May I venture to recommend that the Bill should contain merely the half-dozen clauses needed for this purpose, leaving untouched for subsequent uncontroversial passage, the Naval Prize Consolidation with Amendments Bill? This Bill, suggested and drafted by myself, in the spacious times of peace, in consultation with the Admiralty and other Government Departments, as also with the Judge of the Admiralty Division and the Law Officers (including the present Lord Chancellor), was twice mentioned in the King's Speech, and several times, after careful consideration, passed by the House of Lords, but still awaits the leisure of [196]the Lower House. It deserved a better fate than to have been used, in 1911, as a corpus vile for facilitating the ratification of the Convention for an International Prize Court and of the Declaration of London; receiving, most fortunately, as so perverted, its coup de grâce from the Lords. It should be passed as an artistic whole, apart from any contentious matter, account having, of course, been taken of recent legislation by which it may have been, here and there, affected.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. E. HOLLAND
Oxford, May 23 (1918).
SECTION 10
The Declaration of London
For incidental mentions of the Declaration in earlier sections see supra, pp. [22], [36], [39], [55], [58], [80], [90], [92], [148], [154], [155], [156], [158], [163], [164], [174], [181], [191], [193], [194], [195], [196].
See also my paper upon Proposed Changes in the Law of Naval Prize, read to the British Academy on May 31, 1911, Transactions, vol. v., of which a translation appeared in the Revue de Droit International, N.S., t. xiii, pp. 336-355.