Mr. PEELasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs why is there not included in the Second Peace Conference (Conventions) Bill a schedule setting forth the various unnamed conventions to which it refers; and why has a different course been pursued in this Bill from that pursued in the Naval Prize Bill, in which the Convention to which it refers was included as a schedule?
§ The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir E. Grey)It would not be convenient to the House to annex in a schedule to a Bill of six Clauses Conventions which would probably occupy fifty pages of print, and which have already been laid before the House in Cd. 4175 (Miscellaneous, No. 6, 1908). The titles of the Conventions to which the preamble of the Bill relates are the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, the Convention respecting the rights and duties of Neutral Powers and persons in war on land, the Convention for the adaptation of the principles of the Geneva Convention to maritime war, the Convention relative to the establishment of an International Prize Court, and the Convention respecting the rights and duties of Neutral Powers in maritime war. Legislation is required only in respect of some of the Articles of these various Conventions, and those not the most important; but it would not be feasible to schedule isolated Articles, because they would not be intelligible without the context. There was no inconvenience in scheduling the Prize Court Convention to the Naval Prize Bill, and it was therefore thought desirable to do so.