SOVIET PROTEST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 October 1939, Page 5

SOVIET PROTEST

AGAINST CONTRABAND CONTROL NOT HANDED TO BRITISH AMBASSADOR. Comments by authority IN LONDON . The Russian Government has handed the British Ambassador in Moscow a Note alleging that the British contraband list is a violation of the rules of naval warfare drawn up in 1909, and also protesting against the examination of Russian ships by the British contraband control and demanding compensation, a radio report states. Exception is taken to the British list in that it includes fuel, paper, cotton, fodder and clothing, and foodstuffs which Russia does not regard as contraband. The Note adds that the rules of warfare did not permit the bombing of peaceful populations from the air. On the same grounds Russia did not recognise the right of belligerents to deprive peaceful populations of foodstuffs. The Soviet regards as wholly unjustified. the British demand for obligatory calls at British ports for examination. In London an authority on international law describes the protest as based on a thesis which is many years out of date, and which ignores the changes in the contraband law since the Great War. He points out that the Declaration of London of 1909. to which the Note refers, was never ratified by Britain or even Russia. The Russian protest concerning the examination of neutral ships is considered as strange in coming from a country which had already sanctioned such an act in allowing the City of Flint to be brought to Murmansk and detained for the examination of her cargo, for which no grounds in international law are known to exist. The Note’s reference to the bombing of civilians is also held to be strange as there has been no evidence of a protest from Russia at the bombing of Polish towns by Germany.