FOOTNOTES:
[1] The caveat of the United States Government, published in The Times, 24th July, 1915. This action is considered in the second article, at [p. 90].
[2] The book recently published by the French Foreign Office setting forth the crimes of the German Government is, with great and customary accuracy, entitled ‘Les violations des Lois de la Guerre par l’Allemagne.’
[3] As by the sinking of a merchantman on which its citizens are travelling, without warning and without affording them proper means of escape, or by the dropping of bombs on an unfortified town in which its citizens are residing. If such neutral citizens are injured, elementary legal principles deprive the belligerent, become barbarian, of the plea that he did not know of their existence.
[4] See the [footnote on p. 95].
[6] ‘The Government will use all its belligerent rights, whatever they may be, whether under the Order in Council, or under the law apart from that Order’ (Lord Robert Cecil, House of Commons, 19th Oct. 1915). ‘The Foreign Office is profoundly anxious to enforce to the utmost our blockade rights.... Taking the broad results, the blockade of Germany had been a great success, and not a great failure’ (Lord Robert Cecil, House of Commons, 2nd Nov. 1915).
[7] The ‘Three Rules’ are contained in Article 6 of the Treaty of Washington, 1871, by which the settlement of the Alabama claims was arranged. It provided that: ‘In deciding the matters submitted to the Arbitrators, they shall be governed by the following three rules, which are agreed upon by the High Contracting Parties as rules to be taken as applicable to the case, and by such principles of international law not inconsistent therewith as the Arbitrators shall determine to have been applicable to the case. A neutral Government is bound—first, to use due diligence to prevent the fitting out, arming, or equipping, within its jurisdiction, of any vessel which it has reasonable ground to believe is intended to cruise or to carry on war against a Power with which it is at peace; and also to use like diligence to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise or carry on war as above, such vessel having been specially adapted, in whole or in part, within such jurisdiction, to warlike uses. Secondly, not to permit or suffer either belligerent to make use of its ports or waters as the base of naval operations against the other, or for the purpose of the renewal or augmentation of military supplies or arms, or the recruitment of men. Thirdly, to exercise due diligence in its own ports and waters, and, as to all persons within its jurisdiction, to prevent any violation of the foregoing obligations and duties. Her Britannic Majesty has commanded Her High Commissioners and Plenipotentiaries to declare that Her Majesty’s Government cannot assent to the foregoing rules as a statement of principles of international law which were in force at the time when the claims mentioned in Article 1 arose, but that Her Majesty’s Government, in order to evince its desire of strengthening the friendly relations between the two countries and of making satisfactory provision for the future, agrees that in deciding the questions between the two countries arising out of those claims, the Arbitrators should assume that Her Majesty’s Government had undertaken to act upon the principles set forth in these rules. And the High Contracting Parties agree to observe these rules as between themselves in future, and to bring them to the knowledge of other maritime Powers, and to invite them to accede to them.’
[8] This is expressly declared by Article 7 of the Hague Convention of 1907, No. 13, ‘respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers in Maritime War,’ which is as follows:—‘A neutral Power is not bound to prevent the export or transit, for either belligerent, of arms, munitions of war, or, in general, of anything which could be of use to an army or fleet.’ The full meaning of this article is made specially clear by its juxtaposition with Article 6, which provides that ‘The supply, in any manner, directly or indirectly, of war-ships, supplies, or war material of any kind whatever, by a neutral Power to a belligerent Power, is forbidden.’
[9] Letters of Historicus, p. 121:—‘The recent unfortunate evasion of the Alabama has given rise to much discussion on the general duty of a neutral Government with respect to the trade of its own subjects with the belligerents in contraband of war. One might have supposed that if there were any question which the authority of accredited writers, the definitions of public documents, and the universal practice of nations, had clearly and decisively ascertained, it was this very question on which, unhappily, there seems to prevail a most general and unfortunate misapprehension. This misapprehension, grave as it is in the exasperation which it is calculated to produce between friendly nations, is not altogether inexplicable. We have the misfortune to live in days when, in the name of liberalism, philanthropy, and civilisation, we are invited to upset the whole fabric of international law which the reason of jurists has designed and the usage of nations has built up, and to rear upon its ruins the trumpery edifice of a shallow caprice. It is the old story of that pretentious philosophy which, by a recurrence to first principles, attempted with so little success to operate the regeneration of mankind. I would that we had yet among us the multitudinous eloquence of Burke or the poignant wit of Canning to do condign justice upon this presumptuous sciolism.’