There has also been, even in very responsible quarters, some rather confused talk to the effect that the result of the contraband Proclamation is to ‘improve our international legal position.’ If this means anything it implies acquiescence in the American argument that the Order in Council is not warranted by international law. Such an argument, as I have already said, is more than inopportune at the present time; those who use it would, I presume, be pleased to see the Order in Council revoked altogether. I trust, on the other hand, that nothing that I have said will be construed to suggest that the Government in yielding to the clamour of the critics has issued a futile Proclamation. Yet it is impossible to imagine that Ministers have lost faith in the virtue and efficacy of the Order in Council. The latest statement in Parliament, by Lord Robert Cecil, which I have already referred to, shows that they have not. The Proclamation does, as I have shown, strengthen the position in some slight measure; but there is a well-known form of legislation often resorted to ‘for the quieting of doubts,’ which does not give away the situation. Such I believe this Proclamation to be. But for the sake of the science of international law, in the preservation of which both the British and the American Governments are profoundly interested: for the sake of that cardinal principle that as weapons of war increase in their power of destruction so must the belligerent might and right also increase, and new means must be found for keeping the new manifestations of sea-power within the old principles: for the sake of our duty of loyal belief that the Order in Council has devised those means in most legitimate fashion, let not the critics of the Government, learned or unlearned though they be, lay the flattering unction to their souls that they have won a famous victory. * * * * *