The inviolability of the American soil is invoked without there being at hand the slightest means of warding off the attack of a respectable European power." Johannes Vollert, Alldeutsche Blätter, Jan. 17, 1903.

The Mission of Kultur

now,

"While Englishmen and Yankees are everywhere disliked on account of their sharp and reserved manner, the French were, until the seventies, the unrivaled leaders and patterns of these peoplesthe South Americans-in their progress toward a higher culture; but through their want of numbers and through their swift decline into universal corruption, they have forfeited much of their leadership. Would that the Germans might be called through their talents and activities to be the intellectual, economic, and political leaders of these peoples. *

*

"The Germans seem marked by their talents and by their achievements to be the teachers and the intellectual, economic, and political leaders of these peoples, [the Spanish and Portuguese Americans.]

"If the Germans do not accomplish this mission, then, sooner or later, in consequence of political or financial bankruptcy, the nations of Spanish and Portuguese America will come under the domination and exploitation of the United States. * * * ""

J. Unold, Das Deutschtum in Chile, 1899, pp. 62-65. Johannes Unold is professor in the Handelshochschule at Munich and is a zealous Pan-German.

"Not only North America but the whole of America must become a bulwark of Germanic Kultur, perhaps the strongest fortress of the Germanic races. That is every one's hope who has freed himself from his own local European pride and who places the race feeling above his love for home. Also South America must and can easily become a habitation for German or Germanoid races!

"The lands will be settled upon by people of Germanic blood, the non-Germanic inhabitants being driven into reservations or at best to Africa, [Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Egypt.] * * *

"A free South America for those of Germanic blood, that, too, is a sublime end, which will be attained by war, not, perhaps, by the conquest of the land by North American or by European troops, but through the colonizing efforts and self-assertion of the South American Germans."

Klaus Wagner, Krieg, 1906, pp. 165-166.

Seizure of Brazil

"The German settlements in South Brazil and Uruguay are the only ray of light in this dismal picture of South American civilization. Here dwell 500,000 Germans, and it is to be hoped that in a reorganization of South American conditions after the peoples of Latin and Indian mixture are quite ruined by bad management, the immense plains of the Platte, with the coast in the west, the east, and the south, will fall into the hands of the German people. * * * It is truly a miracle that the German people did not long ago resolve on seizing the country. Think of half a million Germans in a temperate climate in a country of 10,500,000 square miles; that is to say, nine times the size of Germany. All that is enough of itself. False modesty has no place in a struggle for world empire." [And he proceeds to argue that England would not have been so falsely modest.]

Tannenberg, Gross-Deutschland; die Arbeit des 20ten Jahrhunderts, 1911, pp. 228-229.

"After this war we shall have to reckon on a loss of influence in the States of Central and South America; first, because of the lessened purchasing power of those countries, and, secondly, because of the increased Pan-American ambitions of the United States; and we shall have a claim by right of victory and by considerations of justice for damages at the expense of England and the United States."

Professor Hermann Schumacher, Meistbegünstigung und Zollunterscheidung, 1915, pp. 43-45. [G., p. 346.]

Planned Long in Advance

"At the close of the Spanish-American war, I was returning on the Santee-I think it was-from Santiago, Cuba, to

a

"Apropos of discussion between Count von Goetzen and myself on the friction between Admiral Dewey and the German Admiral at Manila, von Goetzen said to me: 'I will tell you something which you better make note of. I am not afraid to tell you this because, if you do speak of it, no one would believe you and everybody will laugh at you.

"About fifteen years from now my country will start her great war. She will be in Paris in about two months after the commencement of hostilities. Her move on Paris will be but a step to her real object-the crushing of England. Everything will move like clockwork. We will be prepared and others will not be prepared. I speak of this because of the connection which it will have with your own country.

billion or more dollars from New York and other places. The Monroe Doctrine will be taken charge of by us, as we will then have put you in your place, and we will take charge of South America, as far as we want to. I have no hostility toward your country. I like it, but we have to go our own way. Don't forget this, and about fifteen years from now remember it and it will interest you."

