"6. Neutralization, for the same reason, of boats or launches employed in the rescue of the shipwrecked during or after naval battles." The American delegates to the conference were instructed to give their "earnest support" to "any practicable propositions" based on those articles. A convention on the subject was adopted by the conference, but, although the "general purpose" of the convention" elicited the especial sympathy" of the American delegates, a neglect of what seemed to them "a question of almost vital importance, namely, the determination of the status of men picked up by the hospital ships of neutral states or by other neutral vessels," led them to refrain from signing the convention and to submit the matter with full explanations to the Department of State. The convention was afterwards signed by the United States, with a reservation as to Art. X. The same reservation was made by Germany, Great Britain, and Turkey. For. Rel. 1899, 512, 515-516, 535-536. All the signatory powers being in favor of the exclusion of Art. X. of the convention of The Hague for the application of the Geneva Convention to maritime warfare, the Russian Government suggested that the text of the article be superseded by the word "excluded," leaving the number of the articles unchanged. This was done. Mr. Hay, Sec. of State, to Baron Gevers, No. 3, May 1, 1900, MS. Notes to Art. X. reads as follows: "The shipwrecked, wounded, or sick, who are "The expenses of entertainment and interment shall be borne by the State to which the shipwrecked, wounded, or sick belong." (For. Rel. 1899, 535.) "ARTICLE I. Military hospital ships, that is to say, ships constructed or assigned by States specially and solely for the purpose of assisting the wounded, sick or shipwrecked, and the names of which shall have been communicated to the belligerent Powers at the beginning or during the course of hostilities, and in any case before they are employed, shall be respected and can not be captured while hostilities last. "These ships, moreover, are not on the same footing as men-ofwar as regards their stay in a neutral port. "ARTICLE II. Hospital ships, equipped wholly or in part at the cost of private individuals or officially recognized relief Societies, shall likewise be respected and exempt from capture, provided the belligerent Power to whom they belong has given them an official commission and has notified their names to the hostile Power at the com mencement of or during hostilities, and in any case before they are employed. "These ships should be furnished with a certificate from the competent authorities, declaring that they had been under their control while fitting out and on final departure. "ARTICLE III. Hospital ships, equipped wholly or in part at the cost of private individuals or officially recognized Societies of neutral countries, shall be respected and exempt from capture, if the neutral Power to whom they belong has given them an official commission and notified their names to the belligerent powers at the commencement of or during hostilities, and in any case before they are employed. "ARTICLE IV. The ships mentioned in Articles I., II., and III. shall afford relief and assistance to the wounded, sick, and shipwrecked of the belligerents independently of their nationality. "The Governments engage not to use these ships for any military purpose. "These ships must not in any way hamper the movements of the combatants. 66 During and after an engagement they will act at their own risk and peril. "The belligerents will have the right to control and visit them; they can refuse to help them, order them off, make them take a certain course, and put a Commissioner on board; they can even detain them, if important circumstances require it. "As far as possible the belligerents shall inscribe in the sailing papers of the hospital ships the orders they give them. ARTICLE V. The military hospital ships shall be distinguished by being painted white outside with a horizontal band of green about a metre and a half in breadth. "The ships mentioned in Articles II. and III. shall be distinguished by being painted white outside with a horizontal band of red about a metre and a half in breadth. "The boats of the ships above mentioned, as also small craft which may be used for hospital work, shall be distinguished by similar painting. "All hospital ships shall make themselves known by hoisting, together with their national flag, the white flag with a red cross provided by the Geneva Convention. "ARTICLE VI. Neutral merchantmen, yachts, or vessels, having, or taking on board, sick, wounded, or shipwrecked of the belligerents, can not be captured for so doing, but they are liable to capture for any violation of neutrality they may have committed. "ARTICLE VII. The religious, medical, or hospital staff of any captured ship is inviolable, and its members can not be made prisoners of war. On leaving the ship they take with them the objects and surgical instruments which are their own private property. "This staff shall continue to discharge its duties while necessary, and can afterwards leave when the commander-in-chief considers it possible. "The belligerents must guarantee to the staff that has fallen into their hands the enjoyment of their salaries intact. "ARTICLE VIII. Sailors and soldiers who are taken on board when sick or wounded, to whatever nation they belong, shall be protected and looked after by the captors. "ARTICLE IX. The shipwrecked, wounded, or sick of one of the belligerents who fall into the hands of the other, are prisoners of war. The captor must decide, according to circumstances, if it is best to keep them or send them to a port of his own country, to a neutral port, or even to a hostile port. In the last case, prisoners thus repatriated can not serve as long as the war lasts. "ARTICLE X. (Excluded.) "ARTICLE XI. The rules contained in the above articles are binding only on the Contracting Powers, in case of War between two or more of them. "The said rules shall cease to be binding from the time when, in a war between the Contracting Powers, one of the belligerents is joined by a non-Contracting Power. "ARTICLE XII. The present Convention shall be ratified as soon as possible. "The ratifications shall be deposited at The Hague. "On the receipt of each ratification a procès-verbal shall