[Inclosure.]
Clipping from the Times, January 4,
1900.
prize law and delagoa
bay.
To the Editor of the
Times.
Sir: The timely letter from so competent an
authority as Professor Holland, in your issue of to-day, will
probably better inform those who have imagined that our Government,
or any, can treat what it pleases as contraband of war, without
reference to the prize court, with which alone the decision lies;
and it may also relieve those who have imagined that food stuffs are
not in any case contraband of war, whereas they have been decided to
be such in certain circumstances by the prize courts of all
countries in all times.
It has been suggested that the decision that food stuffs are, in any
case whatever, contraband of war, would be disquieting. It might be;
yet not to Great Britain. So long as we are predominant at sea, the
more effectual sea power is decided to be to prevent succor and
assistance going oversea to our enemy, the better for us. The succor
and assistance that come oversea to us we can protect ourselves in
their passage and access to our unclosable sea approaches and our
unblockadable islands. Of [Page 547]
course, if we lose predominance at sea it is another matter. But
then, “è finita la Musica.”
What I particularly desire, however, is to call Professor Holland’s
attention to a recent case, which I have not seen mentioned, as
showing that prize courts have taken into consideration not merely
the immediate destination to a neutral port of alleged contraband of
war, but also its real and final destination beyond that port and
overland to a belligerent. In July, 1896, the Dutch steamer Doelwijk took a cargo of arms and ammunition,
destined to Abyssinia, then at war with Italy, from the neutral port
of Rotterdam to the neutral (French) port of Jibutil, in the Gulf of
Tajura. The steamer being captured by the Italian cruiser Etna and brought in for adjudication, was
condemned as lawful prize by the prize court at Rome on December 8,
1896. The case seems on all fours with that of Delagoa Bay and the
Transvaal.
The’ case of the Commercen, quoted by
Professor Holland to illustrate another point, would seem equally to
illustrate this point also. For Mr. Justice Story, in giving the
judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States in that case, put
aside the argument that the cargo could not be contraband because
destined to a neutral port.
It seems indeed absurd that a prize court should look only to the
immediate and pretended destination, and not to the final and real
destination; or that it should decide that arms and ammunition shown
to be really destined to the Transvaal to be used in the war are not
contraband of war only because their destination pretends to be the
neutral port of Delagoa Bay.
Your faithful servant,
Thos. Gibson Bowles.
Wilbury, Salisbury, January
3.
