for the
purpose of learning the language of the country. Several persons
replied offering to take the children, and he wrote to each of them
accepting their offer, and stating that the luggage had already been
sent on. He followed this by another letter purporting to come from a
firm of railway carriers, saying that they had been instructed to
forward certain trunks, and would do so on the receipt of their fees in
advance. He arranged for the replies to these letters to be sent to
five or six different newsagents' shops in various parts of London, and
each place brought him in an average of about L10. The prisoner, on
oath, now said that he was a British subject, and Mr Lewis asked the
magistrate to say that this was not a case in which he ought to
surrender the prisoner to a foreign Power. The magistrate said that
with regard to the point raised as to the accused's being a British
subject, the article in the Treaty with Belgium dealing with that
matter said that 'in no case or on any consideration whatever shall the
high contracting parties be bound to surrender their own subjects
whether by birth or naturalization.' It had been held that such
provision implied that the high contracting parties might surrender
their own subjects, and that such surrender must be left to the
discretion of the Secretary of State. He ordered the prisoner to be
committed for extradition, and it would be for the Home Secretary to
decide whether it was a case in which he ought not to sanction the
surrender."

55. _The Case of the "Oldhamia."_

The following appeared in the _Times_ of Dec. 14th, 1908, dated St
Petersburg, Dec. 13th:

"The Admiralty Appeal Court yesterday confirmed the judgment of the
Libau Prize Court justifying the capture and destruction of the British
steamer _Oldhamia_, bound fur Hong-kong with American oil. She was
taken by the cruiser _Oleg_ of Admiral Rozhdestvensky's fleet off
Formosa on the night of May 18, 1905, and a fortnight later, while
proceeding to Vladivostok, struck on the Kurile reef and was burned by
the prize crew to prevent her from falling into the hands of the
Japanese. The Court disallowed a claim for damages by the captain and
crew for the loss of their personal effects on the formal grounds that
the claim had not been presented at the first hearing of the case. It
allowed a claim of the Standard Oil Company to recover the cost of 200
empty kerosene cases. It confirmed the Libau verdict disallow