ment into court on behalf of the Crown of the appraised value of the ship, or of the amount fixed under rule 4 of this order, as the case may be, at such time or times as the court shall declare by order that the same or any part thereof is required for the purpose of payment out of court.

"6. Where in any case of requisition under this order it is made to appear to the judge on behalf of the Crown that the Crown desires to requisition the ship temporarily, the court may, in lieu of an order of release, make an order for the temporary delivery of the ship to the Crown, and subject as aforesaid the provisions of this order shall apply to such a requisition, provided that, in the event of the return of the ship to the custody of the court, the court may make such order as it thinks fit for the release of the undertaking given on behalf of the Crown or the reduction of the amount undertaken to be paid thereby, as the case may be; and provided also, that where the ship so requisitioned is subject to the provisions of order 28, rule 1, relating to detention, the amount for which the Crown shall be considered liable in respect of such requisition shall be the amount of the damage, if any, which the ship has suffered by reason of such temporary delivery as aforesaid.

"7. The proceedings in respect of a ship requisitioned under this order shall continue notwithstanding the requisition.

"8. In any case of requisition of a ship in respect of which no cause has been instituted, any person interested in such ship may, without issuing a writ, provided he does not intend to make a claim for restitution or damages, apply by summons for an order that the amount to be paid in respect to such ship be fixed by the court, and the judge may, on the hearing of such summons, order the ship to be appraised or to be valued, or give such other directions for fixing the amount as he may think fit."

5. That in Form 4 in Appendix A to the said rules there shall be omitted the words "commander of our ship of war" and the words “taken and seized as prize by our said ship of war."

6. This order shall take effect provisionally in accordance with the provisions of section 2 of the rules-publication act, 1893, from the date hereof. (Dip. Corr., 72-73.)

On January 28 the W. P. Frye was destroyed by a German auxiliary cruiser. Prinz Eitel Friedrich, seeking refuge in Newport News Harbor, brought with her the crew of the Frye, a four-masted bark, which had sailed on November 4, 1914, from Seattle with a cargo of wheat consigned to United Kingdom ports.

The Prinz Eitel had encountered her on the high seas January 27, 1915, and sunk her, the German captain contending that her cargo was conditional contraband and that since he had no means of delivering her to a prize court he had the right to sink her, under the provisions of the declaration of London.

The American Government, in April, asked compensation of $228,059 for the destruction of the vessel. The German Government replied on April 8, admitting liability under treaties of commerce between the United States and Prussia. Settlement was left to arbitration, still uninvoked March 4, 1917.

The correspondence, which comprises several notes, was printed on January 11, 1916, and is found in the first session of the Sixtyfourth Congress, pages 883 to 913. It is not necessary to reproduce it here.

This dispute does not involve the submarine controversy.

The seizure of the Wilhelmina, with a cargo of foodstuffs, was the occasion of several notes on the question of contraband. This correspondence does not involve the submarine controversy, and it is not necessary to insert it here. It will be found in the Congressional Record, first session Sixty-fourth Congress, pages 883 to 913.1

On April 4 Germany filed a memorandum concerning the British restraint of sea-borne trade with Germany and the American exportation of war material:

THE GERMAN AMBASSADOR TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE.

The various British orders in council have one-sidedly modified the generally recognized principles of international law in a way which arbitrarily stops the commerce of neutral nations with Germany. Even before the last British order in council, the shipment of conditional contraband, especially food supplies, to Germany was practically impossible. Prior to the protest sent by the American to the British Government on December 28 last, such a shipment did not actually take place in a single case. Even after this protest the Imperial Embassy knows of only a single case in which an American shipper has ventured to make such a shipment for the purpose of legitimate sale to Germany. Both ship and cargo were immediately seized by the English and are being held in an English port under the pretext of an order of the German federal council (Bundesrath) regarding the grain trade, although this resolution of the federal council relates exclusively to grain and flour, and not to other foodstuffs, besides making an express exception with respect to imported foodstuffs, and although the German Government gave the American Government an assurance and proposed a special organization whereby the exclusive consumption by the civilian population is absolutely guaranteed..

