whatever might be thought of his words his address was dictated by nobler motives than a mere negative desire to avoid entanglement in the war. Rightly or wrongly, he looked forward to the part that America as the greatest neutral Power might at some time be called to play as mediator, and he believed that the one hope of discharging that high function with success was to preserve in the meantime what was bound to be characterized in many quarters as an attitude of exaggerated and unworthy detachment.

President Wilson can have been under no illusions as to what the policy he had chosen would involve. For him personally it would in many respects have been the easiest course to commit his country to intervention forthwith. That decision would at least have saved him from entanglement in the endless series of perilous complications arising out of the German submarine campaign, the British blockade, the machinations of German agents in America, and the abuse by belligerents of the laws of war and of humanity.

It was soon made impossible for America to remain neutral in spirit, whatever she might be in act. The outrages in Belgium, verified as they were by the Bryce Commission, whose Chairman was known and honoured above all other living Englishmen in America, threw a new light on the meaning of the war. The United States was not a guarantor of Belgian neutrality, but she was a signatory to the Hague Conventions of 1907, whose provisions Germany had ruthlessly

and cynically flung to the winds under the impulse of a military necessity that knew no law. The world turned instinctively to the great neutral Republic for the word of judicial protest and condemnation that her part in the violated Convention gave her a legal title as well as an unassailable moral right to utter.

America has

That word was not spoken. earned the undying gratitude of Belgium for the unstinted generosity with which her citizens have provided and her agents administered the relief that has kept millions of Belgians from starvation. But it was not till more than two years of war had passed-when Germany was crowning her crimes by deporting the civil population of Belgium to work in German factories and mines --that an official protest against the martyrdom of that unhappy nation was for the first time voiced by the spokesman and leader of the American people.

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Mr. Wilson's silence was no doubt dictated by his fear of being driven, so early in the war, into a position of apparent partisanship, and it is fair to him to add that the most embittered opponent of his policy, Mr. Roosevelt, at this point shared his views. Sympathy" [with Belgium], wrote the ex-President, "is compatible with full acknowledgment of the unwisdom of our uttering a single word of official protest unless we are prepared to make that protest effective; and only the clearest and most urgent national duty would ever justify us in deviating from our rule of neutrality and non-inter

ference." I Great Britain and France-which, it may be objected, are not entirely unbiased judges -have found full comprehension of that attitude beyond them.

In view of the gravity of the protracted controversies between America and Germany on the conduct of naval warfare, it is of some importance to recall that the first Note of protest drafted at Washington was addressed, not to the Wilhelmstrasse but to Downing Street. It was distinctly friendly in character, but expressed America's perplexity and concern at the new rules of war at sea formulated by the Allied Governments. Full justice has hardly been done to the difficulty of Mr. Wilson's position in his negotiations with this country over the interference with American overseas trade. Soon after the beginning of the war the Declaration of London began to be jettisoned bit by bit, and faced with the fact that a port like Rotterdam or Flushing constituted for commercial purposes practically the mouth of Germany, the Allies undeniably worked the recognized doctrine of continuous voyage and ultimate destination very hard.

Early in 1915, moreover, a series of moves took place that laid American commerce under grave disabilities. Germany established Government control of practically all food supplies; Great Britain thereupon declared all food contraband; Germany replied by announcing a blockade of Britain as from March 18th; and Britain retaliated by Orders in Council proclaimIn the Outlook, September 23, 1914.

ing a blockade of Germany, under which the right was reserved to the British Navy to detain and take into port "ships carrying goods of presumed enemy destination, ownership, or origin." The result of these successive declarations was to supersede the old laws of the sea as commonly understood in favour of a new code, which, as America contended, had the validity only of a municipal law of an individual belligerent and could not be substituted for the recognized canons of international law.

The real difficulty was not that a departure had been made from established custom,-America, like every other nation, realized that the advent of the submarine had introduced a factor subversive of all accepted rules, but that by the middle of 1915 or earlier a neutral had come to feel that the arbitrary proclamations of the different belligerents had left him with no solid ground beneath his feet. In the case of Great Britain American irritation at the delays attendant on the examination of cargoes in port instead of on the high seas was accentuated by the censors' interference with mails-to which merchants more than once attributed (apparently without much justice) the loss of important orders. On our side there was some disposition to ride off too lightly on the plea that while we were merely delaying American cargoes Germany, was murdering American sailors. That was true, and America recognized that it was true; but President Wilson had always insisted on the sound principle that he was discussing business only

with the particular Power concerned, and, as he twice reminded Germany in forcible words, there could be no question of playing off one belligerent against the other. It would have smoothed some rough places if more regard had been paid in this country to a judgment of that shrewd and able diplomatist Lord Lyons, who wrote from the Embassy at Washington fifty years ago: "The Americans, both Government and People, are I think much pleased by attentions and civilities, and very prone to think themselves slighted. This quality may be sometimes turned to good account, and should certainly be borne in mind. when it is necessary to keep them in good humour." I

As it was, speakers and writers were, with individual exceptions, at no particular pains to consider American susceptibilities, and there was considerable surprise when in November 1915 a Note couched in language of marked acerbity was handed by the American Ambassador to Sir Edward Grey. The phraseology, there is reason for believing, was the work of Mr. Lansing, not of President Wilson, and it was strongly deprecated in some sections of the American Press Here it was generally assumed to be in some measure a studied counterweight to the grave communications the President was finding it necessary to address to Germany, and a detailed reply by Sir Edward Grey, offering explanations, and conceding some modifications, of the procedure to which objection was taken, averted any

Lord Lyons, by Lord Newton, chap. ii.