The Declaration of London
Sir,—It is satisfactory that so high an authority as Mr. Arthur Cohen distinctly accedes to the view that the Declaration of London ought not to be ratified as it stands. I should, however, be sorry were his suggestion accepted that the Declaration and the argumentative report which accompanies it might be ratified together. The result would be obscurum per obscurius, a remedy worse than the disease.
I shall ask leave to add that, if Mr. Cohen will take the trouble to look again at my letters of February 10 and 25, he will cease to suppose it possible that in writing “the pleadings are, I think, exhausted, &c.,” I meant to convey that no further discussion of the merits or demerits of the Declaration was required. On the contrary I expressly limited myself to a consideration of the preliminary question, whether interpretative authority would rightly be attributed to the report in question, stating that, while opposed to the ratification alike of the Prize Court Convention and of the Declaration, I did not, for the present, wish to enter upon the demerits of either instrument; and ended my first letter by suggesting the reference to a Royal Commission of “the vitally important questions of theory and practice raised by the Convention and the Declaration,” as needing “calmer and better instructed discussion than they have yet received.”
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. E. HOLLAND
Oxford, March 1 (1911).