be drawn up, a copy of which, duly certified, shall be sent through the diplomatic channel to all the Contracting Powers. “ARTICLE XIII. The non-Signatory Powers who accepted the Geneva Convention of the 22nd August, 1864, are allowed to adhere to the present convention. "For this purpose they must make their adhesion known to the Contracting Powers by means of a written notification addressed to the Netherlands Government, and by it communicated to all the other Contracting Powers. “ARTICLE XIV. In the event of one of the High Contracting Parties denouncing the present Convention, such denunciation shall not take effect until a year after the notification made in writing to the Netherlands Government, and forthwith communicated by it to all the other Contracting Powers. "This denunciation shall only affect the notifying Power." Convention for the Adaptation to Maritime Warfare of the Principles of the Geneva Convention of August 22, 1864, signed at The Hague, July 29, 1899; ratification advised by the Senate May 4, 1900; proclaimed Nov. 1, 1901, 32 Stat. II. 1827. VI. COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE. 1. RIGHT OF NEUTRALS TO TRADE. § 1179. Neutrals have the right to continue during war to trade with the belligerents, subject to the law relating to contraband and blockade. The existence of this right is universally admitted, although on certain occasions it has been in practice denied. Of those occasions the most memorable are the wars growing out of the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic wars that succeeded the breach of the peace of Amiens, when French decrees and British orders in council assumed to dictate the trade in which neutrals should be permitted to engage or to prohibit them from trading with belligerents altogether. As to the British orders in council of 1793-1795, see Moore, Int. Arbitrations, Chap. X., Neutral Rights and Duties, Vol. I., p. 299. As to the French decrees of 1793-1798, see Moore, Int. Arbitrations, V. 4399 et seq., and supra, § 821. As to the French decrees and British orders in council during the Napoleonic wars, see Moore, Int. Arbitrations, V. 4447-4456, and supra, § 821. In discussing the controversy in 1810-11 between Great Britain and the United States in respect to the orders in council, the Edinburgh Review thus speaks: He "It was long the anxious business of the American minister, as appears from the documents before us, to procure by persuasion an abandonment of the measures hostile to the American trade. urged his case on views of justice and of general policy; he calmly combated the pretexts by which he was met; he boldly and pointedly asserted, that the claims of this country must, sooner or later, be abandoned; and he added, what ought never to be forgotten, that they were unjust, and that time, therefore, could do nothing for them. His representations were met by declarations of what His Majesty owed to the honour, dignity, and essential rights of his crown,' and by all the other sounding commonplaces usual on such occasions. These sentiments were afterwards explained at greater length, and promulgated to the world in the deliberate record of a state paper. But in spite of the honour of Majesty thus pledged to these obnoxious measures, they were repealed. A laborious investigation into their merits ended in their unqualified reprobation and abandonment; their authors were unable to look in the face the scenes of beggary, disorder and wretchedness, which their policy had brought on the country; they were borne down by the cries of suffering millions; and they yielded at length to necessity, what they had formerly refused to justice. This was clearly, therefore, an act of unwilling submission. It bore not the stamp of conciliation; and the only inference to be drawn from it was, that the plotters of mischief, being fairly caught in their own snare, were glad to escape, on any terms, from the effects of their ill-considered measures. There is not a man in the Kingdom who can doubt, that if the orders in council had been rescinded six months sooner, the war might have been entirely avoided, and all other points of difference between the countries adjusted upon an amicable footing." 20 Edinburgh Review (Nov. 1812), 453, 459. See, as to rights of trade, Hennebicq, Principes de droit maritime comparé; Schaps, Das Deutsche Seerecht. 2. RULE OF 1756; "CONTINUOUS VOYAGES." § 1180. Under the rule of colonial monopoly that universally prevailed in the eighteenth century, the trade with colonial possessions was exclusively confined to vessels of the home country. In 1756 the French, being, by reason of England's maritime supremacy, unable longer to carry on trade with their colonies in their own bottoms, and being thus deprived of colonial succor, issued licenses to Dutch vessels to take up and carry on the prostrate trade. Thereupon the British minister at The Hague, by instruction of his Government, announced to the Government of the Netherlands that Great Britain would in future enforce the rule that neutrals would not be permitted to engage in time of war in a trade from which they were excluded in time of peace. The restriction thus announced was enforced by the British Government through its prize courts. It has since been known as "the rule of the war of 1756." It was against it that the first article of the declaration of the Empress of Russia of 1780, which formed the basis of the armed neutrality, was leveled, in affirming the right of neutrals to trade from port to port on the coasts of the powers at war. In the wars growing out of the French Revolution, in which the rule was revived, American vessels, which had then come upon the seas as neutral carriers, sought to avoid its application by first bringing the cargo to the United States and thence carrying it on to its European or colonial destination, as the case might be. To thwart this mode of prosecuting the trade, Sir William Scott applied what was called the doctrine of continuous voyages. Wheaton, in a note to the first volume of his reports, p. 507, Appendix, discusses the rule of the war of 1756, and quotes a long passage from William Pinkney's Memorial to Congress from the Merchants of Baltimore. For this able document, see Chitty's Law of Nations, App.; Wheaton's Life of Pinkney, 372; Pinkney's Life of Pinkney, 158. |