An article in the current number of the _Review of Reviews_, to which my attention has just been called, contains some extraordinary statements upon the topic under discussion. The uninformed public is assured that "we owe the Boers payment in full for all the devastation which we have inflicted upon their private property ... it is our plain legal obligation, from the point of view of international law, to pay it to the last farthing." Then The Hague Convention is invoked as permitting interference with private property "only on condition that it is paid for in cash by the conqueror, and, if that is not possible at the moment, he must in every case give a receipt, which he must discharge at the conclusion of hostilities." There is no such provision as to honouring receipts in this much-misquoted convention. Your obedient servant, T. E. HOLLAND. Oxford, July 30 (1962). * * * * * SECTION 12 _Enemy Property at Sea_ PRIVATE PROPERTY AT SEA Sir,--The letter which you print this morning from Mr. Charles Stewart can hardly be taken as a serious contribution to the discussion of a question which has occupied for many years the attention of politicians, international lawyers, shipowners, traders, and naval experts. Mr. Stewart actually thinks that Lord Sydenham's argument to the effect that "the fear of the severe economic strain which must result from the stoppage of a great commerce is a factor which makes for peace" may be fairly paraphrased as advice to "retain the practice because it is so barbarous that it will sicken the enemy of warfare." He goes on to say that this argument "would apply equally to the poisoning of wells and to the use of explosive bullets." It may be worth while to contrast with the attitude of a writer who seems unable to distinguish between economic pressure and physical cruelty that taken up by a competent body, the large majority of the members of which belong to nations which, for various reasons, incline to the abolition of the usage in question. The Institut de Droit International, encouraged by the weight attached to its _Manual of the Law of War on Land_ by the first and second Peace Conferences, has been, for some time past, working upon a _Manual of the Laws of War at Sea_. At its Christiania meeting in 1912 the Institut, while maintaining the previously expressed opinion of a majority of its members in favour of a change in the law, recognised that such a change has not yet come to pass, and that, till it occurs, regulations for the exercise of capture are indispensable, and directed the committee charged with the topic to draft rules presupposing the right of capture, and other rules to be applied should the right be hereafter surrendered (_Annuaire_, t. xxv., p. 602).