PRIZE COURT PROCEDURE 119 
require.’ Under the new rules therefore any evidence, either by 
affidavit of witnesses given viva voce or documentary, which is 
material to the issue is admissible.2 
It is of course within the discretion of The Court to allow or 
refuse an application on the part of claimants for further proof, 
and, if it is allowed, to determine whether the captor shall be 
permitted to file counter evidence. Thus in the case of the Leda ® 
where an order for further proof was made to permit the claim- 
ants to establish that they were the beneficial owners of the 
vessel, we read: 
“The Court declined to order further proof on the ground that whether 
his ship, built in Germany, with a German register, registered in the name 
f a German company, carrying on business in Germany, with German ship 
apers, commanded by a German master, manned for the most part by 
Germans, flying the German flag, could be considered anything else but 
a German ship, even if the entire stock of such a German ganna be 
longed to individuals or to a companv of a neutral State ” 
In the case of the Edna* the Judicial Committee adverting 
to the fact that orders for further proof were much less common 
in earlier times than todav, said: 
“It is true that it was not the practice to exercise that discretion in 
favour of such an order under the circumstances prevailing in the wars at 
the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The 
* British Memorandum of April, 1915, ibid., p. 125. The new rule is 
found in Order XV of the Prize Court Rules of 1914 which provides that 
a cause for condemnation shall be heard upon the affidavit and the ship’s 
papers, if any, or upon the affidavits of the officers of the ship making the 
capture, upon the depositions of the witnesses, if any, and upon “such other 
evidence, if any, as may be admitted by the judge.” The Judicial Commit- 
tee in the case of the Ophelia (II Br. & Col. Pr. Cas. at p. 172) pointed out 
that the abolition of the preliminary hearing sometimes resulted in preju- 
dice to the Crown and operated to the benefit of the claimant. On this point 
Sir Arthur Channell said: 
“In considering these authorities, it is necessary to recollect that the 
procedure in the Prize Court has been very substantially altered by the new 
rules abolishing the preliminary hearing. The alterations in modes of 
doing business in modern times may have made this preliminary hearing 
not quite so useful as it was formerly, and some modification of procedure 
may have been desirable; but the total abolition of a preliminary hearing 
seems to their Lordships, as has been remarked during the argument of 
this and other cases before this Board recently, to operate occasionally 
against the interests of the Crown. Certainly the procedure in the present 
case has given an advantage to the claimant which he would not have had 
under the old procedure.” 
* See Roscoe, “Prize Court Procedure,” Brit. Yr. Book of Int. Law, 1921- 
22, p. 94, who defends the new procedure as “clearly in consonance with 
the general trend of change throughout the whole English law” and in 
accordance with modern conditions. Compare also the opinion of Sir 
Erle Richards, quoted above (Sec. 86), and Colombos. op. cit., p. 314. 
*1 Br. & Col. Pr. Cas. 238. 
‘TII, ibid... at p. 942.