It is surely notorious that the delegates of a Power, by agreeing to the draft of a treaty, give to it no international validity, which results only when the treaty has been ratified by their Government.
Holland emphasizes that mere agreement by delegates does not confer international validity to treaties until ratified by their governments.
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It has long been a universally recognised custom of warfare that a flag of truce must not be fired on, and yet we have seen that rule violated on several occasions during the late war.
The only legitimate object which States should set before themselves during war is to weaken the military forces of the enemy.
States differ so widely in offensive power and vulnerability that it would be hardly advisable thus to fetter the liberty of action of a State which considers itself to have been injured.
If in our own day a law recognised by the civilised world forbids, in a general way, the soldier to make booty in warfare on land, we have here a great advance in civilisation, and the jurists have had their share in bringing it about.
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