e _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. The Conference of 1907 declined, however, to define
existing law, holding that its business was solely to consider
what should be the law in future. After long discussions, in
the course of which frequent reference was made to views
expressed by the present writer (see _Actes et Documents_, t.
iii. pp. 991-993, 1010, 1016, 1018, 1048, 1171), the Conference
failed to arrive at any conclusion as to the desirability of
prohibiting the destruction of neutral prizes, and confined
itself to the expression of a wish (_voeu_) that this, and
other unsettled points in the law of naval warfare, should be
dealt with by a subsequent Conference.

This question was, accordingly, one of those submitted to a
Conference of ten maritime Powers, which was convoked by Great
Britain in 1908, for reasons upon which something will be said
in the next section.

The question of sinking was fully debated in this Conference,
with the assistance of memoranda, in which the several Powers
represented explained their divergent views upon it, and of
reports prepared by committees specially appointed for the
purpose. It soon became apparent that the British proposal for
an absolute prohibition of the destruction of neutral prizes
had no chance of being accepted; while, on the other hand, it
was generally agreed that the practice is permissible only in
exceptional cases. (See _Parl. Paper, Miscell._