What then is left if the Declaration of London is not accepted? Is there
to be no law of the sea at all? What is left is exactly all that there
was before the sittings of that Conference, plus a certain extra
lucidity in places due to its reports. The British courts simply
continue to administer international law on the basis of precedent
adapted to new conditions, exactly as all powers in the world have done.
This offends Mr. Bullard, but I find it difficult to make out what other
course he would recommend.
To establish an international court _ad hoc_, in the middle of the war,
and ask it to settle the new questions as they arise? To submit all
cases to the neutral powers, with all the small European neutrals
terrified of offending their big military neighbours? Refer all
questions to the United States alone? Call another conference to revise
the Declaration of London, and keep all prizes waiting till it reported?
I doubt if any of these courses would please many people. There may be
some course which would have been better than the normal one, but it
certainly is not obvious to the ordinary eye. And it seems a little hard
to denounce the British Government as lawless tyrants, justly hated by
the world, because they do not pursue a better method of settling prize
cases than any one has yet practised, or perhaps even devised.