It is certain that no international usage sanctions the employment by one belligerent against the other of mines, or other secret contrivances, which would, without notice, render dangerous the navigation of the high seas.
Holland asserts that international law does not permit the use of dangerous mines by belligerents.
Share
More from Thomas Erskine Holland
It has long been a universally recognised custom of warfare that a flag of truce must not be fired on, and yet we have seen that rule violated on several occasions during the late war.
The only legitimate object which States should set before themselves during war is to weaken the military forces of the enemy.
Pacific reprisals should also, according to the tendency of modern opinion and practice, be so applied as not to interfere with the interests of third Powers and their subjects.
Men of nations readily disunited and opposed--Germans and French, English and Russians, Spaniards and Dutchmen, Italians and Austrians--are, as a rule, all of one mind as to the principles of international law.
Other voices in this conversation
