of their cargoes and furnished an attestation that their cargoes were not intended for Germany. Some of the Dutch carriers were in our ports for months. Most were anchored in midstream, because docks were scarce and dock-charges high.

In July, 11 of these grain ships made a successful dash for the sea, having resolved to take chances in running the blockade. They were supposedly loaded with cargoes that the British Government, and probably the American Government, would not let go through to neutral countries in Europe. In the second week of July, 60 steamships loaded with grain under the Dutch flag were waiting in New York Harbor alone for permission to sail for Holland via Halifax. The Holland-American Line owned ten of these steamships, whose tonnage ranged from 8,000 to 10,000, and had four more steamships waiting in Baltimore. Other vessels were owned by other Dutch steamship companies, and had been brought into the Atlantic trade from the Dutch East Indies and Southern American trades. Piers and anchorage space below Liberty Island in the Upper Bay were crowded with these delayed ships.

While our manhood in all States of the Union was taking up with determination our challenge of the Kaiser's armed forces, the sources of our strength continued to be menaced by Germans not in uniform, whose weapons were spying, sabotage, bomb-planting, incendiarism, murder, and many forms of insidious propaganda. To combat this menace, President Wilson, on November 19, issued a proclamation barring all male Germans of fourteen years and upward from the neighborhood of any place of military importance; commanding them to register and carry their registrationcards with them at all times; forbidding them to change their places of residence without permission from the Department of Justice; expelling them from the District of Columbia and the Canal Zone; excluding them from all boats except public ferries; and forbidding them to ascend in any airplane, balloon, or airship. It was estimated that this proclamation, which supplemented one issued April 6, would affect about 130,000 persons in New York, and about 600,000 in the country at large.

Early in the war Ambassador Dumba of Austria had declared that there were 250,000 German and Austrian reservists in the United States. Our own Census Bureau estimated that there were within our borders 4,662,000 Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Turks and Bulgarians, of whom more than 900,000 were males of twenty-one years and over. Since the beginning of war German agents and German sympathizers had destroyed in this country, by torch and bomb, millions of dollars' worth of war material intended for the Allies, sacrificing some hundreds of American lives in the process, and scarcely a week passed without some new item being added to this list of their crimes. But it had not been generally known, until the Chicago Herald published the fact that 600 persons had been convicted and imprisoned, and several shot, for criminal pro-German activities on and around the Great Lakes alone, and that only the Navy's vigilance had made possible the moving of 60,000,000 tons of ore through that artery of commerce. In the seven months since we entered the war, according to the Providence Journal, food-supplies to the value of more than $18,000,000 had been burned in the United States by German sympathizers. Along the Brooklyn water-front alone more than thirty fires had broken out under conditions strongly suggesting enemy incendiarism. During a gathering of the American Federation of Labor in Buffalo, Samuel Gompers had declared that "German spies and Teutonic agents honeycomb this convention"; but their presence did not prevent the delegates from pledging loyalty to the Government in the war by a unanimous vote. Within twentyfour hours after President Wilson's proclamation was issued, two hundred Germans were rounded up in the saloons and boarding-houses of the Hoboken water-front and taken to Ellis Island, where they were interned for the duration of the war. The decree that an enemy alien "shall not enter or be found within the District of Columbia" revealed the fact that Germans held clerkships in many executive departments.

6 Principal Sources: The Literary Digest, The Outlook, New York; The Economist (London), The Evening Sun, The Times, The Journal of Commerce, The Sun, New York; Associated Press dispatches.

