of any war ship whatsoever for or to anv other than a bona fide neutral purchaser? Nay, would it not be well to go still farther and insist that a neutral State is bound to use due diligence to prevent the construction for, or sale to, a belligerent purchaser, or the exportation to a belligerent destination,1 of any vessel which is adapted or readily con vertible to warlike use? It will be said that this is an invasion of the commercial rights of neutral individuals who depend upon ship building for a livelihood or for profit, and that it imposes onerous and difficult burdens upon neutral States. Besides, if a distinc tion is to be made between vessels service able for warlike use and other vessels, where. it may be asked, are we to fix the line?2 It is very doubtful whether our shipbuilding in terests * would greatly suffeer by an adoption of these principles; but, even supposing that this were the case, have communities or na tions ever hesitated to sacrifice the vested rights or commercial interests of certain in dividuals, or even classes, to the general wel fare of society as a whole? If they have not 1 In case the destination were nominally neutral, but really belligerent, the doctrine of "continu ous voyage" might be made to apply. 3 Bernard, of. cit., p. 395. ' As stated in the text, it is very doubtful wheth er these interests would suffer to any considerable extent. Even under the interpretation given to our present law, it is rather difficult to imagine a case where such a vessel might be so disposed of (if sold to a belligerent purchaser or dis patched to a belligerent destination) as to free the neutral trader or builder from all taint of suspicion of being engaged in an illegal venture or an unlawful transaction (see, e.g.. the cases of the Meteor and the U. S. v. Quincy, cited above). In practice it is very difficult to distinguish be tween a belligerent and a commercial intent. It only opens the door to fraud. There is no at tempt at such a distinction in the case oí contra band of war where the character of the articles or the belligerent destination furnishes the essential justification of capture. The main difference be tween the two cases would be that in the case oi contraband the right of capture belongs to the belligerent; in that of vessels adapted to warlike use and intended for a belligerent destination, the duty of prevention would rest on the neutral, as it indeed already does to a very considerable extent.
hesitated to exact these sacrifices in the in terest of particular communities or nations, how much less hesitation should there be when the welfare of humanity at large or the collective interests of civilization are at stake! But, it may be asked, should we not go still one step farther, and, as has fre quently been suggested, prohibit all trade in arms and ammunition or implements of war fare between belligerents and neutrals? To this piece of apparently unanswerable logic we may reply that to compel neutral States to assume such responsibilities would indeed involve the imposition of such burdens that they might in some cases prefer the status of belligerency to that of neutrality. In fram ing rules of International Law we must be careful never to exceed the limits of the prac tical, and we must avoid the mistake into which our Legislatures so often fall of fram ing rules which are to difficult or which are impossible to enforce. Would the prohibition of the construction for, or sale to, a belligerent purchaser, or the exportation to a belligerent destination of all vessels adapted or readily convertible to war like use be impossible of execution or too difficult to enforce? Some at least of our modern States have already burdened them selves with considerable responsibility in this direction. According to our own Neutrality Law, such a vessel might indeed be built and sold as an article of commerce, but it could not be suffered to depart from any of our ports if intended for the use of either belli gerent. In England, since the enactment of the British Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870. such a vessel could not even be built or con tracted for. According to the older statutes. the Alabama might have been built and sold as an article of commerce, if she had not been directly intended for the service of the Con federacy. But, as an able writer has. well said: "It is clear that proof of an intention hostile in fact, or constructively hostile, in the builder of a ship or his workmen, or in
