Page:Heresies of Sea Power (1906).djvu/218

192 forces with Russia at any time after Round Island there would have been an important battleship added to Japan's enemies—a battleship which would have been sunk or captured to a certainty but for the existence of a law on the question of internment and Japan's need for observing the law.

Legal moralists have enlarged upon Japan's criminality in seizing the Retchitelni at Chefoo, but in point of common-sense it was quite the correct course. In the matter of a destroyer it was of minor importance, but had the Tsarevitch been the ship in question, the uncertainty as to China's attitude in the war would probably have rendered her capture imperative as a mere measure of self-protection.

Had the incident occurred it is clear that no nation would have taken action against Japan on account of regard for the laws of neutrality as Law: any action, whatever its nominal cause, would have been dictated solely by self-interest or a regard for 'precedent.' Nations able to conceive a similar state of affairs in connection with their own ships at some future date might, on the score of precedent, have protested; but even so the measure of the protest would have been entirely determined by the strength of Japan in relation to themselves. The law in this particular matter, therefore, is in substance, a theory which belligerents agree to observe when observance would be necessary without any law on the matter at all.

The neutral harbour and its sanctity was the bane