CONTRABAND OF WAR.
ITO TUE EDITOR OP TITS "9PECTATOIL1
Sin,—If one may judge from the newspaper reports of the replies given in the House on Monday by Mr. McKinnon Wood to Mr. Leverton Harris's questions regarding contra- band of war, very rarely have more deadly blows been aimed at Britain's security iu time of war than those contained
in Articled XXXIII., XXXIV., XXXV., and XLIX. of the proposed Decimation of London. Hitherto, next to our Navy and Army, our surest safeguard against foreign conquest has been the fact that under the recognised rules of international law the food-supply of these islands in time of war has been fairly secure even in the absence of our fleets. For (1) except in exceptional cirenm- stances—as, for example, when they were going direct to an enemy's forces—food•stuffe could not be seized as con- traband of war, and in every case upon the captor fell the onus of proving in a Prize Court the existence of the exceptional circumstances which imparted to these usually innocent goods a contraband character ; (2) every neutral vessel seized for carrying contraband, or alleged contraband, should be taken before a properly constituted Prize Court, and in no way injured until the judgment of the Court should have been given.
Under the proposed Declaration of London these wholesome, and to Britain vitally important, rules are abrogated. First, the onus of proving the innocent destination of food-stuffs is shifted from the captor to the owner of the goods, so that it would seem that all neutral vessels carrying food-stuffs may be seized, carried off, and detained, until after lengthy legal Process the owners can prove that the food-stuffs they are carrying are not consigned to "ports 'which are bases of supply for our armed forces." Long before the Prize Courts should have delivered judgment Britain might have been starved into surrender. Secondly, "no definition as to what 18 a base of supply has been arrived at by the signatories to the Declaration." Hence it might be possible for an enemy Of Britain to contend that every British port is necessarily such a base, and that therefore all food-stuffs coming to Britain are necessarily contraband, and so confiscable. On the other band, if our enemy were Germany, the Belgian ports would be an ever-open receptacle for food-stuffs destined for our foe, and nothing consigned to a Belgian port could be treated as contraband. Thirdly, " we have departed from the principles which we maintained in the case of the ' Knight Commander,' —viz., that under no circumstances can a belligerent sink a neutral prize." We are prepared to allow a captor to sink neutral vessel carrying contraband "in eases whore success
would be endangered if the captor were to take her prize into Court," If we put these three concessions together, it would appear that in a future naval war our enemy could (1) declare every Port in Great Britain a base of supply to Britain's armed forces; could (2) condemn as contraband every ship carrying food-stuffs to any such port ; and could (3) sink every such ship at sea on the plea that unless it did so its success would be endangered.
There are, of course, countervailing considerations. Assuming that Great Britain retained undisputed supremacy at sea, the new rules would enable her to bring overwhelming pressure to bear upon her enemies. But it is not well to trust the fate of these islands wholly to the chance that the Navy will never meet with even a temporary reverse. As we need the second line of defence which our Army provides, so do we
Peed the third line of defence supplied by the present rules of international law. It is to be hoped that the fullest discussion of the proposed Declaration of London will be allowed before the irrevocable step is taken. The question of the building of ' Dread- noughts' seems hardly more critically important than does the question of these radical changes in international law.—
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