warfare. In view of the use of Zeppelin bombs, poisoned gas, and submarine torpedoes, not to speak of atrocities, the German authorities, Lord Robert concluded, presumed "too far on the toleration of mankind when they complain of such a comparatively humane method of warfare as blockade."

The speciousness of the claim that the submarine, being a new engine of warfare, is an exception to established rules, and is subject to no restraints, has been pointed out in several of the American notes to Germany and needs only a bare mention here. As has been well said:

"In the use of a new weapon a belligerent nation may unquestionably violate well-recognized rules of international law. The armored tractor cars recently introduced by the British, for example, are new weapons, the use of which has not been regulated by international law; but it does not follow that Great Britain could lawfully use these new weapons to destroy enemy field hospitals.

"In using its submarines against merchant ships, Germany in fact invokes established rules of international law. It claims for submarines the rights accorded to cruisers. Cruisers have the right to capture enemy vessels and neutral vessels carrying contra

band. Whenever it is impossible or even inexpedient to take a captured vessel into any of the captor's home ports for condemnation, it is permissible to sink it. Due provision, however, must always be made for the safety of the noncombatants, the crew and any passengers.

America's case against Germany, then, rests upon the ground, as Mr. Wilson said in his address to Congress, that American ships and American lives have been sacrificed by naval commanders "in needless contravention of the just and reasonable understandings of international law and the obvious dictates of humanity." All that the United States seeks is to vindicate its claims to "liberty and justice and an unmolested life," and this could only be accomplished by going to war with the Power which has sought to prevent the enthronement of public right as the guiding principle of the relations between states. The submarine campaign was simply the one manifestation of hostility to this ideal which was sufficient to bring in American Democracy on the side of England

'Smith, "American Diplomacy," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. XXXI, p. 495.

and France and Russia. As I pointed out in the very beginning, it is fundamental; but for the insistence upon this weapon by Germany we would probably still be at peace, in spite of the terrible set-back to our moral and political ideals and the dangerous menace to our safety which the defeat of the Allies would have indubitably meant. Yet we should not forget the eloquent words of M. René Viviani, French Minister of Justice, and head of the French War Commission to the United States:

"Yes; doubtless you had your slaughtered dead to avenge, to avenge the insults heaped on your honor. You could not for one moment conceive that the land of Lincoln, the land of Washington, could bow humbly before the imperial eagle. But not for that did you rise; not for your national honor alone; do not say it was for that. You are fighting for the whole world; you are fighting for all liberty; you are fighting for civilization; that is why you have risen in battle." It is against "a whole race so madly intoxicated with conceit that it imagines it is predestined to dominate the world and is amazed to see free men rise and contest its rights. . . . And when in faroff days after this war history shall tell why we fought . . . it will say why all the peoples rose in

battle, why the free allied peoples fought. Not for conquest! They were not nations of prey. No morbid ambitions lay festering in their hearts and consciences. Why then did they fight? To repel the most brutal and insidious of aggressions. They fought for the respect of international treaties trampled under foot by the brutal soldiery of Germany; they fought to raise all peoples of the earth to free breath, to the ideal of liberty for all, so that the world might be habitable for free men or to perish."

That Mr. Wilson has been one of our most peace-loving presidents, history will not dispute. As the foregoing pages abundantly show, opportunity after opportunity was offered the Imperial Government of Germany to renounce lawlessness and to cease invasions of our sovereignty just as real as the landing of an army. The President's peace note of December called in vain for a definition of aims which would deny the intended subjugation of small states or a great German Empire under which liberty would perish. Armed neutrality, or a technical state of war with naval coöperation, money, and supplies would have sufficed if America had gone in only because her honor had been violated, her citizens murdered. But to send to

France our finest men, in unlimited numbers secured on the basis of compulsory service; to pledge all the resources of the country, as did the congressional resolution declaring war -such a readiness for sacrifice means that America is not merely safeguarding her rights, but it means that America, in M. Viviani's phrase again, will "battle till the end for the deliverance of humanity, for the deliverance of democracy." Perhaps Woodrow Wilson waited wisely until the issue had been made translucently clear-until the liberalization of Russia removed the only anomaly and made the battle one of free nations against a would-be assassin of humanity, democracy, and the future peace of the world.