First World War Centennial

CHAPTER XII

EFFECTIVENESS AS A REQUISITE OF BLOCKADE

BLOCKADE in order to hold neutrals must be effective. That is what the savants have agreed since the Paris Con­vention in 1856. That is what the Decla­ration of London affirmed in 1909.

Prior to the former date the great nations, in spite of the statements of the Armed Neutralities, seemed obsessed with the idea that belligerency was the normal condition of states and that international law reflected the wishes of belligerents. For this reason the so-called "paper blockade," which inter­fered with neutral trade, by proclamation received consideration until the nineteenth century. It was doubtless in the discussions which followed neutral endeavor to articulate

the conviction that a belligerent must justify its aggressive action in interfering with the former's commerce that the word effective was chosen to characterize the sort of block­ade that might properly receive neutral recognition.

To the impartial mind the selection reflects timidity. At all events it was a blunder. Effectiveness ought certainly to be required of any blockade that can be defended, but effectiveness does not of itself vindicate the blockade.

A robber state may seize and effectively hold the property of an abutting nation just as a bandit chief may effectively hold the personal property he has wrenched from the defenseless, or bar the use of a highway to an intimidated neighbor. In neither case does the effectiveness of the act excuse or explain it.

Since the word effective, coined long since, is clearly insufficient and loses its usefulness at a time when belligerents are making their own rules, it is proper for the neutral, which believes that blockade like other belligerent acts is only to be recognized as an act of justifiable dominion, to substitute the latter phrase for the word effective in determining its obligations in the matter of a belligerent effort to shut off its trade with enemy ports. In doing this it will not eliminate the idea of effectiveness—this is included in the larger designation and is an element without which any endeavor to control enemy coasts must prove futile.

"A blockade de facto should be effected by stationing a number of ships and forming as it were a circumvallation round the mouth of the prohibited port, where, if the arch fails in any one part, the blockade fails altogether." (The Arthur—I Dodson, p. 423.) That is the way a much-quoted authority expressed the general idea of an effective blockade in the days when ships-of-war were but feeble instru­ments of the execution of a nation's will when compared with the units which compose a modern fleet. Old-fashioned as the rule now appears to be in the face of later practice, it is yet exceedingly suggestive, as indicating the closeness of the watch which many have declared that a blockading squadron is expected to keep over the coast which it patrols.

That there is another and more liberal point of view is apparent to all who are informed of the blockading of 2500 miles of Confederate coast during the American Civil War by four hundred ships of all sorts. Impossible as it was for the Union navies to shut out all blockade runners, the cordon which they maintained was sufficiently masterful to make an attempt to pass through exceedingly hazardous. Neutral states therefore recog­nized the act of the Federal Government as entitled to the same degree of consideration that the public in a great city accords the police lines that are thrown about a given municipal district which is the scene of a conflagration or tumult. They were con­scious that individual ships might safely slip through the line of patrolling gunboats—indeed they frequently did so—just as single citizens pass the limits from which they are refused admittance without having their heads broken in the attempt, but the risk was sufficient to make the venture imprudent, and it being within the province of a belliger­ent to impose such restriction as had been formally proclaimed, they assented to the blockade as authoritative.

Differing as these two theories do regarding what is required to make a blockade effective, it does not seem as if there were any sufficient antagonism to explain such a conflict among publicists, as is apparent. Underlying each is the same vital principle which, crudely expressed in the books, makes it necessary that a belligerent in imposing a burden upon the commercial world shall make such con­tinuous demonstration of its power to enforce its decrees as will command attention.

This is happily recognized in Article 3 of the Declaration of London by the positive affirmation—"La question de savoir si le blocus est effectif est une question de fait." Would that every statement of an interna­tional convention were as clear and incisive, and that all the rules which have been enacted by nations in conference had been as flexible and adapted to all periods! If it is to stand hereafter (and it must if reason is to be the arbiter), it will be found equally adaptable to a period in which a nation's military re­sources upon, above, and below the surface of the sea far transcend those now existent, as it is to present problems. Already it is serving the good purpose, quite irrespective of its standing as part of an unratified de­claration, of bringing clearly to men's minds the fact that precedents which refer to the agencies used by a belligerent to enforce its will are only valuable when coupled with a clear appreciation of the limitations of the epoch to which they refer.

Never did the nations stand in greater need of such declaratory and cautioning words as those drafted by their emissaries as the ex­pression of world opinion just prior to the greatest of wars. To states in arms they carry a positive message, which says in effect: "On the hypothesis that you are within your belligerent rights, do not fail to remember that although your ships with auxiliary agencies can command much wider areas off enemy coasts than the vessels of former years:

"1. You are pitted against enemy ma­chinery in the shape of fortress guns, mines, vessels, and all manner of defensive in­ventions.

"2. As your fleets push their outer lines into ever widening zones of sea, they must expect to contest with the elements for a certain sovereignty which nature has not yet conceded to man.

"3. That the swift vessels of commercial nations not involved as direct partisans in the war are not to be as easily policed as the sailing craft of earlier times.

"4. And that nothing less than absolute ability to control these forces as a matter of fact will be accepted by the neutral world as an effective blockade."

To neutral Powers the message is brief but crammed with significance: "If a belliger­ent acting within its rights is, as a matter of fact, dominating waters off an enemy coast, your shipping must avoid such seas, otherwise it will be confiscated."