xviii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, 
manner in which Dr. Colombos deals with the subject, 
I do not think that the time is ripe for the question 
to be re-opened. After the experiences of the late war, 
in which it was found that most of the Hague Conventions 
and many of the provisions of the Declaration of London 
were impracticable, many States, and in particular Great 
Britain, will be slow to attach their signatures to similar 
attempts to lay down rigid rules. Dr. Colombos, in 
his chapter on ** Restrictions on the Right of Capture,” * 
shows the divergencies in the interpretation of the Sixth 
Hague Convention, 1907, relative to the status of enemy 
merchant ships at the outbreak of hostilities. The 
purpose of this Convention wholly failed of achievement $ 
and as a consequence either of the differences in the 
application, or of the non-application, of the provisions 
of the Convention, and of the fact that of the Powers 
who signed the Convention no less than seventeen failed 
to ratify it, the British Government, on December 14, 
1925, gave notice of denunciation.? The provisions of 
the Eleventh Hague Convention, 1907, relating to the 
position of mails on board enemy and neutral ships, failed 
to operate, and the work of the Hague Conference, as 
regards maritime International Law, was, on the whole, 
disappointing when put to the stern test of war. 
One striking feature of this book is that it brings 
out with clearness the fact which practitioners in the 
British Prize Court during the late war realised, as the 
war proceeded and the Declaration of London Orders in 
Council were withdrawn, that the fundamental principles 
of the Law of Nations, as administered by our Prize 
Courts, were fully sufficient to meet the modern develop- 
1 See Chapter iv. 
2 Parl. Papers, Misc. No. 19 (1925).