INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. = 
some 5,000 names—far in excess of the number in the 
British lists. 
No cases on blockade occurred in the English Prize 
Court during the whole course of the war; the so-called 
* blockade >> of the Central Powers was effected by the 
retaliatory measures embodied in the Orders in Council 
of March 11, 1915, and February 16, 1917. The validity 
of these Orders was decided by the Prize Court in the 
cases of The Stigstad * and The Leonora ® respectively ; 
and both in the learned judgments of Sir Samuel Evans 
and of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council the 
right of retaliation for unlawful measures adopted by an 
enemy was affirmed, thus following the precedents set 
by Lord Stowell. The right of retaliation is a right of 
the belligerent, not a concession by the neutral, and 
the measures taken under the Orders in Council did not 
subject neutrals to more inconvenience than was reason- 
ably necessary under the circumstances. Neutrals have 
their rights, but they also have their duties ; they may 
proclaim vociferously their losses, but they do not speak 
loudly of their gains, as Sir Samuel Evans said in his 
remarkable judgment in The Leonora. The validity 
of the French retaliatory decrees, which corresponded 
to the British Orders in Council, was not contested in 
the French Prize Court. The Italian Prize Courts, as 
Dr. Colombos states, supported their measures of 
retaliation on similar principles to those laid down by 
the English Prize Court, restricting the use of this 
dangerous weapon to cases where the obligations of 
humanity were not violated and they conformed to the 
rules of law.* 
2 [1919] A. C. 279. 3 [1919] A. C. 974. 
4 See post, p. 248. 
%