THE GREEN BAG ment of neutral or enemy ownership; as also her attempt to persuade the powers to condemn unreservedly the sinking of a neutral prize. "III. Honest spade-work, presenting no serious difficulty, has been done for the im provement in details of the three conventions of 1899, relating to the peaceful settlement of disputes; to war on land; and to the applica tion to maritime warfare of the principles of Geneva. Under this heading may also be placed the new convention as to the rights and duties of neutrals in land warfare; the renewal for a limited period of the first of the Hague Declarations of 1899, relating to the use of balloons; and the accession of prac tically all the powers, including for the first time Great Britain, to this, as well as to the second and third of those declarations, dealing with expanding bullets and with asphyxiating gases, respectively. "IV. Useful new matter, coupled some times with a codification of customary rules, is contained in conventions as to: (i) the treatment of defaulting governments (but the ' Drago doctrine ' is not fully accepted); (a) the declaration of war (no provision is, how ever made for an interval to precede the first blow); (3) bombardment of undefended coast towns (a condemnation of the naval man oeuvres of 1888); (4) certain restrictions, al ready more or less customary, as to captures of ships and treatment of their crews; (5) vague provisions of the same character, as to indulgence to enemy ships at the outbreak of war; (6) neutral rights and duties in a maritime war (a codification of certain widely accepted rules, much weakened by exceptions in favour of divergent national practice). "V. Agreements are entered into as to (i) the transformation of private vessels into ships of war, and (2) submarine mines; but their utility is much impaired by the refusal of some powers to consent to certain restrictions upon their freedom of action in these matters. "VI. A convention for the establishment of a second Hague Tribunal was drafted, but not signed, in consequence of disagreement among the powers as to the appointment of the judges of the court. It is, however, recommended for adoption, if, and when, that disagreement shall have ceased. "VII. An elaborate convention, in fifty-
seven articles, for the establishment of an International Court of Appeal in Prize cases — the credit or discredit of which must be shared between Great Britain and Germany — was voted by a majority of thirty-seven to one, with six abstentions, and some reserva tions, and has been claimed as the most re markable result of the conference. The claim might be sustained were there any prospect that the convention will be ratified. As it stands, it contains within itself the seeds of mortality, in the article which provides that, where international law is silent, the court is to decide ' in accordance with the general principles of justice and equity.' On the objectionable character of such a provision, as at once ambiguous, and empowering a court, in which foreigners would be in a ma jority of eight to one, to adopt the continental rather than the British view on unsettled questions of prize law, the present writer does not here propose to add anything to what he has written elsewhere, both before and after the meeting of the conference. "VIII. The delegates finally recommend that the second peace conference should be followed, at an interval of seven years or so, by a third. They insist upon the need of a carefully prepared programme of work for the new conference; and they suggest, as well they may, in view of their action in the mat ter of an International Prize Court, that a prominent place in that programme should be given to a codification of the laws and cus toms of war at sea." "The Second Peace Conference, II," by A. H. Charteris, The Juridical Review (V. xix, p. 347). Conclusion of an article, the first in stallment of which was noticed in the January GREEN BAG. "The Work of the Second Hague Confer ence," by W. F. Dodd, Michigan Law Review (V. vi, p. 294). "The Development of International Law by the Second Hague Conference," by Edward G. Elliott, Columbia Law Review (V. viii, p. 96). "Latin America at the Hague Conference," by A. G. de Lapradelle and Ellery C. Stowell, Yale Law Journal (V. xvii, p. 270). HISTORY. " Research into Laws, Caste, and Customs," by " S," Bombay Law Re porter (V. ix, p. 337).
