File No. 500.A2a/612a.
The Secretary of State to the President.
Washington, February 1, 1911.
To the President:
I have the honor to submit for transmission to the Senate, if deemed proper, an additional protocol to the convention concluded at The [Page 250] Hague on October 18, 1907, providing for an International Prize Court. This convention, together with other acts of the Second International Peace Conference, held at The Hague from June 15 to October 18, 1907, was transmitted to the Senate by the President on February 27, 1908.
Consideration of that convention has, however, been postponed by the Senate, because by the terms thereof the proposed International Prize Court would sit as a court of appeal, and might thus pass upon decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, which are final under the provisions of the Constitution of the United States.
The additional protocol, now submitted, was suggested by the original proposers of the International Prize Court Convention, in order to remove the constitutional objection to the approval of that convention, and thus to permit the ratification of the convention, as amended by the additional protocol. By virtue of the additional protocol the original question at issue, not the national judgment, may be submitted to the judgment of the International Prize Court. It is hoped that it will be found to have accomplished that purpose.
The additional protocol is to be signed by all the signatories of the International Prize Court Convention, and is to form an integral part of that convention. It has already been approved by 29 of the 33 signatories of the convention, and it is confidently expected that it will be accepted by all.
The Government of the Netherlands has expressed a desire that the convention and the additional protocol should be ratified by the powers, and their ratifications of both be deposited at The Hague in the month of February, 1911. It has, therefore, become advisable that, if possible, action should be taken by the Senate during its present session.
It will be recalled that the Government of Great Britain objected to Article VII of the International Prize Court Convention on the ground that the law to be administered by the proposed court, in accordance with the provisions of that article, was not sufficiently clear and definite, and that, in order to secure an agreement upon the most important principles of law to be administered by the court, under that article, the British Government proposed a conference of representatives of the leading maritime powers at London.
This conference met there on December 2, 1908, and drafted in the French language a declaration concerning the laws of naval warfare, generally known as the Declaration of London, which was signed on February 26, 1909.
This Government was represented at that conference, and its delegates signed the declaration, which was transmitted to the Senate by the President on April 21, 1909. It is recommended that consideration of the declaration be postponed until a uniform translation of the French text is agreed upon by the United States and Great Britain.
The adoption of the additional protocol is deemed necessary to enable this Government to ratify the convention, and the early and simultaneous consideration, therefore, of the original convention and the additional protocol would appear advisable.
I am fully persuaded, as was my predecessor in his report to the President of February 26, 1908, submitting the Prize Court Convention, that the establishment of the International Court of Prize and [Page 251] the services which it may be confidently expected to render in determining and safeguarding neutral rights in case of war will prove one “of the greatest advances made towards the reasonable and peaceful regulation of international conduct,” and will directly tend to diminish the probability of the extension of war to other powers than the belligerents already unhappily engaged therein.
Respectfully submitted.
- Charles’ Treaties, p. 262.↩