Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/139

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Sapir: Time Perspective in Aboriginal Culture
129

out in practice. One could wish that his annotations of this nature had been more numerous, if not more extended. Thus, the question of the right to mark off a mare clausum off an enemy's coast, which was considered with some favor by our Naval War College in 1912, and has been claimed by most of the belligerents since 1914, is not discussed or referred to, except (p. 607) in one of these notes to the chapter on the Declaration on "Blockade in Time of War". In this note it is briefly stated that "the provisions of this chapter are in large measure avoided by the war-zone device", and that the blockade of the Austro-Hungarian coast in 1915 "seemed to have been the only real blockade of the first year of war".

The book contains many recent papers, often the subject of reference, such as the British lists of contraband, absolute and conditional, up to April 30, 1915 (pp. 609–611); and new provisions of the Imperial German Prize Ordinance as revised April 8, 1915 (pp. 614–615). It also refers to several important American statutes passed and departmental regulations prescribed, since the publication of the third edition, such as the compilation of circulars as to citizenship and passports, published by the State Department in 1915 (p. 164), and (p. 602) the "United States Radio Communication Laws and Regulations" of 1914.

As to the questions raised by the sinking of the Lusitania, Professor Sherman takes the view (p. 30) that "international law will protect the lives of all non-combatants afloat or ashore; and whether the merchant-ship be neutral or hostile, whether it carry contraband or non-contraband goods, the belligerent has, indeed, a right to enforce search of neutrals and a right to capture belligerent merchant-ships, but none of these may be destroyed until human life aboard has been placed in safety". In discussing the case of the Nereide (9 Cranch 388) he holds that Marshall's opinion justifies the proposition asserted in the memorandum of our State Department of March 25, 1916, that merchant vessels are under no circumstances subject to attack on the ground that they are armed for defense. He adds that these principles apply with great force to modern submarine warfare; that a submarine is not justified in attacking and destroying a merchantman, either belligerent or neutral, because it is armed, or because it carries contraband merchandise, without first removing all passengers and papers of value; and that if the vessel be then destroyed, the belligerent must be taken to assume all risk of having acted without warrant of law (p. 602).

The proof-reading has been poorly done.

Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture: a Study in Method. By E. Sapir. [Canada, Department of Mines, Geological Survey, Memoir 90, no. 13, Anthropological Survey.] (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau. 1916. Pp. ii, 87.)

Temporal flatness of the available data is the one great weakness of that branch of historical science called ethnology. For the student

am. hist. rev., vol. xxiii.—9.