For more than a year the hubbub against it filled the daily press, the magazines, the two Houses of Parliament and the hustings; Rudyard Kipling even wrote a poem denouncing it.

The adoption of the Declaration, these critics asserted, would destroy the usefulness of the British fleet.

In many quarters it was denounced as a German plot--as merely a part of the preparations which Germany was making for world conquest.

The fact is that the Declaration could not successfully stand the analysis to which it was now mercilessly submitted; the House of Lords rejected it, and this action met with more approbation than had for years been accorded the legislative pronouncements of that chamber.

The Liberal House of Commons was not in the least dissatisfied with this conclusion, for it realized that it had made a mistake and it was only too happy to be permitted to forget it.
When the war broke out there was therefore no single aspect of maritime law which was quite so odious as the Declaration of London.