enforced by the British and French Governments without risk to neutral ships or to neutral or noncombatant life and in strict observance of the dictates of humanity. The British and French Governments will therefore hold themselves free to detain and take into port ships carrying goods of presumed enemy destination, ownership, or origin. It is not intended to confiscate such vessels or cargoes unless they would otherwise be liable to condemnation. The treatment of vessels and cargoes which have sailed before this date will not be affected. CECIL SPRING-RICE. On the 4th of March Congress adopted a resolution safeguarding the neutrality of American waters: Resolved, etc., That from and after the passage of this resolution; and during the existence of a war to which the United States is not a party and in order to prevent the neutrality of the United States from being violated by the use of its territory, its ports, or its territorial waters, as the base of operations for the armed forces of a belligerent, contrary to the obligations imposed by the law of nations, the treaties to which the United States is a party, or contrary to the statutes of the United States, the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and empowered to direct the collectors of customs under the jurisdiction of the United States to withhold clearance from any vessel of American or foreign registry, or license, which he has reasonable cause to believe to be about to carry fuel, arms, ammunition, men, or supplies to any warship, or tender, or supply ships of a belligerent nation in violation of the obligations of the United States as a neutral nation. In case any such vessel of America register or license shall depart or attempt to depart from the jurisdiction of the United States, without clearance, for any of the purposes, the owner or master, or person or persons having charge or command of such vessel, shall severally be liable to a fine of not less than $2,000 nor more than $10,000 or to imprisonment not to exceed two years, or both; and in addition such vessels shall be forfeited to the United States. That the President of the United States be, and he is hereby, authorized and empowered to employ such part of the land or naval forces of the United States as shall be necessary to carry out the purposes of this resolution. That the provisions of this resolution shall be deemed to extend to all lands and waters, continental or insular, within the jurisdiction of the United States. (The New York Times, Mar. 4, 1915.) On the next day the American Government inquired of Great Britain how the restraint upon sea-borne commerce with Germany is to be effected: THE SECRETARY OF STATE TO THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR AT LONDON. In regard to the recent communications received from the British and French Governments concerning restraints upon commerce with Germany, please communicate with the British foreign office in the sense following: The difficulty of determining action upon the British and French declarations of intended retaliation upon commerce with Germany lies in the nature of the proposed measures in their relation to commerce by neutrals. While it appears that the intention is to interfere with and take into custody all ships, both outgoing and incoming, trading with Germany, which is in effect a blockade of German ports, the rule of blockade, that a ship attempting to enter or leave a German port regardless of the character of its cargo may be condemned, is not asserted. The language of the declaration is: "The British and French Governments will therefore hold themselves free to detain and take into port ships carrying goods of presumed enemy destination, ownership or origin. It is not intended to confiscate such vessels or cargoes unless they would otherwise be liable to condemnation.” The first sentence claims a right pertaining only to a state of blockade. The last sentence proposes a treatment of ships and cargoes as if no blockade existed. The two together present proposed course of action previously unknown to international law. As a consequence, neutrals have no standard by which to measure their rights or to avoid danger to their ships and cargoes. The paradoxical situation thus created should be changed, and the declaring powers ought to assert whether they rely upon the rules governing a blockade or the rules applicable when no blockade exists. The declaration presents other perplexities. The last sentence quoted indicates that the rules of contraband are to be applied to cargoes detained. The rule covering noncontraband articles carried in neutral bottoms is that the cargoes shall be released and the ships allowed to proceed. This rule can not, under the first sentence quoted, be applied as to destination. What, then, is to be done with a cargo of noncontraband goods detained under the declaration? The same question may be asked as to conditional-contraband cargoes. The foregoing comments apply to cargoes destined for Germany. Cargoes coming out of German ports present another problem under the terms of the declaration. Under the rules governing enemy exports, only goods owned by enemy subjects in enemy bottoms are subject to seizure and condemnation. Yet by the declaration it is purposed to seize and take into port all goods of enemy "ownership and origin." The word "origin" is particularly significant. The origin of goods destined to neutral territory on neutral ships is not and never has been a ground for forfeiture except