Rights and Duties of Neutrals

CHAPTER I

SOME GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

WHETHER the rights of man and of na­tion precede or follow his or its duties is a matter that philosophers must decide. For practical minds the rights of either are dependent upon a performance of duty. The citizen behind the bars may babble of rights, but his failure to perform his obligations has eliminated these, and the cabinet of a nation which has flagrantly disregarded primal law cannot expect a hearing when it wishes to claim privileges.

This truth if borne in mind during any dis­cussion of the rights and duties of neutrals will tend to logical thinking and consistent action. It will be found applicable to minor matters affecting such theories as those of contraband and blockade, as well as to broader principles and state policy.

Thus for an instance and specifically: The position of the United States is immensely stronger when it insists upon the rights of its individual citizens to manufacture and ex­port arms (thus directly or indirectly aiding either belligerent) than it would be if as a nation it had not endeavored to observe every obligation which rests upon a neutral, by itself abstaining from such activities.

That any deviation from such a recognized standard, viz., the observance of international obligations by a state that claims an inter­national right, in discussing matters which have to do with neutrality, is dangerous, scholars will generally agree. Meanwhile it should be obvious to practical men that there is a paramount duty which can hardly be referred to as prescribed by ethics and inter­national law, which cabinets should attend to as a matter of high policy and expediency before they are driven, as they sometimes are, to assert privileges which they have a right to claim.

This is the duty of preparedness, which a neutral nation, desirous of peace, owes to belligerents, to the sisterhood of civilized states, and to its own people.

(1) To belligerents because they may be led by the objector's apparent military weak­ness into disregarding rights that are being infringed.

(2) To the sisterhood of civilized states with whom in the matter of principles com­monly recognized as sound each Power is sympathetically leagued for the preservation of right standards, whether or not such a compact follows lines suggested by the Cleveland Conference of May 12, 1915.

(3) To its own people who may at any time insist upon ministerial action which is fraught with peril.

Primary as this rule of conduct for any great and self-respecting state should be, it is an extraordinary fact that the United States, whose interest and historic part in the annals of the last century is that of a neutral, has failed to appreciate the place preparedness plays in giving effect to proclamation and protest. This is the more anomalous because the nation has not been blind to its moral obligations, and because its population is essentially peace-loving, and ought to appre­ciate that when the word neutral is printed in the same capital letters as the word bel­ligerent the world will be far nearer the peace millennium than it ever can become through opposing resolutions to bayonets.

Is it not time to change all this? Is it not for men who deal with things as they are in the light of what they desire, rather than academic theories, to see to it now that our national declarations of neutrality be ren­dered respectable by putting the nation's reserve or latent power in such shape that it can be used if exigency requires?

Only by so doing, viz., performing a nation­al duty as above described to sovereign states grouped as the embodiment of civilization and in their several capacities, can we secure the standing in court which is essential to us, if we mean to champion in our own interests and those of humanity the achievements won for neutrality in the past, and secure such conquests as will put neutral nations into the position in world conferences which belongs to them.

It is interesting to discuss the rules of war as they apply to neutrals; to define contra­band; to argue the limitations of blockade, the new theories of "war zone," etc., but a commercial and peaceful nation should never forget that the international law of Hall and Oppenheim is law made largely under the influence of belligerent states in an abnormal, not normal, status, and that the industrial and social interests of neutrals require that positive law in all these matters should more closely approximate to the natural law of Grotius and Phillimore, which is nothing other than economic and moral law.

This will never be brought about until neutral states, noncombatants, speaking with authority because they have performed their political and ethical obligations, play a major part in world councils.