Netherlands protests against changes to the Declaration of London

A British chronology of the war records under 13 November 1914 a protest by the government of the Netherlands against changes to the Declaration of London. It concerned the regulations by which Great Britain, followed by France, had unilaterally altered the rules of this code of the law of naval warfare. The text of the Dutch note itself could not be found in the available sources, but its subject and background are well known.

A transit country

The Netherlands was a neutral state, but its position made it especially important to both sides. Rotterdam, at the mouth of the Rhine, was the main port for western Germany. Goods from overseas were transferred there onto barges and railways that carried them deep into Germany. The 1868 convention on navigation of the Rhine guaranteed free transit on the river. For the British this meant that food and raw materials which could not be carried to Germany directly could reach it through Dutch ports.

From August Great Britain had been stopping ships bound for the Netherlands if it suspected that their cargo would end up in Germany. London demanded that the government in The Hague ban the transit of contraband to Germany. The Dutch refused, because this would breach the Rhine convention and Germany might regard it as a hostile act. Meanwhile the detentions of ships had brought overseas imports almost to a standstill, and the country began to run short of grain.

The new rules of October

The Order of 29 October hit the Netherlands particularly hard. Contrary to Article 35 of the Declaration, it allowed conditional contraband, food for example, bound for neutral ports to be seized if it had been consigned “to order”, without naming the consignee. The British government could also decide that the enemy was being supplied through a particular neutral country, and the protection of Article 35 then ceased to apply to all cargoes bound for that country. At the same time many raw materials were moved onto the list of absolute contraband. On 6 November France introduced similar regulations. The government of Prime Minister Pieter Cort van der Linden and Foreign Minister John Loudon consistently defended the rights of neutrals and protested against their violation by both sides, though usually to little effect.

The compromise

The protest itself changed nothing, but at the same time a practical way out of the deadlock was being sought. Dutch bankers and shipowners, in agreement with the British commercial attaché and with the tacit consent of ministers, were preparing a private company that could give the British the guarantees a neutral government could not. On 24 November 1914 the Netherlands Overseas Trust (Nederlandsche Overzee Trustmaatschappij, NOT) was founded. Importers who wanted to bring in goods from overseas undertook to it not to export them to Germany and paid large deposits. In return the Royal Navy let through cargoes consigned to the trust. From then on the NOT controlled a large part of Dutch overseas trade until the end of the war.