is that of the practical neutralization of the Great Lakes in America. In 1817, at the instance of John Quincy Adams, the United States and Great Britain entered into a compact whereby the Great Lakes, and the waterways from them to the ocean by the St Lawrence river, which divide the United States from the Dominion of Canada, were practically excluded from any possible hostilities. Through a simple agreement, “conditions which make for peace and prosperity, and the absence of those which so often lead to disastrous war, have for nearly a century reigned over these great inland waters, whose commerce, conducted for the benefit of the states and nations of Europe and America, rivals that which passes through the Suez Canal or over the Mediterranean Sea, and with a result foreshadowed in these words of President Monroe in his communication to the Senate commending the proposed agreement: ‘In order to avoid collision and save expense.’ Forts which had been erected at salient points on either side of the lakes and rivers dividing the United States from Canada, which but for this agreement would, in the natural course of events, have been enlarged, increasingly garrisoned, and provided with modern implements of destruction, at large expense, have remained substantially as when the agreement was made, or now constitute but interesting or picturesque ruins; and the great cost of constructing and maintaining, through a long series of years, naval armaments of ever-increasing power has been avoided.”[1]
As we have already said, the Monroe doctrine is a means of excluding European warfare from the American continent and therefore is in the nature of a form of neutralization. A sort of Monroe doctrine is growing into popular favour also throughout the Australian Commonwealth, where it is felt that a continent so far removed from European rivalries ought not to be exposed to complications on account of them.
From time to time questions of adding to existing neutralized areas are raised. When it was announced in 1905 that a British fleet was about to manœuvre in the Baltic Sea, several German newspapers suggested that Germany should combine with other Baltic powers to assure its neutralization.[2] No official observation on the subject, however, was made on the part of any Baltic power. The Baltic is still an open sea for the whole world, without restriction of any kind; and even hostilities between any two non-Baltic powers could be carried on in the Baltic, as elsewhere on the high sea, under the existing practice. When the Dogger Bank incident occurred, the possibility of operations of war being carried on within a few miles of British home ports, and amid the busy traffic of the North Sea, was brought vividly home to British minds.
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. There is however no precedent of neutralization of any such area of the high sea, and international rivers, ocean canals and neutralized states are obviously no criterion in discussing a proposal to neutralize a strip of the ocean, which may be defined accurately enough on the map and which skilful navigators could approximately determine, but which might be violated without any practical means of detection by a belligerent commander whenever he misread, or it suited him to misread, his bearings.
Connected with the principle of neutralization is that of guaranteeing the integrity of states. Several such guarantees have been given in quite recent times. In November 1907 a treaty was concluded between France, Germany, Great Britain and Russia on the one part and Norway on the other, for the maintenance of the integrity of Norway. This treaty differed from the older one of 1855 in which France and Great Britain guaranteed the integrity of Norway and Sweden, in the fact that whereas the older treaty was for the protection of these two states against Russia, the new treaty is intended, if it is to serve at all as a protection against invasion, to protect Norway against Sweden.
Another such guarantee of a vaguer character is that which the North Sea powers recently entered into for the maintenance of the status quo of their respective North Sea territories; and the similar one entered into by the Mediterranean powers for the same objects in the Mediterranean. Lastly in the same order of ideas Austria-Hungary and Russia are said to have concluded an arrangement between them for the maintenance of the status quo in the Balkans.
The future has no doubt still other extensions of the principle of neutralization in store for us. Not the least interesting of existing possibilities is the limitation of the area of visit and search in time of war itself, as a restriction of belligerent right. It seems contrary to common sense that neutral ships should be exposed to being detained, taken out of their course, and overhauled on mere suspicion of carrying contraband, when they are so far from the seat of war that there can be no presumption as to their destination. Neutrals have a right to carry on their ordinary business unmolested in so far as they do nothing to assist either belligerent. When they are beyond a certain distance from the seat of war it seems reasonable that the presumption that they are merely carrying on their legitimate business should be considered absolute. Such a limitation of the area of hostilities is not only feasible, but it was actually put in practice by the British government during the Boer War.[3]
In the course of the Russo-Japanese War the question came up again, being raised this time by Great Britain. Lord Lansdowne called the attention of the Russian foreign office to the extreme inconvenience to neutral commerce of the Russian search for contraband not only in the proximity of the scene of war, but over all the world, and especially at places at which neutral commerce could be most effectually intercepted. H.M. Government had become aware that a large addition was likely to be made to the number of Russian cruisers employed in this manner, and they had, therefore, to contemplate the possibility that such vessels would shortly be found patrolling the narrow seas which lie on the route from Great Britain to Japan in such a manner as to render it virtually impossible for any neutral vessel to escape their attention. The effect of such interference with neutral trade, he said, would be disastrous to legitimate commerce passing from a British port in the United Kingdom to a British port in the Far East. The British government had no desire to place obstacles in the way of a belligerent desiring to take reasonable precautions in order to prevent the enemy from receiving supplies, but they insisted that the right of taking such precautions did not imply a “consequential right to intercept at any distance from the scene of operations and without proof that the supplies in question were really destined or use of the enemy's forces, any articles which that belligerent might determine to regard as contraband of war.”
- ↑ Memoir of Massachusetts State Board of Trade (Feb. 13, 1905).
- ↑ This was merely reviving an idea which had come and gone many times before. See Barclay, Problems of International Practice and Diplomacy (1907).
- ↑ In January 1900 it was reported that the British government had issued instructions to British naval commanders not to stop or search German merchant vessels at any places not in the vicinity of the seat of war. There is no proper statement of the British position on this subject, the only official information having been given by the German chancellor in a speech to the Reichstag. According to this information, the area was ultimately limited as north of Aden, and afterwards it was agreed that the immunity from search should be extended to all places beyond a distance from the seat of war equal to the distance from it of Aden. This was substantially correct, though the telegrams sent by the Admiralty can hardly be said to have fixed any precise area. As a fact, the commanders-in-chief on the East Indies and Cape of Good Hope stations were instructed that in consequence of the great practical difficulty of proving — at ports so remote from the scene of war operations as Aden and Perim — the real destination of contraband of war carried by vessels visiting those parts, directions were to be given to the officers concerned to cease to search such vessels, and to merely report to the commander-in-chief at the Cape the names of ships suspected of carrying contraband, and the date of clearance.
