96 FINAL ACT OF SECOND PAN AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS. 



international law, with references to all standard sources of authority 

 upon each head, would be of no little service in enabling journalists to 

 create a correct public opinion and in enabling the readers to follow up a 

 subject which interested them, and by so doing to take part in creating 

 the enlightened public opinion upon which the administration of justice 

 is so largely founded. 



The importance placed upon public opinion by countries which are 

 unfortunately at war is evidenced by the fact that each of them has 

 published the telegrams and other documents, either in whole or in part, 

 exchanged by them before the outbreak of the great war in the summer 

 of 1914, and it is a fact that these documents are issued by the belligerent 

 Governments not only in their own but in foreign languages, which can 

 only mean that the appeal is made not merely to their citizens or subjects 

 but to enlightened and instructed opinion in foreign countries in the hope 

 of winning its support. 



The Congress recognized the importance of a knowledge of the diplo- 

 matic correspondence bearing upon international law, of treaties, and of 

 the authoritative statements of national policy issued by Governments, 

 by recommending that copies of such documents be secured from min- 

 istries of foreign affairs, and that they be published in cheap and con- 

 venient form, so that they may not only reach the hands of professional 

 students but that they may fall also under the eye of the general, and 

 indeed of the casual, reader. Knowledge of this kind is especially valuable 

 to democracies where in last resort the people pass upon the acts of the 

 government and where the issues of war and peace depend upon the 

 enlightenment or ignorance of the public. It is not enough that docu- 

 ments of this kind be made public; they must be circulated if the actions 

 of the government are to be weighed with intelligence; and unless they are 

 issued in cheap and convenient form they will not be circulated and will 

 be little better than secret documents preserved in archives beyond the 

 reach of the public. 



It is common knowledge that international law has a preferred position 

 in the jurisprudence of the American Republics; that, whether by con- 

 stitution, statute or custom, it is regarded as a part of the law of each 

 country and is administered as national law in cases depending upon its 

 application. This is believed to be the case in varying degrees in other 

 civilized countries. This being so, it is natural that many and important 

 principles of international law are to be found in domestic judgments, 

 and as an illustration of this it may be said that upon calculation, there 

 are some twenty-eight hundred cases, decided by the Supreme Court of 



