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 INTERNATIONAL CONVENTIONS Sir,--You have already allowed me to point out how singularly ill-adapted is the resuscitated "Naval Prize Consolidation Bill"[1] to inform Parliament upon the highly technical points as to which a vote in favour of the Bill might be supposed to imply approval of the Government policy. Two other Bills have now been presented to the House of Commons in such a shape as to raise a doubt whether the wish of the Government, or of the draftsman, has been that the topics to which they relate shall be discussed _en pleine connaissance de cause_.