The Wahpeton times. [volume] (Wahpeton, Richland County, Dakota [N.D.]) 1879-1919, 1917-07-12
How tho War Came % America
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were still but a few communities
ranged along the Atlantic coast, We
were seafaring people. At a
time when our frontiersmen had
not yet reached the Mississippi, the
fame of our daring clipper ships
had spread to all the Seven Seas.
So while we could watch the triu-
infant march and the tragic count
elmarch of Napoleon's grand army
with detached indifference, his
Continental Blockade and the Bril-
fish Orders in Council at once af.
fected the lives of our citizens in
timately and disastrously.
So it was in the case of the Bar
barry pirates. We had no interest
i'll the land quarrels and civil wars
of the Barbary States, but we
fought them for obstructing the
freedom of the seas.
And in the decades ever since,
although the imagination of our
people has been engrossed in i'm
mense labor of winning the West,
our Department of State has never
lost sight of the compelling inter-
est that we have upon the seas, and
has constantly striven to gain the
assent of all nations to a maritime
code, which should be farmed and
enforced by a joint responsibility
Various watchwords have arisen in
this long controversy. We have
urged the inviolability of private
property at sea, we have asked for
a liberal free list and narrow de-
tinition of contraband. But our
main insistence has not been OH
any such details. One salient idea
has guided our Diplomacy. The
law of the sea must be founded not
OIL might but on right and q conf
mon accord, upon a code binding
all alike. which can not be changed
or set aside by the will of any one
ma. ion. Our ideal has been not a
weakening but a strengthening 4:
legal restraint by the free will and
agreement Of all. We have ask" [
nothing for ourselves that We do
not ask for the whole world. The
seas will never be free. in our Am
e;'ican meaning, until all who sail
thereon have had voice in franz
ing sea laws The just governa','
Of the seas must rest on the consent
of the governed.
No other question of internatioM-
al policy has found the great pow
ers more divided. But in our i'll
sistence OH this fundamental pr t
ciple, we have been strengthened
by the support of many oth,r
countries. At times we have had
the support of Great Britain. No
enc Of our Secretaries Of State ha,
mere clearly defined our ideal than
has Viscount Grey, recently Brit
ish Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs. None of our statesmen
has ever gone so far as he in adj
vocating limitation of the rights of
belligerents on the sea. 1t was on
his initiative that the international
naval conference was summoned to
London in 1909, and it was under
IBIS guidance that the eminent i'll
t"r,iational lawyers md diplomats
and admirals who gathered there
drew up the Declaration of Lond-
on.
While there were in that DecIar-
alton sections that did not quite
meet our approval and that we
should have liked to amend. the
document was from our point Of
view tremendous step in advance.
For although, like any effort to con-
cisely formulate the broad prin-
ciples of equity, it did not wholly
succeed in its purpose, it WA at
least an honest attempt to arrive
at an agreement on a col.p!ttr in
terllational code of sea Law. based
upon mutual consent and not TO
/" altered by any bell:gercn; in the
neat of the corf!irt
But the DECLARATION Of I.orion
WIS not ra;;':",. by the Bril-. Par
!i9ment, for Ii, ."nt of view pre-.
iaiing the" IN England WAS 1hnt Il
power dependent a'mos! wholly up
on its navy for protection could
IL: safely :cc.r: further Iiplta-
Inns upon ac'i'n at sea unless there
were compeEsating Limitations, on
land powers And this latter con-
cession Gerna"y consistently re-
1 sed to make. The conference
therefore ca,"' to naught. And
the London Declaration having
been rejected by the strongest
maritime power, it's Endorsement:
was postponed by all the other
countries involved motives. how.
ever. remained unchanued. and our