Gilbert Murray

“ In every country engaged in war there is somewhere below the surface a growling mass of passion, brutality, lawlessness, hatred of foreign nations, contempt for reason and humanity. In Great Britain, thank heaven, the brute is kept cowed and well chained, though at times his voice is heard in the more violent newspapers. ”

“ After a certain date we would allow no ship to carry goods to or from Germany, and, as for their murderous submarines, our fishermen should have arms and fight them. The submarine war has been at times extremely dangerous to us, and may be so again: but, as far as we can at present judge, we have won it. By unheard-of efforts of daring and invention our sea-faring men have baffled and destroyed the submarines, and we have turned the tables of the blockade completely against the enemy. ”

“ In fact, if one or more isolated rules are examined, either from the belligerent or the neutral point of view, the reader may find that the interests with which he is especially concerned are jeopardized by the adoption of these rules. But they have another side. The work is one of compromise and mutual concessions. Is it as a whole a good one?"
Thus the Declaration is not a mere declaration of the existing law of nations. It is a compromise in which different parties make concessions, in response to other concessions which are made to them. ”

“ Asquith seems to have accepted some such view when he explained that our policy was to exclude supplies from Germany, and at the same time refused to use the term "blockade" in order "not to be entangled in legal subtleties." The gravest objection to the whole policy is, no doubt, the hardship which it inflicts on neutrals. All blockading, all stopping of contraband, all interference with shipping, inflicts hardship on neutrals; and the immense scale of the Allied operations in this world-war makes the total hardship inflicted very large. ”

“ And the enormous opportunities for money-making which it also affords to a good number of traders in each country is only a poor excuse for the general inconvenience. Still, I doubt if much improvement is reasonably possible upon these measures which "Great Britain in concert with all her Allies" has taken to prevent trading with the enemy through our lines, so long as neutral states meet us in a neutral and conciliatory spirit. When they do not, of course there is trouble. ”

“ This doctrine was first applied on a large scale by the Government of the United States during the Civil War; it was an extension of previous belligerent rights, was discussed by Great Britain and other powers, and finally accepted as legitimate. The point is a simple one. By the old rule a belligerent has a right to prevent certain ships and cargoes from going to the enemy; he has no right to prevent their going to a neutral port. But suppose he finds them going to a neutral port from which the cargoes are to be taken straight on by a protected road to the enemy? What is the rule to be? ”

“ Is there to be no law of the sea at all? What is left is exactly all that there was before the sittings of that Conference, plus a certain extra lucidity in places due to its reports. The British courts simply continue to administer international law on the basis of precedent adapted to new conditions, exactly as all powers in the world have done. ”

“ We are doing to Germany what they are trying to do to us. Secondly, while we are a nation vitally dependent on sea-borne imports for our food, Germany is almost completely self-supporting. She can live for an indefinite time on her own produce; and the most that our "blockade" can do is to make life less comfortable, and the supplying of the army vastly more difficult. No human being in Germany need starve because of our "blockade." ”

“ If it be argued that Germany cannot be expected to look on at a crowd of conquered Poles and Serbs enjoying themselves while good sound Germans are short of pork and butter and bread, the answer is that, even at the best, we should hardly be able to bring the food-supply of two utterly ravaged and devitalized countries, like Poland and Serbia, to a level approaching that of Germany. Germany is living on her own resources and those of her allies, true ”

“ And then the article tails off into vague horrors about the British censorship and the Defence of [Pg 32] the Realm Act and the deplorable profits made by British shippers, and the "party of Lord North which is installed at the Foreign Office!"
Everybody knows that in war censorship is necessary; every nation employs it, Great Britain rather more leniently than the rest. It is a pure myth to suppose that in England we are kept in the dark about important sides of the war which are well known to neutrals. ”

“ The absolute refusal of the Swedish Government to sanction any agreement for the purpose of determining what imports were going to the enemy and what not, has led to much friction and mutual reprisals. And similarly in Greece, the perpetual series of frauds and secret hostilities which have followed the King's unconstitutional dismissal of Venizelos, his trick upon us at Salonica, and his breach of treaty with our ally Serbia, has [Pg 20] produced a policy of pressure on the part of the Allies, which can be justified only as preferable to actual war. ”

“ It should also be noticed that Great Britain does not act alone; and as compared with the precedents laid down by various nations in previous wars, a policy agreed upon by six of the most important maritime powers in the world has at least a slightly higher claim to validity than one laid down by a single power. Mr. Bullard in one extremely high-principled passage explains that the United States could not in conscience join the Allies in this war because that would be fighting in order "to make British convenience the rule of the seas." ”

“ At present there is no convention either existing or possible. There is no fixed code of the sea and never has been. We have to use our own tribunals, which administer international law to the best of their ability according to precedent. ”

