An article in the Atlantic Monthly for October by Mr. Arthur Bullard has set me thinking. It was hard to classify. It was not exactly pro-German. Most of its general sentiments were unexceptionable. It did not seem to be written in bad faith. Yet it was full of sneers and accusations against Great Britain which almost any candid reader, who knew the facts, must see to be unfair. I did not know what to make of Mr. Bullard till at last there came across my mind an old description of a certain type

"The scrap of paper on which Great Britain had promised fair play at sea is torn up." By the "scrap of paper" Mr. Bullard means the Declaration of London; and he knows perfectly well that the Declaration of London was never passed into law, never accepted either by Great Britain or by any other nation. It is simply untrue to say that we promised to observe the Declaration, or that that document has in any way been violated, since it never was law. Mr. Bullard himself gives most of the facts; so

But here Mr. Bullard has a very cunning point to make. It has been made also by Professor Liszt. He knows and admits that the Declaration was never ratified and had no legal force. But he points out that, both in inviting the other nations to the conference and in recommending the Declaration when it had been framed, authoritative persons explained that the purpose of the whole proceeding was "not to legislate but to codify." "We obtained recognition of the fact," says Lord Desart, "that, as a b

What then is left if the Declaration of London is not accepted? Is there to be no law of the sea at all? What is left is exactly all that there was before the sittings of that Conference, plus a certain extra lucidity in places due to its reports. The British courts simply continue to administer international law on the basis of precedent adapted to new conditions, exactly as all powers in the world have done. This offends Mr. Bullard, but I find it difficult to make out what other course he wou

So much for general principles; let us now consider whether in detailed practice the claims of the British Government or the practice of the British courts have been particularly reprehensible. The two questions are of course distinct; and my own impression, given merely for what it may be worth, is that the decisions of the courts will bear the severest scrutiny, while the claims of the Government are closely analogous to the claims advanced by all governments in a similar situation. They will

I pass to a real difficulty, where I do not feel at all sure that our policy was wise, though on the whole the balance of well-informed opinion seems to approve of it. I mean the so-called total "blockade" of Germany, including the shutting out of foodstuffs. The history of this policy is as follows. On February 4, 1915, the Germans announced that all the seas round Great Britain were a "war-area" in which they would sink without warning all ships whatsoever. (Neutrals might be spared on occasio

The extension of the doctrine of continuous voyage, and the prevention of all sea-borne trade to or from Germany: those are the two main problems. The remainder are smaller things, although in many ways interesting and important. In all of them, I think, the central fact is that we have extended some existing doctrine of international law to meet the special situations produced by this war. I do not say that in all cases we have decided rightly. Sir Edward Grey has definitely offered to submit t

And then the article tails off into vague horrors about the British censorship and the Defence of the Realm Act and the deplorable profits made by British shippers, and the "party of Lord North which is installed at the Foreign Office!" Everybody knows that in war censorship is necessary; every nation employs it, Great Britain rather more leniently than the rest. It is a pure myth to suppose that in England we are kept in the dark about important sides of the war which are well known to neutrals

Britain Transformed.     New Energies Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 38 pp., with Illustrations.                Price Sixpence. Britain's Case Against Germany.     A Letter to a Neutral. By the Late REV. H. M. GWATKIN. Crown 8vo. 15 pp.                                         Price One Penny. German Truth and a Matter of Fact. By the RT. HON. J. M. ROBERTSON, M.P. Crown 8vo. 10 pp.                                         Price One Penny. The Belgian Deportations. By ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE, With a Statement