PROBLEMS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 515 



security of neutral commerce and ought not, by the device of declar- 

 ing an extension of the list of contraband articles, to be done away 

 at any time by any belligerent. The Russian declaration, which 

 seeks to treat as contraband substantially all fuel and food arid the 

 staple from which clothing is made, would certainly have this effect 

 if enforced, and the most objectionable harrying of neutral commerce 

 and deprivation of noncombatant belligerents would be liable to 

 follow. That this is no small matter to neutral trade is shown by 

 a very simple consideration of the facts. If we regard the excessive 

 number of two or even three millions of persons as engaged in or by 

 location or otherwise infected by the warlike operations of Japan, 1 

 then neutral ships cannot carry supplies of food or fuel or clothing 

 to those three millions without liability to seizure, but they may still 

 carry such supplies with entire immunity to some forty-two millions 

 of Japanese, constituting the civil population. The extension by 

 the terms of the Russian proclamation is of a limitation, lawful as to 

 one fifteenth of the people, to the whole people, and it seems an un- 

 warranted invasion of the plain rights of neutrals to trade in these 

 great staples with forty-two millions of people. 



It is certainly customary for belligerents to announce what articles 

 they will treat as contraband, and the Institute of International 

 Law resolved in 1877 that belligerent governments should determine 

 this in advance on the occasion of each war, 2 and Prince Bismarck 

 so stated in reply to a complaint of Hamburg merchants; but no 

 substantial alteration of the rules of international law can be so made. 



If a belligerent, commanding the sea, can thus paralyze the neutral 

 transport of food, fuel, and the staples of clothing, the suffering and 

 death inflicted on the millions of noncombatants in such island 

 nations as Great Britain or Japan are appalling and quite unwar- 

 ranted by public law, and the blow to neutral commerce is utterly 

 destructive. 



Considering the greatly improved facilities for inland transit, the 

 test of noxious or not according to the character of the port of con- 

 signment may require modification, but such articles are, by the 

 great weight of authority and practice, not, as Russia would make 

 them, absolutely contraband, but conditionally so, if intended for 

 warlike use. 



So late as December, 1884, Russia, at the Congo Conference, 

 declared that she would not regard coal as contraband, 3 and food- 

 stuffs were not in her list of contraband in 1900. 4 



Russian Declaration of February 14, 1904, " Le blocus, pour etre obligatoire doit 

 etre effectif." 



1 The entire number of persons in the army and navy of Japan, including 

 reserve and landwehr, as appears by the Statesman's Year-Book of 1904, p. 864, 

 was 667, 362. 



2 Hall's International Law, 5th ed. 1894, p. 653; Annuaire for 1878, p. 112. 



3 Lawrence's War and Neutrality in the Far East, p. 158. 4 Ibid. p. 166. 



