Neutral zone

“ DÖNITZ: Strict neutrality would require the avoidance of combat areas. Whoever enters a combat area must take the consequences.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I see. That is your view? I do not think it could possibly be put more fairly.
DÖNITZ: And for that reason the United States explicitly prohibited entry into these zones in November, because it refused to enter the combat zone.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: In your view, any neutral ship which entered a zone of 750,000 square miles around Britain was committing an un-neutral act and was liable to be sunk without warning at sight. ”

“ A movement set on foot at the instance of Edward Atkinson, the well-known Boston economist, and warmly supported by the Massachusetts State Board of Trade, seeks to establish by treaty neutral zones from the ports of North America to the ports of Great Britain and Ireland and the continent of Europe, within which zones steamship and sailing vessels in the conduct of lawful commerce should be free to pass without seizure or interruption in time of war. ”

“ To establish through negotiations conducted directly between the parties, or, failing that, through the intermediaries in the service of the United Nations, permanent truce lines and such neutral or demilitarized zones as may appear advantageous, in order to ensure henceforth the full observance of the truce in that area. Failing an agreement, the permanent lines and neutral zones shall be established by decision of the Acting Mediator ”

“ When it is contiguous with the border of another state or race, the two form a zone in which ascendency from one side or the other is being established. The boundary fluctuates, for equilibrium of the contending forces is established rarely and for only short periods. The more aggressive people throws out across this debatable zone, along the lines of least resistance or greatest attraction, long streamers of occupation; so that the frontier takes on the form of a fringe of settlement, whose interstices are occupied by a corresponding fringe of the displaced people. ”

“ The contiguous zone of the United States is a zone contiguous to the territorial sea of the United States, in which the United States may exercise the control necessary to prevent infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration, or sanitary laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea, and to punish infringement of the above laws and regulations committed within its territory or territorial sea. ”

“ When the political boundary has evolved by a system of contraction out of the wide waste zone to the nicely determined line, that line, nevertheless, is always encased, as it were, in a zone of contact wherein are mingled the elements of either side. ”

“ For the frontier, therefore, the centripetal force is weakened; the centrifugal is strengthened often by the attraction of some neighboring state or tribe, which has established bonds of marriage, trade, and friendly intercourse with the outlying community. Moreover, the mere infusion of foreign blood, customs, and ideas, especially a foreign religion, which is characteristic of a border zone, invades the national solidarity. Hence we find that a tendency to political defection constantly manifests itself along the periphery. ”

“ The breadth of the frontier zone is indicative of the activity of growth on the one side and the corresponding decline on the other, because extensive encroachment in the same degree disintegrates the territory of the neighbor at whose cost such encroachment is made. A straight, narrow race boundary, especially if it is nearly coincident with a political boundary, points to an equilibrium of forces which means, for the time being at least, a cessation of growth. ”

“ In this paper he offered as a solution of the question of the real neutrality of the prime meridian, which the French delegates insisted upon, the proposition that "the prime meridian shall be defined by references as exact as may be practicable to all the national astronomical observatories of the twenty-five nations represented in this conference; the grounds belonging to these observatories shall be declared neutral territory, and the astronomers in charge shall be respected in all international matters ”

“ Neutral territory, being outside the region of war, [651] offers an asylum to members of belligerent forces, to the subjects of the belligerents and their property, and to war material of the belligerents. Since, according to the present rules of International Law, the duty of either belligerent to treat neutrals according to their impartiality must—the case of extreme necessity for self-preservation excepted—prevent them from violating the territorial supremacy of neutrals, enemy persons as well as enemy goods are perfectly safe on neutral territory. ”

“ There is not so much land in the world that this need be wasted, nor have there been so many examples of the successful creation and continuance of such a community as the Zone has been as to justify its obliteration before the world has grasped its greatest significance. ”

“ The total area of the war zone is 174,000 square miles, of which the Western theater of the war, in France and Belgium, stretches over an area of 19,500 square miles, and it contains over 3,000 cities, villages, and hamlets, great manufacturing and agricultural districts, of which some have been totally annihilated and some heavily affected. ”

“ The boundary zone in nature.
Nature abhors fixed boundary lines and sudden transitions; all her forces combine against them. Everywhere she keeps her borders melting, wavering, advancing, retreating. If by some cataclysm sharp lines of demarcation are drawn, she straightway begins to blur them by creating intermediate forms, and thus establishes the boundary zone which characterizes the inanimate and animate world. ”

“ If the choice of a zone of operations involves no extensive combinations, since there can never be more than two or three zones on each theater, and the advantages generally result from the localities, it is somewhat different with lines of operations, as they are divided into different classes, according to their relations to the different positions of the enemy, to the communications upon the strategic field, and to the enterprises projected by the commander. ”

“ They know, then, that neither they nor we can do anything as long as we maintain the zone—that it is a stalemate. They also know that it takes an enormous amount of power to keep the zone in place. Now we have gone as far as we can go upon the meager data we have—considerably farther than we really are justified in going. ”

“ The foregoing facts explain the significance of the Central Zone of nations for the German Drang nach Osten. The smaller nations and states have not been able so far to offer an effective resistance to the greater states either economically or by force of arms. ”

