of prisoners who entered neutral territory should be extended in cases of asylum or refuge to those who were conducted by an armed force. Moreover, they proposed that war supplies, taken from the enemy and carried by an army taking refuge in neutral territory, shall be returned to the state to which it belongs after the termination of the war. They proposed, further, that the declaration should expressly stipulate that the fact of a neutral state resisting, even by force, attempts to violate its neutrality can not be regarded as a hostile act.

Germany contributed to the problem by suggesting a new article providing that the neutral state is not bound to prohibit or restrict the use by belligerent states of cables and telegraphs which are within its territory, including government installations as well as those belonging to private individuals or companies; but that any prohibition or restriction should apply equally to all belligerents.

On the part of Switzerland, certain amendments as to form were proposed, emphasizing the idea that the neutral state is not bound to receive escaped prisoners, nor to tolerate their residence in their territory. The Belgian amendments referred, in great part, to the matters of form and expression, except that they proposed that neutral territory is inviolable and that the neutral state should be allowed to permit escaped prisoners to go at liberty or to assign them a place of residence.

And, finally, the Danish proposition declared that if a neutral state mobilizes its military forces with a view to preparing in good time for the defense of its neutrality, even although it may not have received notice of the opening of hostilities from the belligerents, such act shall not be deemed unfriendly with respect to either contending party.

6. With this material, the second subcommission of the second commission and its comité de redaction and d'examen 2 proceeded to their respective labors. It was unanimously admitted that it

2 This committee, presided over by Mr. Asser, was made up of General de Gündell, from Germany; General Davis, from the United States of America; Baron Giesl de Gieslingen, from Austria; Beernaert and van den Heuvel, from Belgium; Bustamante, from Cuba; Brun, from Denmark; Renault, from France;

was not proper to formulate the projected convention as applicable only to the duties of neutrals, but that it was necessary to draft it in a form to include duties of belligerents, and that in certain cases concrete duties should be imposed upon them.

The responsibility of the neutral state was defined to be that it was not possible to demand neutrality for everything that takes place in its territory, nor for anything that takes place outside of it. Japan wished to extend the responsibility of the neutral state to territory over which it exercises jurisdiction, or a protectorate, or, as Colonel Borel said, in broader terms [to territory] to which its public authority is extended. Difficulties of drafting, aside from the individuality of such cases, made it advisable that the definitive project should include only the territory of the neutral state.

The first agreement, accepted without debate, was the fundamental declaration, opportunely proposed by the Belgian delegation, that the territory of neutrals is inviolable to belligerents.

7. Aside from the general lines mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, rules were established to govern the legal and illegal acts which may be performed by belligerents in neutral countries. Recruiting offices and the organizing of corps of combatants were prohibited without discussion, but, on the other hand, it was positively settled that neutral states have no responsibility for the acts of persons who may individually leave the country to enter the service of either of the belligerents.

Although Germany held, with regard to this proposition and with respect to neutral individuals residing in belligerent territory or in territory occupied by belligerents, that the belligerent states should engage not to accept the service of foreigners and that neutral states should prohibit such service by their subjects, this innovation, which departed from established usage up to the present time and seriously threatened individual liberty, did not meet with success in the commission.

Lord Reay and General Elles, from Great Britain; Tsudzuki, from Japan; Eyschen, from Luxemburg; General den Beer Poortugael, from the Netherlands; Samad Khan, from Persia; Beldiman, from Roumania; Borel (Redacteur) and Carlin, from Switzerland.

The theory of respecting neutral territory in the direct uses of war was carried to the extent of prohibiting belligerents from sending their troops, convoys, munitions, or provisions across the territory of a neutral state. But the neutral state, in the protection of commerce and to avoid becoming an indirect ally of either of the belligerents, remained exempt by express provision from prohibiting, for the use of either of the belligerents, the exportation or the transit of arms, munitions, and anything that might be useful to a fleet or

an army.

