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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2017
While a duty of preparedness for war is constantly urged upon American statesmen and upon military and naval officers, the fact is too often overlooked that there is also a duty of preparedness resting upon American statesmen, jurists, and legal authors to keep abreast of the times, or even in advance of the times, in connection with rights and duties affected by war. A prominent international lawyer has written that “as the flag of a nation follows the territorial explorations of its subjects, jurisprudence follows the path of science.” This broad statement must be qualified by the admission that jurisprudence only follows at a very long distance. Too rarely do statesmen and lawyers try to visualize changing industrial, economic, social, and governmental conditions, and to promote, in advance, needful corresponding changes in the law. Especially in connection with international law and international agreements is the gift of imagination lacking, the possession of which is necessary in order to attain preparedness in any field.
1 Since the above article was written, Professor Earl Willis Crecraft has published his Freedom of the Seas (1935), in Chapter 14 of which (entitled “Next the Airplane“) he treats to some extent of the problem of aircraft and neutral trade (pp. 124-131) and says: “It is evident that, if another great maritime war should occur, and if aircraft should be used to destroy merchantmen carrying munitions, to enforce a blockade or to enforce a war zone, the same acute crisis would confront neutral nations that confronted them in 1915 and 1916. Any neutral which went through such bitter experiences with the submarine, ought to prepare to meet the challenge of the airship.” See also Sea Power in the Modern World (1934), by Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, K.C.B., pp. 113-116, reviewed infra, p. 359.