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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2017
On the 23d of August the English official press bureau issued the following public statement:
The Admiralty wishes to draw attention to their previous warnings to neutrals of the danger of traversing the North Sea. The Germans are continuing their practice of scattering mines indiscriminately upon the ordinary trade routes. These mines do not conform to the conditions of the Hague Convention. They do not become harmless after a certain number of hours; they are not laid in connection with any definite military scheme, such as the closing of a military port, or as a distinct operation against an invading fleet, but appear to be scattered on the chance of touching individual British war or merchant vessels. In consequence of this policy, neutral ships, no matter what their destination, are exposed to the greatest danger. * * * The Admiralty, while reserving to themselves the utmost liberty of retaliatory action against this new form of warfare, announce that they have not so far laid any mines during the present war and that they are endeavoring to keep the sea routes open for peaceful commerce.
51 Printed in the London Times, August 23, 1914.
52 In September several Italian fishing boats were reported as having been destroyed by floating mines placed in the Adriatic Sea by the Austrians. The Italian Government addressed a protest to the Government of Austria against this alleged violation of the Hague Convention in respect to the laying of mines.
53 La Deuxième Conférence de la Paix, t. III, p. 663.
54 Smith and Sibley, p. 93.
55 May 24, 1904.
56 London Times, May 24, 1904.
57 War and Neutrality in the Far East, p. 10.
58 Scott, Texts of the Peace Conference at The Hague, p. 254. Article 1 forbids the laying of unanchored, automatic, contact mines which do not become harmless within at least an hour after the person who laid them has lost control of them, and also the laying of such mines when anchored, which do not become harmless as soon as they have broken loose from their moorings.
59 Higgins, The Hague Peace Conferences, p. 343; also Lémonon, La Séconde Conference, p. 499, and Westlake, Pt. II, p. 324. See a letter by Mr. Higgins to the London Times of September 14, 1914, where the same opinion is expressed. “The permission to belligerents,” said Sir Ernest Satow, “to lay mines anywhere in the sphere of their immediate activity, was a permission to strew the high seas with mines. On the outbreak of war a catastrophe to a neutral ship would at once create a situation which in all probability diplomacy would be impotent to solve.” The convention would there increase instead of diminish the causes of war. Conférence International de la Paix, Actes et Documents, t. III, p. 380.
60 Compare the views of Lord Loreburn, Capture at Sea, p. 139, where these provisions are declared to be little more than “benevolent expressions.”
61 Compare, on this point, the views of Mr. A. P. Higgins in the London Times of September 14, 1914.
62 Conference International de la Paix, Aetes et Documents, t. III, p. 382.
63 Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles, a well known member of the English Parliament and a writer of note on international law, in a letter published in the London Times of Sept. 9, 1914, severely criticised Sir Ernest Satow for having “very unwisely’’ voted for the Mines Convention and the British Government for having “still more unwisely” ratified it. He adds: “Whether such a convention of the governments represented on this occasion at The Hague has given any sanction to the cowardly use of contact mines against belligerent and neutral shipping alike; whether, in short, a Foreign Office delegate and Secretary can secretly give a sanction withheld by the law of nations to methods of warfare so inhuman, is a question to which I believe there can be but a negative reply.
“ I myself feel absolutely confident that neither by the law of nations nor by any convention whatever can the unrestricted and deliberate assassination of harmless neutrals by concealed mines be either sanctioned or justified. And I feel equally confident that if and when the question arises our prize courts will so declare.”
64 International Law,—War, p. 322.
65 Annuaire, 1906, p. 88; 1910, pp. 429–457; 1911, pp. 286–302; 1913, pp. 227–228.