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The problem of recognition of states and governments has neither in theory nor in practice been solved satisfactorily. Hardly any other question is more controversial, or leads in the practice of states to such paradoxical situations.The reason for this lies in the fact that the term recognition points to twoentirely different acts, not clearly separated either in theory or in practice. A codificationof the norms of general (common) international law concerning recognition must above all furnish a clear distinction between the two functions known as recognition.

An editorial on the Turkish Institute of International Law by Professor Philip Marshall Brown, President of the American Peace Society, appeared in the October 1943 issue of this JOURNAL. I had the pleasure of publishing in the ULUS newspaper on the 23rd of February, 1944, a translation of this editorial, which contained the expression of many good wishes for our Institute no less than for Turkey itself and I was rewarded by seeing that it aroused great interest and profound gratification in learned and political circles in Turkey. Needless to say, this favorable comment on its inauguration and work, written by an authority in the most progressive country in the world, was recorded with deep gratitude and pride by our Institute.

I. In the field of international law every subject generally acts in person, through its own organs, without resorting to cooperation with other subjects. However, international practice shows that members of the community of nations sometimes act on behalf of other members, with the legal effect that the transactions performed by the acting subject in the name and for the account of the other have for the latter the same legal consequences as if it had acted in person. This happens, for example, when a state, duly authorized, concludes through its own organs a treaty for another state: the latter is thus bound by the treaty exactly in the same way as if it had concluded the treaty itself, through its own organs. This legal phenomenon implies a split between the immediately acting international person and the person to whom the legal effects of these acts are imputed.

The overwhelming majority of writers on international law seem still inclined to advocate that states only be recognized as legal persons in international law. Since, however, neither the term "state" nor the term "legal personality" is unequivocal, it may well be questioned whether a conclusion reached by means of a mere combination of these terms is adequate to clarify the pertinent problems.Through constant repetition, the unqualified designation of the state as the only legal person in international law became seemingly self-evident. Yet it should not be overlooked that the concept of the state is much older than the description of the state in terms of legal personality, since the latter terminology does not appear before the middle of the seventeenth century. There seems to be general agreement that Thomas Hobbes originated the usage of speaking of the "state" as a "person," when he proposed to define a "body politic" as "a multitude of men,united as one personby a common power."