We find in it what may, at first sight, suggest the establishment of a gigantic "paper blockade," such as was proclaimed in the Berlin Decree of 1806, stating that "Les iles Britanniques sont declarees en etat de blocus." But in the new decree the term "blockade" does not occur, nor is there any indication of an intention to comply with the prescriptions of the Declaration of Paris of 1856 as to the mode in which such an operation must be conducted.

What we really find in the announcement is the specification of certain large spaces of water, including the whole of the British Channel, within which German ships will endeavour to perpetrate the atrocities about to be mentioned.
2.

These promised, and already perpetrated, atrocities consist in the destruction of merchant shipping without any of those decent preliminary steps, for the protection of human life and neutral property, which are insisted on by long established rules of international law.

Under these rules, the exercise of violence against a merchant vessel is permissible, in the first instance, only in case of her attempting by resistance or flight to frustrate the right of visit which belongs to every belligerent cruiser.

Should she obey the cruiser's summons to stop, and allow its officers to come on board, they will satisfy themselves, by examination of her papers, and, if necessary, by further search, of the nationality of ship and cargo, of the destination of each, and of the character of the latter.