what is the relative scope of the two systems under the existing practice of International Law. The Oxford Rules on naval war (1913) provide that "the special rules relating to maritime war are only applicable to the high sea and the territorial waters of the belligerents to the exclusion of those waters which in respect of navigation cannot be considered as maritime."

Territorial waters (q.v.) differ from the high sea in being a belt of the sea along the coast over which the adjacent State has a right of sovereignty, though for purposes of innocent navigation the ships of other States have a right of passage through them.

The belt is measured from low-water mark. For bays, estuaries, or other openings from the sea, however, it is measured from a line drawn across the opening. Within this line, landwards, the waters are subject to the jurisdiction of the adjacent State absolutely. These are the exception to which the Oxford Rules refer. Thus, acts of war within these waters are not governed by the rules of naval war, but by those relating to war on land.

A roadstead is an anchorage not within a port or haven. It follows from the universally admitted definition of territorial waters" that where the roadstead is a part of the belt through which the right of innocent passage is exercisable it forms part of the territorial waters. Where it is protected by a breakwater, pier, or jetty built into the sea, it must be classed along with bays, the head of the projecting masonry being treated as a promontory, and the territorial belt being measured from a line drawn from such head to a spot on the coastline, which is in accordance with the rule for the measurement of inland waters in the case of bays. Roadsteads are assimilated under No. XIII. (1907) to ports and inland waters.

Thus the capture of an enemy merchant vessel within an enemy port, harbour, or roadstead as above defined would be subject to the law of war on land, and would not be a capture according to the law of naval war.1 The capture of a neutral ship is subject to the same distinction. Two of the Hague 1 See, however, Naval Prize Act, 1864, Sect. 34, p. 226.

Conventions (1907) relate to neutral rights and duties, the one of them to those in war on land (No. V.), and the other to those in naval war (No. XIII.).

There are very good grounds for this distinction between the law of war on land and that of naval war, based on the different circumstances in which they are respectively carried on.

In the case of war on land, the enemy is in the midst of the civil population of the invaded country, surrounded by its civic life, mixing of necessity with it for all the purposes of housing and feeding the invading forces. Where the invaded country is occupied, the native political superior is displaced, military laws are enforced by the invader, and the régime as a whole is a mixed one, which requires more or less minute determination as set out in The Hague Regulations.

In war at sea a different order of conditions prevails. Here none of the rules arising out of campment among a hostile population or out of the derangement of the civil or civic life of an invaded country have application at all.

The purpose of war on land is to defeat and capture the enemy's armed forces, and appropriate such public enemy property as can serve for its continuance. That of war at sea is to isolate the enemy country, and prevent it from deriving means to continue the struggle, either by conversion of merchant into war vessels, or by carriage from beyond seas, or by maritime communication within its own borders, to paralyze its trade, and hasten the conclusion of the war. This involves the capture of private enemy ships which are a means for the carriage of enemy supplies-i.e., enemy cargoes on enemy ships—and, but for the power neutrals have acquired of asserting their interest, would involve the capture of enemy goods generally, and not only of contraband of war, found on neutral ships. Any assimilation of the land and the sea laws, it is seen, must be based on the fact that war on land and war at sea are carried on for purposes of a different character.

Even the law relating to postal communications is influenced by this different character. Thus in war on land a strict supervision over correspondence is a matter of vital importance to an army surrounded by a hostile population intently watching its movements. The same danger does not arise in

Nor is there any pro

the case of mail-bags on the high sea. posal to assimilate war on land to war at sea in this respect. It is provided in Convention No. XI. that even the official correspondence of belligerents is inviolable except where it comes from or is destined for a blockaded port. This is not the place to express doubts as to the wisdom of having ratified this provision. It has been ratified, and is binding on all the Parties to the war of 1914.

As regards prisoners in maritime war, it will be seen that they are not necessarily confined to belligerent forces, combatant or non-combatant, nor need they necessarily have been captured with an army which they were following as journalists, camp-followers, etc.1 The captor in maritime war is entitled to treat as prisoners of war the officers and crew of captured enemy merchant vessels owing merely political allegiance to the enemy State.2 They may be detained for the same reasons as those which may be put forward in justification of the capture of enemy ships and the enemy cargoes they carry.