Under the circumstances, the seizure of the American ship was inadmissible according to recognized principles of international law. Nevertheless, the United States Government has not to date secured the release of the ship and cargo, and has not, after a duration of the war of eight months, succeeded in protecting its lawful trade with Germany.

Such a long delay, especially in matters of food supply, is equiva- ‹ lent to an entire denial.

The Imperial Embassy must therefore assume that the United States Government acquiesces in the violations of international law by Great Britain.

Then there is also the attitude of the United States in the question of the exportation of arms. The Imperial Government feels sure that the United States Government will agree that in questions of neutrality it is necessary to take into consideration not only the

1 See pages 274-280.

84610-H. Doc. 2111, 64-2, pt. 1-3

formal aspect of the case, but also the spirit in which the neutrality is carried out.

The situation in the present war differs from that of any previous war. Therefore any reference to arms furnished by Germany in former wars is not justified, for then it was not a question whether war material should be supplied to the belligerents, but who should supply it in competition with other nations. In the present war all nations having a war-material industry worth mentioning are either involved in the war themselves or are engaged in perfecting their own armaments, and have therefore laid an embargo against the exportation of war material. The United States is, accordingly, the only neutral country in a position to furnish war materials. The conception of neutrality is thereby given a new purport, independently of the formal question of hitherto existing law. In contradiction thereto the United States is building up a powerful arms industry in the broadest sense, the existing plants not only being worked but enlarged by all available means, and new ones built. The international conventions for the protection of the rights of neutral nations doubtless sprang from the necessity of protecting the existing industries of neutral nations as far as possible from injury in their business. But it can in no event be in accordance with the spirit of true neutrality if, under the protection of such international stipulations, an entirely new industry is created in a neutral State, such as is the development of the arms industry in the United States, the business whereof, under the present conditions, can benefit only the belligerent powers.

This industry is actually delivering goods only to the enemies of Germany. The theoretical willingness to supply Germany also, if shipments thither were possible, does not alter the case. If it is the will of the American people that there shall be a true neutrality the United States will find means of preventing this one-sided supply of arms or at least of utilizing it to protect legitimate trade with Germany, especially that in foodstuffs. This view of neutrality should all the more appeal to the United States Government, because the latter enacted a similar policy toward Mexico. On February 4, 1914, President Wilson, according to a statement of a Representative in Congress in the Committee on Foreign Affairs, of December 30, 1914, upon the lifting of the embargo on arms to Mexico, declared that " we should stand for genuine neutrality, considering the surrounding facts of the case He then held that "in that case, because Carranza had no ports, while Huerta had them and was able to import these materials, that it was our duty as a nation to treat Carranza and Huerta upon an equality if we wished to observe the true spirit of neutrality, as compared with a mere paper neutrality."

If this view were applied to the present case it would lead to an embargo on the exportation of arms. (Dip. Corr., 73-74.)

On April 21 our Government replied to Germany's note of the 4th:

THE SECRETARY OF STATE TO THE GERMAN AMBASSADOR.

EXCELLENCY: I have given thoughtful consideration to your excellency's note of the 4th of April, 1915, inclosing a memorandum of

the same date, in which your excellency discusses the action of the Government with regard to trade between the United States and Germany and the attitude of this Government with regard to the exportation of arms from the United States to the nations now at war with Germany.

I must admit that I am somewhat at a loss how to interpret your excellency's treatment of these matters. There are many circumstances connected with these important subjects to which I would have expected your excellency to advert, but of which you make no mention, and there are other circumstances to which you do refer which I would have supposed to be hardly appropriate for discussion between the Government of the United States and the Government of Germany.

