Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/148

112 112 HARVARD LAW REVIEW TT was singular that Mr. Westengard should have returned to the •*• Law School to become Bemis Professor of International Law, in the fall of the year 191 5, at the precise time when events were be- ginning both to disclose and to increase the practical importance of the law of nations. The world had suddenly found that the regulation of international conduct was, for the time being, a great deal more exigent than the regulation of individual relations; and, accordingly, the study of international law was greatly developing everywhere, even in that most utilitarian of educational institu- tions, the Law School. A relatively large number of men took Mr. Westengard's course, and when he came, in 1916, to teach Admiralty, a number elected that course also. It was in the work of these courses, and of the graduate course in war problems, that Mr. Westengard's heart really lay, I think. He taught property and torts well, and he was interested in them both; but I am sure that he had not, for either of them, the keen enthusiasm that a delicate question of international law, or a vivid, picturesque, and frequently intricate question of admiralty would promptly arouse in him. He was a master of the technical reason- ing required for the problems (often such dry ones) of the common law; but he preferred those fascinating questions whose solution sometimes took one back to the laws of Oleron, the "Black Book of the Admiralty," or the " De Jure Belli et Pacis " of Hugo de Groot; upon the answer to which might rest the action of a nation; and in whose determination heavy and inextricable cords of policy so often pulled one way and another. The law governing the rights and duties of neutrals, for instance, was to Mr. Westengard peculiarly vital: he once said (speaking of the Netherlands and the Scandi- navian coxmtries), "My heart bleeds for the poor neutrals!" As has been said, Mr. Westengard returned to the Law School, after a most honorable and successful career in Siam (during the course of which that country had achieved the fullest measure of independent sovereignty), at a fortimate time. He brought to his new duties not only much experience in diplomatic practice and in the administration of international law, but also wide learning,