commerce in time of war laid stress upon the fact that there are as yet no legal principles fixed and binding on all the maritime Powers, respecting the rights of neutrals to trade with a belligerent, or the rights of belligerents in respect to neutral commerce.  He pointed out that, although proposals had been repeatedly made to regulate this subject all attempts had failed owing to the obstacles created by the conflicting views of the different Powers.

The Peace Conference at the Hague has in fact expressed the wish that an international conference might regulate, on the one hand, the rights and duties of neutrals, and on the other, the question of private property at sea.  The German Chancellor intimated that his Government would support any plan of the kind for more clearly defining the disputed points of maritime law.  The fact was pointed out that maritime law is still in a “liquid, elastic, and imperfect state,” that with many gaps which are only too frequently apt to be supplemented by armed force at critical junctures, this body of law opens the way for the criticism that “the standard of might has not as yet been superseded by the standard of right.”

The Institute of International Law which met at Venice in 1896 declared that the destination of contraband goods to an enemy may be shown even when the vessel which carries them is bound to a neutral port.  But it was considered necessary to add the caution that “evident and incontestable proof” must make clear the fact that the goods, contraband in character, were to be taken on from the neutral port to the enemy, as the final stage of the same commercial transaction.

This latter condition the English Government failed to fulfil in the cases of the Bundesrath, Herzog and General, and it was this failure which gave just ground for Germany’s protests.  Great Britain not only failed to show by “evident and incontestable proof” that the German ships carried actual contraband, but she failed to show that there were on board what have been called “analogues” of contraband.  The point was emphasized indeed that while special consideration would be shown to all German mail steamers, not every steamer which “carried a bag of letters” could claim this partial immunity.  The English representative said:  “We understand by mail steamers, steamers of subsidized lines, and consequently owned by persons whom the German Government consider as respectable."[44] And in this intimation he merely voiced the suspicion in England that with or without the knowledge of the Government the German ships had been guilty of unneutral service, which the more recent authorities on international law distinguished from the carrying of contraband.

[Footnote 44:  Sessional Papers, Africa, No.  I (1900), C. 33, p. 21; Salisbury to Lascelles, Jan. 16, 1900.]