[Footnote 62:  Mr. Broderick, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, speaking in House of Commons in regard to the Mashona on March 19, 1900.]

With reference to trading with the enemy Great Britain attempted to extend the accepted doctrine of continuous voyages.  She expressed herself as follows:  “An ultimate destination to citizens of the Transvaal even of goods consigned to British ports on the way thither, might, if viewed as one “continuous voyage” be held to constitute in a British vessel such a “trading with the enemy” as to bring the vessel within the provisions of the municipal law."[63]

[Footnote 63:  For.  Rel., 1900, p. 609.]

The United States held that “the destination of the vessel being only such [British] ports ... the port authorities may presumably, and are assumed to be bound to, prevent transshipment through British territory of contraband destined for the Boers."[64]

[Footnote 64:  For.  Rel., 1900, p. 594.]

No contraband was shown, and the attempt which Great Britain made to extend the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1863 so as to apply to trading with the enemy cannot be considered to have been successful.  The questions of international law involved in the seizures of flour and foodstuffs generally were not answered by the final arrangement between the Governments concerned.  In his Message to Congress in 1900 President McKinley deplored the fact that while the war had introduced important questions the result had not been a “broad settlement of the question of a neutral’s right to send goods not contraband per se to a neutral port adjacent to a belligerent area.”

Two things, however, were apparently admitted:  (1) that a belligerent may declare flour contraband pro hac vice; (2) that a belligerent may detain neutral goods and divert them from their destination on a reasonable suspicion that they are intended for the enemy, subject to a claim for compensation including damage by detention.