It is much to be desired that the practice should be, by future international agreement, absolutely forbidden--- that the lenity of British practice in this respect should become internationally obligatory.
3.

In the meantime, to adopt the language of the French instructions, "On ne doit user de ce droit de destruction qu'avec plus la grande reserve"; and it may well be that any given set of instructions (e.g.
the Russian) leaves on this point so large a discretion to commanders of cruisers as to constitute an intolerable grievance.
4.

In any case, the owner of neutral property, not proved to be good prize, is entitled to the fullest compensation for his loss.

In the language of Lord Stowell:-- "The destruction of the property may have been a meritorious act towards his own Government; but still the person to whom the property belongs must not be a sufferer ...

if the captor has by the act of destruction conferred a benefit upon the public, he must look to his own Government for his indemnity." It may be worth while to add that the published statements on the subject for which I am responsible are contained in the _Admiralty Manual of Prize Law_ of 1888 (where section 808 sets out the lenient British instructions to commanders, without any implication that instructions of a severer kind would have been inconsistent with international law); in letters which appeared in your columns on August 6, 17, and 30, 1904; and in a paper on "Neutral Duties in a Maritime War, as illustrated by recent events," read before the British Academy in April last, a French translation of which is in circulation on the Continent.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T.E.HOLLAND.
Temple, June 29 (1905).
The Russian circular of April 3, 1906, inviting the Powers to a second Peace Conference, included amongst the topics for discussion: "Destruction par force majeure des batiments de commerce neutres arretes comme prises," and the British delegates were instructed to urge the acceptance of what their Government had maintained to be the existing rule on the subject.