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Zaproburno Yollanica Directory 10
Page 07
The effects of the battle of Bouvines were not confined to France nor to the war then going on. The results in German history--the fall of Otto IV, the triumph of Frederick II--we have no occasion to trace. In English history its least important result was that John was obliged to make peace with Philip. The treaty was dated on September 18. A truce was agreed upon to last for five years from the following Easter, everything to remain in the meantime practically as it was left at the close of the war. This might be a virtual recognition by John of the conquests which Philip had made, but for him it was a much more serious matter that the ruin of his schemes left him alone, unsupported by the glamour of a brilliant combination of allies, without prestige, overwhelmed with defeat, to face the baronial opposition which in the past few years had been growing so rapidly in strength, in intelligent perception of the wrongs that had been suffered, and in the knowledge of its own power.
Even in those early centuries the contact of Japan with her Oriental neighbors revealed certain traits of her character which have been conspicuous in recent times--great capacity for acquisition, and readiness to adopt freely from foreign nations. Her contact with China, at that time so far in advance of herself in every element of civilization, was in some respects disastrous to her original growth. Instead of working out the problems of thought and life for herself, she took what China and Korea had to give. The result was an arrest in the development of everything distinctively native. The native religion was so absorbed by Buddhism that for a thousand years it lost all self-consciousness. Indeed the modern clear demarcation between the native and the imported religions is a matter of only a few decades, due to the researches of native scholars during the latter part of the last and the early part of this century. Even now, multitudes of the common people know no difference between the various elements of the composite religion of which they are the heirs.
It is upon this basis that all previous discussions of law for regulating warfare have proceeded. The German submarine fulfills none of these obligations. She enjoys no local command of the waters wherein she operates. She does not take her captures within the jurisdiction of a prize court. She carries no prize crew which can be put aboard prizes which she seizes. She uses no effective means of discriminating between neutral and enemy vessels. She does not receive on board for safety the crew of the vessel she sinks. Her methods of warfare, therefore, are entirely outside the scope of any international instruments regulating operations against commerce in time of war.
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