AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 389 



Its basic principle is plainly that of a limitation of war to the belliger- 

 ent powers directly concerned. But neutrality in its practical appli- 

 cations is more than this. A distinct relation arises at once between 

 the contending governments and those bearing no immediate share in 

 the conflict, and situations are ipso facto created pregnant with the 

 gravest complexities and responsibilities. It is, indeed, in this day of 

 a liighly expanded world commerce, impossible that the disasters of war 

 should be wholly confined to the actual belligerents. The neutral will 

 inevitably experience some phases of the general loss and damage, since 

 each belligerent must, by universal consent, be allowed to so far re- 

 strain commercial intercourse with the opposing belligerent as to insure 

 the cutting off of all intentional or incidental neutral aid. Neutrality, 

 to be genuine, can know no degrees whatsoever, no divisions, no limits ; 

 it must be absolute and unconditional; should it be permitted to de- 

 velop, under a specious pretext of safeguarding its own economic inter- 

 ests, any quality of relativity, it at once incurs the peril of becoming 

 essentially less aloof from the interests of one side than of the other, 

 and undeniably open to the charge of partiality. A neutral power may 

 not even be permitted to vary its required attitude on the plea that pro- 

 posed deviations may benefit the belligerents equally ; since an identical 

 concession or absence of restriction must operate with varying effect on 

 those whose local environment is dissimilar. Such an imperfect neu- 

 trality becomes in substance a participation in a belligerent struggle. 

 We need not, of course, stop to point out the distinctions arising from 

 a partial territorial neutrality such as exists in the Savoy districts of 

 Eastern France and where, should war occur between France and Italy, 

 the districts in question may be occupied by Swiss troops to preserve 

 the neutralization accorded this region at the Congress of Vienna. The 

 very fact of neutralization, indeed, would appear to properly imply a 

 prerogative of defense by force of arms if need be. Upon two cele- 

 brated occasions (in 1780 and in 1800) the states of northern Europe 

 agreed to maintain, with their allies, certain dogmas of maritime neu- 

 tral regulation by force of their combined fleets and troops, nor were 

 these "armed neutralities" thought to derogate from true neutral 

 character. Exceptions, too, are seen in the beneficent activities of the 

 Eed Cross and ambulance service, and in such cases as may justify a 

 neutral in granting pilotage assistance to a disabled belligerent or in 

 permitting him to take supplies of fuel limited by the requirements of 

 distance to his nearest national or colonial port. But in such a crisis 

 as confronts the world to-day, the chief stress of international perplexi- 

 ties arises from the threatened interests of commerce, — the detention 

 by a belligerent of goods claimed as contraband, whether destined to an 

 opposing belligerent or to neutral territory whence transshipment to 

 belligerent territory is considered more than probable; or, again, the 



1 Fuller, C. J., in the case of The Three Friends, 166 U. S. 1, 52, March 

 1. 1897. 



