One of the best achievements of The Hague Conference of 1907 was the scheme for an International Court of Appeal in Prize Cases. The world was not ready for it, and the differences of view between the greater and the lesser Powers have not unnaturally prevented its ratification. But is it not, under present circumstances, possible that a shorter step in the same direction might and could be taken by some of those Powers who are most concerned in the proper disposition of prize court proceedings?

Madame de Staël declared that mankind was always advancing, but always in a spiral course. In 1915 the world, while it moved far during the preceding century or two in the direction of human brotherhood, seems to have come to a pause very close, so far as commercial intercourse between nations is concerned, to the point reached at the time of the French Revolution.

International law in common with other sciences is compelled to lay down certain major premises or postulates. These are variously termed the “fundamental,” “primordial,” “inherent,” or “absolute rights” of the state. Thus Hall says:

The appalling loss of life and property resulting from the sinking of the Titanic served to direct public attention both here and abroad not only to the laws which should provide the safeguards of navigation, but also to the incidence of liability for accidents upon the high seas. The former subject has been dealt with in an interesting paper published in this Journal. We here propose to discuss the application to foreign ships, of the United States rule of the limitation of the shipowner’s liability, the foreign law upon the subject and the significance of the international movement for reform through identic legislation in many countries.

One of the immediate consequences of the outbreak of war, according to the Anglo-American law, is that all the commercial relations between subjects of the belligerent countries come to an end. Fresh dealings cannot be entertained, and existing dealings cannot be continued, between persons divided by the line of war, save with the licence of the sovereign power. It is stated in several of the old English books that such trading is a misdemeanor, and even that it amounts to a felony, but there is no reported instance of a conviction by a criminal court. In numerous cases, however, contracts concerned with such trade were declared null, and goods seized when so engaged were confiscated as prize to the Crown. The broad principle was laid down clearly during the Napoleonic wars by Lord Stowell in the case of The Hoop, where a cargo had been captured on a neutral ship on the ground that it was being brought to England from the enemy country by British subjects. There had been some divergence of practice between the prize courts and the common law courts on the question of the absolute illegality of commercial intercourse with the enemy during war, and Stowell then stated the rule which was derived from the Dutch jurist Bynkershoek and which was conceived to be a rule of the law of nations:

By an order in council issued on the 4th of August, 1914, the British Government announced a list of articles which it proposed to treat as contraband “during the war with the German Emperor”; by an order of August 12th the first mentioned order was extended to the war with “the Emperor of Austria—King of Hungary,” and by an order of September 21st certain additions were made to the list of contraband articles published in the two preceding orders. By an order in council of October 29th the list of contraband articles in the earlier proclamations was withdrawn in consequence of the complaint of the Swedish Government that it included metallic ores, which were on the free list in the Declaration of London, and that the treatment of such articles as contraband would seriously injure Swedish trade. A new list was therefore substituted, from which ores were omitted.

The recent appearance of the Austrian Red Book and Servian Blue Book completes the history of the breaking out of the war, as told in the official diplomatic correspondence of the belligerent nations, so far as they have seen fit to make this correspondence public.

It is the purpose of this article to attempt to summarize the story told by this correspondence, and at the same time to indicate the conclusions which in the opinion of the writer may properly be drawn therefrom, with respect to the immediate causes of the war. The dispatches are so numerous, and the action they record was crowded into such a short space of time that it is difficult to keep this summary within reasonable limits. And this difficulty is increased by the fact that those who sympathize with the viewpoint of the belligerents on the one side or the other, are apt to differ radically as to which parts of the correspondence are important, therefore making it necessary for anyone desirous of summarizing the documents in a way to afford a basis for a fair consideration of the arguments advanced on either side, to go into the correspondence much more fully than would be necessary if there were a greater agreement as to the relative importance of the issues which it presents. It will be the effort of the writer, while confining himself—with such exceptions as are specifically noted—strictly to the diplomatic correspondence, to set out impartially the portions of the correspondence especially emphasized, on the one side and on the other, with full references to the original documents. If he is successful in this, his readers can be relied on to correct any errors in his comments and conclusions.