O'Brien, and the mate and others were indicted for taking part in the preparation and transportation of a hostile military expedition against the King of Spain in Cuba. The court charged: If the jury find that there was a combination or concert of action or organization among these passengers to stand together for the purpose of effecting their landing in Cuba and reaching the Cuban army, then it was a military expedition; and if the captain, mate or owner were aware of such a combination when the men went on board or at the time they sailed, they must convict them. "It was not a crime for individuals to leave the United States with the intention of enlisting in foreign military service, or for persons to transport such people, or for persons to transport arms and ammunition even in the same ship, when it was purely a commercial enterprise, and there was no connection between the men and the arms except that of porters of the same. The mere fact that mystery or secrecy is used, such as the taking of a false oath by the master in clearance papers is not conclusive evidence, against the legality of the enterprise; because these means may be resorted to to prevent a foreign power from seizing the cargo as contraband on the high seas." United States v. Murphy, 84 Fed. Rep., 609.-In this case the court said: "Nor is it necessary that all of the persons composing the military enterprise should be brought in personal contact with each other within the limits of the United States; nor that they should all leave those limits at the same point. It is sufficient that by previous arrangement or agreement, whether by conversation. respondence or otherwise, they become combined and organized for the purposes mentioned, and that by concerted action, though proceeding from different portions of this country, they meet at a desig nated point either on the high seas or within the limits of the United States." cor RESPONSIBILITY OF NEUTRAL LIMITED TO ITS OWN TERRITORY. A neutral Power is not called upon to punish acts in violation of its neutrality unless the said acts have been committed on its own territory.-Hague Convention V, 1907, Article 5. As territorial sovereignty brings with it duties, so it supplies the measure of neutral responsibility. A state cannot be asked to take cognizance of what occurs outside its own borders. In another country it obviously cannot act. On the sea it is not required to act, both because its jurisdiction, being confined to its own ships, is inadequate, and because it would be beyond the power of any state to supervise the actions of its subjects, or of persons who may have made improper use of its territory, on all the oceans of the world. A state therefore washes its hands of responsibility at the edge of its territorial waters. Of whatever hostile conduct its subjects, or other persons issuing from its shores, may be guilty, the remedy of a belligerent is upon them personally, and not upon the nation to which they belong or the territory of which they may have used. Hall, pp. 78, 79. It has been proposed to stretch the liability of a neutral sovereign so as to make him responsible for the ultimate effect of two independent acts done within his jurisdiction, each in itself innocent, but intended by the persons doing them to form part of a combination having for its object the fitting out of a warlike expedition at some point outside the neutral state. The argument upon which this proposal rests has been shortly stated as follows: The intent covers all cases, and furnishes the test. It must be immaterial where the combination is to take place, whether here or elsewhere, if the acts done in our territory-whether acts of building, fitting, arming, or of procuring materials for those acts-be done as part of a plan by which a vessel is to be sent out with intent that she shall be employed to cruise." In accordance with this view, it was contended on the part of the United States before the Tribunal of Arbitration at Geneva that the Alabama and Georgia, two vessels in the Confederate service, were in effect armed within British jurisdiction. The Alabama left Liverpool wholly unarmed on July 29, 1862, and received her guns and ammunition at Terceira, partly from a vessel which cleared a fortnight later from Liverpool for Nassau in the Bahamas, and partly from another vessel which started from London with a clearance for Demerara. In like manner the Georgia cleared from Glasgow for China, and received her armament off the French coast from a vessel which sailed from New Haven in Sussex. The intent of acts, innocent separately, but rendered by this theory culpable when combined, can only by their nature be proved when the persons guilty of them are no longer within neutral jurisdiction. They cannot therefore be prevented by the state which is saddled with responsibility for them; and this responsibility must mean either that the neutral state will be held answerable in its own body for injury suffered by the belligerent, in which case it will make amends for acts over which it has had no control, or else that it is bound to exact reparation from the offending belligerent, at the in evitable risk of war. If this doctrine were a legal consequence of the accepted principles of international law it might be a question whether it would not be wise to refuse operation to it on the ground of undue oppressiveness to the neutral. But no such difficulty arises; for, as responsibility is the correlative of power, if a nation is to be responsible for innocent acts which become noxious by combination in a place out side its boundaries, it must be enabled to follow their authors to the place where the character of the acts becomes evident, and to exercise the functions of sovereignty there. But even on the high seas it is not permissible for a non-belligerent state to assume control over persons other than pirates or persons on board its own ships and within foreign territory it has no power of action whatever. The true theory is that the neutral sovereign