Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/67

 THE GREEN BAG consistent with the rights of third parties. This qualification is important and is the reason for a great many formalities of the law. THREE essays on topics of international law delivered at the Congress of Arts and Sciences appear in the December magazines. "Some Problems of International Law" is the title of a valuable and timely paper on the relations of belligerents to neutrals by Charles Noble Gregory, printed in the Yale Law Journal for December (Vol. xiv., p. 82). It is replete with ancient and modern citations of authority and precedent, and its interest is enhanced by its discussion of illustrations furnished by the stirring events in the Far East. The author takes up first the rule ex empting from imprisonment neutrals on neu tral blockade runners, and shows that this is a modern alleviation of older strictness. Of contraband, he says: — "The doctrine that articles which may serve alike the uses of peace or war are not contraband unless intended for the military uses of a belligerent, rests on two broad principles: — "First, that neutrals under modern usage cannot be hindered in their general right to trade in innocent articles of commerce with belligerents except by an actual blockade, never by a proclamation. "Secondly, international law forbids a bel ligerent to make war upon the civil or noncombatant population of its opponent." "Against earnest and concurrent action on the part of these two powers (England and the United States) it would seem strange if Russia should successfully carry out her plan for extending the definition of contraband, and so turning back the happy progress of neutral right. In so far as condemnations have already taken place, they will undoubt edly be the source of claims for damages which will not be easily satisfied." "Neutral rights are the rights of the vast majority, and they should not be lightly prejudiced for those of the belligerents, who are always a small minority." In regard to the attempts by the Japanese to cut out Russian vessels in Chinese harbors, he says: —

"It is believed that later practice and de cisions in no way warrant the invasion of a neutral port even to seize or attack a hostile cruiser harboring there." He sustains the practice of the Russians in sinking neutral prizes on the ground that "if, for good and sufficient cause, such neutral prize cannot be brought in, there is no obli gation to allow her to go free, to reinforce the enemy with her cargo, but as a rule of neces sity, to prevent the delivery of the cargo, she may be destroyed exactly as a belligerent, the crew and papers being preserved and the question of prize or no prize being adjudicated as if she had been brought in." The author gives as a "result of this dis cussion of these several problems in interna tional law (a few of the many lately mooted) a humiliating sense of the uncertainty, confu sion, and conflict which still attend the mari time rights of neutrals in the time of war. One is forced almost to acquiesce in M. de La Peyre's recent statement, that maritime international law does not exist. "It certainly shows the great necessity of an authoritative international conference to discuss, define, and establish the rights and duties of neutral commerce in time of war. Now that the vast and complicated machinery of war is of such desolating destruction, it is more true even than a generation ago, when the late Mr. Lecky so convincingly proclaimed it, that the rich nations are the potent ones in war, as in a ruder age they were not. It is true, too, that the very riches which enable them to support, powerfully persuade them to avoid, war. These great commercial pow ers possess the seas with their beneficent ad ventures and they must strive to keep the peace on those great highways of all the na tions, and the ships that bear the means of life must be considered as of interest and hu man claim equal and paramount to those designed to inflict death." The other addresses are: "To What Extent Will a Nation Protect Its Citizens in Foreign Countries," by Benjamin T. Abbott, printed in the American Lawyer for November (Vol. xii., p. 475); and that of J. M. Dickinson on " The Alas kan Boundary Case," printed in the American Law Review (Vol. 38, p. 866).