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INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 
Professor A. PEARCE HIGGINS, C.B.E., K.C., LL.D. 
(Whewell Professor of International Law, Cambridge; Membre 
de Institut de Droit International.) 
I ave much pleasure in complying with the request of 
Dr. Colombos to write an Introductory Chapter to his 
Treatise on the Law of Prize. Dr. Colombos began his 
researches, which have resulted in this book, when he 
was studying International Law under my direction at 
the London School of Economics and Political Science. 
His first intention was to limit his work to the applica- 
tion of Prize Law to British Prize Courts, and this is 
the main basis of the text. He has, however, gone much 
further, and has taken a complete survey of the working 
of the Prize Courts in all the belligerent countries, with 
the exception of Turkey, during the War of 1914—18. 
His plan is to state the law as understood in Great 
Britain and the United States in 1914, and then to 
examine, under the various appropriate headings of the 
matters dealt with in Prize Courts, the judgments 
delivered in the Prize Courts of the British Empire. He 
then appends in slightly smaller type the decisions of 
the Prize Courts of France, Germany, Italy, Austria- 
Hungary, Russia, Japan, China, Belgium, Portugal, 
Roumania, and Siam. The Prize Courts of the United 
States did not sit during the War; the large number of 
enemy merchant ships lying in American waters when 
she entered the War were taken over by legislative and 
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