[‘Our Government will stand in a sad position amongst the nations’: Sir Edward Fry on non-ratification of the London Declaration concerning the Laws of Naval War.] Autograph Letter Signed to W. H. Dickinson, on the ‘disgrace’ that would result.

See Fry’s entry in the Oxford DNB. Dickinson was an influential proponent of the League of Nations. The present item concerns the London Declaration concerning the Laws of Naval War, an international code of maritime law, following on from the second Hague Conference. Great Britain, as the world’s chief naval power, had felt that such a court should be governed by defined principles, and had convened an international concerence in London in 1908. The Declaration that was issued three years later comprised 71 articles. 3pp, 12mo. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once. Signed ‘Edw: Fry’, and addressed to ‘W. H. Dickinson Esq MP’. He begins by expressing a willingness to ‘join the General Com[mitt]ee to promote the ratification of the Declaration of London’, feeling that ‘if both it & the Convention for the prize Court be not satisfied, our Governt. will stand in a sad position amongst the nations. We proposed the International Court at the Hague, we carried it through, we called the Conference of London, we got what we were contented with - & if now we withdraw, who will take the trouble to negociate with us?’ Were Britain’s ‘food supply’ being ‘placed in peril’, then of course ‘we would withdraw & accept our disgrace - but I do not think that this is so’.