528 INTERNATIONAL LAW 



They are as follows: 



" 28. If there are controlling reasons why vessels may not be 

 sent in for adjudication, as unseaworthiness, the existence of infec- 

 tious disease, or the lack of a prize crew, they may be appraised and 

 sold, and if this cannot be done, they may be destroyed. The imminent 

 danger of recapture would justify destruction, if there was no doubt 

 that the vessel was good prize. But, in all such cases, all the papers 

 and other testimony should be sent to the prize court, in order that 

 a decree may be duly entered." 



It is to be observed that the language is general, applicable to 

 neutral as well as belligerent vessels, and it is believed it in a meas- 

 ure supports the Russian contention. 



It is submitted that this rule and the Russian practice are entirely 

 reasonable and in accordance with the necessities of maritime war 

 and that they are, therefore, able to impair the authority of a dictum 

 even from so eminent an admiralty judge as Sir W. Scott. 



The result of this inadequate discussion of these several problems 

 in international law (a few of the many lately mooted) is a humili- 

 ating sense of the uncertainty, confusion, and conflict which still 

 attend the maritime rights of neutrals in the time of war. One is 

 forced almost to acquiesce in M. de la Peyre's recent statement that 

 maritime international law does not exist. 1 



It certainly shows the great necessity of an authoritative inter- 

 national conference to discuss, define, and establish the rights and 

 duties of neutral commerce in time of war. Now that the vast and 

 complicated machinery of war is of such desolating destruction, it 

 is more true even than a generation ago, when the late Mr. Lecky so 

 convincingly proclaimed it, that the rich nations are the potent ones 

 in war, as in a ruder age they were not. It is true, too, that the 

 very riches which enable them to support, powerfully persuade 

 them to avoid, war. These great commercial powers possess the seas 

 with their beneficent adventures, and they must strive to keep the 

 peace on those great highways of all the nations, and the ships that 

 bear the means of life must be considered as of interest and human 

 claim equal and paramount to those designed to inflict death. 



1 Questions diplomatiques et coloniales, August 1, 1904, p. 185. 