in case a blockade is declared and maintained. What, then, would the seizure amount to in the present case except to delay the delivery of the goods? The declaration does not indicate what disposition would be made of such cargoes if owned by a neutral or if owned by an enemy subject. Would a different rule be applied, according to ownership? If so, upon what principles of international law would it rest? And upon what rule, if no blockade is declared and maintained, could the cargo of a neutral ship sailing out of a German port be condemned? If it is not condemned, what other legal course is there but to release it? While this Government is fully alive to the possibility that the methods of modern naval warfare, particularly in the use of the submarine for both defensive and offensive operations, may make the former means of maintaining a blockade a physical impossibility, it feels that it can be urged with great force that there should be also some limit to "the radius of activity," and especially so if this action by the belligerents can be construed to be a blockade. It would certainly create a serious state of affairs if, for example, an American vessel laden with a cargo of German origin should escape the British patrol in European waters only to be held up by a cruiser off New York and taken into Halifax. Similar cablegram sent to Paris. BRYAN. On the 13th of March the British Government rejected this Government's proposal for mutual concessions in the following language: THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR. On the 22d of February last I received a communication from your excellency of the identic note addressed to His Majesty's Government and to Germany respecting an agreement on certain points as to the conduct of the war at sea. The reply of the German Government to this note has been published, and it is not understood from the reply that the German Government are prepared to abandon the pactice of sinking British merchant vessels by submarines, and it is evident from their reply that they will not abandon the use of mines for offensive purposes on the high seas as contrasted with the use of mines for defensive purposes only within cannon range of their own harbors, as suggested by the Government of the United States. This being so, it might appear unnecessary for the British Government. to make any further reply than to take note of the German answer. We desire, however, to take the opportunity of making a fuller statement of the whole position and of our feeling with regard to it. We recognize with sympathy the desire of the Government of the United States to see the European war conducted in accordance with the previously recognized rules of international law and the dictates of humanity. It is thus that the British forces have conducted the war, and we are not aware that these forces, either naval or military, can have laid to their charge any improper proceedings, either in the conduct of hostilities or in the treatment of prisoners or wounded. On the German side it has been very different. 1. The treatment of civilian inhabitants in Belgium and the north of France has been made public by the Belgian and French Governments and by those who have had experience of it at first hand. Modern history affords no precedent for the sufferings that have been inflicted on the defenseless and noncombatant population in the territory that has been in German military occupation. Even the food of the population was confiscated until in Belgium an international commission, largely influenced by American generosity and conducted under American auspices, came to the relief of the population and secured from the German Government a promise to spare what food was still left in the country, though the Germans still continue to make levies in money upon the defenseless population for the support of the German Army. 2. We have from time to time received most terrible accounts of the barbarous treatment to which British officers and soldiers have been exposed after they have been taken prisoner while being con veyed to German prison camps; one or two instances have already been given to the United States Government founded upon authentic and first-hand evidence which is beyond doubt. Some evidence has been received of the hardships to which British prisoners of war are subjected in the prison camps, contrasting, we believe, most unfavorably with the treatment of German prisoners in this country. We have proposed, with the consent of the United States Government, that a commission of United States officers should be permitted in each country to inspect the treatment of prisoners of war. The United States Government have been unable to obtain any reply from the German Government to this proposal, and we remain in continuing anxiety and apprehension as to the treatment of British prisoners of war in Germany. 