The Convention covering the Regulations for the conduct of war on land is not confined to a mere recommendation that they should be adopted, but provides that the "Contracting Powers shall issue instructions to their armed land forces, which shall be in conformity with the Regulations respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land annexed to the present Convention," and, moreover, that the belligerent Party who shall violate the provisions of the said Regulations shall be bound,3 if the case arises, to pay an indemnity. It shall be responsible for all acts done by persons forming part of its armed force."

As regards the principles which the Powers represented at The Hague Conferences have agreed should be observed by belligerents generally, including, of course, cases in which The Hague Conventions have given no precise indications for the conduct of warfare, the preamble to Convention No. IV. 1 See Regulations for War on Land, Art. 13. * See Hague Convention, No. XI., Art. 6. The word used in the text is tenu. The official translation gives "shall be liable to make compensation," which would leave a discretion to a determining authority not granted by the original text..

states that the interests of humanity, the requirements of civilization, and the desire to diminish the evils of war, so far as military necessities permit, are the underlying principle of the Regulations thereinafter set out.

No margin, it is seen, is left for the case of military necessity within the scope of the Regulations themselves. The contracting Powers are bound to give their armed forces instructions in accordance with the Regulations (q.v.).1 In a European war, however, where no powerful European Power is free to exercise an independent neutral influence, the observance of The Hague Conventions and Regulations, and of the dictates of natural law, humanity, and public conscience is solely dependent on the state of civilization of the belligerent Parties themselves.

Reduced to its simplest expression, war as between nations, after it has begun, is an effort on the part of the one to impose its will on the other. As between the armies, the object of the one is to force the other to surrender.

The one is the political aspect of war, the other the military. In the present volume I do not deal with the political side of war or wars, and least of all with that of the present war, which seems devoid of any precise object or objects which can be ascribed to any of the Parties pitted against each other. The cause of the war-the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Servia—has all the appearance of a querelle d'allemand, as the French call a trumped-up quarrel forced without any alternative on the other side. In the course of the war some reason may be devised to account for it. Meanwhile one of the Parties to it seems to have revived with luxurious fulness all the practically obsolete horrors of warfare, the sacking of defenceless cities, personal reprisals, ransom, hostages, the very methods modern civilization was flattering itself had been banished from warfare, to which has even been added the new and supreme horror of laying floating mines on the high sea, the

As the preamble states, military necessity was taken into account in the drafting of them. It treats them as a minimum, expressly stating that any case not therein provided for is not to be regarded as left to the belligerent commander's discretion, but remains governed by the " usage of civilized nations, the laws of humane conduct, and the exigencies of public conscience."

highway of mankind, and inflicting on neutrals as well as belligerents the most cruel and most cowardly method of carrying on hostilities yet devised by man.

The system which has been adopted on all sides of excluding the Press from the scene of war may have been necessary with a view to keeping the enemy in ignorance of the movements of the troops opposed to him, but it has had the deplorable result of opening the floodgates of conjecture and of a factitious excitement which may do ultimate harm. Many of our present judgments and much of our present indignation may have to be revised when the war is over. Meanwhile God grant that we may not be misled into imitation of the barbarism rightly or wrongly attributed to our enemies. The war is not one of our seeking, but one of unprovoked aggression by a foe who has forfeited his good name in order to gain an initial point over his more scrupulous adversaries; yet we must strive to avoid including the innocent with the guilty, and not condemn a whole nation for the acts of a section of it, or individuals for the sins of a nation, however difficult it may be to feel patient and judicial in spirit. We may feel sure that when this war is over, whether Germany is victor or vanquished, all the real culture of Germany will unite against those who have degraded the fair name of a great nation and will brand with infamy any who have made a nation's suffering as inglorious as murder and rapine.

While we form this judgment of our enemy, let us bear ourselves in mind that there is a law of war, that it has now been codified, that the Nations of the world have signed treaties giving effect to it, and that every violation of it is a disgrace to those who are guilty of such violation, that on the sanctity of contract and treaties rests all the moral structure of civilization, and that those who undermine that structure are the enemy, not of their adversaries only, but of all mankind.