OCR Text |
Show NOTE TO ENGLAND. The fact that Great Britain and France on the one side and the United States on the other are virtually in agreement upon the principles which govern the seizure of mails, leads to the hope that the difficulties caused by the interference of English and French warships with our mails will be adjuat-, adjuat-, ed speedily. If Great Britain yields the spectre of ' ' British navalism, ' ' which has been likened to tc German militarism," will assume less frightful proportions. Control of the sea must necessarily be more or less benign in peace times; it is only in war times that it can be a genuine menace to the world. The Trent affair of our Civil war is inevitably recalled by the present crisis, cri-sis, because in that case, too, there was an agreement as to principle. John M. Mason of Virginia and John Slidell of Louisiana were sent by the confederate confeder-ate states as embassadors to Great Britain and France respectively. They made their way through the blockade to Havana, where they boarded the British merchant steamer Trent. Cap tain Wilkes, commanding a United States warship, stopped the Trent on its way to Europe, took off Mason and Slidell and permitted the steamship to proceed on its way. In Great Britain the event caused much bitterness and rapid preparations were made for war with the United States. Great Britain called upon the United States to release Mason and Slidell and to apologize. Mason and Slidell, together with i their papers, could rightly have been considered contraband, but Wilkes had erred in not bringing the Trent into port, where the case could have been adjudicated by a court of admiralty. Although Wjlkes had become a national hero and had received the thanks of congress, President Lincoln ordered the release of Mason and Slidell. In the mails case, as in the Trent case, the dispute relates chiefly to pro- i! ceduro. Under certain circumstances j mail can be classed as contraband and i; seized. The United States maintains ' that Great Britain has violated interna tional law by forcing neutral ships to enter English ports. Great Britain concedes con-cedes that it has no right to seize the first-class mails on the high seas, but after the ships are in port it searches all the mails to discover the "sincerity of their character." Secretary Lansing Lan-sing justly points out " that the fhrase is meaningless and thatGreat Britain is committing lawless acts under the pretended excuse of an undefined phrase. The English have haughtily deoied the charge that they are using the information in-formation obtained from our mails to gain any advantage in commerce. Secretary Sec-retary Lansing cites specific, cases to show that this is what the English have done in effect. In one instance an American electrical firm bid on work in Denmark, but the letter containing the bid was seized by the British gov-i gov-i ; ernment and detained so long that the Banish government would not hold open its offer beyond a certain date. As a result, the contract was awarded, not to a German or a Swedish, but to a British firm. Whether the British Brit-ish teok advantage of the American bid I in formulating their bid is not stated by Secretary Lansing, for he cannot possibly be informed on that point, but (he fact stands out that the British firm was able to obtain the contract. The result was the same as if advantage advan-tage had been taken of the American figures. |