driven to the conclusion that a commerce in arms and other military material is a violation of moral principles whenever prosecuted, in time of peace as well as in time of war; or, in other words, the wrong always resides in the nature of the articles themselves, and not in the particular season during which the parties transact their business. But the immoral element, if it exist at all, must follow the transaction to a much greater length. If it be a violation of morality for neutrals to make and send military material to a nation while engaged in war, or while preparing therefor, it is equally and for the same reason immoral for the citizens of the state, and even for the state itself, to make a like preparation, and to manufacture and sell or collect supplies of arms, ammunition, and other articles necessary for the conduct of actual hostilities. In this manner every step in the process could be shown to be immoral, until we finally arrive at the conclusion that war itself is essentially wrong. In fact, this result is evident from the outset; the proposition that a trade in military material with one belligerent is essentially an immoral act necessarily involves the assumption that war itself is also an immoral act. The one depends upon the other; the quality of immorality in the interdicted traffic, if it exist at all, can only follow from the fact that war is so intrinsically wrong that it affects with a quality of immorality any act done in its aid. This is a reductio ad absurdum. In fact, the outcry which has been raised within the past few years against a neutral commerce in contraband articles is the result of combined sentimentalism and ignorance; a sentimentalisin which shrinks from the contemplation of acts which may assist in the prosecution of war, and an ignorance of the fact that the objection extends to war itself.

When the Prussian Minister of Foreign Affairs assumed the attitude which has been described towards the British government, and demanded that a trade in contraband by neutral citizens should be made an international offence on the part of the neutral state to which such citizens owed their allegiance, he did not base his claim upon any sentimental notion that the traffic was a violation of morality; his reasons were those of state policy, that is, the reasons which actually led him to assume the position. In explaining them we shall exhibit the necessary effect upon the great family of nations of the two alterations proposed to be made in the laws of maritime war, in case they should

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be universally accepted as a part of the public law, - an effect which is certainly contemplated by the wily statesmen who are intriguing to procure their adoption, although doubtless overlooked by the theoretical publicists who insist that they are in the interest of humanity. This effect we have already stated to be the building up, strengthening, and maintenance of a military absolutism. It can be easily shown that these two changes in the modes of conducting war on the ocean, like the provisions of the Russian Code for the regulation of war on the land, would inevitably exalt and extend the already enormous power of the great military empires like Russia and Germany, and would proportionately undermine and weaken the strength of the minor states, and especially of those whose governments are constitutional in form, and in which the free sentiments and habits of the people are opposed to the existence of vast standing armies. Russia and Germany may be taken as the types of empires based upon the idea of a military absolutism. Rich, powerful, possessing in themselves immense resources, their able-bodied male citizens are all organized into the national armies. No states on the continent can compete with them or oppose a successful resistance to their encroachments, except by adopting their policy of internal military organization. Great Britain alone is at present their equal in power, not because of its army, for the British people could not for a moment endure such a system, but because of its navy, which makes it supreme on the ocean, and enables it to control the commerce of the world. This power of Great Britain to destroy the commerce of any European enemy places it on an equality with Russia and Germany, and compels those nations to endure the neighborhood of its free and popular institutions and the contrast with their own. If the naval supe

riority of Great Britain were removed, it would fall an easy prey to its continental rivals, or be forced to maintain armies which could compete with theirs; and such a military establishment would of itself be a death-blow to constitutional liberty. It has already been shown that the single change in the law of maritime warfare which abolishes the capture of private property on the sea. would terminate at once the naval supremacy of Great Britain; and this fact alone is sufficient to explain the attitude of Russian and German statesmen towards the proposed amendments. The same considerations apply with equal force to all other nations,

and to none more directly than to the United States. If war on the ocean is abandoned, if all hostilities are to be conducted on the land, if the only means of coercing an enemy is to consist in the destruction of life and the putting his forces hors de combat, if the contest is to be restricted to a professional soldiery, while the non-combatant citizens are to remain spectators, pursuing their customary avocations and unmolested in their commercial pursuits, if this is to be the future character and condition of warfare, then of course the largest and best equipped armies must ever prevail; war will be reduced to a matter of mere superiority in numbers and military resources; then a nation without a standing army large enough to cope with its rivals must necessarily be in a position of inferiority to one which possesses such a force. Standing armies will thus become indispensable to the preservation of national power, and with the rise of these military organizations, which must embrace the entire able-bodied male population, will of necessity come the decline and final distinction of free institutions and constitutional governments. Political and civil liberty cannot for a moment exist in a state where the whole people are under the domination of the drill-sergeant.

