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quantities of dyestuffs remained undelivered. It was held on alternative grounds of the further performance of the contracts being prohibited by trading with the enemy legislation and illegality, and that being made on the basis that existing commercial conditions would continue which had become impossible, the comercial objects of the contracts had been frustrated and the contracts had been dissolved. It was stated arguendo by Sir Douglas Hogg, as he then was, that a contract between someone having an enemy character and a British subject was determined ipso facto when war broke out, and it is within my knowledge that eminent Counsel have advised since the commencement of the present war that this principle applies where enemy character attaches under the Trading with the hemy Act, which is in its definitions of enemy character wider than the Common Law.
I judge fran paragraph 3 of your letter that you are principally concerned with the legal position of a United Kingdom company or firm towards one of its employees who was in its service in territory now in Japanese occupation, and that the contracts to which your letter refers are contracts of employment. A contract
is held to be dissolved where it provides for something which at the date of the contract was lawful and before the time of performance becomes unlawful. I have not to hand an adequate law library but I conceive that this principle applies where one of the parties to the contract is required to be ready and able at all times to perform his part, and if he is prevented by force majeure, such as interment or its equivalent restriction of liberty, the other party is absolved. In the case of embodied volunteers one would have, I think, to look at the Hong Kong ordinances under which they were embodied since it may be expressly provided that there should be some compensation which would take the place of the contractual rights of the volunteer, if any.
The
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