ship (except for resistance to visit). Evidently, neutral trade was now in a parlous case. And all this time the absolute immunity of the enemy's own goods on board a neutral carrier was loudly proclaimed as an axiom of international intercourse! The force of folly could no further go. The war of 1914 saw the new pretensions uncountered and even approved. The Naval Conference of London had discussed and regulated them. It had even given an implicit sanction to the belligerent claim to strew the high seas with engines of destruction. The weaker Powers had been excluded from that august discussion, in which the only thing which counted was military force. Holland and Spain were there, indeed, but they did not count. How the claim to appropriate the high seas as a mine-field has led to the claim to appropriate them as a "military zone" into which the neutral ship ventures at its peril: how the claim to capture grain and ore as contraband has developed into the claim to exclude all trade with an enemy according to the practice of the sixteenth century, all this is fresh in the recollection of our readers. The old questions of 1793 and 1807 are revived almost in their original form.2 The enormities (and they are many) of Germany are recounted to justify retaliation upon America, Spain and Sweden. A freedom from judicial subtleties is claimed which might have satisfied Brennus or Lynch, FouquierTinville or Bethmann-Hollweg. "Hard cases make bad law." The natural sympathy for the Allies, contending for all that peaceable countries and small countries and free countries hold sacred, will be misplaced if it ends in handing over the high seas as the sole preserve of belligerents. We are told, indeed, that the new conditions of commerce render imperative an abandonment of the old and established rules. It may be so. If it be so, the change must be accepted by all, and not dictated by a few. It must be so definite and obvious as to be accepted by common good sense. But no such general acceptance can 2 The reader of modern debates on "Tightening the Blockade" will be amused to read in Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates, the speeches of 4 February, 1807 which afford an exact parallel to them of today. (Vol. 8, col. 620.) See also the debates of 1808-9, s. v. "Orders in Council," ibid., Vols. 9, 10, 11, 12. even be thought to exist in favor of the abandonment of the ancient principles of prize law, which the powerful nations would be, and are, the first to maintain against small warring communities. And the fact is, that no revolution is required. The stock allegation is that neutral trade must be attacked because railway transport is so swift and easy. The statement will not bear examination. Railway lines, especially in war time, are apt to become congested. Much of the delay of transport is involved in loading and unloading at terminals, and in the delay of waiting for dispatch. Railways are not a magician's rod. On the other hand, the modern belligerent is provided by science with a far more effective means of interrupting commerce than the frigate or brig which was equally dependent with her prey on the wind and the weather. The modern cruiser can overhaul anything. Thus the neutral is subject to a control of a stringency of which the casual eighteenth and early nineteenth century knew nothing. According to the Naval Annual, Great Britain possessed in 1914 some 118 effective cruisers (besides torpedo boat destroyers, ocean-going and other, over 200 in number), none of which fell below 19 knots in speed. Sixteen were of 29 knots. Four were of 26 knots. Twenty-four were of 25 knots. Four were of 24 knots. Eighteen were of 23 knots. Twelve were of 22 knots. Five were of 21 knots. Sixteen were of 20 knots. Nineteen were of 19 knots: 118 in all. Whilst of the world's oceanic shipping, setting aside some 23 "fliers" of 20 knots and over, it may roughly be said that 20,000 vessels are of 10 knots and under, 2,000 of from 10 to 12 knots, 200 of from 12 to 19 knots, and 20 of 19 knots. It is a mistake to suppose the ordinary passenger and cargo liner to the East or to South America to be comparable in speed to the few exceptionally fast boats which ply between Europe and New York. A speed of 15-17 knots is common and sufficient. There is therefore scarcely any merchantman which is not at the mercy of any cruiser: and none which is not at the mercy of many. Because a new weapon, like the submarine, is invented which cannot be used as effectively as it otherwise might without disregarding the accepted rules of law-that is not a reason for discarding those rules. It is a reason for discarding the weapon. No passing advantage can compare with the danger of encouraging the idea that the law of nations is a toy blown about by every blast of circumstance. What is really a novel development, explaining (if it is far from justifying) the extraordinary latitude which belligerents are assuming, is the recognition that has been accorded to the shocking practice of minelaying on the high seas. By a cool process of assertion the military Powers invested this abominable outrage on humanity with a color of legality. When once it was recognized that the open sea could be mined, the appropriation of the open sea-the highway of neutrals—as a monopoly of combatants was sure to follow. It is impossible to allow waters to be denied to the British fleet. If they are mined by an enemy, they must be cleared. And in bringing to bear the necessary powers of clearance, there is a great temptation, to say the least, to protect the operations by counter-mine, and to exclude neutrals from the wide areas of water affected. The idea of a "zone of operations" apparently took its rise in a phrase of Lord Lansdowne, uttered in relation to a different subject. Interference with British commerce during the Russo-Japanese War might, he suggested, be fairly restricted to the "zone of operations" in the