The purpose of the Declaration of London (itself the subject of much difference of opinion) was to curtail this licence of decision, by providing the Court with so much ascertained Prize Law as to render action under the too-elastic phrase above quoted almost inconceivable.
Is it too much of a counsel of perfection to suggest that the debatable questions arising under the Convention of 1907 and the Declaration of 1909 should first be threshed out in discussions on a Bill dealing with those questions only; and that the decision, if any, thus arrived at should be subsequently inserted, freed from hypothesis, in the Consolidation Bill which has so long awaited the leisure of the House of Commons?
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T.E.HOLLAND.
Oxford, July 10 (1910).
THE NAVAL PRIZE BILL Sir,--The Government has so far yielded to the representations of the Opposition as to have refrained from forcing on Friday night a division upon the Naval Prize Bill.

Is it too much to hope that the Government may even now withdraw altogether a measure so ill adapted to place fairly before Parliament the question of the desirability of ratifying two documents held by a large body of competent opinion to be certain, if ratified, seriously to endanger the vital interests of the country?
The Bill, as I have already pointed out, as originally drawn, was a careful consolidation of the law and procedure governing British Courts of Prize.

Into this has now been incongruously thrust a set of clauses intended to give effect to a novel and highly controversial proposal for the creation of an International Prize Court.

About the Declaration of London, alleged to contain a body of law which would adequately equip such a Court for the performance of its duties, not a word is said in the Bill; yet, should approval of the Bill be snatched by a purely party majority, the intention of the Government is to proceed straightway to the ratification both of the Prize Court Convention and the Declaration.
Whether they intend also to endeavour to obtain the ratification, as an auxiliary Convention, of the lengthy covering commentary upon the Declaration, supplied by the committee by which the Declaration was drafted, does not yet appear.

Of such a step I have already written that 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.