[579] According to section 30, the Interpretation Clause of the Act, "equipping" includes "the furnishing of a ship with any tackle, apparel, furniture, provisions, arms, munitions, or stores, or any other thing which is used in or about a ship for the purpose of fitting or adapting her for the sea or for naval service." It is, therefore, not lawful for British ships, in case Great Britain is neutral, to supply a belligerent fleet direct with coal, a point which became of interest during the Russo-Japanese War. German steamers laden with coal followed the Russian fleet on her journey to the Far East, and British shipowners were prevented from doing the same by the Foreign Enlistment Act. And it was in application of this Act that the British Government ordered, in 1904, the detention of the German steamer Captain W. Menzel, which took in Welsh coal at Cardiff for the purpose of carrying it to the Russian fleet en route to the Far East. See below, § [350].
[580] An interesting case which ought here to be mentioned occurred in October 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War. Messrs. Yarrow & Co., the shipbuilders, possessed a partly completed vessel, the Caroline, which could be finally fitted up either as a yacht or as a torpedo-boat. In September 1904, a Mr. Sinnet and the Hon. James Burke Roche called at the shipbuilding yard of Messrs. Yarrow, bought the Caroline, and ordered her to be fitted up as a high-speed yacht. The required additions were finished on October 3. On October 6 the vessel left Messrs. Yarrow's yard and was navigated by a Captain Ryder, via Hamburg, to the Russian port of Libau, there to be altered into a torpedo-boat. That section 8 of the Foreign Enlistment Act applies to this case there is no doubt. But there is no doubt either that it is this Act, and not the rules of International Law, which required the prosecution of Messrs. Sinnet and Roche on the part of the British Government. For, if viewed from the basis of International Law, the case is merely one of contraband. See below, §§ [321], [334], and [397].
It must be specially observed that the British Foreign Enlistment Act goes beyond the requirements of International Law in so far as it tries to prohibit and penalises a number of acts which, according to the present rules of International Law, a neutral State is not required to prohibit and penalise. Thus, for instance, a neutral State need not prohibit its private subjects from enlisting in the service of a belligerent; from supplying coal, provisions, arms, and ammunition direct to a belligerent fleet, provided such fleet is not within or just outside the territorial waters of the neutral concerned; from selling ships to a belligerent although it is known that they will be converted into cruisers or used as transport ships. For article 7 of Convention VII. as well as of Convention XIII. of the Second Peace Conference categorically enacts that "a neutral Power is not bound to prevent the export or transit, on behalf of either belligerent, of arms, munitions of war, or, in general, of anything which could be of use to an army or fleet."
End of Neutrality.
§ 312. Neutrality ends with the war, or through the commencement of war by a hitherto neutral State against one of the belligerents, or through one of the belligerents commencing war against a hitherto neutral State. Since, apart from a treaty obligation, no State has by International Law the duty to remain neutral in a war between other States,[581] or, if it is a belligerent, to allow a hitherto neutral State to remain neutral,[582] it does not constitute a violation of neutrality on the part of a hitherto neutral to declare war against one of the belligerents, and on the part of a belligerent to declare war against a neutral. Duties of neutrality exist so long only as a State remains neutral. They come to an end ipso facto by a hitherto neutral State throwing up its neutrality, or by a belligerent beginning war against a hitherto neutral State. But the ending of neutrality must not be confounded with violation of neutrality. Such violation does not ipso facto bring neutrality to an end, as will be shown below in § [358].