Excerpt from The Recognition Policy of the United States IT will always be a great problem for the student of international law to determine the mutual relationships of law and policy. In the past, political considerations have invariably been of preponderating importance, and since this is due to the nature of the international system there is no indication that the future will bring any material change. It should be the task of the constructive publicist to estab lish and perfect the legal precepts which the practice of states has produced to prevent the purely political consider ations from maintaining unrestricted sway. This is best accomplished by first an objective analysis of international facts which may then be interpreted on the basis of sub jective thought. It is this latter process which strikes me as being of pre-eminent importance; it has puzzled writers and jurists from the time of Grotius to the present day, and satisfactory methods or solutions have never been found. This is due in large measure to historical tradition. Grotius and his immediatesuccessors sought on the basis of a law of nature a purely metaphysical interpretation of the facts of international existence, and the scheme of rights and obligations outlined by them has survived to the present day the most vigorous attacks of those who seek to demolish the natural law system. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.