Thomas Erskine Holland: “The result would be obscurum per obscurius, a remedy worse than the disease.”

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 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.

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.

Ought they not to be referred to a Royal Commission, on which should be placed representatives of the Navy and Merchant Service, of the corn trade, and of the Colonies, together with international lawyers, in touch with the views of their…