Prize Law and Modern Conditions

It has been the peculiar glory of the United States in history to be a great neutral Power and the champion of neutral rights. From the earliest days of the republic, the sentiments of her statesmen, of Washington and Hamilton no less than of Jefferson and Franklin, were whole-heartedly for peace and neutrality, for the protection of the merchant against the soldier. And throughout the nineteenth century, the world acclaimed neutrality with her, and regarded the United States as the standing exemplar of a Peace Power. It was recognized that there might indeed be excusable wars, just wars, necessary wars. But the ideal of the nineteenth century was peace. Just and necessary as his cause might be, the belligerent was an ipso facto nuisance. He must be allowed to interfere as little as possible with the peaceful affairs of the world. On any doubtful question of interference with neutral commerce, the presumption was against him. He had always been a nuisance, and he was coming to be an anachronism. As an anachronistic nuisance, the scales were heavily poised against a belligerent

Anachronism · Belligerent · Champion · Glory · Ideal (ethics · Law and economics · Neutrality · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Presumption · Sociology · History · Law · Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems · Legal principles and applications

• The London Naval Conference

  Open Access•Kriege Kriege, C H Stockton et al.•American Journal of International…•1909

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