40 MOORE— CONTRABAND OF WAR. [Februarys, 



with the traditional contention of the United States, put beyond 

 reach of capture on loose and interested surmises. 



While seizures of articles commonly classed as conditional con- 

 traband have inflicted upon neutrals enormous losses, the effect of 

 such seizures upon the fortunes of the belligerents has by no means 

 been so appreciable as it is often hastily assumed to have been. 

 Lawless, unrestrained and successful as were the depredations on 

 neutral commerce during the wars following the French Revolution, 

 not only did the struggle persist through more than twenty years, 

 but its end was scarcely hastened by the spoliations, which indeed 

 seem rather to have supplied the means of its prolongation. The 

 reduction of the South, during the American Civil War, was sen- 

 sibly accelerated by the cutting off of its commerce, but this result 

 was achieved chiefly by means of blockade. 



At the Second Peace Conference at The Hague, in 1907, the 

 British government, with a view to diminish the difficulties which 

 neutral commerce encounters in case of war, proposed that the 

 powers should enter into an agreement to abandon the principle of 

 contraband altogether, and to confine the right of visit to the ascer- 

 tainment of the merchant vessel's neutral character. Such a meas- 

 ure was justified on the ground that, while it had in spite of all 

 efforts been found to be impossible to prevent belligerents from 

 obtaining the munitions which they needed, the attempt to do so 

 had, by reason of the increase in the tonnage of ships, the carrying 

 of mixed cargoes, the lack of any single destination of ship or cargo, 

 the multiplication of the number of articles used in war, and the 

 development of railways and other means of transportation by land, 

 become more and more futile on the part of belligerents and more 

 and more injurious to neutrals. The circumstance that the radical 

 proposal of Great Britain, although it was not eventually adopted 

 by the Conference, received the support of twenty-six of the powers 

 represented therein, while only five voted against it,-^ alone suffices 



^For: Argentine Republic, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, 

 Chile, China, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Great Britain, Greece, 

 Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Persia, Portugj^l, Salva- 

 dor, Servia, Siam, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland. — 26. 



Against: France, Germany, Montenegro, Russia, United States. — 5. 



