The result would be _obscurum per obscurius_, a remedy worse than the disease." The alternatives before Parliament on Monday next will be either, by reading the Naval Prize Bill a second time, to bring about, in the teeth of protests from those best qualified to express an independent opinion upon the subject, the immediate ratification of the Convention and the Declaration, or to ask that before, this momentous step is taken the infinitely complex and delicate questions involved should be examined and passed upon by a Commission of representative experts.

Which shall it be?
Your obedient servant, T.E.HOLLAND.
Oxford, July I (1911).
_Cf._ a letter of July 7, 1911, _supra_, p.

36.
NAVAL PRIZE MONEY Sir,--The existing enactments as to prize bounty are, it seems, unsuitable to present conditions of naval warfare, and are accordingly to be varied by a bill shortly to be introduced.
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 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 grace_ 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.