Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1939, Page 472
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LE NORD
With the exception of the two cases described above, Fin-
nish merchant ships have not been sunk at sea. Several dozens
of Finnish ships, however, have already been seized in the Baltic,
the North Sea and the Danish straits for visitation, etc. German
naval vessels have even penetrated in some cases right into the
Gulf of Bothnia and there seized a Finnish vessel. In general
seizures have been affected in the open sea outside of neutral
territorial waters. But in one case, a German airplane compelled
a Finnish merchant vessel with the aid of machine-gun fire to
steer away from her course in Swedish waters, whereafter a Ger-
man patrol ship took charge of the Finnish ship. Action of this
kind is of course in contradiction to the chief principles of neu-
trality law, which forbids the extension of military operations
to neutral territory. The Finnish vessel in question was then taken
for examination to a German port, from where, however, she
was later allowed to continue her voyage to a neutral port.
In common with Great Britain and France, Germany too has
adopted as a general practice the conveyance of seized vessels to
one of her own ports for visitation and possible further measures
regardless of distance and other considerations. As already men-
tioned, this is not in accord with previous practice (except during
the Great War), nor with the generally accepted principles of
international law. What used to be an exception is here made a
rule, a circumstance extremely regretable from the point of view
of neutral maritime trade. Long detours involving a great waste
of time have been a source of serious financial loss to the vessels
in the shape of lost freight earnings, not to mention all the other
trouble entailed. Further losses have been incurred because of
the extreme slowness, with which the examinations have generally
been carried out in port, where vessels engaged in perfectly inno-
cent trade, in circumstances that should make this fairly obvious,
have been held up for weeks. Finally, cases have occurred in
which the condition has been attached to the release of such ves-
sels that the Master should give a written undertaking to refrain
for the duration of the war from carrying goods to a country,
with which his present captors are at war. A demand for such
assurances, in the circumstances, in which it is here made, is con-
trary to international law, nor can any basis for it be found in
German legislation relating to the treatment of prizes.
Most of the Finnish merchant ships detained by Germany have
been on the way to a neutral destination, in other words, bound