[Footnote 53: International Law (1880), pp. 579-580.]

Oppenheim shows that the importance of horses and beasts of burden for
cavalry, artillery, and military transport sufficiently explains their
being declared contraband by belligerents. He asserts that no argument
against their being held as conditional contraband has any validity, and
it is admitted that they are frequently declared absolute
contraband.[54] During the Russo-Japanese War Russia at first refused to
recognize any distinction between conditional and absolute contraband,
but later altered her decision with the exception of "horses and beasts
of burden," which she treated as absolute contraband.

[Footnote 54: International Law, Vol. II, p. 426.]

The tendency in modern times, however, is to treat horses as only
conditional contraband. The only reason that they were not expressly
declared contraband in the Anglo-Boer contest was the character of the
war. Had the Transvaal been able to issue an authoritative declaration
and insure respect for it by a command of the sea, horses and mules
would have been considered technical contraband as in fact they were
actual contraband, being nothing if they were not "warlike instruments."

The enforcement of the obligations incumbent upon the United States
under the circumstances undoubtedly lay with the Federal Government
rather than with the States. Early in 1901 a proceeding in equity had
been instituted in a federal court in New Orleans for the purpose of
enjoining the shipment of horses and mules from that port to Cape
Colony. The bill was filed by private individuals who alleged that they
had property in the Transvaal and Orange Free State which was being
destroyed by the armies of Great Britain, and that these armies were