Edward Price Bell

“ How much can the Central Empires add to their military strength by impressing Belgians, Serbians, Poles, and Roumanians? How many thousands, or scores of thousands, of Germans may be thrown into the fighting fronts as a result of these impressments? ”

“ The indirect cost to the Allies has been that of relieving the Germans of all responsibility for the maintenance of over seven million people, whom, under International Law, they were obliged to feed and maintain in health, and whom, moreover, they otherwise actually would have had either to feed or to deport wholesale, since it is impossible, from a military point of view, to have a starving population on the lines of communication of a great army. ”

“ The strictly military interests of the Allies as regards Belgium, when that country had been occupied, leaving out of account all questions of humanity, would have been to apply the blockade to Belgium in the same way as to the Central Empires themselves. The right to blockade friendly or neutral territory occupied by an enemy is clearly recognized by the Hague Convention, and this recognition indicates what the military interests of a belligerent must be. ”