With a view to the expected meeting of the Conference by which the Convention was signed in 1906, Mr. Pike and his friends again, in 1903, pressed upon the British Government their desire that the new Convention should extend protection to persons engaged in relieving the sufferings of wounded horses. The British delegates to the Conference, however, who had already been appointed, and were holding meetings in preparation for it, were not prepared to advise the insertion of provisions for this purpose in the revised Convention of Geneva.
"The principles of the Geneva Convention" of 1864 were applied to naval warfare by The Hague Convention No. iii. of 1899, and those of the Geneva Convention of 1906 by The Hague Convention No. x. of 1907 respectively. Both were ratified by Great Britain. Cf. supra, [Chapters ii.] and [iv.]
SECTION 11
Enemy Property in Occupied Territory
By Art. 55 of The Hague Règlement of 1899, which reproduces Art. 7 of the Brussels Projet, and is repeated as Art. 55 of the Règlement of 1907: "The occupying State shall regard itself as being only administrator and usufructuary of the public buildings, immoveable property, forests and agricultural undertakings belonging to the hostile State [101]and situated in the hostile country. It must protect the substance of these properties and administer them according to the rules of usufruct."
The following letter touches incidentally upon the description of the rights of an invader over certain kinds of State property in the occupied territory as being those of a "usufructuary."
Sir,—The terminology of the law of nations has been enriched by a new phrase. We are all getting accustomed to "spheres of influence." We have been meditating for some time past upon the interpretation to be put upon "a lease of sovereign rights." But what is an international "usufruct"? The word has, of course, a perfectly ascertained sense in Roman law and its derivatives; but it has been hitherto employed, during, perhaps two thousand years, always as a term of private law—i.e. as descriptive of a right enjoyed by one private individual or corporation over the property of another. It is the "ius utendi fruendi, salva rerum substantia." The usufructuary of land not merely has the use of it, but may cut its forests and work its mines, so long as he does not destroy the character of the place as he received it. His interest terminates with his life, though it might also be granted to him for a shorter period. If the grantee be a corporation, in order to protect the outstanding right of the owner an artificial limit is imposed upon the tenure—e.g. in Roman law 100 years, by the French Code 30 years. For details it may suffice to refer to the Institutes of Justinian, II. 4; the Digest, VII. 1; the Code Civil, sects. 573-636; the new German Civil Code, sects. 1030-1089.
It remains to be seen how the conception of "usufruct" is to be imported into the relations of sovereign States, and, more especially, what are to be the relations of the usufructuary to States other than the State under which he holds. It is, of course, quite possible to adapt the terms [102]of Roman private law to international use. "Dominium," "Possessio," "Occupatio," have long been so adapted, but it has yet to be proved that "Usufructus" is equally malleable. I can recall no other use of the term in international discussions than the somewhat rhetorical statement that an invader should consider himself as merely the "usufructuary" of the resources of the country which he is invading; which is no more than to say that he should use them "en bon père de famille." It will be a very different matter to put a strict legal construction upon the grant of the "usufruct" of Port Arthur. By way of homage to the conception of such a grant, as presumably creating at the outside a life-interest, Russia seems to have taken it, in the first instance, only for twenty-five years. One may, however, be pardoned for sharing, with reference to this transaction, the scruples which were felt at Rome as to allowing the grant of a usufruct to a corporation—"periculum enim esse videbatur, ne perpetuus fieret."