CO129-435 - Governor Sir May & Acting Governor Claud Severn - 1916 [9-11] — Page 239

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that postal correspondence found on the high seas on

board a neutral or enemy ship is inviolable, Article

9 of the same Convention states that its provisions

do not apply except between contracting powers and then

only if all the belligerents are parties to the

Convention.

In this war all the belligerents are not

parties to the Convention, so that its provisions do not

apply, a fact to which Germany has already drawn

attention in explanation of her conduct in siezing

and destroying neutral mails on the high seas.

It is clear, therefore, that Great Britain is

bound only by usages of International Law as they

existed before the date of the 11th Hague Convention

of 1907. That the United States Government recognizes

how weak its position would be if it were to rely on

that convention is clear from the pains taken in the

present note in attempting to prove that the British

practice is a violation of the prior practice of nations.

Unfortunately for the American argument, Mr. James Brown

Scott, Legal Adviser to the State Department for Foreign

Affairs and Technical Delegate of the Hague Conference

of 1907, published in 1909 a work on the Hague Peace

Conferences, in which he quotes, without challenging its

accuracy, from the Report to the Conference by Monsieur

Henri Fromageot ("La Deuxième Conférence Internationale

de la Paix, 1907, actes et documents" volume 1 page 266

the following epitome of the law in regard to postal

correspondence as it existed in 1907: "In the actual

"state of International Law, the transmission of postal

"correspondence by sea is not assured in time of war by

"any serious guarantee. A distinction is indeed made

"according to the private or official character of the

"correspondence, according to the personality of the

"sender, and the adcresses belonging or not to the

service/