atre of war, "it is certain/' in the words of Professor Holland, in his recent letter to tile Times, whose views have been con firmed and enforced by Professor Woolsey of Yale, and Dr. Lawrence, "that no inter national usage sanctions the employment by one belligerent against the other of mines or other secret contrivances which would with out notice render the navigation of the high seas dangerous" to neutrals. The circumstance that there is no prece dent which governs the case of mines adrift beyond the territorial limit is, of course, at tributable to the very recent development of these terrible engines of destructive warfare; that their employment on the high seas, to the peril of neutral vessels and the infraction of the common right of mankind to free navi gation in accordance with the rule of modern international law, subject only to well-de fined modifications, constitutes a grave of fence against international morality cannot be doubted. The trend of the development of international jurisprudence for the pro motion of the safety of non-combatants may be used to gauge the gravity of the conduct of a belligerent Power in adopting a course of action calculated to endanger life and property in neutral shipping. To take a single illustration of the care for the safety of non-combatants, which applies, more strongly in the case of neutrals, by which international morality in recent times is so nobly distinguished: All the nations repre sented at The Hague Conference, in view of the newness of the practice and danger of injury to other than combatants, agreed "to prohibit for a term of five years the launch ing of projectiles and explosives from bal loons or by other new methods of a similar nature": (Hill's Peace Conference, p. 461). The argument by way of analogy against the floating of mines on the high seas, where they are liable to endanger neutral ships, is unanswerable. CONCERNING the "Assumption of Risk Growing out of the Non-Performance of a
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Master's Statutory Duty," the Yale Law Journal for June, says: That the common law places upon the master certain duties for the protection of his servant is fundamental; that these duties cannot be delegated so as to relieve the mas ter from liability, although deducible from, is equally elemental with the first proposi tion. One of these common law duties is the furnishing of reasonably safe imple ments with which to work. The courts have, however, engrafted upon this principle a qualification, in that, although the master has not performed his full duty, thereby cre ating an additional risk which was both ob vious and ordinary, yet the servant by con tinuing his employment with knowledge of such delict, was conclusively presumed to have accepted the increased hazard arising therefrom. That is the doctrine of "assump tion of risk." If an injury accrued to him in such a contingency the servant was deemed to have waived the master's nonperformance of duty and no recovery was possible. Do the same rules of law apply if the mas ter is under a statutory duty to provide pro tection for his servant? The United States Circuit Court of Appeals has come to the conclusion recently that the doctrine of "assumption of risk" is equally applicable, whether the duty be statutory or of the com mon law. A statute of Missouri designed for the protection of employés provided that all exposed gearings, etc., should be guarded. An employer complied with the statute, but for a period of six weeks prior to an injury to one of his employés he had allowed some of the guards to fall into disuse so that a pair of rapidly revolving cogwheels were left ex posed. A servant, a girl of 20 years of age, was required to work at the machine con taining these wheels, about ten or fifteen minutes each day, and in consequence of their unguarded condition was injured. The Circuit Court of Appeals holds that the ser vant is entitled to no recovery, since by con tinuing in her employment she had assumed the risk arising from the failure of the mas
