Some Questions of International Law. of human use which might be declared con traband of war simply because it might ul timately become in any degree useful to a belligerent for military purposes. Coal or other fuel and cotton are applied for a great many innocent purposes. Many nations are dependent on them for the con duct of inoffensive industries, and no suffi cient presumption of an intended warlike use seems to be afforded by the mere fact of their destination to a belligerent port. The recognition in principle of the treatment of coal and other fuel and raw cotton as ab solutely contraband of war might ultimately lead to a total inhibition of the sale by neu trals to the people of belligerent States of all articles which could be finally converted to military uses. Such an extension of the principle by treating coal and all other fuel and raw cotton as absolute contraband of war simply because they are shipped by a neutral to a non-blockaded port of a bel ligerent would not appear to be in accord with the reasonable and lawful rights of a neutral commerce. I am, your obedient servant, JOHN HAY.' Fortunately for Russia and the neutral nations, the Russians had no opportunity of making a practical application of their views on the subject of contraband until after the capture of several neutral vessels in the Pacific by the Vladivostok squadron during the months of June and July, 1904." The The comment of the British and American newspapers (including those of the political op ponents of the Administration) upon the position taken by Secretary Hay in this circular appears to have been uniformly favorable. I have been unable to detect a single dissenting voice amidst the general chorus of approval. 'As has been noted in a previous paper, the neutral colliers seized and detained as prizes in the Red Sea during the second week of the war were released in response to an order of the Czar's on the ground that these captures had been made before the formal declaration of coal as contraband of war. The later Red Sea seiz ures were decided on other grounds than that of their alleged carriage of contraband. See THE GREEN HAG for October, 1904.
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first case which aroused controversy was that of the British collier Allantan which was captured in the straits of Korea on her return voyage from a Japanese port, while conveying Japanese commercial (anthracite) coal from Japan to Singapore. One of the grounds on which the vessel was con demned was that she had carried contra band (Welsh) coal to Japan on her outward voyage, 2. c., the Allantan appears to have been condemned for a past, not a present of fence. The British Government refused to in terfere at the time on the ground that, inas much as an appeal to the Admiralty court at St. Petersburg had been allowed, the case was still sub jndicc? If the facts alleged by those interested in the fate of the Allantan are correct, there can be no question but that Russia has been guilty of a serious violation of the law of contraband in condemning the vessel for an offence supposed to have been committed on her outward voyage. As Lord Stowell said in the case of the Imina * "the articles must be taken in delicio, in the actual prose cution of the voyage to an enemy's port/' "On the /tilinto» case, see especially letter of V. R. Rea, the owner of the Allantan, in the Lon don Times (weekly ed.) for September 2, 1904, and the letter from the British Foreign Office to Mr. Stanley Mitcalfe in the London Times (week ly) for August 26, 1004. Some of the grounds, given by the Russians for the condemnation of the vessel were very trivial, as, f. g., that she had a Japanese cabin boy on board, that the official log-book had not been entered up properly, etc. A more serious charge was that her papers were irregular. The Allantan has since (October 29. 1904.) been released by the Admiralty Court of St. Petersburg. 43 Rob. 168. This is the general rule, but there are excep tions. In 1816 the cargo of the Commerccn, a Swedish vessel, was condemned by the Supreme Court of the United States because it was in tended for the British fleet lying in a Spanish port during the War of 1812. The cases to which the doctrine of continuous voyage has been ap plied may also be said to constitute exceptions to this rule. In any case, the real or ultimate destination must be a hostile one. The case of the Allantan cannot be brought under any of these heads. Her destination appears to have been really as well as nominally neutral.
