[636] Germany, Domingo, Siam, and Persia have entered a reservation against article 12.
[637] Germany has entered a reservation against article 13.
Building and Fitting-out of Vessels intended for Naval Operations.
§ 334. Whereas a neutral is in no[638] wise obliged by his duty of impartiality to prevent his subjects from selling armed vessels to the belligerents, such armed vessels being merely contraband of war, a neutral is bound to employ the means at his disposal to prevent his subjects from building, fitting out, or arming, to the order of either belligerent, vessels intended to be used as men-of-war, and to prevent the departure from his jurisdiction of any vessel which, by order of either belligerent, has been adapted to warlike use.[639] The difference between selling armed vessels to belligerents, on the one hand, and building them to order, on the other hand, is usually defined in the following way:—
An armed ship, being contraband of war, is in no wise different from other kinds of contraband, provided she is not manned in a neutral port so that she can commit hostilities at once after having reached the Open Sea. A subject of a neutral who builds an armed ship or arms a merchantman, not to order of a belligerent but intending to sell her to a belligerent, does not differ from a manufacturer of arms who intends to sell them to a belligerent. There is nothing to prevent a neutral from allowing his subjects to sell armed vessels, and to deliver them to belligerents, either in a neutral port or in a port of the belligerent. In the case of the La Santissima Trinidad[640] (1822), as in that of the Meteor[641] (1866), American courts have recognised this.[642]
[638] See below, §§ [350] and [397].
[639] See article 8 of Convention XIII.
[640] 7 Wheaton, § 340.
[641] See Wharton, III. § 396, p. 561.