Far East. Russia, it will be remembered, had seized the Malacca in the Red Sea: and it was desired to place some limitation on the recurrence of these incidents. The suggestion of a limited zone for the exercise of war rights, though received with much favor in the uninstructed press, the Russian declined with thanks: and it is obvious that no belligerent will resign the right to stop illicit trade at its source. But the conception of a "military zone" seems to have appealed to those responsible for the conduct of naval operations. Without acknowledgments to Lord Lansdowne, the principle was utilized to cover a declaration warning neutral vessels against cruising, in order to obtain information, in the zone of hostilities. Now a vessel which cruises about in order to obtain information to assist the enemy is doing a hostile thing, and is clearly liable to be dealt with as an enemy ship. But a neutral which chooses to visit the scene of hostilities for her own purposes-whether they be to obtain information for the neutral public, or for the gratification of private curiosity, is using her strict rights. She is on her own ground, and no admiral has any right to treat her people as spies or to exercise any authority over her, other than to send her in for adjudication in a proper case of grave suspicion of enemy control. The vague suggestion, for which Lord Lansdowne was thus, it would seem, responsible, of a "zone of operations," in which the normal rights of neutrals are in a greater or less degree superseded by the dictation of belligerents, was a novelty. No such idea was known to the nineteenth century. Throughout its course, the seas were free to all. It was reserved for the twentieth, in its humanitarian fervor of progressiveness, to concede to a combatant that he might exercise dominion over the high seas. The creation of "a military zone" in the North Sea, announced by the British Admiralty in early October, was not very clearly set forth. On 3d October, 1914, it was announced by the Secretary to the Admiralty that the German policy of mine-laying, combined with the German submarine activities, made it "necessary" for the Admiralty to adopt counter-measures. We do not complain of the hazy language here exhibited, but we are sceptical as to the necessity which can justify the appropriation of the North Sea by any combatant, any more than it could justify the invasion of Belgium. The Admiralty, however, proceeded to warn ships that it was unsafe to cross the area between lat. 51° 15′ N. and 51° 40′ N. and long. 1° 35′ E. and 3° E.-whilst at the same time not encouraging the supposition that the navigation of the southern part of the North Sea was safe anywhere. Essentially, the germ of a paper blockade lay in this announcement. For if a belligerent may always render any given area of sea unsafe for neutrals, he can obviously effect the exclusion therefrom of all traffic. Ships are more effectively warned off by the threat of automatic destruction than by the threat of capture and prize litigation. This facilitation of paper blockades was pointed out several years ago in the Révue de Droit International as an obvious consequence of the detestable new policy of submitting to the validity (under circumstances of "necessity") of the destruction of neutral prizes-a violent act which had never disgraced the most arrogant commander until the dawn of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, by refraining from claiming more than the mere net value of hull and freight in the case of the W. P. Frye, sunk by a German cruiser, the United States in a measure encouraged destruction. They claimed nothing in respect of the injury done to all American shipping by the German blow at its security. For the moment, matters took no fresh turn. The American note to Great Britain, presented in December, 1914, dealt almost exclusively with the delays and supposed injustices occasioned by our enlarged interpretation of the idea of contraband. But in the new year it was announced (27th January) that the German Government would, as from 1st February, take over the whole of the food stocks of the country. This, though alluded to by a legal correspondent of The Times (London) as creating a situation unprecedented in international law, had a very precise analogy in the measures adopted by the French revolutionary government in 1793. De Marten's Causes Célèbres devotes a whole section to that affair. It is universally recognized that the American and Danish protests against the pretension that foodstuffs became contraband because the government had taken control of their distribution, were thoroughly justified. It cannot be inferred that because food is to be under the control of a government department, therefore it is necessarily destined for naval or military use. That the Declaration of London asserts that it can be so inferred, only demonstrates the fatuity of that instrument. But it was announced that His Majesty's Government would lay hold of the new German declaration (afterwards explained away) in order to treat cargoes of food for Germany as contraband. This supposed intention raised a storm of indignation in the German Empire: the direct outcome of which was the celebrated declaration of 4th February. It is proper to remember, however, that before that declaration, a raid had been made (on 30th January) by German submarines on British shipping in the Irish Sea (the Ben Cruachan, Linda Blanche and Kilconn being sunk). Simultaneously with a cautiously worded statement issued by the British Foreign Office on 4th February, which confirmed the suspicions of those who believed that the government proposed to invite the prize court to treat food as contraband (while illogically according an ostentatious exemption to the carriers), the text of the Berlin declaration was reported in Amsterdam (The Times, 5th February). It was justified as a retaliation upon neutrals for their |