The average individual of these modern days views war with apprehension and alarm. To him it means loss, or risk, of life or limb, either for himself or for those dear to him, or loss of business opportunities and heavy taxes. The growth of socialistic and democratic doctrines has widely spread the historic truth that in the conflicts of the past, largely brought on by the selfish greed of the oligarchic few, the plain many, “the common herd,” Napoleon’s “food for powder,” have had their sufferings for their pains. And the heads of the aggregations of men we call “sovereign states”—the oligarchic few— softened by the spread of the civilizing influence of an industrial age, themselves begin to look on war askance, and to plan ways of avoiding it.

The Argentine Republic, like all America, was deeply moved by the military steps taken by England, Germany and Italy in the month of December, 1902, against Venezuela for the settlement of claims of various sorts. Among these claims, arising some from special contracts and others from material injuries sustained by the subjects of the nations mentioned in the revolutionary commotions and civil wars of the unfortunate Republic, was made to figure the collection of the deferred interest on the foreign public debt, outstanding in the form of bonds issued by the Venezuelan government for the construction of railways and other public works. The coercive measures adopted assumed at one time a character of extreme violence, the Powers going so far as to seize the Venezuelan fleet, bombard the cities of La Guerra, Puerto Cabello and Maracaibo and establish a rigorous blockade of the coast.

It was at this moment of veritable consternation for America that the Argentine Republic sent to its Minister in Washington the note of December 29, 1902, that has given rise to most important controversies and debates, which now, after the lapse of so long an interval, are far from exhausted.

War in the full sense, according to international law, can exist only by declaration or recognition of belligerency by a state. War in the material sense of an actual contest of armed forces may and does often exist without such declaration or recognition. However desirous a party using armed force within a state and in opposition to it may be to be regarded as a belligerent, such a party has not the legal capacity to raise itself to a belligerent status. This status can be gained only by action of the parent state or of a foreign state. An armed contest may, nevertheless, exist and of this fact others must often take notice.

The members of the congress of Vienna who, for the most part, directed the international politics of Europe for the first half of the nineteenth century, have never been accounted as exponents of liberal thought, or as the advocates of liberal policies. But it must be said in behalf of their narrow and, at times, reactionary statesmanship, that it kept the peace in western Europe during the period intervening between the battle of Waterloo, which terminated the military and political activity of the first Napoleon, and the appearance of his nephew in the rôle of a military commander in the Italian campaign of 1859. For the first time in recorded history it was given to the harassed inhabitants of the Rhine provinces to see a full half century of peace, and to enjoy so much as fifty years of fortunate and uninterrupted immunity from the hardships and sacrifices of war.

The doctrine of continuous voyages was developed by the English courts to defeat the devices by which American merchantmen endeavored to avoid the rule denying to neutrals in time of war the right to engage in a commerce from which they were excluded in time of peace. Under the system of colonial monopoly which then prevailed the trade with colonial possessions was confined to the ships of the home country. Colonists were regarded as the property of the mother country and as existing exclusively for her use and benefit. They were expected to supply markets for her manufactured goods and products for her markets. With respect to other countries colonies in a commercial sense had no existence. In theory, it has been said, the English colonies were no more to France than as if they were settlements in the mountains of the moon. For commercial purposes they were not on the same planet. Had they been annihilated it would have left no chasm in the commercial map of Germany. Had they been submerged the fact would have found its way into the chronicles of other countries as an interesting event but nothing more.