PREFACE
I have attempted in this work to give a survey of the organ-
ization, function and jurisdiction of the Prize Courts during the
World War, to analyze the mass of prize jurisprudence, which
may be said to constitute the most important contribution of
the war to international law, to summarize and compare the
interpretation and the conclusions of the Prize Courts of the
different countries in which such tribunals were organized and
to point out the divergencies of opinion and doctrine which they
enunciated upon identical or similar questions.
The preliminary task of procuring the texts of the reported
decisions rendered by the Prize Courts was not an easy one, and
I have not entirely succeeded in performing it. Unfortunately,
in no one of the countries in which the prize jurisdiction was
organized does there appear to have been published a complete
official collection of the decisions rendered by its Prize Courts.
The collections that have been made and published are usually
unofficial in character, and with a few relatively unimportant ex-
ceptions, they are incomplete. In some countries no decisions at
all have been published; in others only those rendered by the
Courts of Appeal have been published in collected form; in others
they can only be found scattered through the files of the official
gazettes, and other government publications.
While the preparation of my treatise was well advanced there
appeared the scholarly work of Professor Verzijl of the Univer-
sity of Utrecht, entitled Le Droit des Prises de la Grande Guerre,
Jurisprudence de 191} et des Années Suivantes en Matiére de
Prises Maritimes, which has been of invaluable assistance to me.
I am glad to acknowledge my indebtedness to him, especially for
his classification of the cases and for the information which his
work contains regarding some of the decisions which I was
unable to procure.
I desire also to acknowledge my obligation to the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, which has done so much for
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