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: CHAPTER II BLOCKADE BLOCKADE is a proceeding of a naval character, having for its object the interdiction by force of all intercourse by sea between the blockaded littoral, its ports, havens, estuaries, and rivers, and the rest of the world. A siege differs from a blockade in that a siege necessarily involves the notion of attack and ultimate capture by means of siege works or assault A pacific blockade is a demonstration of a belligerent character short of actual hostilities against an offending State, whereby its commerce is suspended, but in accordance with the precedents generally established by modern usage and the views of most jurists, should not extend to interference with the commerce of neutrals proceeding to or from the offending State. The purpose of blockade is, primarily, by depriving the inhabitants of the hostile State of all commercial intercourse by sea with the rest of the world, and thus subjecting it to privation, to coerce it to seek peace on terms acceptable to the other belligerent. The serious injury inflicted upon neutral States through being thus shut off from commerce with a State upon which they are on terms of amity, has from early times constrained them to insist upon certain rules and observances as conditional to their recognition of a blockade as being effective and binding upon their subjects. As in the case of contraband, so in that of blockade: its claim for recognition by neutral States is founded upon the principle that when sovereign States are at war they are entitled to choose the means and methods of war they may employ against each other, and that no neutral nation has a right so to act as to render such means or methods ineffective. There are, indeed, some publicists who insist that blockades are entitled to special favour,…