An assertion to this effect would obviously be the negation of the whole system of international law, of which Professor de Martens is so great a master, resting, as that system does, not on individual caprice, but upon the agreement of nations in restraint of the caprice of any one of them.
Holland argues that questioning a neutral country's decisions undermines international law.
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More from Thomas Erskine Holland
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.
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