P.S.--I have dealt with the subject on the supposition that all contracts are made after the declaration of war. But much foreign trade is carried on by ‘long-distance’ contracts, and neutral merchants who have entered into continuing contracts before the War would seem to demand special attention, for their eyes were not open, and the risk of seizure by a belligerent has caught them awares. Speaking generally, it is here that the consideration shown to the neutral merchant by Great Britain may find full scope for action. But I admit quite frankly that so much of my argument as is personal to the neutral merchant does not apply to this category. On the other hand, the law of contraband, with its adjunct the doctrine of ‘continuous voyages,’ and the law of blockade, as they have been understood in the past, do not exempt them from the rigours of their operation. Yet the fact remains that the new development of the law does impose upon them greater risks than they ran heretofore, and a protest specially devoted to their hard case would, I imagine, if it were limited to contracts relating to non-contraband and to contracts not made with the enemy Government, receive careful consideration. III _COTTON AS CONTRABAND OF WAR_ [_September 1915_] Cotton proclaimed Contraband of War--Public Demand for the Proclamation--The answer to the Critics of the Government--‘Continuous voyages’ and the Order in Council--Possible combination of Contraband and Blockade--American reply to Austrian Note. Raw cotton has been proclaimed contraband of war.[48] I may therefore fill in a blank space in what I have written in the previous articles on the law of contraband of war and the law of blockade. It was obviously impossible while the matter was, as it were, _sub judice_, to point the moral of the doctrine advanced in those articles--which I believe to be most sound doctrine--that ‘the right to blockade the enemy is in principle no more than the right indefinitely to extend the list of contraband of war against the neutral trader,’[49] by a reference to the ‘cotton question.’ But I am free to do so now. _Public Demand for Cotton to be made Contraband of War_ I must confess that the movement, of which the Proclamation is the outcome, in its later stages has filled me with amazement; more especially the way in which, the object attained, the announcement of its issue has been received. A sigh of relief has gone up: ‘At last!’ it is said, ‘the Government has given way, and the step has been taken which should have been taken at the beginning of the War.’ There is a gratified assumption that those who have fought the good fight have triumphed over a stubborn lot of procrastinating and incompetent Ministers. Some even suggested, when the decision was announced, that a wicked Government might, after all, only make cotton conditional contraband, for was it not a Government prone to subterfuge?