The Laws of War

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Section II. On Enemies and Hostile Property. During a peace of thirty-nine years, there has naturally arisen a vast inter-immigration throughout Europe; many complicated commercial and family relations have sprung up between nations of different countries; many Englishmen are permanently settled in various...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Section II. On Enemies and Hostile Property. During a peace of thirty-nine years, there has naturally arisen a vast inter-immigration throughout Europe; many complicated commercial and family relations have sprung up between nations of different countries; many Englishmen are permanently settled in various parts of Europe; and England, in return, is crowded with Foreigners, who look upon this country as their present and future home. What is the position of these persons at the commencement of war ? Who, in fact, are our enemies ? And the previous Section, in which the effect of War on Commercial Relations has been sketched out, must have made it quite evident that it has become important accurately to determine what relations and circumstances impress a hostile character upon persons and property. According to Chancellor Kent, the modern International Law of the Commercial World is replete with refined and complicated distinctions on this point, A man is said to be permanently an Alien Enemy, when Alien he owes a permanent allegiance to the adverse belligerent, and his hostility is commensurate in point of time with his country's quarrel. But he who does not owe a permanent allegiance to the enemy, is an enemy only during the existence and continuance of certain circumstances. The character of enemy arises from the party being in 1 Kent, p. 73 what the law looks upon as a state of allegiance to the state at war with us; if the allegiance is permanent (as in the case of a natural-born subject of the hostile Sovran), the character is permanent. But with respect to the man who is an alien enemy from what he does under a local or temporary allegiance to a power at war with us?when the allegiance ends, the character of alien enemy ceases to exist. Of cours...