The Raymer Enterprise

REJECT ALL U.S. CLAIMS

BRITISH NOTE CITES AMERICAN ACTION IN CIVIL WAR.

England's Replies to Last American Note Denies That Orders in Council Are Illegal.

Western Newspaper Union News Service.

Washington.-Great Britain's replies to the latest American representations against interference with neutral commerce reject entirely the contention that the orders in council are illegal and justify the British course as being wholly within international law. "Unsustainable either in point of law or upon principles of international policy." is the British reply to the American protest against the blockade of neutral ports, with an invitation to submit to international arbitration any cases in which the United States is dissatisfied with the action of British prize courts.

Great Britain's reply, embodied in two notes, one supplemental, was made public here Tuesday night and in London simultaneously by agreement between the two governments. With the notes was made public also the correspondence over the American steamer Neches, seized by the British while en route from Rotterdam to the United States with goods of German origin. All the correspondence aggregates 7,000 words.

Changed conditions of warfare, the British note contends, require a new application of the principles of international law. The advent of the submarine, the airship and the alleged atrocities by German troops in Belgium are cited as justification for the exercise of extreme measures.

The blockade is justified on the contention that the universally recognized fundamental principle of a blockade is that a belligerent is entitled to cut off "by effective means the sea-borne commerce of his enemy."

The note reiterates that Great Britain will continue to apply the orders complained of, although not without every effort to avoid embarrassment to neutrals and observes that the American statistics show that any loss in trade with Germany and Austria has been more than overbalanced by the increase of other industrial activities due to the war.

In the general reply to the American representations against the orders in council, Sir Edward Grey, the foreign minister, addressing Ambassador Page, begins by expressing the hope that he may be able to convince the administration in Washington "that the measures we have announced are not only reasonable and necessary in themselves, but constitute no more than an adaptation of the old principles of blockade to the peculiar circumstances with which we are confronted."

"I need scarcely dwell," wrote Sir Edward, "on the obligations incumbent upon the allies to take every step in their power to overcome their common enemy in view of the shocking violation of the recognized rules and principles of civilized warfare of which he has been guilty during the present struggle."

Sir Edward then refers to atrocities in Belgium, poisoning of wells in German Southwest Africa, use of poisonous gases against the allied troops in Flanders, and finally the sinking of the Lusitania, to show "how indispensable it is that we should leave unused no justifiable method of defending ourselves."

Sir Edward Grey then refers to the American Civil War blockade of 3,000 miles of coast with a small number of vessels, and recalls how the United States finally took recourse to blockading "neighboring neutral territory which afforded convenient centers from which contraband could be introduced into confederate territory and from which blockade running could be facilitated."

The note then refers to the case of the British ship Springbok, seized by United States cruisers during the Civil War while bound for the British West Indies, because her cargo, it was charged, was to be transshipped to the confederate states. The Supreme Court of the United States sustained the seizure against the condemnation of a group of prominent international lawyers.