That search for contraband of war can ever be suppressed I do not believe, and fear that it may be many years before divergent national interests can be so far reconciled as to secure an agreement as to the list of contraband articles.
He expresses skepticism about the possibility of suppressing contraband searches, indicating the challenges of reconciling national interests.
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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.
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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…
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