er State thereby
wrongfully affected.

The so-called "private international law," better described as "the
conflict of laws," deals, in reality, with the rules which the Courts of
each country apply, apart from any international obligation, to the
solution of questions, usually between private litigants, in which doubt
may arise as to the national law by which a given transaction ought to
be governed--e.g. with reference to a contract made in France, but to
be performed in England. There is here a "conflict," or "collision," of
laws, and it is decided in accordance with rules adopted in the country
in which the litigation occurs. These rules have no "international"
validity, and the term is applied to them, merely in a popular way, to
indicate that a Court may have in some cases to apply the law of a
country other than that in which it is sitting. The unfortunate
opposition of "public" to "private" international law has to answer for
much confusion of thought. "International law," properly so called, has,
of course, no need to be described as "public" to distinguish it from
rules for solving the "conflicts" of private laws, which are
"international" rules only in the sense that laws are sometimes applied
in countries other than those in which they are primarily binding.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. E. HOLLAND.
Oxford, December 19 (1918).

NOTES
- 1: Writer's names are omitted as immaterial.
- 2: _Infra_, p. 70.

A full discussion of the topics dealt with in the last
paragraph of this letter may be found in my _Elements of
Jurisprudence_, edit. xii., pp. 409-425. A translation, by
Professor Nys, of the chapter in which those pages occur, as it
stood in edit. i., appeared in the _Revue de Droit
International_, t. xii., pp. 565, &c.

CHAPTER IV

CONVENTIONS AND LEGISLATION

Not a few International Conventions necessitate, before they
can be ratified, in order that their provisions may be carried
into effect, a certain amount of municipal legislation.

The letters which follow are concerned with some measures
introduced into the British Parliament for this purpose,
relating respectively to Naval Prize, to the Geneva Convention
of 1906, and to Conventions signed at The Hague Peace
Conference of 1907. It is with criticisms of Bills dealing with
the last-mentioned topic that this chapter is mainly occupied.

GOVERNMENT BILLS AND I