Great Britain's Sea Policy: A Reply to an American Critic, reprinted from 'The Atlantic Monthly'Murray, Gilbert
History
Great Britain's Sea Policy: A Reply to an American Critic, reprinted from 'The Atlantic Monthly'
Murray, Gilbert
Bullard, Arthur, 1879-1925. Our relations with Great Britain; World War, 1914-1918 -- Blockades
"The scrap of paper on which Great Britain had promised fair play at sea
is torn up." By the "scrap of paper" Mr. Bullard means the Declaration
of London; and he knows perfectly well that the Declaration of London
was never passed into law, never accepted either by Great Britain or by
any other nation. It is simply untrue to say that we promised to observe
the Declaration, or that that document has in any way been violated,
since it never was law. Mr. Bullard himself gives most of the facts; so
it is apparently just for fun, or in the joy of rhetoric, that he
writes such nonsense as this.
The Declaration of London was an attempt to codify and improve the
traditional rules of warfare at sea, which have always been very
fluctuating and uncertain. It was due largely to Sir Edward Grey. He
summoned the chief maritime nations to a conference on the subject in
December, 1908; the conference sat for less than three months, and in
February, 1909, made a report which was embodied in the Declaration of
London. It was greatly discussed and eventually rejected in the British
Parliament. It was not, I believe, even proposed anywhere else. As a
matter of fact, the Declaration did not fully satisfy anyone. It was
certainly a move in the right direction, but there were two large
objections to it. First, many international lawyers--Professor Holland
was one of them--considered that it had been drawn too hastily and was
not a satisfactory legal code. Secondly, its desirability or
undesirability depended partly on certain large political problems which
were obscure in 1909. They are anything but obscure now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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