72. My second example is taken from the use to which an assertion of Rousseau is commonly put. In his _Contrat Social_, Bk. I, ch. iv, is the following passage: 'War, then, is not a relation of man to man, but a relation of states in which private persons are enemies only accidentally; not as men nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders. In a word, each state can only have as enemies other states and not men; seeing that no true relation can exist between things of different natures.' It is in this assertion of Rousseau that a basis is found for a quite common doctrine to the effect that war is a relation only between the belligerent states and their contending forces. See how much else has been deduced from this principle and demanded on the strength of it! That blockade is only permissible in the case of naval ports and fortified coast-towns, and not in the case of other ports and places. That breach of blockade is as little punishable as carriage of contraband, seeing that it is but a commercial act of peaceable individuals, it being immaterial whether they are subjects of a neutral power or of the enemy. That the capture of enemy merchant vessels on the high seas is unlawful, because these vessels are dedicated to peaceful trade alone, and have naught to do with hostilities. That peaceful intercourse, and especially commercial intercourse, between the subjects of the belligerents cannot be forbidden. And more of the same kind.