Thomas Erskine Holland: “What naval men most want is definite guidance, in categorical language, upon those points of maritime international law…”

The Declaration of London has, most fortunately, never been ratified by the Government of Great Britain.

The fact is that the vitally important questions of theory and practice raised by the Convention and the Declaration need calmer and better instructed discussion than they have yet received.

It would be calamitous should a practice be introduced of attempting to cure the imperfect expression of a treaty by tacking on to it an equally authoritative reasoned commentary, likely, as in the present case, to be enormously longer…

The elaborate classification of contraband had to be at once thrown overboard, and most of the remaining provisions of the Declaration proved to be inapplicable to modern warfare.