[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR. " ) SIR, —The Foreign Secretary is
understood to say that "in practice " neutral merchantmen are liable to be sunk uncondi- tionally by a belligerent ship of war. Will he tell us of one instance in which that has been done—much less submitted to—on the high seas (prior to the recent case of the Knight Commander') ? He says that instances have occurred in recent years in which food-stuffs, "with the approval of other Great Powers," have been declared to be absolute contraband. Will he state in how many cases a cargo of food-stuffs has been confiscated as such ; and, incidentally, bow many Powers, small or great, approved the French Declaration of rice as contraband in 1884 ? He says that a neutral has no redress except in a Prize Court. Will he explain where redress was obtained for the illegal acts of United States cruisers for which (inter alia) we obtained half-a-million of money damages in 1873, and whether a Prize Court ordered the release of the Malacca' ? Finally, are we to take it that every assertion of an inadmissible principle by a foreign Chancellery is to be made the occasion of compromise by Great Britain ?—I am, Sir, &c., THOMAS BATY. Temple.
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