THE DECLARATION OF LONDON.
IT is seldom that so complicated a subject is laid before Parliament as that which was discussed in the House of Lords on. Wednesday and Thursday. It touches at all points the vague and elusive machinery of International Law, and of this the ordinary politician necessarily knows very little. He feels that he would like in the main to be guided by Naval experts in matters which ultimately affect the safety of our shores and the security of our food supplies, but he finds that most Naval experts are as back- ward as himself in understanding the exact bearing of Inter- national Law on naval warfare. For ourselves, while we admit the extraordinary difficulty of coming to a decision as to how this or that clause of the Declaration of London would work in practice, we are not inclined to modify in any way the opinion we have expressed more than once, that if the Declaration were ratified it would tie our hands in war, and that the greatest risk any country can run is the risk of defeat. The safety or con- venience of neutrals can be bought at much too high a price. But, before we say more, we must deprecate strongly the foolishness of speaking of the work of those English- men who helped to draft the Declaration as though it were an unpatriotic act. Lord Desart and his Naval colleagues at the Conference, of course, believed that it would be to the distinct advantage of Great Britain to have the Inter- national Law, under which the proposed International Prize Court or Court of Appeal would carry on its work, codified as it is in the Declaration. Lord Desart never spared himself in his labours, and it is absurdly unjust to pretend that he was all the time perfecting an instru- ment for a Radical Government to betray the country. Men of both parties approve of the Declaration, just as men of both parties strongly disapprove of it. All we shall try to show now is that the risks to which it would expose us are greater than the advantages ; and that, as the Declaration must be taken or rejected as a whole, it certainly ought to be rejected.
The greatest power which naval strength puts in the hands of a, country is the power to destroy the commerce of an enemy and thus undermine his tax-paying capacity and his ability to prolong a war. In the Declaration of Paris, which followed the Crimean War, we consented to part with our right to capture enemy merchandise in neutral ships • we agreed to fight in future with one hand behind our be:0k ; and, in return, we secured the nominal abolition of privateering. The Declaration of London extends the principles of the Declaration of Paris, but it omits to prohibit privateering. We do not, however, attach very great importance to this question of privateer- • ing, which would cut both ways. By far the gravest objections to the Declaration, as it seems to us, are the treatment of contraband and the powers vested in the - International Prize Court. The advocates of the Declara- tion paint a picture of which we should be the last to deny the attractiveness. At present every country forms its own Prize Court, and when injustice is done to neutral shipping, as it was over and over again, for example, in the Russo- Japanese war, compensation can be got in rare cases, and to an inadequate amount, from the authors of the injustice. They are the judges of their own cause. It would un- doubtedly, be an agreeable innovation to have an Inter- national Law by which all the grievances of neutrals would be brought to the same test, instead of the present chaotic diversity of morals. In the minds of some optimists and idealists the Declaration of London is only a step towards a completely logical understanding by which all commerce shall go unmolested. and the navies of the world shall be left free for the sole task of battering one another. Even now one continually hears the argument that the further security brought to neutrals by the Declaration of London would of itself enable us to reduce the cost of our Navy by relieving us of a large part of the duty of guarding our commerce. It is important to know that this argument in favour of the Declaration was summarily quashed by Lord Morley on Wednesday, when he stated that the effect of the establishment of an International Court and of the acceptance of the Declaration of London (as the legal code of that Court) would be "small and inconsider- able."
