to the proper rule to be applied in cases as to which
international law gives no guidance. In such cases the ultimate
adjustment of differences of view is the appropriate work, not of a law
Court, but of diplomacy.

It is hardly necessary to combat the notion that there already exists,
_in nubibus_, a complete system of prize law, which is in some
mysterious way accessible to Judges, and reveals to them the rule
applicable to each new case as it arises. This notion, so far as it is
prevalent, seems to have arisen from a mistaken reading of certain
_dicta_ of Lord Stowell, in which that great Judge, in his finest
eighteenth-century manner, insists that the law which it was his duty to
administer "has no locality" and "belongs to other nations as well as
our own." He was, of course, thinking of the rules of prize law upon
which the nations are agreed, not of the numerous questions upon which
no agreement exists, and was dealing with the difficult position of a
Judge who has to choose (as in the recent _Moray Firth_ case) between
obedience to such rules and obedience to the legislative, or
quasi-legislative, acts of his own Government.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. E. HOLLAND.
Eggishorn, Suisse, September 16 (1907).

A NEW PRIZE LAW

Sir,--The speech of the Prime Minister at the Guildhall contains a
paragraph which will be read with a sense of relief by those who, like
myself, have all along viewed with surprise and apprehension The Hague
proposals for an international prize Court.

Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman admits that "it is desirable, and it may be
essential, that, before legislation can be undertaken to make such a
Court effective, the leading maritime nations should come to an
agreement as to the rules regarding some of the more important subjects
of warfare which are to be administered by the Court"; and his
subsequent eulogy of the Court presupposes that it is provided with "a
body of rules which has received the sanction of the great maritime
Powers." What is said as to the necessary postponement of any
legislation in the sense of The Hague Convention must, of course, apply
_a fortiori_ to the ratification of the Convention.

We have here, for the first time, an authoritative repudiation of the
notion that fifteen gentlemen of mixed nationality composing an
international prize Court, are to be let loose to "make law," in
accordance with what may happen to be their conceptions of "justice and
equ