The economic warfare that each side is carrying on against the other on the sea in the present war has ils legal basis in two rights that the Jaws of naval warfare give to bolligerents—the right to confiscate enemy property on the sea, whatever its character, unless this enemy property is both non-contraband and being carried in neutral ships, and the right to confiscate even neutral property there, when it falls within the cate~ gory of contraband of war. These are the operations which we commonly refer to as. the blockade; and that is a convenient term, provided we remember that there is no blockade in the sense in which lawyers use that word, namely, the blocking by the naval forees of the belligerent of ingress to oF egress from the enemy's coast to the ships of fall nations, and that in judging the actions of the belligerents we are not concerned with the technical rules of blockade but warfare, with a different branch of the Jaws of naval
T spoke of each side carrying on their economic warfare: for, of course, it is a complete delusion (o suppose that in our blockade we are doing something to Ger= many which she is not trying to do to us. German propaganda would like that to be believed, but it is not the case. Moreover, German' submarines, as we now know, had taken up their stations before the war began, and they have been trying to blockade us from the first day of the war; so that when propaganda suggests that the German blockade is only a reprisal for ours, that again is not true, 'The plain truth is, of course simply this that each of us is trying to disorganize the economic life of the other, and that that is perfectly legitimate aim' in war, provided you do it in the way that rules of law and rules of humanity prescribe. The difference is that whereas the Allies have both the will and the means to disorganize Germany's arrangements, the course of the war at sea ready gives us good reason for hoping hat though Germany has the will, she has not 4ot the means of disorganizing our 1 want, then, to say something about the belligerent rights on which our blockade of Germany, and hers of us, rest; and to illus~ ware what can and what can not legally be done under each of them, I shall use some of the incidents in the war at sea which have already been reported in the Press. Hirst, about the right to capture enemy mer~ chant ships on the sea: this right mainly concerns Germany's blockade of us; be~ feause, except in the Baltic, Germany ship~ ping has quickly disappeared from the sea.
But there are circumstances in which st is lawful to destroy an enemy merchantmin at sea, instead of bringing her into port. There are different views ay to what eircun~ stances do Justify destruction at sea, but about one point there is absolutely we difference of opinion; and that is that the destroying warships must first provide for the safely of those on board the merchant~ man, As recently as 1936, Germ: note' that it was. Hitler's treaty in which these words occur cept in case of persistent refusst to stop on being duly summoned, or of active resisttance to visit and search, a warship, whether surface vessel or submarine, may not sink a merchant vessel without having first placed passengers, crew und ship's papers in a place of safety." And the treaty went on to say that the ship's boats were not to be rewarded as a place of safety unless the safety of passengers and crew was assured by the sea and weather conditions, or the proximity of land, or the presence of another vessel able to take them on board, We do well to remember this treaty when we read of the Athenia, sunk by a German submarine on the first day of the war with the loss of 112 non-combatant lives. And we do well to remember it, too, and how it has proved not to be worth the paper it was written on, when we find in Hitler's peace offensive speech a proposal that a conference hould be held to define the use of submarines stich st manner that the war will be deprived of its terrible character of a fight igninst women and children." No conference, and no new treaty, is necessary if that his. purpose Suppose an' enemy merchantman prefers: to resist at the risk of being sunk, knowing perk our ships came to know during the list war—that whether she resists oF not, the German submarine, if it can, will sink her without regard to the lives of those on board. Take the case of the Athenia, for instance. Suppose she had sighted the submarine and guessed its intentions in time offer resistance. What are the legal rights. and wrongs of such a case? You have seen, I expect, that the British Admiralty is putting guns on to our merchantman so that they may defend themselves against submarines, and perhaps you saw that the German wireless in English which said that this was "a direct violation of international law.
The position was put in a nutshell by the on international law has written United States ina Memorandum written
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.