42. In contrast to the rules of the Peace Conferences, a really notable and exemplary preparation took place in connexion with the Declaration of London, and the befitting result was a law excellent alike in matter and in form. England, the state which summoned the Naval Conference of London, made a collection of the topics which would arise, and communicated it to the states attending the Conference with the request that they would send in full statements on the subjects mentioned. After the answers to this request had come in they were collated with regard to each of the points on which discussion would arise, and _bases de discussion_ were elaborated which made a thorough examination of each point possible at the Conference. By this means it was at once made clear when the different states were in accord and when not. The door to compromise was opened. And apart from a few vexed questions an agreement was in this way successfully reached with regard to a comprehensive law resting at every point on exhaustive deliberation. [Sidenote: The preparation of the Declaration a pattern for future international legislation.] 43. This model method must be the method of the future. If, as indicated in §26 above, Art. 5, a permanent commission for the preparation of the Peace Conferences be successfully inaugurated, it will be its task to make preliminary preparations for the legislative activity of the Conferences in the manner just sketched out, and chance will no longer have the same part to play as heretofore. International legislation will no longer produce anything so full of gaps as the 'Regulations respecting the laws of land warfare', which leave essential matters--for instance, capitulations and armistices--without any adequate regulation. [Sidenote: Intentionally incomplete and fragmentary laws.] 44. Of course, where the interests of different states are still involved in some uncertainty, or are in such antagonism that a complete agreement is impossible, even the fullest preparation and most painstaking deliberation will not procure a more satisfactory treatment for many matters than that the legislation which regulates them should be (so to say) only experimental and intentionally incomplete and fragmentary in character. Thus, for example, the Conventions about the conversion of merchantmen into men-of-war and about the use of mines in naval war can only be considered as legislative experiments, regulating these matters merely temporarily and in an incomplete and unsatisfactory manner. But even conventions which designedly are full of lacunae have their value. They embody all the same an agreement upon some important parts of the respective topics, and provide a regulation which in every case is better than the chaos previously prevailing in the areas in question. They also constitute a firm nucleus round which either custom or future legislation can develop further regulation. [Sidenote: Interpretation of international statutes.]