Page:Handbook of maritime rights.djvu/50

Nations at war with each other have been compared to individuals carrying on war with each other in the primitive condition of society. If I am at war with a man, I have no right to insist on any one taking my side in the dispute, but I have a right to insist on no one, who claims the privileges of neutrality, taking my adversary's side, which if he does, he violates impartiality and departs from neutrality. Now, if I am able to prevent my enemy from carrying his goods by sea, what right has a third party, calling himself a neutral, to step in and do for him what he is unable to do for himself? Not only this, but by his conduct he does me a double injustice, for he not only does for my enemy what my enemy is unable to do for himself, but thereby he enables him to increase, proportionately to the aid he receives, his means of offensive operations against me; for every sailor whom he lends my enemy to carry on his trade is a man subtracted