8:/?8:. I am honoured and grateful to have the opportunity to associate myself with the publication of the volumes Letters to Australia, talks given on national radio in Australiabymyformerprofessor,JuliusStone.HeheldthepositionofChallisPro- fessor of International Law and Jurisprudence at the University of Sydney, for 30 years from March 1942. This first publication of 185 commentaries, in two vol- umes, commences with 13 delivered over a period of two months in the middle of 1942 when the war was going badly for the Allies, when the Wehrmacht controlled Europe from the Atlantic to Stalingrad, and Singapore had fallen to the Japanese the month before. The remaining 172 talks in this series start in July 1945 with the ‘Birth of the United Nations’ and continue through to October 1948 when Profes- sor Stone took up a visiting professorship in the United States. On his return to Sydney in early 1950 he resumed the weekly commentaries, which concluded in 1972, some 13 years before his death at the age of 78 years. What is quite remarkable about these broadcasts is that they were conceived and written thousands of miles away from the centre of the war and of subsequent global political developments. Stone’s sources were the newspapers, weekly publi- cations and radio and, no doubt, correspondence with his wide range of friends. He had no large research staff to assist him. We must all be grateful to his most talented children, Michael, Jonathan and Eleanor for their years of work in finding the texts and in organising them in such a creative manner in the two volumes presented here. I must add how sad I am that he did not have, at his time, access to the modern technology that would have given him the global platform that he deserved. It was only at the very beginning of the 1980s, long after his broad- casts ceased, that computers, internet, cellphones and all the related technologies and applications started their enormous and continuing development. There is no doubt that, had such technology been available, he would have been recognised as the larger global figure that he deserved to be. AsIreadthroughthetalksinthesevolumes,Icametoappreciatewhata privilege Australian listeners had in receiving a regular series of insights of such remarkable quality. Stone had the capacity first to identify important issues, and @3 /<</:;<8=;<:+53+(85=6/ then to give a historical and philosophical background, and, where necessary, a full description of the chosen subject from relevant and often opposing points of view. Quite often, with all due modesty, he projected future scenarios and advised hisau- dience on how they might prepare for and deal with events, if they were to unfold as he described. He assumed that his listeners were looking not just for headlines or a superficial analysis, but for an understanding of issues, the chance to evaluate them and, in some cases, to act on them. Imustaddapersonalnotethatallthetimehewaswriting,hewasfirstand foremost a professor who cared for his students. I was one who needed a great deal of guidance in my early years at university, which commenced upon his re- turn from his first sabbatical leave overseas. I shall always be grateful to him and to his wife Reca, who guided me in full measure. He created in all his students, not only an understanding of the law—for he was an outstanding teacher—but a sense of global issues and of the importance of the law to civilised peoples and societies. The publication of The Province and Function of Law in 1946, and of Legal Con- trols of International Conflict in 1954 confirmed the extraordinary breadth of his knowledge. For his students, these massive works were, on publication, a great set of texts for the study of law. For a selected few of us, before publication, there was a chance to see a master at work and to assist in the tasks of checking footnotes and sources and, on occasions, the opportunity to debate him about his conclusions and thoughts. He published 27 books in all, and I, like many others, had their lives changedbyhisinterestsandbythestandardsheset.Withoutanydoubthewasthe greatest influence on my life of all my teachers and professors, and he opened the way for me to see my challenge and my opportunity to contribute at a global level. But I must return to the broadcasts themselves. As I mentioned earlier, these volumes starts with 13 wartime talks from 1942, delivered within a two-month pe- riod in the middle of the year, when the war was going badly for the Allies in both Europe and the Pacific. His first offering commences with the words: We in the British Commonwealth stand unbowed today alongside three other great peo- ples, those of the United States, Soviet Russia and China . We are fighting because if we allow the Nazi and fascist and Shintoist ideas of human life to prevail, then the ideas we always cherished must die for centuries. These initial broadcasts proceeded in a positive and encouraging tone, building