This concession was made about the middle of September last, and it was then agreed that provisions should be placed in the secondary category (as was duly explained in the Petersburg judgment in the case of the _Arabia_ on December 14) together with some other articles, among which it seemed that raw cotton was not included.
The final decision in the _Calchas_ case marks a welcome change of policy.

Cotton has now followed foodstuffs into the category of "conditional" contraband, and effect has so far been given to the representations on the subject made by Mr.Hay in circular despatches of June 10 and August 30, 1904, and by Sir Charles Hardinge, in a note presented to Count Lamsdorff on October 9 of the same year.
The question had become a practical one in the case of the _Calchas_.

On July 25 this vessel, laden with, _inter alia_, nine tons of raw cotton for Yokohama and Kobe, was seized by a Russian cruiser and carried into Vladivostok, where, on September 18, the cotton, together with other portions of her cargo, was condemned as absolutely contraband.

The reasons for repudiating this decision, and the notification to which it gave effect, were not far to seek, and it may still be worth while to insist upon them.

As against Russia, it is well to recall that, from the days of the Armed Neutralities onwards, her traditional policy has been to favour a very restricted list of contraband; that when in 1877, as again in 1900 and 1904, she included in it materials "servant de faire sauter les obstacles," the examples given of such materials were things so immediately fitted for warlike use as "les mines, les torpilles, la dynamite," &c.; and that what is said as to "conditional contraband" by her trusted adviser, Professor de Martens, in his _Droit International_, t.