“ But everybody knows that some such special laws are necessary in war time; there is no nation in Europe which attempts to do without such laws, and Mr. Bullard makes no attempt to show that any other nation applies them more leniently than England does. As to the fortunes made by shippers, why drag in the word "British"? With the German merchant ships out of use, with Allied and neutral ships sunk to the number of some hundreds by submarines and extensively commandeered by the various governments for war purposes, there is an extreme shortage of ships together with an immense demand. ”

“ I do not contend that we have never stretched in our favour the vague body of unwritten rules, based on conflicting precedents and unenforced by normal sanctions, which is called international law. Every belligerent in every war hitherto has done so ”

“ Naturally, however, they dislike our "brusque denial that nations with smaller navies have any voice in defining the law." "The Sea-Lords have decided what they would like to do, and His Majesty's Privy Council has announced that that is the law." In English opinion and action "Might makes Right"—this phrase is constantly repeated. We are always "hitting below the belt." And lastly and most explicitly, "The scrap of paper on which Great Britain had promised fair play at sea is torn up!" ”

“ They are people who prefer to supply the enemy; and we do not willingly, in war time, allow people to supply the enemy, any more than the enemy, when he can help it, allows them to supply us.
These two methods applied in conjunction are the best instruments that we have discovered for carrying out without undue friction our necessary, although somewhat oppressive, task. The war does impose on neutrals a considerable amount of hardship ”

“ In the present war the extension became inevitably far wider. Germany's own ports are closed; she proceeds to import whatever she needs by way of Copenhagen or the Dutch ports. We assert the doctrine of continuous voyage and treat all contraband goods shipped for Copenhagen but obviously intended for German use just as if they were shipped for Hamburg. ”

“ Bullard, dropping for a moment his lofty idealism, complains simply that the British are getting too large a share of the swag, an unproved and to me extremely doubtful statement. Naturally ships belonging to the Allied powers are less open to suspicion than neutrals are, and consequently are less harassed by certain restrictions. But the British, at any rate, are not only subjected to enormous war-taxation, but have in addition fifty per cent. ”

“ We invite those merchants and corporations in neutral countries who are importing goods bona fide for their own country's consumption, and not for re-export to our enemies, to sign an agreement to that effect. ”

“ Bullard admits, on the whole fighting for the maintenance of public right and for honesty between nations, cannot be expected, in the midst of its mortal struggle, to divest itself of its normal sources of strength, to satisfy an ideal which has never been demanded of other belligerents. ”

“ It is a purely business arrangement, by which certain firms who want for themselves goods passing through the hands of one belligerent, undertake, if they receive the goods, not to hand them on to the other. ”

“ Secondly, on ground of humanity. We are said to be "starving the women and children of Germany." The answer is, first, that such a blockade is a normal measure of war in all sieges and was practised, e.g. by the Germans in the siege of Paris. It has always been understood that the siege process would be applied to Great Britain by any enemy who should command the sea. It was attempted by Napoleon, and it has been applied already by Germany, though with complete lack of success. ”

“ Codification without alteration is really an impossible achievement. Every person of experience knows that you cannot codify a large mass of floating customs and divergent laws without, by that very fact, introducing changes. ”

“ It is not likely that their decisions are in every case exactly right. It is to be hoped that after [Pg 35] the war, if we can get some fair security of future peace and establish some permanent and effective international tribunal, we may reach a definite code of international law which all nations can agree to uphold. ”

“ His method is to ask at once more than human nature can be expected to give, and then pour out a whole commination service of anathemas when his demands are not complied with. He begins, as it were, by saying that all he expects of Mr. X—— in order to love him is common honesty and truthfulness: we all agree and are edified. ”

“ In most countries there is a large union or trust which has collectively made such an undertaking, and which endeavours to prevent breaches of the agreement by its members. (2) We try to ascertain the bona fide imports of each country by taking the average imports of some ten previous years, and allowing some extra amount—varying in different cases—to replace such imports from enemy countries as may have disappeared. ”

“ They are not always in absolute agreement with the views peculiar to each country, but they shock the essential ideas of none. They must not be examined separately but as a whole, otherwise there is a risk of the most serious misunderstandings. ”

“ The brute knows the hands that hold him down and hates almost all the present Cabinet, but most of all, perhaps, he hates two men: the great and moderate Liberal who presides over the government, the great and moderate Liberal who guides the Foreign Office.—And Mr. ”

“ They have on certain occasions decided that our government has gone wrong and can be compelled to pay damages; they have decided that certain orders in council were against international law and have disallowed them. They have, I may note in passing, declined to admit the plea of the Crown that it was following an American precedent which was afterwards [Pg 28] embodied in an act of the United States Congress, on the ground that the said precedent and act were too oppressive. ”

“ The cargoes had been seized and there were numerous claims against the British Government for compensation. Some of these were allowed by the High Court on various grounds, but most were rejected. The main facts were as follows. Certain exporters, mostly American, sent to Copenhagen enormous quantities of lard [Pg 16] and "fat backs," which were in great demand in Germany. They contain glycerine, which is the basis of various explosives. There is no beast so charged with potential explosive as a fat hog. ”