if France violated Belgian neutrality in the course of the war then raging. Moreover, in 1911, Germany had given a diplomatic assurance to Belgium that she had no intention of violating Belgian neutrality; and as late as July 31, 1914, the German Minister at Brussels had informed the Belgian Foreign Office that he knew of these assurances and was certain that "the sentiments expressed at the time had not changed." Two days later the same Minister presented to the same Foreign Office an ultimatum demanding passage on pain of instant war in case of refusal; and three days later the German troops crossed the Belgian frontier! There is nothing more to tell except that on the night of August 1 Germany seized Luxemburg, whose neutrality she had covenanted to respect by the Treaty of 1867. There she met with no armed opposition, and there her forces still remain. The heroic Kingdom is castigated well nigh to death for keeping her plighted word; but the submissive Duchy is not relieved of her burden because she accepted it without resistance. In both cases the offense of Germany is continuous as well as flagrant. Every day that passes adds to the weight of her guilt.

THE QUESTION arises whether some effective protection cannot be devised for States whose rights to remain neutral is wantonly disregarded. This is bound up with the vastly greater question of the development of international society in such a way that a proved and serious breach of the mass of rules and customs we call International Law shall be punished at the behests of an authority created by common consent. The nature of the authority, the nature of the sanction, and the nature of the rules to be sanctioned, are each and all matters which provoke great differences of opinion. This is not the occasion to discuss them. But it may be pointed out that there is a real sanction in cases where the permanent neutrality of a State is guaranteed by a great lawmaking treaty, at least if the guarantee is several and not collective merely, as seems to be the case with regard to Luxemburg. There can be no doubt that one of the reasons which impel Great Britain, France and Russia to carry on the present war is that they may punish the brutal violation of Belgium by the German forces. With Great Britain it is probably the most cogent reason of all. Indeed, it might be questioned whether she would have drawn the sword at all but for the indignation and disgust caused by Germany's bad faith. At any rate, the entire strength of the nation would not have been flung whole-heartedly into the conflict, as is the case at present. It has yet to be seen whether the statesmen of Berlin did not make, even from the point of the military interests of their country, the worst of their many mistakes when they sent von Emmich and his men across the Belgian frontier.

IT WAS till lately regarded as an axiom of civilized warfare that

neutral life was sacred, whatever liberties might be taken with neutral property. It is true that a neutral individual who joined the armed forces of a belligerent might be killed or wounded or taken prisoner, like any of his comrades. But that was because he had thrown off his neutral character by entering the army or navy of the enemy. And at the same time that he assumed the liabilities of a fighting man he acquired the privileges also. He was entitled to be treated in action as a lawful combatant, and if captured, he must be kept in honorable detention as a prisoner of war. But we are beginning to change all this. In the RussoJapanese war of 1904-5 submarine contact mines were used for the first time on a large scale. Some were anchored and some were not. The anchored class frequently broke loose from their moorings and got adrift; while the unanchored class were adrift from the beginning. The result was that hundreds of neutral Chinese fishermen were destroyed, in many cases long after the war was over. Their hard and cruel lot made little impression on the Second Hague Conference, though it was presented to that august body in a pathetic memorandum. The Convention on the subject, adopted at the last moment after long and weary discussions extending over four months, was admittedly an eleventh hour compromise, which satisfied nobody. Its provisions were weak in themselves, and in addition full of loopholes. Practically they allowed belligerents to sow the open seas with sudden death, and to lay in secret cordons of mines across the channels of access to an enemy's port as long as they could find some excuse for alleging that other objects than the closing of the port to commercial navigation had prompted their action. When these risks were pointed out by Sir Ernest Satow on behalf of Great Britain at the Eighth Plenary Meeting of the Conference on October 8, 1907, the late Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, who was the first Plenipotentiary of Germany, replied that it would be unwise to make rules so strict that their observance might be "rendered impossible by the nature of things." "Conscience," said he, "good sense, and the sentiment of duty imposed by principles of humanity will be the surest guides for the conduct of sailors, and will constitute the most effective guarantee against abuses. He went on to declare that the officers of the German Navy would always fulfil in the strictest fashion the duties which emanate from the unwritten law of humanity and civilization," and to claim that there was no Government or country superior to his own in such

matters.

THESE, says Dr. Lawrence, we e brave words. A brief and very incomplete record of what the German navy has done in regard to neutral life during the present war will form an instructive commentary on them. First, it laid mines along the East Anglian coast the moment war was declared, if not a good many moments

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before, and followed this up by placing other mine fields in other parts of the North Sea fairways. Then it mined large tracts of open sea off portions of its own coasts, and brought about thereby the death by drowning of a few neutral sailors. Then it extended its mines along the channels of the North of Ireland, where the sea tracks of vast numbers of vessels, many of them neutral, converge on their way to Scotch, Irish and British commercial ports. Then on February 4, 1915, the German Government issued a decree proclaiming as from February 18, the seas for a considerable distance round the British Isles to be a War Zone, within which all British vessels were liable to destruction by German submarines or air-craft, if necessary without warning, and neutral vessels which presumed to traverse the forbidden region were liable to share their fate. These threats were not suffered to remain unexecuted. There was action behind them; and in consequence of that action scores of innocent neutral lives have been lost. The torpedoing of the Falaba and the Lusitania, to give the two most conspicuous examples, is fresh in our minds. On both occasions American citizens perished; and on the second the horror was deepened by the terrible fact that many were women and children.