on a mass of historical and philosophical references and comparisons to convey the message that democratic principles must give us confidence in ourselves and guide us to victory. The remainder of the series starts in mid-1945, and runs for a little overthreeyears,startingwithcommentsonthebirthoftheUnitedNations,and of prior important events in the League of Nations. Stone traces the establishment of UN history beginning with San Francisco Charter and analyses and comments upon many of the international agreements that followed. @33 8:/?8:. As the 1940s progressed, the talks addressed such postwar subjects as disarmament and nuclear weapons, which were such a thorn in the side of Stalin who, alone of the Great Power leaders, was not informed of their existence. Stone addresses developments in the global power structure and identifies the trends and events and changing relations between the Western powers and the Soviet Union, as well as the adjustment of the United States to its peacetime responsibilities. It is hard for me to imagine how, in such short broadcasts, he is able to explain and to project likely paths of future development. A look at the index to these lectures dis- closes the range of issues addressed—the economic and political future of Europe, disarmament and the control of nuclear weapons, the relations among the Great Powers, UKCommonwealthrelations,warcrimesandtheevolutionoftheCold War. Volume 2 starts with a series of broadcasts on decolonisation. There follow observations on selected countries and regions. Here we find a remarkable set of commentaries on events in individual nations, starting with countries in Europe and concluding with broadcasts on the Americas. I found particularly interesting his observations on the national leaders of the times—Churchill, Attlee, Stalin, Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-shek, the special importance of Australia’s Dr HV Evatt at the United Nations, as well as the contribution of Prime Minister Menzies. Nor does Stone ignore local issues such as the development of Australia’s own foreign and colonial policy, especially the increased importance of an independent Asian policy. Finally he offers us a relevant collection of his thoughts on the jurispru- dence of international relations, which demonstrate that he took his audience seriously.Assomeonewhohasspentmanyyearsintheinternationalarena,Ican only marvel at the breadth of his knowledge of the world both past and present, and the issues facing individual countries and regions. Ihavetocommentononemoreofhisobservations,madeinhisnexttolast talk in this decade, in which, before anyone else at that time, he addresses the rapidly growing populations in Asia, notably in India and China, and calls for a greater sense of equality between the self-important ‘white’ peoples and the ‘non- white’ peoples, for reasons both of equity (the sharing of resources) and of peace (to reduce the potential for conflict). Sadly he has not been with us during these recent decades to assist us in coming to terms with this transition. I was only 15 years old when Stone and his family embarked in 1948 for their voyage to the United States. When he returned, as we shall discover in subsequent volumes in this series, he was able to bring to his public fresh ideas based on his new experiences and his conversations with leaders and friends and colleagues of different nationalities and backgrounds. I was about to enter university at the time of his return, and I am forever grateful to him for the knowledge he conveyed, for the excitement he elicited, for the international outlook he projected, and for the sense of global participation he felt for himself and offered to his students and ra- dio audience. More than anyone else at that time, he gave Australians a feeling that they were part of the world and could, and should, seek to influence events. @333 /<</:;<8=;<:+53+(85=6/ Hecertainlychangedmylifeandaspirations...Icanneverthankhimenough. James D Wolfensohn AO, KBE New York, July 2014 @3> 8:/?8:. Nineteen forty-two was a dreadful year. Hitler had overrun all of Europe, his armies were deep in Russia. Japan controlled most of the Pacific, coming as close to Australia as New Guinea, its submarines shelling Sydney Harbour. To the small band of usfewer than 5000 in numberwho had arrived as refugees from Cen- tral Europe, Australia was a haven. Any prejudice we encountered, we felt, was directed more at our foreignness than our religion. If the only price to pay for safety from oppression was being called a ‘reffo’, one could live with that. At the timeithadnotyetbecomeapparentthatwehadbeengrantedrescuenotjustfrom oppression but from annihilation of an unprecedented scope. Australia appeared to be relatively free of the deep-seated European kind of anti-Semitismhadn’t Sir John Monash been AIF commander-in-chief and Sir Isaac Isaacs Governor-General? But then the Julius Stone affair hit the scene.