Page:Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations (1919).djvu/123

 was entitled Précis du Droit des Gens moderne, fondé sur les Traités et l'Usage. It might well appear, as he admitted in 1801, in the Preface to the second French edition of his work, that the European convulsions resulting from the Revolution in France, and that the triumph of might which these convulsions seemed to make manifest and even to be justifying by events, had cut away the ground in standpoint and reasoning that had been appropriate enough before the bursting of the storm in 1789. Even in the Preface, written in 1820, to the third edition, the author could still, however, record his tribute to the immutable principles of natural law which serves as the basis of international rights. But his work was not rendered obsolete, just because even from its first inception it was designed to be of use in the practice of affairs, and for the author that claim may be made which was put forward for himself by the hard student of fact and observer of forces and power: writing for such as can see his meaning, he deemed it the more feasible course to be taken in tow by the truth showing itself in accomplished facts, than to follow vain imaginings. 'You are a teacher of public law; that will have to be modernized. Does not public law consist to-day simply in the right of the stronger?' Thus was Martens