POSSIBLY these few instances may be sufficient to convince the world that even German humanity is not to be trusted with a free hand. In truth, rules to restrain the violence of combatants are urgently required, and those not vague rules full of loopholes and saving clauses, but rules that are clear, distinct and meant to be obeyed. For lack of such restraints we are rapidly going back to a warfare in some respects worse than that of savages. They slaughter the women and children of their adversaries when the blood-lust is on them. Germany slaughters in cold blood the women and children of friends as well as foes; and unless she is checked her example will be followed by other Powers.

DR. LAWRENCE then takes up the two questions: Can neutral property found on board a captured enemy vessel be destroyed when it is deemed necessary to destroy the vessel? And have belligerents a right to sink neutral prizes at sea? On the first question, he says, a decision was given by the French Conseil d'Etat in 1871 in the cases of the Ludwig and the Vorwärts which had been captured in 1870, and burnt at sea along with their neutral cargoes because their captors could not safely spare a prize crew. Not only was the legality of the destruction upheld, but it was also maintained that no compensation was due to the neutral owners who had lost their property loaded in these vessels. The ground of the decision appears to have been that a neutral must take the chances of war if he puts himself or his goods in a po30

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sition where hostile acts may be expected. This reasoning and the judgment founded upon it have met with general acceptance. But Dr. Lawrence dissents from this view to differ with them. He maintains that the deliberate destruction of a cargo after the ship which carries it has passed under the power of the captor is no more incidental to the operation of capture, than the deliberate cutting of the throat of a prisoner after he has been taken is incidental to the operation of taking him. Each is a separate act, and must be judged on its own merits. Looked at in this way the burning of the cargo was a clear violation of the Third Article of the Declaration of Paris, which exempts neutral goods from capture, and a fortiori from destruction, when found under an enemy flag, unless they are contraband of war. Granted that there were good grounds for the destruction of the vessels, and that they could not be destroyed without destroying the cargoes, yet a wrong was done thereby to the neutral owners, and therefore full compensation was due to them. This should be the law of the future, unless the captors can prove that the cargo was contraband. Recent events show that the rage for destruction grows by what it feeds on. Germany claims to use the new weapon of the submarine in such a way as to destroy the old immunities of neutrals and non-combatants. According to her, there need be no search, in some cases even no summons to surrender, no provision of safety for the crew, no attempt to take the vessel into port for adjudication, nothing but one wild orgy of indiscriminate violence. The reply of the civilized world should be a refusal to surrender the slightest neutral prerogative. Unless the outworks are held inviolate the citadel will soon be carried, and warfare at sea will become as barbarous as it was directly after the fall of the Roman Empire.

TO THE further question as to whether belligerents have a right to sink neutral prizes at sea, till lately belligerent warships rarely went to this extremity. The British custom was to release rather than resort to it. In the case of the Actaeon (2 Dodson 48) Lord Stowell laid down that "if a belligerent ship destroys a neutral vessel, the owner thereof is entitled to be put in the same position as he was in before the destruction of his vessel, i. c., to recover damages and costs. The commander of a belligerent ship may have good reason for destroying a neutral vessel, but this does not relieve him from responsibility to the owner for damages. The question was never very prominent in those days; but it sprang into importance during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. Russia made a practice of sinking neutral vessels when her cruisers found it inconvenient to bring them in for adjudication, and Great Britain, along with other neutral Powers, challenged her right to do anything of the kind. The great case was that of the Knight Commander, a British vessel laden with a cargo of railway ma

terial. Her Russian captors declared this to be contraband, and sunk her off Yokohama, because of the proximity of an enemy's port and lack of coal to take her to Vladivostock. England claimed an indemnity of £105,000, and Russia refused to admit any liability. England then proposed that the case should be sent to arbitration; but Russia declined her proposal. The general question was discussed at the Hague Conference of 1907, but no agreement was reached. The Naval Conference of 1908-9, however, succeeded where the larger body had failed. The Declaration of London, which it drew up, laid down a general rule in accordance with British views in the words, "A neutral vessel which has been captured may not be destroyed by the enemy." But it went on to admit the Russian idea of exceptions, and allowed destruction when observance of the rule would involve "danger to the safety of the warship, or to the success of the operations in which she is engaged at the time." The ship's papers were, however, to be preserved and brought before a prize court, which must be convinced of the necessity of the destruction, and also of the liability of the vessel to capture and condemnation. Failing satisfactory proof of either or both of these, compensation must be paid (Arts. 48-52). This solution of the difficulty, says Dr. Lawrence, seems right in principle, but wrong in conceding to the belligerent cruiser too many grounds for destruction. The phrase "danger to the success of the operations in which she is engaged at the time" is much too elastic. It may be stretched to cover consequences that are both unimportant and remote. Of course, the destruction by German submarines of American and other neutral vessels during the present war, without even a pretense of discovering by lawful search their true nationality, business and destination, is a gross illegality, whatever view may be taken of the sinking of neutral vessels after they have been detained and examined, and their papers and crews removed.

THROUGHOUT the war Germany has been insistent in its demands on the United States that their Government should stop the great trade in arms and munitions of war that has sprung up between American firms and the naval and military authorities of the Allies. Its appeals to what may be called the equities of neutrality, and the abusive threats of its highly-disciplined press, are calculated to raise a smile in an assembly of jurists where the law of contraband is well known, and the recent history of German trade not entirely forgotten. The Hague Conference of 1907 twice enacted that: "A neutral Power is not bound to prevent the export or transit, on behalf of one or other of the belligerents, of arms, munitions of war, or in general of anything that can be of use to an army or a fleet." These words appear in the Seventh Article of the Fifth Convention, and also in the Seventh Article