caractere neutre du batiment de commerce." Does this mean
that the visiting officer, as soon as he has ascertained from the ship's
papers that she is neutral property, is to make his bow and return to
the cruiser whence he came? If so, what has become of our existing right
to detain any vessel which has sailed for a blockaded port, or is
carrying, as a commercial venture, or even ignorantly, hostile troops or
despatches? No such definition as is proposed of an "auxiliary
ship-of-war" would safeguard the right in question, since a ship, to
come within that definition, must, it appears, be under the orders of a
belligerent fleet.

I would venture to suggest that the motto of a reformer of prize law
should be _festina lente._ The existing system is the fruit of practical
experience extending over several centuries, and, though it may need,
here and there, some readjustment to new conditions, brought about by
the substitution of steam for sails, is not one which can safely be
pulled to pieces in a couple of months. Let us leave something for
future Hague Conferences.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. E. HOLLAND.
Oxford, July 24 (1907).

A NEW PRIZE LAW

Sir,--In a letter under the above heading, for which you were so good as
to find room in July last, I returned to the thesis which I had ventured
to maintain some months previously, _a propos_ of a question put in the
House of Commons. My contention was that the establishment of an
international prize Court, assuming it to be under any circumstances
desirable, should follow, not precede, a general international agreement
as to the law which the Court is to administer.

It would appear, from such imperfect information as intermittently
reaches Swiss mountain hotels, that a conviction of the truth of this
proposition is at length making way among the delegates to The Hague
Conference and among observers of its doings. In a recent number of the
_Courrier de la Conference_, a publication which cannot be accused of
lukewarmness in the advocacy of proposals for the peaceful settlement of
international differences, I find an article entitled "Pas de Code
Naval, pas de Cour des Prises," to the effect that "l'acceptation de la
Cour des Prises est strictement conditionnelle a la redaction du Code,
qu'elle aura a interpreter." Its decisions must otherwise be founded
upon the opinions of its Judges, "the majority of whom will belong to a
school which has never accepted what