Lord Robert Cecil in the House on Tuesday made a
statement PA to the Dutch convoy to the East Indies which causes us much anxiety. We do not doubt that the Foreign Office has obtained from the Dutch Government as full an account of the passengers and cargoes as if the ships had been stopped and searched in the ordinary way. The Dutch guarantee that the ships only carry Government officials and Government stores may be accepted. But in international law it is of the utmost importance that the prescribed forms should be observed. Now in this case we have waived our right to visit and search these neutral vessels on the high seas. We have also admitted in fact the " right of convoy," though the Dutch, according to the White Paper published on Thursday, say that " this point of international law can be left out of account in the present case of a very special sort of convoy," and our Foreign Office has refused in theory to recognize it. By our action, though not by our words, we have allowed the Dutch the liberties that they would have had under the fatal Declaration of London, which, if it had been in operation, would have lost us the war. Lord Robert Cecil pleaded, of course, that this was an altogether excep- tional " act of courtesy " which would not form a precedent, and he declined to explain why an exception should be made. For our part, we regard the Government's repeated concessions to Holland as profoundly unwise. The more we yield to the Dutch, the more the Germans are encouraged to encroach upon their neutrality. We are giving away points less to Holland than to Germany.
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