I shall take the liberty, therefore, of regarding your excellency's reference to the course pursued by the Government of the United States with regard to interferences with trade from this country, such as the Government of Great Britain has attempted, as intended merely to illustrate more fully the situation to which you desire to call our attention and not as an invitation to discuss that course. Your excellency's long experience in international affairs will have suggested to you that the relations of the two Governments with one another can not wisely be made a subject of discussion with a third Government, which can not be fully informed as to the facts and which can not be fully cognizant of the reasons for the course pursued. I believe, however, that I am justified in assuming that what you desire to call forth is a frank statement of the position of this Government in regard to its obligations as a neutral power. The general attitude and course of policy of this Government in the maintenance of its neutrality I am particularly anxious that your excellency should see in their true light. I had hoped that this Government's position in these respects had been made abundantly clear, but I am, of course, perfectly willing to state it again. This seems to me the more necessary and desirable because, I regret to say, the language which your excellency employs in your memorandum is susceptible of being construed as impugning the good faith of the United States in the performance of its duties as a neutral. I take it for granted that no such implication was intended, but it is so evident that your excellency is laboring under certain false impressions that I can not be too explicit in setting forth the facts as they are, when fully reviewed and comprehended.

In the first place, this Government has at no time and in no manner yielded any one of its rights as a neutral to any of the present belligerents. It has acknowledged, as a matter of course, the right of visit and search and the right to apply the rules of contraband of war to articles of commerce. It has, indeed, insisted upon the use of visit and search as an absolutely necessary safeguard against mistaking neutral vessels for vessels owned by an enemy and against mistaking legal cargoes for illegal. It has admitted, also, the right of blockade if actually exercised and effectively maintained. These are merely the well-known limitations which war places upon neutral commerce on the high seas. But nothing beyond these has it conceded. I call your excellency's attention to this, notwithstanding it is already known to all the world as a consequence of the publication of our correspondence in regard to these matters with several

of the belligerent nations, because I can not assume that you have official cognizance of it.

In the second place, this Government attempted to secure from the German and British Governments mutual concessions with regard to the measures those Governments respectively adopted for the interruption of trade on the high seas. This it did, not of right, but merely as exercising the privileges of a sincere friend of both parties and as indicating its impartial good will. The attempt was unsuccessful; but I regret that your excellency did not deem it worthy of mention in modification of the impressions you expressed. We had hoped that this act on our part had shown our spirit in these times of distressing war, as our diplomatic correspondence had shown our steadfast refusal to acknowledge the right of any belligerent to alter the accepted rules of war at sea in so far as they affect the rights and interests of neutrals.

In the third place, I note with sincere regret that, in discussing the sale and exportation of arms by citizens of the United States to the enemies of Germany, your excellency seems to be under the impression that it was within the choice of the Government of the United States notwithstanding its professed neutrality and its diligent efforts to maintain it in other particulars, to inhibit this trade, and that its failure to do so manifested an unfair attitude toward Germany. This Government holds, as I believe your excellency is aware, and as it is constrained to hold in view of the present indisputable doctrines of accepted international law, that any change in its own laws of neutrality during the progress of a war which would affect unequally the relations of the United States with the nations at war would be an unjustifiable departure from the principle of strict neutrality by which it has consistently sought to direct its actions, and I respectfully submit that none of the circumstances urged in your excellency's memorandum alters the principle involved. The placing of an embargo on the trade in arms at the present time would constitute such a change and be a direct violation of the neutrality of the United States. It will, I feel assured, be clear to your excellency that, holding this view and considering itself in honor bound by it, it is out of the question for this Government to consider such a course.

I hope that your excellency will realize the spirit in which I am drafting this reply. The friendship between the people of the United States and the people of Germany is so warm and of such long standing, the ties which bind them to one another in amity are so many and so strong, that this Government feels under a special compulsion to speak with perfect frankness when any occasion arises which seems likely to create any misunderstanding, however slight or temporary, between those who represent the Governments of the two countries. It will be a matter of gratification to me if I have removed from your excellency's mind any misapprehension you may have been under regarding either the policy or the spirit and purposes of the Government of the United States. Its neutrality is founded upon the firm basis of conscience and good will.

Accept, etc.,

(Dip. Corr. 74-75.)

W. J. BRYAN.