cold and unyielding terms in which American rights concerning only property were insisted upon. It would seem as if the American Government feared a rupture with the Imperial German Government, that it examined each and every question as it arose from the standpoint of its possible effects upon relations with Germany and its people, and that the President and his advisers had determined that no act on the part of the United States, that no unguarded word or expression in correspondence with Germany, should give the Imperial Government a pretext, much less a cause, to turn against the United States if it should seem to stand in the way of the realization of the purpose upon whose realization the German Government had bent its energies and upon which the German people had set their heart.

It is difficult to know just how to handle a grievance or a complaint of this kind, and it is difficult to see how a charge of this nature can be met and overcome if it has not already been disposed of. Friendship is at best a relative term, and the United States was not in a position to choose its attitude, for it is a Government of laws. The President and his advisers are the creatures and the servants of law, and more especially of international law, which, by the Constitution of the United States and by the decisions of the Supreme Court, is and is declared to be a part of the law of the United States. The President and his advisers were bound to yield implicit obedience to international law; international law prescribed the neutrality and the duties laid upon neutrals; and international law, therefore, determined the conduct of the President and his advisers. In the conception of law there is neither friendship nor enmity, and the impartiality which any belligerent can ask is only the impartiality which flows from compliance with the law. The President and his advisers might have done less, they could not have done more to show their neutrality, for the neutrality which the President impressed upon his fellow countrymen was not merely the neutrality of the Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege, which simply requires compliance with international courtesies; it was not merely the neutrality of action, it was the neutrality of thought and of expression. Secretary Bryan was speaking in the fullness of knowledge when he regarded the categorical replies to the specific complaints set out in his letter as a sufficient answer to the charge of unfriendliness to Germany and Austria-Hungary; and in the last paragraph but one of his letter he stated the cause of the apparent difference in the treatment of Germany and Great Britain, a cause which was not of his making

and which neither the President nor the United States could alter. Thus he said:

If any American citizens, partisans of Germany and AustriaHungary, feel that this administration is acting in a way injurious to the cause of those countries, this feeling results from the fact that on the high seas the German and Austro-Hungarian naval power is thus far inferior to the British. It is the business of a belligerent operating on the high seas, not the duty of a neutral, to prevent contraband from reaching an enemy. Those in this country who sympathize with Germany and AustriaHungary appear to assume that some obligation rests upon this Government in the performance of its neutral duty to prevent all trade in contraband, and thus to equalize the difference due to the relative naval strength of the belligerents. No such obligation exists; it would be an unneutral act, an act of partiality on the part of this Government to adopt such a policy if the Executive had the power to do so. If Germany and AustriaHungary can not import contraband from this country, it is not, because of that fact, the duty of the United States to close its markets to the allies. The markets of this country are open upon equal terms to all the world, to every nation, belligerent or neutral.1

SECTION 11. SUMMARY

The charges contained in Senator Stone's letter of January 8, 1915, and specifically answered by Secretary Bryan in his reply of January 20th to Senator Stone, have been enumerated and discussed in very considerable detail because, as far as known, Senator Stone's letter contained all the grievances both of the Imperial German Government and its sympathizers in the United States, and Secretary Bryan's reply justified the conduct of the United States on the eve of the announcement by Germany of its intention to use the submarine against Great Britain, even although by its use neutrals should suffer as well as its enemy. The war entered upon a new phase, and it is because of the injuries to American life and property resulting from the conduct, or rather misconduct, of the submarine which brought about that state of war declared by the Congress and President of the United States to exist on the 6th day of April, 1917, between the United States and the Imperial German Government. There were, indeed, grave assaults upon American

1 Official text, American Journal of International Law, Special Supplement, July, 1915, pp. 266-267.

sovereignty within the United States and attacks upon American rights beyond the United States by other agencies than that of the submarine, but in comparison they were as aggravations. They added, it might be said, insult to injury; they were not of themselves, and they would not have been of themselves, a cause of war, although, even without the menace of the submarine, they would have created resentment and embittered the relations of the two countries. They will only be referred to as occasion requires and mentioned in passing, for the direct and impelling cause of the war arose through the use of the submarine, and its abuse.

CHAPTER IX

SUBMARINE WARFARE

In a note dated February 6, 1915, from the German Ambassador to the Secretary of State occurs the following paragraph:

It is known to the Imperial Government that Great Britain is on the point of shipping to France large forces of troops and quantities of implements of war. Germany will oppose this shipment with every war means at its command.'

What steps the Imperial German Government meant to take are stated in the proclamation of the 4th of February, 1915, in which it declared the waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland to be comprised within the seat of war and that neutral vessels entering such waters did so at their peril. The text of the proclamation as transmitted by the American Ambassador is thus worded:

1. The waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland including the whole English Channel are hereby declared to be war zone. On and after the 18th of February, 1915, every enemy merchant ship found in the said war zone will be destroyed without its being always possible to avert the dangers threatening the crews and passengers on that account.

2. Even neutral ships are exposed to danger in the war zone as in view of the misuse of neutral flags ordered on January 31 by the British Government and of the accidents of naval war, it cannot always be avoided to strike even neutral ships in attacks that are directed at enemy ships.

3. Northward navigation around the Shetland Islands, in the eastern waters of the North Sea and in a strip of not less than 30 miles width along the Netherlands coast, is in no danger.2

The proclamation was accompanied by a memorandum setting forth the misconduct of Great Britain as the justification for the declaration of the war zone.

Before taking up the provisions of the memorandum-a revela

1 Papers Relating to Maritime Danger Zones, p. 22.

2 Official text, American Journal of International Law, Special Supplement, July, 1915, pp. 83-84.

tion of national psychology-it is to be observed that, according to the proclamation, enemy merchant ships are to be destroyed without the necessity of saving the crew and passengers, and that neutral ships may be treated as enemy ships without saving the crew and passengers, for the twofold reason that British vessels had been ordered to use neutral flags, and that neutral vessels might be accidentally sunk because of a failure to visit and search them. In the memorandum accompanying the proclamation the illegal acts of the British Government are set forth in considerable detail, which may be thus summarized: That, (1) although Great Britain had ordered its naval forces to be guided by the Declaration of London, nevertheless the Declaration has been repudiated in its essential points; (2) the British Government has obliterated the distinction between absolute and conditional contraband and has placed upon the list of contraband articles which are not such under the Declaration of London or under the generally acknowledged rules of international law; (3) the British Government has violated the provision of the Declaration of Paris that the neutral flag covers enemy property; (4) the British Government has removed German subjects from neutral ships and made them prisoners of war and that such action was not justified by the provisions of the Declaration of London which Great Britain had acknowledged; (5) the British Government has declared the North Sea in its whole extent to be a seat of war, thus establishing a blockade of neutral coasts and ports contrary to the elementary principles of generally accepted international law. The memorandum declares that the purpose of these measures is to reduce Germany to famine by "intercepting legitimate neutral commerce by methods contrary to international law."

1

By way of comment, it may be said in this connection that, even supposing every British measure complained of to be illegal, it appears that the act was the act of Great Britain, that it was not the act of the neutral Powers and that they were in no way responsible for it. The necessity of charging the neutrals as participes criminis evidently appealed to the Imperial German authorities, for in the succeeding paragraph they are blamed for not having prevented Great Britain from doing what Germany itself and by force of arms. did not and apparently could not prevent Great Britain from doing. The language of this part of the memorandum should be quoted, as a

1 Official text, American Journal of International Law, Special Supplement, July, 1915, pp. 84-85.