Review: International Law: International Law in Historical Perspective, Volume VIII

Published date01 September 1978
Date01 September 1978
DOI10.1177/002070207803300317
Subject MatterReview
638
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
obvious
enough
who
is
or
isn't
a
member of an
established govern-
ment's armed
forces,
but
who
is
to
say
whether or
not
a
guerilla
is
what
he
says
he
claims
to
be?
And
what
if
there
are
two
or
more
gue-
rilla
forces
operating
against
each
other
as
well
as
against
the
govern-
ment?
In
such
anarchic
circumstances
(many countries
have
already
experienced them) people
are
going
to
ask
the
same
questions
about
the
'legitimacy'
of
guerilla
movements
as
they
have
sometimes
asked
about
governments,
and
to
listen
with
renewed
sympathy
to
govern-
ments'
classic
claims
that
they
at
least
represent
order.
The
line
be-
tween
guerilla
indomitability
and
sheer
bloodymindedness
in
any
case
is
more
tenuous
than
M.
Veuthey
makes
it
his
business to
admit.
He
repeatedly
points
to
the
socio-economic
condition
of
the
people
as
in
effect
the
matter
at
issue
between
the
guerilla
(taken at
face
value
as
representative
of 'the
people')
and
the
government;
but
what
when
guerillas
persist
after
losing
the
socio-economic contest?
What
if
indeed
they
are
so
ideological/theological/tribal
in
mind
as
actually
to
have
no
interest
in
that
contest
or
to
consider
it
a
coarse, base
one?
Can
some
people's
sense
of
injustice
or
alienation
(see
for example
pp
41,
74
n.7o,
142)
ever
be
remedied?
May
not
'violent
types'
find
their
way
into
guerilla
forces
just
as
they
are
credibly
supposed
to
do
into
mili-
tary
and
police
forces?
Such
questions
do
not
come
directly
within
M.
Veuthey's
brief,
and
he
cannot
be
blamed
for
not
directly
facing
them.
But
they
clamour for
an
answer.
M.
Veuthey
has
given
us
an
excellent
book
about
guerillas
and
the
law
of
war.
Urgently
needed
now
is an
equally
excellent
book
about
guerillas
and the
law
of
peace.
Geoffrey
Best/University
of
Sussex
INTERNATIONAL
LAW IN
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE,
volume
viii
J.H.W.
Verzijl
Leiden:
A.W.
Sijthoff,
1976,
x,
646pp,
$64.00
The
eighth
volume
of
Professor
Verzijl's
magnum
opus
on
internation-
al
law
in
historical
perspective
is
devoted
to
inter-state
disputes and
their
settlement.
The
learned
author,
who
had
reached
the
age
of
88
by
the
time
the
volume
was
published,
does
not,
however,
deal
with
those
disputes
which
are
settled
by
way
of
armed
conflict,
although
he

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