1. The action of the Japanese is in full accordance with the letter and spirit of all four articles of the Declaration of Paris. ("The Treaty of Paris" has, of course, no bearing upon prize law.)
2. "The general principles" of that Declaration is a phrase which conveys to me, I confess, no meaning.
3. The Japanese have, of course, a prize law of their own, borrowed, for the most part, from our own Admiralty Manual of Prize Law. Neither the British nor the Japanese instructions are in conflict with, or indeed stand in any relation to, the Declaration of Paris.
4. The existing prize law of Japan was promulgated on March 7, 1904, not on August 20, 1894.
Your Correspondent goes on to say that the Japanese definition of contraband "is almost as sweeping as was the Russian definition, to which the British Government took active objection last summer." So far is this from being the case that the Japanese list is practically the same as our own, both systems recognising the distinction between "absolute" and "conditional" contraband, which, till the other day, was ignored by Russia.
The Japanese rules as to the cases in which ships carrying contraband may be confiscated are quite reasonable and in accordance with British views. The third ground for confiscation mentioned by your Correspondent does not occur in the instructions of 1904.
Ships violating a blockade are, of course, confiscable; but the Japanese do not, as your Correspondent seems to have been informed, make the existence of a blockade conditional upon its having been "notified to the Consuls of all States in the blockaded port." Commanders are, no doubt, instructed to notify the fact, "as far as possible, to the competent authorities and the Consuls of the neutral[157] Powers within the circumference of the blockade"; but that is a very different thing.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. E. HOLLAND
The Athenæum, March 10 (1905).