Statement of Major N. A. Bailey to Dr. W. T. Hornaday, given in a letter from Dr. Hornaday in New York Tribune, Aug. 11, 1915.

*

"The Emperor was standing; so naturally I stood also; and, according to his habit, which is quite Rooseveltian, he stood very close to me, and talked very earnestly. * * He showed, however, great bitterness against the United States and repeatedly said, 'America had better look out after this war'; and 'I shall stand no nonsense from America after the war.' * I was so fearful in reporting the dangerous part of this interview, on account of the many spies not only in my own embassy but also in the State Department, that I sent but a very few words in a roundabout way by courier direct to the President."

* *

James W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, 1917, pp. 251-253.

Mr. Gerard, American Ambassador to Berlin, is here summarizing an interview with the Kaiser on Oct. 22, 1915.

Ε

INGLAND and France decided on Oct. 18, 1917, to place an embargo on commerce destined for the neutral kingdoms of Northern Europe-in other words, to forbid all exports except those specially authorized. A similar step had been taken by President Wilson on July 9 with regard to all neutrals. That was a decisive date in the evolution of the economic war.

Many persons imagine that the in

finitely complex mechanism intended to strangle our enemies was invented at a single stroke and that it remains, with the perfection of a few details, practically the same as it was in the beginning. On the contrary, few instruments of war have been transformed more radically or by a more continuous progression than the affair of wheels within wheels which we call, for lack of a better name, the blockade. The blockade

of 1917 no more resembles that of 1914 than the battle of Flanders resembles the battle of the Marne. In the one realm, as in the other, the Allies have been wise enough to profit from the teachings of half successes and even of

reverses.

were

At first the lists of contraband articles were lengthened. Remember that in the beginning these lists neglected articles as interesting as rubber, lubricating oil, and fodder. I will merely mention cotton, which waited nearly two years for the order forbidding its export-out of consideration for American interests. Direct shipments to Germany stopped promptly enough. On the other hand, exportations out of Germany, bolstering her credit and increasing her war fund, might have continued freely for a long time if she had not committed the imprudence of tearing international law to shreds and proclaiming ruthless submarine war in British waters, (Feb. 3, 1915.) The Allies replied on March 1, 1915, by interdicting all traffic either going to or coming from the enemy countries.

No More Conditional Contraband Finally, on July 7, 1916, France and England formally freed themselves from the provisions of the London Convention, which had arranged for lists of absolute and conditional contraband, and had even sought to free a certain number of articles entirely from war risks. Thenceforth, it was admitted that all trade would be held under suspicion, except when proofs of its innocence were forthcoming. Thus the burden of proof was reversed. Until then it was up to the captor to establish the validity of the seizure by proving the enemy destination of the cargo. Since July 7, 1916, it is the seized cargo that has to establish its innocence as to destination.

As to putting a stop to enemy trading by firms in belligerent countries, it was thought at first that a few simple measures would be sufficient, such as prohibiting the departure of goods from port and laying heavy penalties on suspected traffic. Soon it was realized that even this aspect of the problem was not simple. The idea of nationality varies enor

mously in the laws of different nations. Strange as it may seem, the English law did not permit Germans and Austrians in neutral countries to be treated as enemies. To this was added the incredible confusion of interests in great international enterprises. The Allies found themselves compelled on Feb. 25, 1916, to resort to blacklists formally proscribing houses connected more or less closely with the enemy.

Neutrals a Difficult Problem

It remained to hinder supplies from reaching the enemy through neutrals. That was the stumbling block. It was difficult to stop the transit of shipments often seemingly honest; still more difficult was it to keep non-belligerents from furnishing the products of their soil and industry impartially to both sides.