has only to do with such overt acts as are performed within his own territory, and to them he can only apply the test of their immediate quality. If these are such in themselves as to violate neutrality or to raise a violent presumption of fraud, he steps in to prevent their consequences; but if they are presumably innocent, he is not justified in interfering with them. If a vessel in other respects perfectly ready for immediate warfare is about to sail with a crew insufficient for fighting purposes. the neutral sovereign may reasonably believe that it is intended secretly to fill up the complement just outside his waters. Any such completion involves a fraudulent use of his territory, and an expectation that it is intended gives him the right of taking precautions to prevent it. But no fraudulent use takes place when a belligerent in effect says: I will not compromise your neutrality, I will make a voyage of a hundred miles in a helpless state, I will take my chance of meeting my enemy during that time, and I will organize my expedition when I am so far off that the use of your territory is no longer the condition of its being. Hall, pp. 631-634. PERSONS LEAVING NEUTRAL COUNTRY SEPARATELY TO ENLIST WITH BELLIGERENT NEUTRAL NOT RESPONSIBLE. The responsibility of a neutral Power is not engaged by the fact of persons crossing the frontier separately to offer their services to one of the belligerents.-Hague Convention V, 1907, Article 6. Contra. If either of the parties shall be at war with any nation whatever, the other shall not take a commission from the enemy, nor fight under their colors. Treaty of Peace and Friendship, concluded between the United States and * * * ** International law does not require of the neutral sovereign that he should keep the citizen or subject within the same strict lines of neutrality which he is bound to draw for himself. The private person, if the laws of his own state or some special treaty do not forbid, can enter into its [a belligerent state] service as a soldier, without involving the government of his country in guilt. *The practice of individuals belonging to a neutral nation serving in foreign wars was formerly widely diffused and admitted throughout Europe, and it is not of easy prevention, if prohibited; for at the worst the individual may renounce his country, putting himself also beyond its protection. It is only when a great pressure into the armies of one. of the belligerents is on foot that the neutral can be called on to interfere. Woolsey, p. 280. Starting from the theoretical side, we have arrived at this, that the duties of neutrals flow from the principle that they ought to avoid acts of war as long as they decline to enter on a state of war; that the hopelessness of a complete agreement on theoretical grounds between belligerents and neutrals as to what are acts of war, makes positive rules imperatively necessary: that to a large extent such rules exist; and that some of them, for the sake of peace, throw exclusively on individuals the duty which they prescribe and the responsibility for failure in those duties, recognising in belligerents, to the extent permitted by the rules in question, their right of acting directly against all who interfere with their wars without state authority at their back. The position of an individual who leaves his country in order to enter belligerent service is similar, the other belligerent being entitled to treat him as an unprotected enemy, while no demand is made on neutral states for more than prevention of such enlistments on their territory as would amount to an unneutral use of it. Westlake, vol. 2., p. 195. But that a subject, not enlisted, should go abroad with the intention of entering belligerent service would not of itself involve his state, in the territory of which nothing illegitimate would have been done, although an agency, opened or carried on within the territory for encouraging such departures in search of service, would only be a colourable avoidance of enlistment on the soil, and its case could not properly be distinguished from that of actual enlistment. Westlake, vol. 2., p. 210. But a state cannot be expected to prevent the secret departure of a few individuals [to enlist in the forces of a belligerent]. Lawrence, p. 639. Qualification as to military and naval officers. Although several States, as Great Britain and the United States of America, by their Municipal Law probihit their subjects from enlisting in the military or naval service of belligerents, the duty of impartiality incumbent upon neutrals does not at present include any necessity for such prohibition, provided the individuals concerned cross the frontier singly and not in a body. But a neutral must recall his military and naval officers who may have been serving in the army or navy of either belligerent before the outbreak of war. A neutral must, further, retain military and naval officers who want to resign their commissions for the obvious purpose of enlisting in the service of either belligerent. Oppenheim, vol. 2, pp. 390-391. Extension of rule. A neutral is not obliged by his duty of impartiality to interdict passage through his territory to men either singly or in numbers who intend to enlist. Thus in 1870 Switzerland did not object to Frenchmen traveling through Geneva for the purpose of reaching French corps or to Germans traveling through Basle for the purpose of reaching German corps, under the condition, however, that these men traveled without arms and uniform. Oppenheim, vol. 2, p. 399. Contra-British laws. 4. If any person, without the licence of Her Majesty, being a British subject, within or without Her Majesty's dominions, accepts or agrees to accept any commission or engagement in the military or naval service of any foreign State at war with any foreign State at peace with Her Majesty, and in this act referred to as a friendly State, or whether a British subject or not within Her Majesty's dominions, induces any other person to accept or agree to accept any |