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The note suggests that the situation would be improved if an embargo were placed upon the exportation of munitions. The burden of this note, when baldly stated, was that the United States should restore to the Central Powers an advantage they had undoubtedly lost as the result of war by depriving the Allied Powers of an advantage they had undoubtedly gained as the result of war. It thus seeks to "improve the present situation," only so far as the Central Powers are concerned. In short, it calls upon the United States to violate its neutrality and depart from the accepted law of nations by conferring a special benefit upon one of the belligerents.

The reply to this note was drawn by Mr. Lansing, at that time Secretary of State, and dispatched to Ambassador Penfield, at Vienna, August 12, 1915. This reply seems to furnish a complete answer to the position taken by the Austro-Hungarian Government, and to maintain with renewed force the traditional doctrine of international law strictly adhered to by the United States.

Attention is first directed to the claim that the United States should abandon the long-recognized rules governing neutral traffic in time of war, and adopt measures, in the words of the Austro-Hungarian note, "to maintain an attitude of strict parity with respect to both belligerent parties." Mr. Lansing says: "The recognition of an obligation of this sort would impose a duty upon every neutral nation to sit in judgment on the progress of a war, and to restrict its commercial intercourse with a belligerent whose success prevented the neutral to trade with the enemy. The contention of the Imperial and Royal Government appears to be that the advantages gained to a

belligerent should be equalized by the establishment of a system of non-intercourse with the victor."

The Secretary then calls attention to the attitude of the Central Powers themselves under circumstances similar to those existing. He says: "During the Boer War between Great Britain and the South African republics, the control of the coasts of neighboring neutral colonies by British naval vessels prevented arms and ammunition from reaching the Transvaal or the Orange Free State. The allied republics were in a situation almost identical in that respect with that in which Austria-Hungary and Germany find themselves at the present time. Yet, in spite of the commercial isolation of the one belligerent, Germany sold to Great Britain, the other belligerent, hundreds of thousands of kilos of explosives, gunpowder, cartridges, shot and weapons; and it is known that AustriaHungary also sold similar munitions to the same purchaser."

Mr. Lansing thus indicates that the past practice of the Central Powers does not sustain their present contention. He also shows that: "The general adoption by the nations of the world of the theory that neutral Powers ought to prohibit the sale of arms and ammunition to belligerents would compel every nation to have in readiness at all times sufficient munitions of war to meet any emergency which might arise, and maintain establishments for the manufacture of arms and ammunition sufficient to supply the needs of its military and naval forces throughout the progress of a war." (For this and the preceding correspondence with the Central Powers, see Special Supplement of the Amer. Journal of Int. Law, July 1915.)

In summing up this discussion the following conclusions seem to be inevitable:

(1) That the custom of regarding all neutral commerce as free, subject only to the belligerent right of visit and search and of confiscation in case of hostile goods with a hostile destination, has existed from the eighteenth century.

(2) That this custom has been recognized by the Government of the United States as a rule of international law from the very beginning of its history until the present time.

(3) That this custom is a part of the general law of contraband, which is based upon the fact that the transportation of munitions of war is injurious only to one or the other of the belligerents, upon whom is conferred the legal means to prevent it; and is in no sense an injury to neutral states, which are therefore relieved of the obligation to prevent it.

(4) That the fact that one of the belligerents has, by a misfortune of war, been deprived from exercising his own belligerent right of intercepting contraband goods on their way to his enemy, does not justify the assumption of this belligerent right by a neutral Power for the sole benefit of the unfortunate belligerent.

(5) That the abolition of this custom would ignore the concurrent judgment of the world as expressed in the Law of Nations, would impose new obligations and oppressive burdens upon every neutral state; would work a positive injustice to every country inadequately prepared for war and compel every nation to be sufficiently armed at all times to meet any possible attack,-a condition of things that would lead to a universal state of militancy and prove a misfortune to the world at large.

CHAPTER VIII

BRITISH DIPLOMACY AND BRITISH COLONIAL REFORM: CANADA, AUSTRALIA AND SOUTH AFRICA

DIPLOMACY, in the most usual sense, refers to the method or procedure employed in the transaction of business between independent and sovereign states, It may, therefore, be a question whether it should be applied to the negotiations employed in adjusting the relations between a parent government and its dependent colonies. But where a colony forms a distinct body, or community of persons, with a consciousness. of rights not recognized by the parent government, it is possible that there may arise a condition of things quite similar to that existing between two independent communities. In either case there may exist a conflict of views that can be settled only by an appeal to arms or an appeal to reason. In an appeal to reason for the adjustment of discordant claims between a government and it colony there may be required the use of methods not essentially different from those required to settle a controversy between two sovereign

states.

Such a use of diplomatic methods seems necessary only when the spirit of discontent has reached a stage in which palpable issues are joined between the two parties. There may be presented the ultimate alternative of revolt on the part of the colony or concession on the part of the government-that is, the

spectre of war with the possible loss of the colony, or the use of diplomatic methods to conciliate the discontented people.

There were special reasons that led to the spirit of discontent on the part of the early English colonists. These emigrants from the old country frequently carried with them to their new homes, the traditional spirit of English liberty, and continued to insist upon their rights as Englishmen. This fact, no doubt, directly or indirectly, led to the beginning of the reform of the British colonial system.

SI. THE PREVIOUS EUROPEAN POLICY REGARDING COLONIES

The new colonial policy adopted by Great Britain has been largely the result of a protest or revolt against the older system that generally prevailed among European states. It is hardly necessary to say that modern colonization properly began with the discovery of America and the new sea-route to the East Indies. It was then that Spain and Portugal began the occupation of the newly-discovered lands. To settle the rival claims of these two countries, Pope Alexander VI (in 1493) assumed the prerogative to divide the non-Christian world by an imaginary line, which gave to Portugal the Asiatic lands as well as Brazil and Labrador in South and North America; while the rest of the American continent was granted to Spain. Spain was the most enterprising and successful in taking possession of her newly acquired territory; and to Spain must be given the credit or discredit of founding the modern colonial system.

By the Spanish government, the colonial establish

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