The same design is even more plainly exhibited in the Prussian proposal to interdict the neutral traffic in contraband; and it is difficult to repress a feeling of mingled indignation and disgust when we see the mawkish sentimentality which has seized upon this crafty proposition of an arbitrary statesman, and is advocating its adoption on the plea of its superior humanity. If such interdiction should become an acknowledged doctrine of the international laws, every state, whether weak or powerful, whether poor or rich, would be forced to make and to keep up at all times the enormous preparation necessary for the operations of modern warfare. Under the provisions of the public law, as it now exists, a nation is not forced to maintain a constant and full supply of military material; it can wait until hostilities commence, and then, with but little risk, can obtain all that it needs as the exigencies of the war demand. If the proposed

change is made, this policy can no longer be pursued. Every state, to be prepared for war, must keep on hand at all times a full and complete amount of arms, ammunition, and other similar articles, no matter at what expense, or by means of what ruinous

taxation, enormous burdens upon property and private industries, and perhaps popular discontents; or it must enter upon a war when it comes utterly unprepared, and so fall a ready prey to its better supplied and more fully equipped enemy. In either case the result is favorable to the policy of an ambitious and unscrupulous military absolutism. If standing armies are kept at their highest numbers, if, in fact, the whole male population is one vast military array, if arsenals are kept always filled, if all the means for engaging in actual hostilities are at all times on hand ready for use, and if the cost of all this incessant preparation is defrayed, as it must be, by a grinding taxation which eats out the substance of the national industries, there is no room for free institutions, for the development of constitutional government, and for the rule of the popular will. If, on the other hand, any state should neglect these precautions, and makę no provision for the possible outbreak of war, its very existence would depend upon the forbearance merely of its powerful neighbors whose political systems are the embodiment of a military despotism, and whose superior resources and vast armies place them above any law except their own will. These are not vain and empty predictions: they are the statements of events that have taken place under our own eyes. The steady, remorseless progress of Russia in destroying and blotting out free people after people whose territory lay in the path of its invading policy and its march through Asia towards the British India; the equally inexcusable acts of Prussia in absorbing independent states and incorporating them with its own dominions, upon no pretext or claim of right whatsoever, except its desire for territorial aggrandizement, demonstrate the truth of the conclusions which we have reached, and show what may be expected from a military absolutism when clothed with a power sufficient for the accomplishment of its far-reaching designs.

Third. The Three Rules of the Treaty of Washington.

Our space will not permit any extended discussion of these rules, nor is it necessary, for they have been carefully examined, and their character fully disclosed, in former numbers of this Review. They are only mentioned now in order to show that their effect, if adopted, would be the same as that of the two proposed changes in the public law already described, that is, a destruction of neutral freedom, and an increase of neutral obli

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gations. The important and the only question to which we shall allude is, Are these rules a mere statement in a statutory form of what the international law requires from all neutral governments, or do they introduce and impose upon neutrals new obligations towards belligerents? M. Charles Calvo, in the essay quoted at the commencement of this article, discusses the question, and reaches the conclusion that they are declaratory of the existing law, and are therefore obligatory upon all nations. This opinion is not held by publicists generally; and that it was not held by the two contracting parties, and is not accepted by other states, is very evident from the text of the treaty itself, and from the diplomatic proceedings in reference to it since its execution by the Geneva Arbitration. The text of the treaty shows that the negotiators regarded their work as introducing new doctrines into the international law. It declares that the arbitrators shall be governed by these three rules, "which are agreed upon by the high contracting parties as rules to be taken as applicable to the case, and by such principles of the International Law not inconsistent therewith as the arbitrators shall deem to have been applicable to the case." This language is very instructive. assumes that there are principles of the public law inconsistent with these treaty stipulations, and of course such principles could only relate to the same subject-matter, to the facts in dispute between the contracting parties. But the context is even more expressive. Great Britain distinctly denies that the rules are parts of the public law, and permits them to have a retroactive effect, and to be made the basis of decision from motives of comity merely. Finally, the two contracting parties agree "to bring them to the knowledge of other powers, and invite them to accede to them." This stipulation is utterly inconsistent, both in its form and its intent, with the notion that the High Commissioners were putting into a concise and positive form what was already acknowledged as universally obligatory. The conclusion thus reached, by an examination of the text, is fully corroborated by the proceedings since the treaty was executed. Neither of the parties has taken any steps in earnest to carry out the agreement last quoted, and the debates in Parliament clearly show that there is no intention on the part of the British government to do so. Not a single nation of importance has "acceded" to the rules; on the contrary, several of the European governments first