With regard to the medium of communication, a distinction as sensible as it was necessary was made. The neutral state is not bound to prohibit or restrain the belligerents from the use of telegraphic or telephonic cables or of wireless telegraphic apparatus which may belong to it or to companies or private individuals; but any restrictive or prohibitive measures which it may adopt shall apply impartially to all belligerents, seeing to it that private persons and companies owning apparatus shall follow the same course. This latter point gave rise, on the part of the British delegation, in the subcommission, to a reservation, which was not repeated in the conference, and the principle of the freedom of communications was accepted by Great Britain on condition that in the report it should appear that the liberty of a neutral state to transmit dispatches by means of land lines, submarine cables, or wireless apparatus does not comprehend the right to use them or to permit their use to lend obvious assistance to either of the belligerents. It seemed to the committee that this last reservation leaves the broad wording of the convention a little indecisive and exposed to practical difficulties.

At the same time, and as another of the distinctions already mentioned, it was specifically prohibited to the belligerents

(a) To install within the territory of the neutral state wireless stations or any other apparatus destined to serve as a means of communication with the belligerent sea or land forces; and,

(b) To use installations of this kind established by them before the war, for exclusively military purposes, and which may not have been open to the service of public messages.

The above clause (b), which was suggested by some remarks of the first Japanese delegate in the comité de redaction, and amended by the Russian delegate, and then modified by the British, to make it harmonize with the convention on wireless telegraphy of 1906, is explained, in the report submitted to the conference, to be for the purpose of inducing the British and Japanese delegations to abandon their reservations made previously to three of the articles of the proposed convention. It is to be hoped that this section will not, in the future, provoke any serious difficulties.

8. Japan held that the use of neutral territory should also be prohibited as a base for storehouses or military depots. A few observations, however, showing the uselessness of such a measure, the facility with which it could be evaded by availing of private individuals, and the complications to which it would give rise with respect to the neutral state, were of such weight with the Japanese delegation that they refrained from insisting upon their proposition.

9. With respect to escaped prisoners of war who may reach neutral territory, there was no difficulty whatever in accepting the universally established rule that they should be at once at liberty; but the proposition with regard to those prisoners who are accompanied by an armed enemy force in search of asylum or refuge aroused a lively debate in the committee and in the commission.

Some of the delegations thought that to leave them absolutely at liberty would be in contravention of article 59 of the rule of 1899 concerning laws and customs of war on land, as well as of article 15 of the convention adopted by this Second Conference on the 20th of July, 1907, for adapting to maritime warfare the principles of the Geneva Convention negotiated the previous year. In both conventions it is provided that the wounded or sick, belonging to belligerent forces and brought by land or sea into a neutral state with its consent, must remain under the guard of that state, so that they may not take part anew during the war in the hostile operations.

The case is, however, different. When a body of the army, encamped near the frontier, enters neutral territory and there yields up its arms, it does so undoubtedly in order to avoid surrender.

If it shall have chosen to surrender, it is undeniable that the enemy prisoners which it had should immediately be at liberty. How could a neutral state consent that a war prison be maintained for them simply because the military force which guards them has substituted surrender for entrance into its territory?

Comparing such diverse questions as human liberty and material property, one of the Russian delegates maintained that the logic of such reasoning would also carry with it the delivery to the victorious enemy of the arms and munitions of the refugee forces; but the extreme difference between both hypotheses strengthened the other reasons in support of the liberty of prisoners. Aside from humanitarian considerations, it is easy to comprehend that neutral states neither can nor ought to permit a foreign armed force, once having put foot into its territory, to continue exercising there effective power, or even the control which the holding of prisoners under guard would imply. As soon as the army crosses the frontier and leaves the belligerent territory it loses every right and title of authority which it exercised over enemy prisoners, and the latter recover ipso jure their liberty. And in order that they may also recover it ipso facto the authority of the neutral state intervenes.

The commission-except for a Russian reservation not maintained or repeated in the plenary session of the conference — adopted the formula favorable to prisoners of war in such situation. And with respect to all prisoners of war escaping or liberated in neutral territory, it admitted the right of the state to tolerate or not their presence, and to indicate for them a fixed place of residence if they remained in the country.

10. Shall material of war, carried by the army across the neutral frontier and which the said army has captured previously from the enemy, continue to belong to the party which brought it in or be retained by the neutral state in order to turn it over to its former owner when the war shall close? This latter theory was strongly urged by one of the Dutch amendments, without doubt for the same reason which prompted the proposition regarding the liberation of prisoners.