3. At the very outset of the war a German mine layer was discovered laying a mine field on the high seas. Further mine fields have been laid from time to time without warning, and, so far as we know, are still being laid on the high seas, and many neutral as well as British vessels have been sunk by them. 4. At various times during the war German submarines have stopped and sunk British merchant vessels, thus making the sinking of merchant vessels a general practice, though it was admitted previously, if at all, only as an exception, the general rule to which the British Government have adhered being that merchant vessels, if captured, must be taken before a prize court. In one case already quoted in a note to the United States Government a neutral vessel carrying foodstuffs to an unfortified town in Great Britain has been sunk. Another case is now reported in which a German armed cruiser has sunk an American vessel, the William P. Frye, carrying a cargo of wheat from Seattle to Queenstown. In both cases the cargoes were presumably destined for the civil population. Even the cargoes in such circumstances should not have been condemned without the decision of a prize court, much less should the vessels have been sunk. It is to be noted that both these cases occurred before the detention by the British authorities of the Wilhelmina and her cargo of foodstuffs which the German Government allege is the justification for their own action. The Germans have announced their intention of sinking British merchant vessels by torpedo without notice and without any provision for the safety of the crew. They have already carried out this intention in the case of neutral as well as of British vessels, and a number of noncombatant and innocent lives on British vessels, unarmed and defenseless, have been destroyed in this way. 5. Unfortified, open, and defenseless towns, such as Scarborough, Yarmouth, and Whitby, have been deliberately and wantonly bombarded by German ships of war, causing in some cases considerable loss of civilian life, including women and children. 6. German aircraft have dropped bombs on the east coast of England where there were no military or strategic points to be attacked. On the other hand, I am aware of but two criticisms that have been made on British action in all these respects: (1) It is said that the British naval authorities also have laid some anchored mines on the high seas. They have done so, but the mines were anchored and so constructed that they would be harmless if they went adrift, and no mines whatever were laid by the British naval authorities till many weeks after the Germans had made a regular practice of laying mines on the high seas. (2) It is said that the British Government have departed from the view of international law which they had previously maintained, that foodstuffs destined for the civil population should never be interfered with, this charge being founded on the submission to a prize court of the cargo of the Wilhelmina. The special considerations affecting this cargo have already been presented in a memorandum to the United States Government, and I need not repeat them here. Inasmuch as the stoppage of all foodstuffs is an admitted consequence of blockade, it is obvious that there can be no universal rule based on considerations of morality and humanity which is contrary to this practice. The right to stop foodstuffs destined for the civil population must therefore in any case be admitted if an effective "cordon" controlling intercourse with the enemy is drawn, announced, and maintained. Moreover, independently of rights arising from belligerent action in the nature of blockade, some other nations, differing from the opinion of the Governments of the United States and Great Britain, have held that to stop the food of the civil population is a natural and legitimate method of bringing pressure to bear on an enemy country, as it is upon the defense of a besieged town. It is also upheld on the authority of both Prince Bismarck and Count Caprivi on the point. Prince Bismarck, in answering, in 1885, an application from the Kiel Chamber of Commerce for a statement of the view of the German Government on the question of the right to declare as contraband foodstuffs that were not intended for military forces, said: "I reply to the chamber of commerce that any disadvantage our commercial and carrying interests may suffer by the treatment of rice as contraband of war does not justify our opposing a measure which it has been thought fit to take in carrying on a foreign war. Every war is a calamity which entails evil consequences, not only on the combatants but also on neutrals. These evils may easily be increased by the interference of a neutral power with the way in which a third carries on the war to the disadvantage of the subjects of the interfering power, and by this means German commerce might be weighted with far heavier losses than a transitory prohibition of the rice trade in Chinese waters. The measure in question has for its object the shortening of the war by increasing the difficulties of the enemy, and is a justifiable step in war if impartially enforced against all neutral ships." Count Caprivi, during a discussion in the German Reichstag on the 4th of March, 1892, on the subject of the importance of international protection for private property at sea, made the following statements: "A country may be dependent for her food or for her raw products upon her trade. In fact it may be absolutely necessary to destroy the enemy's trade." "The private introduction of provisions into Paris was prohibited during the siege, and in the same way a nation would be justified in preventing the import of food and raw produce." The Government of Great Britain have frankly declared, in concert with the Government of France, their intention to meet the German attempt to stop all supplies of every kind from leaving or entering British or French ports by themselves stopping supplies going to or from Germany by sea. The difference between the two policies is, however, effectively controlling by cruiser "cordon" all passage to and from Germany * * * |