B. Neutral Citizens of neutrals who happen to be in belligerent countries are entitled to protection and to the advantage of commercial and other treaties with those bellig.. erents.
(3) Neutrals on the other hand are bound to refrain from Ninneutral acts') which might give aid and comfort to any of the belligerents. No military expeditions are to be prepared on their soil; no ships of war to be built or fitted. up; no passage is permitted to belligerent. troops across neutral territory; no hostilities al lowed by land or sea within the territorial re strictions of the neutrals.
(4) Hospitals and Red Cross services are exempt from capture; and neutrals engaged in such service are to be respected.
(5) The neutral preserves the right of con tinuing intercourse in goods or persons, by land or sea, by railroad or by ship, with all the belligerents, subject to the limitations on sea commerce described below.
(6) Neutral vessels capturable at all are entitled to an adjudication by a prize court. The vessel is to be preserved if possible, and the passengers and crews must be taken off in safety.
(7) By the Declaration of Paris (16 April 1856), the signatory powers (not including the United States) agreed not to use privateers for the capture of merchant vessels.
(8) Enemy's vessels and enemy's property in such vestels are liable to capture anywhere on the high seas. The efforts to prohibit capture of private property at sea were unsuccessful.
(9) Enemy's property (except contraband) is safe from capture in neutral ships.
(10) Neutral goods (except contraband) are safe from capture in enemy ships.
C. Freedom of the Seos.—Neutral com merce is subject to three very important limita tions as follows: (11) Contraband, that is, commodities and persons directly intended or adapted for mili tary purposes, are capturable even if owned by a neutral or in a neutral ship.
(12) A blocicade of any port or coast by a belligerent is considered directly a military operation so that neutral vessels bound in or out are subject to capture anywhere on the high seas. Blocicades in order to be binding must be effective.
(13) Neutral goods, if contraband in nature, may by the doctrine of continuous voyages be captured if bound from one neutral port to another, vihere the ultimate destination is a belligerent port. • (14) The definition of contraband was un .certain in 1914. In the Conference of London in 1911, an international Declaration was drawn under the leadership of Great Britain, which made careful distinction between acontraband,I) 'conditional contrabandk and anon-contrabandb; but this document was subsequently withdrawn by the British government before ratification.
The progress of the art of war has added many commodities to the group of materials plainly intended for war; and it has always been a debatable question whether food is necessarily contraband.
Not all of these principles were admitted by all nations; but, with the exception of privateer ing, which played no part in the Great War, they were substantially held by the American government in 1914, and had been applied to, it in the Spanish War of 1898 and claimed ill other wars to which the United States was not a party. The statute books contained a series of provisions for enforcing the neutrality of the United States by penalties on those who might aid the belligerents. Unfortunately the neutrality statutes of the United States, as pointed out early in the war by the Attomey General, were defective and inadequate. They date back to 1794 with a revision in,1797 and additions in 1818. This body of law was sub stantially incorporated into the revised laws of 1878 and was in force in 1914. In spite of the advice of the Department of Justice, the only new statute enacted during the penod of the neutrality was that of 4 March 1915, authorizing the withholding of clearances where ((there was reasonable cause to believe that the cargo was intended to supply belligerent vessels of war at sea.
Diplomatic Intercourse.—At the outbreak of the war Great Britain, Austria and Germany requested the United States to represent them in enemy countries, and Turl,L.,, Scrbia and other countries made like requests. This threw upon the United States a large responsibility with reference to indi‘iduals and property of citizens of one state in the territory of an enemy, and also made the United States min isters intermediaries in questions relating to the status and treatment of prisoners of war and of civilians arrested and interned. In addition the American ministers in all the belligerent countries represented the general interests of the United States as a neutral, and were the channel for claims of the owners of ships and cargoes which were seized or captured.