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

APPENDIX II. 173

18. While the United States Government was at first inclined to view with leniency the British measures which were termed in the correspondence, but not in the Order in Council of the rrth March, a blockade,” because of the assurances of the British Government that inconvenience to neutral trade would be minimized by the discretion left to the Courts in the application of the Order in Council, and by the instructions which it was said would be issued to the administrative and other authorities having to do with the execution of the so-called “ blockade ”” measures, the Government of the United States is now forced to the realization that its expectations, which were fully set forth in its note of the 3oth March, were based on a misconception of the intentions of the British Government. Desiring to avoid controversy, and in the expectation that the administration of the Order in Council would conform to the established rules of international law, the Government of the United States has until now reserved the question of the actual validity of the Order in Council of the rrth March, in so far as it is considered by the Government of Great Britain to establish a blockade within the meaning of that term as understood in the law and the practice of nations; but in the circumstances now developed it feels that it can no longer permit the validity of the alleged blockade to remain unchallenged.

LAW AS TO BLOCKADE.

19. The Declaration of Paris in 1856, which has been universally recognized as correctly stating the rule of international law as to blockade, expressly declares that “ blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective, that is to say, maintained by force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy.” The effectiveness of a blockade is manifestly a question of fact. It is common knowledge that the German coasts are open to trade with the Scandinavian countries and that German naval vessels cruise both in the North Sea and the Baltic and seize and bring into German ports neutral