IV

THE VISITS OF BALFOUR, VIVIANI, AND JOFFRE, AND OTHER WAR COMMISSIONERS

April 21, 1917-September 27, 1917

FOLLOWING our declaration of "a state of war" with

Germany, there came to this country in April, May, June and August, successive groups of war commissions from the Entente Allies, which led to probably the most remarkable exchange of international greetings, congratulations, and understandings of which history has any record. The first to arrive were the British, headed by Arthur J. Balfour, the Foreign Minister and a former Prime Minister of Great Britain. A few days later came the French Commission, headed by M. Viviani, a former Premier of France, and now Minister of Justice, and Marshal Joffre, the respective dates of arrival being April 21 and April 24. These commissions came in almost immediate response to the declaration of “a state of war," so promptly had their countries recognized the motive and determination with which this country had entered the great conflict. News of the action of Congress had caused among the Entente Allies profound rejoicing. America was declared to have acquired a pivotal position in the war, largely because she came into the work freshhanded, and had such enormous resources in men and money, in inventive ability and in manufacturing facilities.

Within a fortnight after the declaration of "a state of war, newspapers in New York had given out rumors that eminent statesmen and soldiers were coming to this country on special missions from the Entente Allies-the first hint of any kind the public had of these historic visits. The rumors gave rise to the highest expectations, with predictions that the Commissioners would receive a welcome the like of which had been unknown in this country, save, perhaps, in the case of Lafayette's second visit in 1825. Within a few days, the rumors were well authenticated, altho nothing

definite was for a time made known as to when or where the commissioners would arrive. The activity of German submarines, which about this time reached their highest point of intensified and unrestricted warfare, combined with the tragic fate of Lord Kitchener, off the Orkney Isles, in the spring of 1916, had led to the imposition of absolute secrecy as to details. Then suddenly on April 21 it became known that one of the commissions had actually arrived on American soil.

Mr. Balfour and his associates and staff, to the number of perhaps twoscore, had landed in Halifax. The ship which brought them over had been guarded by torpedo boats for a short distance from the port of sailing, but no sign of submarines or hostile craft had been seen anywhere during the voyage. They were met at Vanceboro, Maine, by American State Department officials who for five days with a fivecar Government train, had been waiting at a New England station for word from Halifax. On receipt of news that Mr. Balfour's ship had arrived there, this train by a night run crossed the State of Maine, and at nine in the morning reached Vanceboro, a frontier town, where the American officials, including representatives of the Army and Navy in uniform, descended in a dense fog from their train to a dingy, deserted little station, there to wait for the arrival of Mr. Balfour's train from Halifax. Two hours later Mr. Balfour's train brought him and his party to Vanceboro, across the bridge that spans the St. Croix River, a bridge which in the early days of the war German plotters had laid plans to blow up. Ten minutes afterward the train, guarded as perhaps no other train had ever been guarded in this country, got under way for Washington by way of Portland and New York. Boston was avoided and New York was entered and left by tunnels.

There was no flaw in the welcome that Washington on April 22 extended officially and personally to Mr. Balfour and to those who came with him. At 3.10 o'clock that afternoon a great crowd assembled at the Union Station, where, at the open train gate, appeared a tall, slender man of almost 70, with silver-gray hair and drooping moustache, at his right Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice, the British Ambassador,

at his left Robert Lansing, Secretary of State. The crowd cheered with spontaneous enthusiasm as Mr. Balfour passed through a long lane of police to the President's room at the opposite side of the station. No guest of the nation had ever received a more cordial or wholehearted welcome at the

UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD. N. Y.

MR. BALFOUR AND MR. CHOATE The picture shows the two men on their way to the New York City Hall at the time of the reception to Mr. Balfour

American capital. It was all the more emphatic because of the lack of any formal preparations for it. The Union Jack was flying with the Stars and Stripes from windows and from the hoods of motor-cars at curbs along the whole route. Washington seldom gets excited anything, but

over

when Mr. Balfour came it was different. His welcome was attended by one continuous chorus of cheers.

The French Commission reached Washington a few days later and had a tumultuous welcome. They had landed at Hampton Roads on April 24, whence, board the Presi

on

dent's yacht Mayflower, they went up Chesapeake Bay to Washington. American naval officials, with a flotilla of destroyers, had met them about 100 miles at sea, a former French passenger liner having brought them over. After signals were exchanged, the destroyers reversed their course and escorted the French ship to the Virginian Capes. Not