“ Where a violation of neutral territory has taken place from ignorance of the boundary and not from evil intent, the neutral State shall immediately claim redress, compensation, and the adoption of measures necessary to prevent a similar mistake in future. ”

“ The Exclusive Economic Zone extends to a distance 200 nautical miles from the baseline from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured. In eases where the maritime boundary with a neighboring State remains to be determined, the boundary of the Exclusive Economic Zone shall be determined by the United States and other State concerned in accordance with equitable principles. ”

“ The leading objections to the use of astronomical boundaries, particularly as international dividing lines, are: The temptation they offer to diplomats and others, who may be interested in the speedy conclusion of a treaty, to make hasty divisions of territory without knowing its resources or commercial and other possibilities. Then, too, such boundaries cross the land without reference to its topography, and have no essential relations to the courses of streams or the directions of coast-lines, etc. ”

“ Convenience of movement shall be permitted through the territory under the military control of either side over any route necessary to move between points within the Demilitarized Zone where such points are not connected by roads lying completely within the Demilitarized Zone. ”

“ For, in truth, just as a stone piller constitutes a boundary, not because it is a stone, but because of the place in which is stands, so a river is made the limit of nations, not because it is running water bearing a certain geographical name, but because it is water flowing in a given channel, and within given banks, which are the real international boundary. ”

“ Article 15 Any Party to the conflict may, either direct or through a neutral State or some humanitarian organization, propose to the adverse Party to establish, in the regions where fighting is taking place, neutralized zones intended to shelter from the effects of war the following persons, without distinction:
wounded and sick combatants or non-combatants; civilian persons who take no part in hostilities, and who, while they reside in the zones, perform no work of a military character. ”

“ Facing away from Paris, one looked over a valley, and in the distance could distinctly hear the boom of guns in action.
We were now at the outer line of the defense zone, within which all the roads, bridges, and valleys were held by infantry working in conjunction with the large forts placed at intervals in the great circle. Outside of this zone is open country in which battles are being fought ”

“ Next to this zone, we can in the same way find the limits of others presiding over other movements. The influence appears greatest at the center of the zone: exciting the periphery sometimes produces a light supplementary movement belonging to a neighboring zone. The special centers or zones being very near together, our means of electrizing them are not perfect enough to prevent a slight diffusion of the current into neighboring centers and faintly exciting them. To get precise separate effects we must excite the center of the special zone. ”

“ When to these internal differences are added the ambitions and intrigues of warring Powers, each hungrily desirous of increasing its coast at the expense of its neighbors, the lot of the inhabitants of the debatable zone is seen to be unenviable indeed. ”

“ The expression "neutral system of longitude" is a myth, a fancy, a piece of poetry, unless you can tell precisely how to do it. He would vote for a neutral system if the French representatives can tell the Conference clearly how to decide that it is neutral, and satisfy them that it is not national in any way.
Mr. Janssen, Delegate of France, said:
I perfectly understand the objection of my honorable colleague, Prof. Abbe. He asks what is a neutral meridian, and adds that the metre itself does not appear to him to be a neutral measure, but to be a French measure. ”

“ In time of peace, the territorial Power is bound by modern usage to allow "innocent passage," under reasonable conditions as to tolls and the like, not only to the merchant vessels, but also, probably, to the ships of war, of all nations. In time of war, the territorial Power, if belligerent, may of course carry on, and is exposed to, hostilities in the strait as elsewhere, and the entrances to the strait are liable to a blockade. ”

“ In arcifinious lands, where the bounds are formed by nature, any gradual change in the course of the river makes a change also in the boundaries of territory, and whatever accession is given by the river to one side, it will belong to the possessor of the land on that side. Because the respective nations are supposed originally to have taken possession of those lands, with an intention of making the MIDDLE of that river, as a natural boundary, the line of separation between them. ”

“ It has proved to be like the horizon, when one is walking towards it; it has never been a real barrier, but always movable, and always a line of strife and conflict. It has been shifting between every mountain range and every broad river between the Gulf of Mexico and the Lake of the Woods, till it has become self-obliterated, and no longer a significant word. Our frontiers, which that boundary line was supposed to limit, have become merged and blurred on the whole of this side of our continent, and have begun to advance inwards from the Pacific coast. ”

“ In what I will particularise as the —— area of the War zone, there is a small village-by-a-stream where Generals stride about the narrow streets or whirl through them in gigantic cars, and guards at every corner clank and turn out umpty times a day. ”

“ Between these two lines is an area about sixteen miles wide where these zones overlap, which the author calls the "tension zone," because a constant state of strain or tension in the struggle for existence prevails in it. In the deciduous zone the geological formations are numerous, with various soils and every gradation of topography, and the diversity of trees is great. ”

“ The location of a frontier may, in a given case, not only be an international question in the sense that it should be settled internationally, but also in the sense that it is justiciable, according to the usual idea of justiciable questions. ”

“ Such an imperfect neutrality becomes in substance a participation in a belligerent struggle. We need not, of course, stop to point out the distinctions arising from a partial territorial neutrality such as exists in the Savoy districts of Eastern France and where, should war occur between France and Italy, the districts in question may be occupied by Swiss troops to preserve the neutralization accorded this region at the Congress of Vienna. ”