THE DECLARATION OF LONDON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 231, 4 February 1911, Page 10

THE DECLARATION OF LONDON.

HOW WILL IT WORK? SEA - LAW MADE IN GERMANY. Mr Gibson Bowles has published a volume entitled "Sea-Law and SeaPower," fiercely attacking the Declaration of London, and Mr. 11. W. Wilson says, in the Daily Mail, he might have prefixed to his hook the legend from SeJden, "The English people sire many times in Treaties overmatched by them whom they overmatch in arms." For in the Declaration of London Great Britain suffers diplomatic, defeat, and surrenders half the advantages of her naval power. He gives from Mr. Bowies' pages, three "surrenders" which Great ilritaiu has ma do:

THE SCKRENDEK OF THE BLOCKADE The rigiit of blockade has been so limited as to' paralyse our fleets. Neutral ships'ma king for blockaded ports may not be captured "except within the area of operations of the warships detailed to render the blockade effective." If a British llest were blockading the German coast from Borkum to Kiel, British cruisers could not capture blockade-run-ners off the Shetltmds or in the Straits of Dover. Outside a limited, narrowed, undefined, and undeflnable zone, the blockade-runner is to go scot-free from any molestation. Not only this, but if the Hague Court holds that twenty ships are necessary to "render a blockade effective," and one of those twenty chases a blockade-runner leaves her station oil' the hostile eoast, the blockade will be raised and everybody will be free to enter.

Sach a rule as this prevents Britain from bringing to bear upon future enemies'the steady pressure which crushed Napoleon, and won for the present generation the British Empire.

THE iSURRENDER OF CONTRABAND. By a most dangerous piece of carelessness in translation, the British people have been allowed to believe that foodstuffs in war will not be contraband or liable to seizure by hostile cruisers. As a matter of fact, the Declaration of London lays down that where the goods are "addtessed" to a "trader established in the enemy country, who, as a matter of common knowledge, supplies articles of the kind to the enemy," they may be seized. As "enemy" in French and in the context of the Declaration means the whole hostile nation, it follows that all foodstuffs addressed to traders in British ports are liable to seizure. Against any such interpretation-of international law the British Government has steadily fought in the past, and fought with success, .now we make over to foes the right to attack our food supplies. At the same time the door is 'opened wide for contraband trade between a neutral country and our enemies. No vessel carrying contraband can be condemned if the contraband is only half the cargo. A neutral ship of 10,000 tons can carry to an enemy 4000 tons of arms and ammunition with complete impunity. A Dutch vessel, for example, could convey arms and ammunition to German West Africa, provided she «|id not take on board more than half her tonnage of these goods, and we could not touch her.

In the past our courts have eetwidered all facts in defining contraband. All their work is now thrown to the winds. A belligerent Power is given the right to add anything that it likes to the list of contraband, in peace or in war. THE SURRENDER OF PRIVATEERIN. To abolish this we made immense surrenders ia the Declaration of Paris, fifty years ago. By the Declaration of London it is left open to be re-established. Germany is to be left able to "authorise the sudden transformation outside her own ports by a mere production of paper and hunting into a ship of war or a ship which up to that transformation has set forth as, and claimed to be only, a merchant ship, entitled as such to neutral hospitality and unlimited sufferance, and disentitled to search and seize other vessels on the high seas." These are only three of a host of surrenders, each important, eacli weakening our sea-power, each inuring to the advantage of our enemies—cumulatively disastrous. But lest it should be thought that the British Government sought by this Declaration to humanise naval war and to remove its worst barbarities, we have two more surrenders, perhaps the most deplorable of all. By the first we admitted the right of hostile cruisers to destroy neutral merchantmen when any so-called military need arises. A German cruiser, that is to say, if Germany is at war with Hayti, might sink British merchantmen out of hand. .Such a right has never before been admitted by this country. It is a gross aggravation of the laws of war. RESTRICTING SUBMARINE WARFARE. Lastly, by the Hague Convention No. 8, already ratified, the murderous and merciless submarine mine, which makes no distinction between neutral and enemy, between warship and liner, mav be sown anywhere at sea, with this single ridiculous restriction, that it shall "not be placed on the coasts of an adversary with the sole purpose of intercepting commercial navigation." There is no parallel in our past history to such a surrender of British naval rights.