Article I. The territory of neutral powers is inviolable. Article
II. Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either
munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral power."

These articles, together with the whole convention called "Rights and
duties of neutral powers and persons in case of war on land," have been
ratified and therefore accepted as law by the United States of America,
Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia and other minor
powers. Great Britain experienced a change of heart, and, although her
own delegates had moved these articles, she refused to ratify them, when
she ratified most of the other conventions on Nov. 27, 1909. (A table
showing the ratifications of conventions has been published by The World
Peace Foundation, Boston.)

The Case of Belgium.

Since Great Britain did not accept these articles as law, she was not
bound by them, for the principle of The Hague Conferences is that a
nation is bound only by those laws which it accepts. The remarkable
fact, therefore, appears that the only one of the big nations which had
refused to accept these articles, and which, therefore, might have moved
her troops across a neutral country and have claimed that she could do
so with a clear conscience because she broke no law which was binding on
her, was Great Britain. And the world now sees the spectacle of Great
Britain claiming to have gone to war because another power did what she
herself could have done, according to her own interpretation, with
impunity. Japan has broken the international law by infringing the
neutrality of China, but Great Britain can claim that she did not break
a law by doing exactly what Japan did.

It is not asserted here that the citizens of Great Britain are not
absolutely sincere in their belief of the causes which have allied them
with the Russians and the Japanese, and the Indians and the Zouaves, and
the negroes and the French and the Belgians against Germany. Their
Government, however, should have known that the presumption of
insincerity exists when one charges against others a crime which one
would have felt at liberty to commit one's self. Yet, more, the British
Government knew better than anybody else that Germany had not even
committed this crime; for, according to all laws of justice, no person
or nation can claim the inviolability of a neutral when he has committed
"hostile acts against a belligerent, or acts in favor of