I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T. E. HOLLAND. Eggishorn, Suisse, August 26 (1904).
Sir,--In your St. Petersburg correspondence of yesterday I see that some reference is made to what I have had occasion to say from time to time upon the vexed question of the sinking of neutral vessels, and your Correspondent thinks it "would be decidedly interesting" to know whether I have really changed my opinion on the subject. Perhaps, therefore, I may be allowed to state that my opinion on the subject has suffered no change, and may be summarised as follows:--
1. There is no established rule of international law which absolutely forbids, under any circumstances, the sinking of a neutral prize. A _consensus gentium_ to this effect will hardly be alleged by those who are aware that such sinking is permitted by the most recent prize regulations of France, Russia, Japan, and the United States.
2. It is much to be desired that the practice should be, by future international agreement, absolutely forbidden--- that the lenity of British practice in this respect should become internationally obligatory.
3. In the meantime, to adopt the language of the French instructions, "On ne doit user de ce droit de destruction qu'avec plus la grande réserve"; and it may well be that any given set of instructions (e.g. the Russian) leaves on this point so large a discretion to commanders of cruisers as to constitute an intolerable grievance.
4. In any case, the owner of neutral property, not proved to be good prize, is entitled to the fullest compensation for his loss. In the language of Lord Stowell:--
"The destruction of the property may have been a meritorious act towards his own Government; but still the person to whom the property belongs must not be a sufferer ... if the captor has by the act of destruction conferred a benefit upon the public, he must look to his own Government for his indemnity."
It may be worth while to add that the published statements on the subject for which I am responsible are contained in the _Admiralty Manual of Prize Law_ of 1888 (where section 808 sets out the lenient British instructions to commanders, without any implication that instructions of a severer kind would have been inconsistent with international law); in letters which appeared in your columns on August 6, 17, and 30, 1904; and in a paper on "Neutral Duties in a Maritime War, as illustrated by recent events," read before the British Academy in April last, a French translation of which is in circulation on the Continent.