It has now come to cover, and it is the only term which does cover generically, an indeterminate list of unfriendly acts, such as embargo, pacific blockade, seizure of custom-houses, and even occupation of territory, to which resort is had in order to obtain redress from an offending State without going to war with it.
Holland defines a broad range of actions that can be taken against a state without declaring war.
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More from Thomas Erskine Holland
It would be calamitous should a practice be introduced of attempting to cure the imperfect expression of a treaty by tacking on to it an equally authoritative reasoned commentary, likely, as in the present case, to be enormously longer…
The elaborate classification of contraband had to be at once thrown overboard, and most of the remaining provisions of the Declaration proved to be inapplicable to modern warfare.
It is surely notorious that the delegates of a Power, by agreeing to the draft of a treaty, give to it no international validity, which results only when the treaty has been ratified by their Government.
The fact is that the vitally important questions of theory and practice raised by the Convention and the Declaration need calmer and better instructed discussion than they have yet received.
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