this meeting. I am stating things which whether right or wrong have unquestionably happened, as bearing upon the branch of jurisprudence to which this society is devoted. It seems that if the violation of law justifies other violations, then the law is destroyed and there is no law; that if the discovery of new ways of doing a thing prohibited justifies the doing of it, then there is no law to prohibit. The basis of such assertions really is the view that if a substantial belligerent interest for the injury of the enemy comes in conflict with a rule of law, the rule must stand aside and the interest must prevail. If that be so it is not difficult to reach the conclusion that, for the present at all events, in all matters which affect the existing struggle, international law is greatly impaired. Nor can we find much encouragement to believe in the binding force of any rules upon nations which observe other rules only so far as their interest at the time prompts them. Conditions are always changing and a system or rules which cease to bind whenever conditions change should hardly be considered a system of law. It does not follow that nations can no longer discuss questions of right in their diplomatic intercourse, but upon such a basis it seems quite useless to appeal to the authority of rules already agreed upon as just and right and their compelling effect because they have been already agreed upon. When we recall Mansfield's familiar description of international law as "founded...