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Would Immunity from Capture, During War, of Non-Offending Private Property Upon the High Seas Be in the Interest of Civilization?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

Extract

This subject is a timely one from the fact that we are on the eve of the meeting of the second international conference at The Hague, the first conference in 1899 having voted that —

The conference expresses the wish that the proposal which contemplates the declaration of the inviolability of private property in naval warfare may be referred to a subsequent conference for consideration.

The present programme for this coming conference includes this question of the immunity of private property as one agreed upon for discussion.

Before entering into a discussion of the subject, it may be well to make a résumé of the historical status of the question up to the present time so far as the United States, Great Britain, and other civilized countries are concerned.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1907

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Footnotes

1

This address was delivered by Admiral Stockton at the first annual meeting of the Society, held at Washington in April last.

References

2 Prize money for such captures was, however, abolished by act of Congress in 1899, shortly after the Spanish-American war.

As to the severity of land warfare towards private property, extreme cases have taken place in our history, such as the freeing of private slave property as a war measure in the Civil War and also the devastation of the Shenandoah Valley by Sheridan, while on the part of the South there was the confiscation of private debts owed to Northern creditors during the same war.