For indirect commerce the Allies still had one means of action, since they controlled the ways of access. Besides, they possessed a basis of computation in the statistics of before-the-war trade. Thus they could, almost mathematically, fix the necessary allowance of each commodity for each neutral country, as based on production and imports. But all this was purely theoretical. Practically, nothing is more unreliable than figures. It would have been necessary to know the existing stocks of each commodity, and the changes of demand caused by the war. Let us not forget the consideration which the western powers tried to show, as far as possible, toward trusted nations, up to the time when German methods compelled them to push things to extremes.

Very rapidly the principles of the solution took shape. In November, 1914, there was organized in Holland the Netherlands Oversea Trust, a group destined to become a permanent intermediary between Dutch commerce and the blockade authorities. In October, 1915, the Swiss Surveillance Society was established on similar lines. In Norway and Denmark another system was followed, that of private agreements with commercial houses. Sweden alone resisted all arrangements. The basis of the agreement in every case was to fix upon the amount of contingent importations

and to obtain guarantees against re-exportation. On the latter point the results have been most satisfactory. Errors in statistics have been more frequent.

Germany's War Trade Methods

When all is said, the machine would have been very effective if the neutral countries had not disposed freely of their own products. The word freely is, perhaps, out of place when one knows the war methods used by Germany to impose her will upon her smaller neighbors. Her principal argument is not force of arms. Our enemies, who alone are in position to furnish the neutrals with certain essential articles-such as coal and iron did not have to resort to that method of blackmail. The world knows the methods used by Berlin to compel Switzerland to furnish supplies of cattle and metals in return for bank credits. Holland has found her potatoes and fish in a sense requisitioned; Denmark her farm products. To combat this intensive drain the Allies long were without other resource than that of competition. To buy up all the supplies in neutral markets is expensive. It is a burdensome method and one that cannot always be pushed to its logical end.

There is only one way to stop this enemy traffic, and that is to place the neutrals face to face with a situation in which they will no longer be able to pass along their own products-to kill speculation with want. All the small neutral States are dependent upon foreign trade; their food supply, therefore, depends upon the masters of the sea. But it depends still more upon the United States, the only great country outside of Europe committed to the arbitrament of arms. That is why the American flag was almost like an enemy flag as long as the great transatlantic Republic remained in the neutral camp. From the day America entered the war it became wholly one of the Allies. The Americans, with their business lucidity and the light of two years' experience, perceived the gap in the blockade. That is why President Wilson did not rest until he had all exports under his control. Henceforth the neutrals will have their food imports strictly

controlled. They will receive only what is truly required for their needs after their stocks have been greatly reduced and after they have proved the exhaustion of their resources. Under these conditions it becomes practically impossible for them to share their supplies with their neighbors.

Great Britain and Neutrals

Lord Robert Cecil, British Minister of Blockade, wrote a letter on Oct. 30, 1917, to Professor Birck of Copenhagen, in which he gave the following summary of Great Britain's blockade policy toward Denmark and other neutrals:

Until the United States entered the war, the powers of the Entente Governments with regard to Danish trade were those of belligerents, relying principally on their belligerent rights for exercising economic pressure on our enemies. As belligerents we have the right to stop and put into the prize court any goods which we had reason to believe were going to our enemies. Broadly speaking, the limit of our rights was drawn up for us by the law which our prize court administered. Anything which we had reasonable grounds for thinking was liable to condemnation by our prize court we could stop, and beyond that we could do nothing, except by agreement or in excess of our legal rights.

The British Government have throughout the war shown themselves anxious not to exceed their belligerent rights in dealing with neutral nations, and I am myself satisfied that that policy was not only right but eminently justified by its results all over the world. There remains the possibility of making agreements whereby imports from Denmark into Germany should be limited, and we did our best to enter into understandings or agreements of that nature; but our powers in that respect were much more limited than they are now that the United States have become co-belligerents, for a large part of the most necessary imports into Denmark comes from the United States. So long as America was neutral she naturally put no restraint on her trade with Denmark. Now that