RULES OF WAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15686, 13 August 1914, Page 5

RULES OF WAR.

WHAT USAGE SANCTIONS. RIGHTS OF NEUTRALS, RISKS OF SHIPPING. Roughly, the supreme rule of war is: " Might is right." However far international conferences, during times of peace, may agree to a compilation of "it's and ans," experience proves that nations engaged in lifc-and-death struggles have a habit of forgetting the rulebook in the fight for survival. Hague regulations provide for the payment of goods taken from peoplo of an enemy country by an invading force, but no immunity is guaranteed. "The only immunity of private property yet known to the laws of war is a limited one at sea. War, by its very nature, seems to prevent the growth of any such immunity," says one authority. Prizes at Sea. Enemy property at sea is liable to capture and confiscation (subject to the jurisdiction of Prize Courts) wherever found on the high seas or in enemy waters. Exemption from capture is now allowed by belligerents to enemy merchant ships which, at the outbreak of war, arc on their way to one of their ports, and they also allow enemy merchantmen in their ports at tho outbreak of war a certain time to leave, them. This is confirmed by The Hague Convention of 1907. A somewhat similar practice exists as regards pursuit of merchant ships which happen to bo in a neutral port at the same time with an enemy cruiser. "The difficulties at present in tho task of formulating a complete code of prize law are great," stated a writer in the Edinburgh Review (July, 1909). "National jealousies, hopes, and fears, apparently antagonistic, are aroused, and national hesitation as to the result of tho acceptance of legal formulas grows, as doubts cannot be cleared away as to the practice effect in time of war on belligerency or neutrality of an international agreement. . . . Some points,, of disagreement aro not likely to be defined without the experience of a great European war." Risks ol Neutrals. Daring the Russo-Japanese war attention in Britain was strongly directed to the destruction of neutral prizes by Russian cruisers. Vessels of 6evoral nationalities—British, German, and Danishwere sent to the bottom; and it was only because the number of acts of destruction was few that public opinion was notmoro strongly stirred, declares one historian. The British principle is perfectly plain; a neutral prize must not bo destroyed; but, if an urgent necessity compels a captor to destroy it, then compensation must, in any orient, bo paid to the neutral owner for the loss of his vessel. ... A characteristic of English prize law is its robust common-sense. It would be absurd to lay down the principle that a neutral vessel must not be destroyed, and then, because a belligerent found it necessary for his own purposes to do so, to refuse compensation to the neutral owner. At The Hague Conference no agreement could be arrived at on this point. Privateering. The Hague Conference (1907) declared that a merchant ship cannot have the rights and duties of a man-o'-war unless it is placed under the direct authority, immediate control, and, responsibility of its national Power. Further, a converted merchant ship has to bear the external marks which distinguish warships of their nationality—" a somewhat cryptic declaration," is the note of one critic. The commander must also be in the service of the State and duly commissioned, and his name must be on the list of officers of the 'fighting fleet, and the crew must be subject; to military discipline. There is a further declaration that a converted merchant ship must observe tho laws of war, and that the belligerent Power to which she belongs must, as soon as possible, announce the conversion. But while these • regulations differentiate the converted merchant ship in some degree from the primitive privateer, the formal recognition of the right to convert merchant ships into war-vessels is to some extent a nullification of the first articlo of the Declaration of Paris. It is well known that many vessels of the British mercantile marine were armed two or three years ago. The Declaration of London. ' There was keen controversy and trenchant criticism of the Imperial Government in regard to the Declaration of London, which the House of Lords rejected in 1909. Hero is the terse comment of Thomas Gibson Bowles, in tho Nineteenth Century of May, 1909: — Tho whole question ever was, and still is: whether the neutral is to-be left freo to assist the belligerent' to carry for him that trade which ho can no longer carry for himself; to supply him with the instruments of war known as contraband, which otherwise ho could not obtain; to break, or attempt to break, blockade without serious penalty; whether, in short, he is to be left free 'to assist either belligerent— must mean assisting mainly the weaker— of being bound to assist neither. All these questions every British statesman who knew what real war was, and what its real stresses were, would have decided, and always did decide, in the negative. All theso Sir Edward Grey decides in tho affirmative. "Or, rather, he invites tho military Powers so to decide them. They have, with his assistance and co-operation, set forth a Declaration which throughout enlarged the power of the neutral to assist the enemy; which restricts tho power of the belligerent to prevent that assistance: which in both respects lessens the effectual use of tho superior naval power in maritime warfare; and which comes near to nullifying naval superiority altogether. It leaves where they were the rights of a belligerent on land—to requisition, capture, sack, burn, destroy, or devastate at the solo will of a commanding officer. It destroys the moro effectual part of the remaining rights of a belligerent at sea. And it represents, therefore, as enormous a relative increase of strength to tho military Powers as it embodies a decrease in that of naval Powers. It is all against Nav.il England; all for military Germany." However, tho Declaration remained.