far to cover the grant of an
overland passage for troops from Beira inland."[36]

[Footnote 35: International Law in South Africa, p. 77.]

[Footnote 36: Ibid., p. 76.]

The conclusion reached by Mr. Baty is far more favorable to England than
the circumstances of the case warrant. "One may regret," he says, "that
the British Government should have found it necessary to place a
somewhat strained interpretation on a treaty which, even then did not
give them in anything like clear terms, an absolute servitude of the
kind contended for."[37]

[Footnote 37: Ibid., p. 77.]

Such a conclusion is misleading in the first place because the British
Government was contending for a right which was not recognized among
independent nations at the time the treaty was formed; in the second
place, granting that ancient authorities may have declared the
possibility of such a right existing in time of war, the stipulations of
the treaty itself are the strongest argument against the interpretation
used by England. Hall has pointed out that, "When the language of a
treaty, taken in the ordinary meaning of the words, yields a plain and
reasonable sense, it must be taken to be read in that sense."[38]
The only reasonable sense in which the stipulations of the
British-Portuguese treaty of 1891 could be taken was that of a purely
commercial agreement. The spirit of the treaty, the general sense and
the context of the disputed terms all seem to indicate that the
instrument considered only times of peace and became absolutely invalid
with reference to the transportation of troops in time of war. The
authority already cited says, "When the words of a treaty fail to yield
a plain and reasonable sense they should be interpreted by recourse to
the general sense and spirit of the treaty as shown by the context of
the incomplete, improper, ambiguous, or obscure passages, or by the
provisions of the instrument as a whole,"[39]

[Footnote 38: International Law (1880), p. 281.]

[Footnote 39: Hall, Int. Law (1880), p. 283.]

Unquestionably the provisions of the instrument as a whole yield but one
meaning. The treaty is not broad enough to sustain the passage of troops
in time of war. Nor would there seem to be any plausibility in the claim
that certain mutual explanations exchanged between the two Governments
at the time of the signing of the treaty gave tenable ground for the
fulfilment of such a right as that which was granted by Portugal.

Th