[817] See below, § [405], p. 510.
The Declaration of London has adopted (articles 22 and 24) the distinction between absolute and conditional contraband, but it distinguishes, besides these two classes of articles, a third class (article 27). To this class belong all articles which are either not susceptible of use in war, or the possibility of the use of which in war is so remote as practically to make them not susceptible of use in war. These articles are termed free articles.[818]
[818] But there are a number of other free articles, although they do not belong to the articles characterised above; see below, § [396a].
Articles absolutely Contraband.
§ 393. That absolute contraband cannot and need not be restricted to arms and ammunition only and exclusively becomes obvious, if the fact is taken into consideration that other articles, although of ancipitous use, can be as valuable and essential to a belligerent for the continuance of the war as arms and ammunition. The necessary machinery and material for the manufacture of arms and ammunition are almost as valuable as the latter themselves, and warfare on sea can as little be waged without vessels and articles of naval equipment as without arms and ammunition. But formerly no unanimity existed with regard to such articles of ancipitous use as had to be considered as absolute contraband, and States, when they went to war, increased or restricted, according to the circumstances of the particular war, the list of articles they considered absolute contraband.
According to the British practice[819] which has hitherto prevailed—subject, however, to the prerogative of the Crown to order alterations of the list during a war—the following articles were considered absolute contraband:—
Arms of all kinds, and machinery for manufacturing arms; ammunition, and materials for ammunition, including lead, sulphate of potash, muriate of potash (chloride of potassium), chlorate of potash, and nitrate of soda; gunpowder and its materials, saltpetre and brimstone, also guncotton; military equipments and clothing; military stores; naval stores, such as masts, spars, rudders, ship timbers, hemp and cordage, sail-cloth, pitch and tar, copper for sheathing vessels, marine engines and the component parts thereof (including screw propellers, paddle-wheels, cylinders, cranks, shafts, boilers, tubes for boilers, boiler-plates and fire bars), maritime cement and the materials used for its manufacture (as blue lias and Portland cement), iron in any of the following forms: anchors, rivet-iron, angle-iron, round bars of from 3/4 to 5/8 of an inch diameter, rivets, strips of iron, sheet plate-iron exceeding 1/4 of an inch, and Low Moor and Bowling plates.
[819] See Holland, Prize Law, § 62.
By articles 22 and 23 of the Declaration of London an agreement has been reached according to which two classes of absolute contraband must be distinguished. Article 22 enumerates eleven groups of articles which may always, without special declaration and notice, be treated as absolute contraband. These constitute the first class. The second—see article 23—consists of such articles exclusively used for war as are not enumerated[820] amongst the eleven groups of the first class; these may be treated as absolute contraband also, but only after special declaration and notification. Such declaration may be published during time of peace, and notification thereof must then be addressed to all other Powers; but if the declaration is published after the outbreak of hostilities, a notification need only be addressed to the neutral Powers. Should a Power—see article 26—waive, so far as itself is concerned, the right to treat as absolute contraband an article comprised in the first class, notification thereof must be made to the other Powers. The following are the groups of articles comprised in the first class:—
(1) Arms of all kinds, including arms for sporting purposes, and their distinctive component parts.