According to an Exchange telegram from St. Petersburg published in
Friday's papers, it was decided at an extra- ordinary meeting of a Commission appointed by the Russian Government that coal, cotton, and iron materials should be declared to be contraband. If this news is correct., the question again assumes a very serious aspect, for our Government have most emphatically declared their inability to admit this view of the subject. Hitherto it has been the practically universally accepted opinion of international lawyers that such things as coal, cotton, and iron are not unconditionally contraband,—i.e., can only be held to be contraband, and so liable to seizure, if they are consigned to a belligerent Government. On August 11th Mr. Balfour insisted on this view very strongly. "I do not think it would be possible to sit down quiescently under that decision," were his words in regard to the possibility of the finding of a Russian Prize Court being contrary to the accepted rule of international law.
