The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1904-09-21

How Peculiar II international Law!
Newspaper gossip says that the Lena is
to be offered for sale by Russia. That
starts new sensational questions for the
International legists. 1t might be o
good plan for the intending purchaser
to obtain, before he buys the advice Of q
competent lawyer, lest Japan, after the
sale, seize the vessel as enemy's property
and take her before a Japanese prize
court.
The purchaser will also do we'll to medi-
tate on the career Of the Confederate
cruiser Georgia, that was notoriously
built in Scotland for the Confederate
Government; launched in 1888; received
British register; cleared in March Of
that year on a pretended voyage to
China, and took from another steamer
on the French coast guns and Rmmuni-
ton sent by her British agents. After
leaving the French coast, MAURY, her
commander produced on deck his COM
mission from JEFFERSON DAVIS and pro-
claimed her the Georgia, whereupon she
setforth ON her work Of destroying Amer
lean vessels. Mr.. ADAMS at London had
two days earlier informed Earl RUssBLL
Of what had happened, and where the
ship could be found. RUSSELL promised
efficient efforts to arrest her, but she
was not seized. She was, ON the contrary,
received at Capetown as duly commits
stoned Confederate cruiser. In May Of
the next year she reappeared in Liver
pool harbor, after having destroyed many
American vessels. In defiance Of the
new twenty-four hours rule Of neutral
ity, which England had proclaimed on
Jan. 81, 1852, she was permitted to re-
main. The British Government would not
seize her and prosecute her for violating
British neutrality, but pleaded that the
effect of proclaiming her in the service Of
the Confederacy, although she had never
been in its waters, had done away with
the illegality Of her origin, and entitled
her to the same treatment in British
ports as cruisers of the United States.
The steamer Alar, which carried to the
Georgia her naval outfit and delivered
it to her on the French coast, was not
prosecuted, although the character OF
the fitting out Of the Georgia in neutral
England was fixed by the trial and con-
viotion Of those in Liverpool who there
enlisted the seamen. Another person
pleaded guilty to the charge Of fitting
her out but was never punished.
A comparison Of the pending British
contentious with Russia over the Smol-
ensk and St. Petersburg, which passed
through the natural canals of Constan-
tinople as unarmed commercial VESSELS
and then cruised in the Red Sea as Rus
sian naval vessels commissioned to
make captures for carrying contraband,
and the British orders promulgated at
Malta on Aug. IL, 1904, regarding the
treatment of Russian cruisers in British
ports, with the treatment, forty years
ago, of cruisers commissioned on the
ocean by the Confederate States, will
show how peculiar is international law,
how slow is its growth, and how import
ant it is for writer's thereon to discrimi-
nate between ideas of justice and moral
ity which should, as they think, be inter-
national rules, and those to which the
nations have actually consented.
The United States had practical ex-
pericnce of that at Paris when the Boring
Sea Tribunal denied that Secretary
BLAINE's contra bonos mores doctrine
had become international law.
All the world can now read the de-
nunciation by the British Government
and by London newspapers of the Rus
sian claim that her two Black Sea ves-
sells we're duly made naval cruisers in the
Red Sea; and yet only third of century
ago that same British Government in
structed her advocates at Geneva to
insist that there are no general rules
which prescribe how. where, or in what
form the commissioning must be ef-
fected 40 as to impress on the vessel the
character of public ship Of. war.
With respect to the admission Of bel
ligerent ships into neutral ports, the
British case presented at Geneva main
tanned that it was within the absolute
discretion of a neutral either to refuse
or grant admission; that no restrictions
were required to be placed on the pur-
chases of provisions, coal, or any sup
plies other than munitions Of war; that