Simultaneously, England so extended her North Sea fields that she deemed it best to declare (a device not original but copied from Japanese practice in 1904) the North Sea a "military area" in which merchant shipping of all kinds, traders of all countries, fishing craft and all other vessels would be exposed to the grave est danger.
Extreme solicitude was shown for the safeguarding of neutral mariners against the misfortune of fouling British mines; lanes of movement through the obstructions were al+ ways willingly indicated.
In 1907, by the 8th Hague Convention, the chief Naval Powers had attempted to deal with the vexed question of employing submarine mines. Those who framed the agreement had pictured mines as of one automatic contact type and either unanchored or anchored. They had declared that none of the unanchored kind might be sown, unless devised to become harmless an hour after casting adrift, and none of the anchored variety which would not become innocuous to all shipping immediately on accidentally breaking loose. The lo; laters had decided also that a belligerent would always be bound, upon laying a mine field, to inform neutrals,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.