Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

APPENDIX IIT. 191

the old cases of contraband, the question at issue was usually not where the goods were in fact going to, but whether their nature was such as to make them liable to condemnation in view of the destination shown on the ship’s papers. Even in the American Civil War the difficulty of proving destination was usually not serious, because the neutral harbours through which the supply of goods for the Confederate States was carried on were in normal time ports of comparatively small importance, and it could be shown that in normal times there was no local market for goods of such quantities and character.

17. The case has been far different in the present war. The goods which Germany attempts to import are consigned to neutral ports, and it need hardly be said that the papers on board convey no suggestion as to their ultimate destination. The conditions of modern commerce offer almost infinite opportunities of concealing the real nature of a transaction, and every device which the ingenuity of the persons concerned, or their lawyers, could suggest has been employed to give to shipments intended for Germany the appearance of genuine transactions with a neutral country. The ports to which the goods are consigned, such as Rotterdam and Copenhagen, have in peace time an important trade, which increases the difficulty of distinguishing the articles ultimately intended to reach the enemy country from those which represent importation into the neutral country concerned for its own requirements. If action had to be taken solely on such information as might be gathered by the boarding officer on his visit to the ship, it would have been quite impossible to interfere to an appreciable extent with German imports, and the Allied Governments would therefore have been deprived of a recognized belligerent right.

18. In these circumstances, unless the Allied Governments were prepared to seize and place in the Prize Court the whole of the cargo of every ship which was on her way to a neutral country adjacent to Germany, and to face the consequences