In another respect the debate in the House of Lords made the situation clearer. For instance, Lord Desart, who, though he did not speak for the Government, of course, stated the authoritative view of the Declaration, said that the report on the Declaration by M. Renault (to think that in such an important matter this running commentary on the Declaration should be necessary to interpret it I) would be regarded in the International Court as having official authority and, indeed, as part of the Declaration. But the whole of Lord Desart's speech leaves us quite unsatisfied that we should not suffer enormously through the Declara- tion if we were engaged in war. It is impossible to take all the points which cause us misgiving, but let us examine the supremely important question of contraband. Article 34 of the Declaration is full of words of doubtful meaning. Such terms as "enemy authorities," " con- tractor," " place serving as a base," require, as Lord Desborough said, most careful definition. Con- sider the last phrase. It is laid down that food in a. neutral ship consigned to a fortified place can be captured. and destroyed. Well and good ; we cannot object to that. But it is also laid. down that food may be similarly captured. and destroyed if it is coming to a " place serving as a base for the armed. forces of the enemy.' Is it con- ceivable that any port in our small islands would. be held as a legitimate place for landing food ? All are within easy communication of fortified places, and therefore may be regarded as " bases." It is necessary to remember that our position is different from that of all other Powers. If a Continental country were cut off immediately from its supplies by sea it would suffer great inconvenience indeed, but it could make shift to feed itself ; food could be landed at ports outside its own territory and be brought in by train. Moreover, all the Great Powers have vaster internal resources than we have. For an island like Great Britain to be cut off is something much worse than inconvenience : it is death. For this reason alone we feel that there is no reasonable point of comparison between Continental Powers and ourselves, and we must not reassure ourselves by imagining that the International Court would instantly step in if a neutral vessel bringing us supplies in time of war were wrongly stopped on her voyage, and would set her on her course again. The inter- vention of the Court would be a slow process ; inquiries would have to be made into the good faith of the seized vessel, and a case would have to be stated. Possibly justice would be done when the war was over. But that would be too late. The mischief to us, depending as we do absolutely on our food supply from over the seas, would be irretrievable. If a small and obscure Power alleged that any neutral vessel was disguising the contraband nature of her cargo, the mere allegation, as we understand it, would be enough to have the vessel seized and held till doubt was removed. And what could be expected of the interpretation of the Declaration from the naval officers of foreign Powers ?
Would they not put the widest possible construction on " a place serving as a base " ? Of course they would, and no blame to them. An International Court becomes a mere shadow in the background when a zealous naval
officer, who, as Lord Selborne very rightly said, will be the first interpreter of the Declaration, has all the discretion of the man on the spot and is consumed with anxiety to defeat his enemy.
What is the answer of the supporters of the Declaration to the objection we have just stated ? They say that the objection is based entirely on the assumption that the existing British theory of contraband is accepted by other nations. " All that you fear," they say, " can happen now. Why, then, should you object formally to admit this fact, and get in return for your admission the undoubted advan- tages of the Declaration in several other respects ? " This argument was skilfully used by Lord Desart on Wednesday. He told us that we had to judge the general effect of the Declaration in relation to the practice of other Powers, not in accordance with our own prepossessions. Judged in this way the Declaration, he considered, would be found to secure numerous advantages to neutrals, while it did no injury to the striking power of a belligerent. Russia, it is said, de- clared cotton contraband in her war with Japan. Such a thing could never happen again under the Declaration. We may admit that the argument is reasonable, and still bold, as we sincerely do, that the mere act of regularising the cutting off of our food supply in war, as in effect we should do, would be a disastrous surrender. And, when all has been said, there remains the fact, quite unanswered, that the acceptance of the Declaration would reduce our capacity for injuring our enemy in war. If you reduce your power of offence, you also reduce your poweref defence. As for the composition of the International Court, is it not making ourselves hostage to the whole world to submit ourselves to the adjudication of small Powers which have no naval interests comparable with ours, and in some cases no naval strength at all, and yet have the same voting strength as the Great Powers ? We conclude, then, that the ratification of the Declaration would be a leap in the dark. The British Dominions are beginning to grow their own navies. They have not been consulted. They also would be subject to the decisions of Powers which have no navies. We hold strongly that we should not sign so vague an instrument as this Declara- tion. We are not blind to the desirability of unifying International Law, but we should guard our words with infinite precision. If the Government carry the day and ratify the Declaration, why should they not define carefully their interpretation of the disputed passages, and say that they accept the Declaration in this sense alone ? That, though not nearly so satisfactory as total rejection, would, at any rate, mitigate some of the chief risks of the Declaration. Other Powers might repudiate that expedient. At all events, we should not seem churlishly to go back upon a procedure which we ourselves proposed, and we should have put our exact views on record.
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