Evening star., 1939-10-05
Raiders and Neutrality

kuIderS and NeutroIIty
With a German sea raider of sur
face type prowling about South
Americas recently established mari
time security belt" the stage appar-
emily is being set for an initial test
of the new Declaration of Pan
ANA. Just as the declaration, setting
up a wide neutral zone" around the
Americas, was being signed, dis
patches from Rio de Janeiro told of
the sinking of the British steamer
Clement by mysterious warship,
partially identified as the Nazi
''pocket battleship" Admiral Scheer.
The freighter was but seventy miles
off the coast of Brazil and within the
keep out" area defined in the pan
American agreement when she was
shelled, it is reported, by the raider.
The sudden appearance of the mys-
terious warship off South America is
almost as intriguing as the disap-
pearance of the Bremen. The Ad-
miral Scheer and her two sister
'pocket battleships," the Deutsch-
land and the Admiral Graf Spec, are
10000 ton ships with cruising ranges
of 10000 miles and return. Even with
such long cruising ranges, the ships
could not stay at sea for any consid-
cradle period without putting in
somewhere for supplies. Under inter-
national law as amplified by the
Hague Convention of 1907, warship
of belligerent may enter neutral
port and remain for not more than
tWenty-four hours for the purpose
of making necessary routine repairs
and of taking on just enough fuel,
food and water to carry the ship to
the nearest port of its home country.
A ship so refueled and provisioned
may not re-enter the same or any
other port of neutral within three
months. Outlawed in neutral waters,
too, are such warlike acts by bel
1igerent war vessels as the taking of
prizes, the sending of radio messages
to belligerent forces on land or sea
or the use in general of neutral ports
as bases for raiding the enemy. All
these rules were included in the
Presidents neutrality proclamation
of last month.
The neutral zone in American
waters at the outbreak of the World
War was the traditional three-mile-
wide area. German sea raiders
cruised in and out of this zone on
numerous occasions--sometime to
be refueled, sometimes to be interned.
The Prinz Eitel Friedrich and the
kronprinz Wilhelm, converted cruis-
ers, sank many allied vessels near
American coasts before taking refuge
in 1915 at Newport News, where they
were interned. In 1914 a German
naval squadron of five warships un-
der Admiral Won Spec used ports in
Colombia and Ecuador as bases for
operations. The British protested to
the American republics, but the
A British squadron of faster but
lighter ships attacked Won Specs
little fleet off Chile, but was defeated
with the loss of two cruisers, the
Monmouth and Good Hope. A month
later a stronger British squadron
overlook Won Specs ships off the
Falkland Islands, which are inside
the new security zone mapped at
Panama, and sank all of the German
squadron but the Dresden. The fugi-
tive warship slipped into a Chilean
port several months later and re-
fused to leave within the twenty
four-hour limit While still within
Chilean waters the Dresden was sunk
by British warships. Chile protested
to both governments that her neu-
trality had been violated. Germany
attempted to explain, England apollo
gized. In 1915 an armed U-boat, the
U-53, brought mail to Newport for
Ambassador Won Bernstein and then
sank several British and neutral
merchant ships off New England, Just
outside the three-mile limit.
The effect of the Declaration of
Panama is to mark out a new neu-
trality limit at an unprecedented
distance from American shores and
to serve notice on Germany and the
allies that they must not commit
therein any acts comparable to the
destruction of the Clement. The
crew Of the Admiral Scheer, If
such the raider was, had not yet
learned of the "verboten" area when
they attacked the Clement-but
there is no good reason to believe
that on sighting the British prize
they would have twiddled their
thumbs in difference to the Panama
decree. Now comes word from Eng
land that the admiralty has a secret
"pre- e-arranged plan" for dealing