The leaders in the fight, the distinguished chemists, are so eminent that I refrain from applying to them the term ‘agitators’; they are so eminent that I am sure they will bear with me patiently while I explain why, even though they appear to have accomplished it, they were trying to shut a door that was already closed, for ‘sweet reasonableness’ is an attribute of all eminence. It is not necessary now to inquire what were the reasons which induced the Government to refrain from putting cotton on the list of absolute contraband during the first six months of the War; it was a policy deliberately adopted by responsible Ministers; whether it was the right or the wrong policy is not the question which the leaders of the movement have put in issue. The errors of the past were at length to be retrieved.
By the Order in Council of the 11th of March, a new policy was adopted which, in the opinion of the present Government, should have been effective to achieve what all desire—the prevention, by all possible legitimate means of warfare, of cotton, as well as everything else, from reaching Germany. This was intimated in Lord Moulton’s answer of the 19th March to the distinguished chemists who had moved in the matter;[50] and it was more fully explained by Lord Robert Cecil in the House of Commons in August. It is that policy which has been so vehemently attacked as insufficient, as part of our ‘sorry record in the cotton question.’ It was contended that in spite of the far-reaching effect of the Order in Council it was necessary further to reinforce the powers taken under it by putting cotton on the list of contraband of war; and the Government have now done what they were asked to do.
The criticism of the Government took two forms, one of which was serious. The other may be dealt with summarily. It was to the effect that the Order in Council ought to be revoked because, so it was said, many lawyers considered it to be contrary to international law, and that it should be replaced by some provision dealing specially with cotton. I have endeavoured in the preceding articles to show that this opinion of my learned brothers, if indeed they hold it, is erroneous. But, putting this on one side, I believe the sound and only rule of speech and of the pen for Englishmen while the War lasts to be omnia præsumuntur rite esse acta. Criticism, based on learning or otherwise, of action taken by the Government against the enemy is out of place in time of war. The fact that such action affects neutral merchants injuriously does not justify criticism, for whatever weight it may have, by so much it adds to the difficulties, already immense, of temperate discussion with neutral Governments; by so much it heartens the enemy who seeks per nefas to render the discussion intemperate. For the present, therefore, at least a judicious silence is the better and the wiser part.
But criticism of inaction of the Government in regard to the enemy stands on a different footing, and, so only that it conform to one condition, it is permissible. That condition is the not unimportant one—full knowledge of all the facts. The eminent chemists and others who have been so vehemently urging the Government to make cotton contraband of war were critics of alleged inaction, and so far their position was unimpeachable; but, I venture with respect to ask them, did they know all the facts? They certainly knew one fact—that, at the time they approached the Government, Germany was getting too much cotton; and realising the intimate connexion between this and the ever-growing lists of casualties they were deeply stirred, as all of us who are condemned to sit at home at ease were deeply stirred when we came to understand. But emotion is apt to cloud clear mental vision, and we have been asked by some persons to believe that those others, men like ourselves, who form the Government of the nation, having eyes yet see not the plain things that are going on before them. And yet those are the only men among us who know all the facts. The critical point, however, is not whether Germany has been getting too much cotton, but whether she has been getting it because the Government had not taken sufficiently strenuous measures to prevent it. This being assumed in the affirmative, these eminent critics further assumed that declaring cotton to be contraband would be more effective in preventing it from getting to Germany than the procedure authorised by the Order in Council.
The Answer to the Critics of the Government
None of us know what is actually happening on the high seas in the area controlled by our cruiser squadrons, though the statistics just published by the Foreign Office somewhat lift the veil. We cannot, therefore, do more than consider the abstract question of principle, whether it was necessary to supplement the Order in Council by a proclamation of contraband so as more effectually to prevent cotton getting through to Germany; and it seems to me essential to a right understanding of the discussion that we should consider it.
Now there is one fact which I should have thought would at once have disposed of the whole contention of the critics—the Protest of the United States Government. That Protest declares that in the Order in Council we have gone to lengths in interfering with American trade (which includes trade in cotton) hitherto unknown to international law, more especially in stopping that trade, asserted to be ‘innocent’ but manifestly the opposite, on its way to neutral countries. In all friendliness that Government exhorts us, among other things, to revert to the time-honoured practice of relying on declarations of contraband. It appears, therefore, that the United States Government charges us with doing precisely what our own critics condemn Ministers for not doing, except by ‘a half-hearted expedient’—stopping ‘innocent’ cargoes of cotton. That Government insists that the correct way of preventing cotton reaching the enemy is to shut ourselves up in those old watertight compartments of international law labelled ‘contraband’ and ‘blockade.’ They want to entangle us in that incomprehensible ravel of illogic into which those doctrines of international law have got themselves. Paraphrased, what the American Government says is this—declare a blockade, even though it be a ‘long-distance blockade,’ which they are willing to concede to be our right, and then we may stop all cotton going direct to German ports, though not, as the text-books point out, cotton going indirectly to Germany through neutral ports; or, declare cotton to be contraband, and then we may stop it even though it passes through neutral ports. But as we had done neither of these things in express terms, Germany must be allowed to get her ‘innocent’ shipments of cotton by way of neutral and contiguous ports. Verily, the American fowler spreads the net in the sight of the British bird.
Here is the substance of the whole discussion. The Judges of the United States, with clear-cut thought, declared, half a century ago, that the doctrine of ‘continuous voyages’ was the inevitable complement to the belligerent right of stopping munitions of war and their component substances on the high seas on the way to the enemy. In other words, that the doctrine completed the law of contraband of war. The British Government, has, by the Order in Council, declared that doctrine equally to be the inevitable complement to the more extended belligerent right of stopping all supplies from reaching the enemy. In other words, that the doctrine completes the law of what we have called the ‘new blockade.’
This, then, is the clear issue raised by the Order in Council for the judgment of any tribunal, national or international, to which it may hereafter be submitted, and of the world to which it is now submitted. And the position is, in my humble judgment, and in spite of the critics on our own side, unassailable. Nations, no more than individuals, are not to be bound by mere phraseology, especially in such a subject as this, without knowing what the terms used mean. ‘Blockade’ is a mere term, explaining what belligerent nations do, but not why they do it nor why neutral nations silently acquiesce.[51] It tells nothing of the right to do it. On the contrary it seems, for a hundred years, to have successfully blinded men by its technical conditions to the fact that the so-called right to declare a blockade is no more than a declaration of an intention by a belligerent to stop all supplies from going to the enemy, and stopping them. Is it not abundantly clear that that intention cannot be nullified by the cleverness of the neutral merchant in ‘darkening and disguising’ the fact that they are going to the enemy? That, then, we have declared by the Order in Council to be our intention, and we have acted on it. It may be that, in regard to cotton, we have exercised it imperfectly; some neutral merchants may have successfully evaded the vigilance of our ships. Human agencies are never quite perfect; of all, even though they be official, Rostand’s philosophy is, alas! too true:
Sache donc cette triste et rassurante chose,
Que nul, Coq du matin ou Rossignol du soir,
N’a tout-à-fait le chant qu’il rêverait d’avoir.