Sir,--The Government has so far yielded to the representations of the Opposition as to have refrained from forcing on Friday night a division upon the Naval Prize Bill. Is it too much to hope that the Government may even now withdraw altogether a measure so ill adapted to place fairly before Parliament the question of the desirability of ratifying two documents held by a large body of competent opinion to be certain, if ratified, seriously to endanger the vital interests of the country? The Bill, as I have already pointed out, as originally drawn, was a careful consolidation of the law and procedure governing British Courts of Prize. Into this has now been incongruously thrust a set of clauses intended to give effect to a novel and highly controversial proposal for the creation of an International Prize Court. About the Declaration of London, alleged to contain a body of law which would adequately equip such a Court for the performance of its duties, not a word is said in the Bill; yet, should approval of the Bill be snatched by a purely party majority, the intention of the Government is to proceed straightway to the ratification both of the Prize Court Convention and the Declaration. Whether they intend also to endeavour to obtain the ratification, as an auxiliary Convention, of the lengthy covering commentary upon the Declaration, supplied by the committee by which the Declaration was drafted, does not yet appear. Of such a step I have already written that it "would be calamitous should a practice be introduced of attempting to cure the imperfect expression of a treaty by tacking on to it an equally authoritative reasoned commentary. The result would be _obscurum per obscurius_, a remedy worse than the disease." The alternatives before Parliament on Monday next will be either, by reading the Naval Prize Bill a second time, to bring about, in the teeth of protests from those best qualified to express an independent opinion upon the subject, the immediate ratification of the Convention and the Declaration, or to ask that before, this momentous step is taken the infinitely complex and delicate questions involved should be examined and passed upon by a Commission of representative experts. Which shall it be? Your obedient servant, T. E. HOLLAND. Oxford, July I (1911). _Cf._ a letter of July 7, 1911, _supra_, p. 36. NAVAL PRIZE MONEY Sir,--The existing enactments as to prize bounty are, it seems, unsuitable to present conditions of naval warfare, and are accordingly to be varied by a bill shortly to be introduced.