364 Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1914– )on aid to victims of aggression also envisaged a signifi cant change in the law
of neutrality, to permit countries to provide aid to victim states without
thereby incurring liability to the aggressor. Th e eff ect would be to relieve
neutral states of the fundamental duty of impartiality in cases of aggression.
In this area, the Harvard researchers can be credited with a fair degree of
prescience, since (as will be seen presently) their ideas were soon put to con-
crete use.Battles of Ideas
If there were striking institutional innovations during this period, there
were some new developments, too, on the conceptual front. Th ere was also
an important new forum in which to expound them: the Hague Academy of
International Law. Th e plans for it had been laid before the war, but they
only came to fruition aft erward. Located alongside the World Court in the
Peace Palace, the academy was not a degree- granting body, and it had no
permanent faculty. Instead, it off ered a series of annual courses on selected
topics given by prominent fi gures from around the world, starting in 1923.
Th e publication of these courses provides a trea sure trove for the explora-
tion of diff erent perspectives on international legal topics— and on the sub-
ject as a whole— over the years.
An especially striking feature of the interwar period was the emergence
of radical, or at least potentially radical, challenges to international law from
states with new forms of offi cial ideology. Th is was the fi rst time since the
French Revolution that this had been so. Here, challenges came from both
the left and the right— the left , from socialist Rus sia, and the right, from
fascist Italy and Germany. It is interesting to note, though, that, although
the ideologies may have been new, the international-law positions fl owing
from them fell, for the most part, into the existing schools of thought.
Th e Continuing Reign of Positivism
In general, mainstream positivism continued to reign as the dominant phi-
losophy of international law, even if it no longer held so exalted a position as
it had before the war. But there were some important changes, chiefl y in