allowed the destruction of all the defenses which had been built for them?

Our professions have been fully on a par with our opportunities. On October 22, 1914, when our first note was sent to England, we said:

This government will insist that the rights and duties of the United States and its citizens in the present war be defined by the existing rules of international law.

On October 21, 1915, when our last note to England was sent, we said that we unhesitatingly accepted the championing of the rights of neutral nations.

The clearest of all expressions of our intent is in a part of our July 21 note to Germany regarding the Lusitania:

The government of the United States and the imperial German government are contending for the same great object, have long stood together in urging the very principles upon which the United States now so solemnly insists. They are both contending for the freedom of the seas. The government of the United States will continue to contend for that freedom, from whatever quarter violated, without compromise and at any cost.

Those were very brave words of profession. What of our performance? Apart from all passion, prejudice and hearsay, what are the facts of the case as set forth in the record for all to read?

At the opening of the war we asked all the belligerents to adopt the declaration of London as their code of naval warfare. The declaration of London resulted from a convention called at the behest of England, and is a clear codification of the immunities of neutral commerce in war time, compiled by an

international conference in the dis

passionate days of peace. The declaration states in its preamble that "the signatory powers are agreed that the rules contained in the following chapters correspond in substance with the generally recognized principles of international law." Germany and her allies accepted the declaration. England and her allies refused; or worse, "accepted" it "with modifications" which made it a mockery.

The British order in council of August 20, 1914, put the severest breach of the war into the defenses of neutral rights. Great Britain in that order practically destroyed the distinction between conditional contraband and absolute contraband. Both these classes were forbidden to move to Germany, and both placed under suspicion if moving to a neutral country adjacent to Germany. The contraband lists were then expanded so as to contain every article of import into Germany except cotton. The right of blockade was exercised without assuming any of its obligations.

Under the operation of this illegal order and its substitute of October 29, nothing but cotton was allowed to enter Germany, and half our shipments to neutrals-among other things, $15,000,000 of meat products were haled into the British prize court and subjected to loss and delay upon mere suspicion. We sent no protest against this violation of law-and of the very precedents Britain had established-until December 26, 1914. That protest was an academic one. In her answer to it, dated January 7 and February 10, 1915, Great Britain did not in the slightest degree meet our demands.

The purpose of the British measures was to starve Germany. The Germans in January, 1914, adopted measures for the conservation of grain and flour in the empire, in order to make supplies last until the next harvest. On February 18 the submarine warfare was instituted as a reprisal against Great Britain's starvation measures.

Great Britain then proposed a "blockade" as a retaliation against the submarine warfare. The block

ade, so called, was to prevent Germany from exporting anything and from receiving cotton-all other imports into Germany had long since been stopped by the August and October orders in council and the swollen British contraband lists.

Our government saw that these reprisals might be endless. So, for a second time, we invited the combatants back into the limits of law. We suggested that Germany give up her submarine warfare and that England allow food for noncombatant population to proceed to Germany. Again, Germany accepted our offer; again, Great Britain rejected it.

Which of the belligerents is manifestly determined to continue violation of neutral rights in the pursuit of its own ends?

In March, 1915, the blockade was declared, in the face of our protests. We protested again. On March 30, we pointed out that Britain was not in the Baltic and so did not hinder Swedish exports to German Baltic ports like Stettin. Therefore she had no right to interfere with our exports to Stettin. No iota of concession has ever been made to our representations of the illegality of the blockade. No note to England

ever showed that we meant busi

ness.

With Germany it was quite different. Our first occasion to speak to her was after the February submarine order. We told her that we should hold the German government to strict accountability for injury done to American vessels or citizens. When the Lusitania was torpedoed in early May we told Germany she should not expect us

to omit any word or act necessary to the performance of our sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment.

Our

Yet we never made any serious move to perform the sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens when England infringed upon them. March 30 protest against the blockade was answered evasively by England in July. Not until October 21 did we renew our protest to England, and it was again a literary affair. There was no suggestion of threat in it.

In the meantime the Lusitania matter was vigorously pursued. Time after time we were on the verge of a diplomatic break with Germany. We forced from her concession after concession, until at last, in February, 1916, she offered to apologize for sinking the Lusitania, to pay an indemnity, to sink no more unarmed liners without warning.

To make sure that German submarines would have no excuse for sinking merchantmen without warning, we have attempted to have England agree not to arm her merchant ships. We contended that any armament is superior to a submarine on

the surface, and the submarine cannot be expected to rise, visit and search unless trading vessels cease arming against the submarine. Mr. Lansing notified the entente powers:

I should add that my governmeent is impressed with the reasonableness of the argument that a merchant vessel carrying armament of any sort, in view of the character of the submarine warfare and the defensive weakness of the underseas craft, should be held to be an auxiliary cruiser, and so treated by a neutral as well as by a belligerent government, and is seriously considering instructing its officials accordingly.

Well, that seemed clear. Berlin, basing on these words of ours, issued a warning that after March 1 she would torpedo all armed liners. If they were really auxiliary cruisers, as we contended, they deserved no warning.

England objects to our procedure and threatens to withdraw her merchant marine from our service if we rule that armed liners are auxiliary cruisers. Suddenly Mr. Lansing reverses himself. He says that he cannot stand by his ruling without the consent of all belligerents: i. e., England. He and the President tell the German ambassador that to kill an American on an armed British liner will mean severance of diplomatic relations between this country and Germany. Congress becomes alarmed at the prospect of a war with Germany because of a German order which we apparently authorized her to make. So Congress threatens the President that it will pass a resolution warning Americans off armed ships.

So the matter stands to-day.

The question of whether merchant vessels have a right to arm for any purpose is a much mooted proposition in international law. Prior to

the declaration of this war it has been a rule with France, Germany and Spain that the arming of their merchantment in times of war made them auxiliary cruisers and vessels of their national navies. Consequently this is not a change of front by Germany. It is uncontradicted that the national laws of the belligerents are not in accord on this subject.

The argument of our government that international law cannot be changed during the progress of a war is of no force, in view of the previous attitude of this government in reference to the blockade. In our note of March 30, 1915, to Great Britain, it is stated:

The government of the United States is, of course, not oblivious to the great changes which have occurred in the conditions and means of naval warfare since the rules hitherto governing legal blockade were formulated. It might be ready to admit that the old form of "blockade," with its cordon of ships in the immediate offing of the blockaded ports, is no longer practicable in the face of an enemy possessing the means and opportunity to make an effective defense by the use of submarines, mines and aircraft.

In our note of March 5, 1915, to the British government, it is stated:

This government is fully alive to the possibility that the methods of modern naval warfare, particularly in the use of the submarines for both defensive and offensive operations, may make the means of maintaining a blockade a physical impossibility.

The attitude of our government thus seems to be that we can admit to Great Britain and France that the advent of submarines may cause a change in a fundamental proposition of international law, without asking Germany for its consent to this change, even though such happens to injure the cause of Germany.

Not only have we refused to take any firm stand against England, but we have refused to aid any one else in so doing. When in November, 1914, Great Britain mined the open North sea, the Scandinavian countries asked us to join them in a protest against this lawless act. We declined. We now decline to join Sweden in a protest against Brit

ain's interference with international mails on the high seas.

We insist on the very letter of the law when it is a question of our right to ship ammunition to the allies. But we insist on neither the letter nor the spirit of the law when it is a question of shipping food to the peaceful inhabitants of Germany. We protest that the "blockade" is unlawful, but we do nothing, and promise to do nothing about it. Thomas Jefferson tells us that there is no difference between our restraining shipments of food to Britain's enemy, and allowing Britain to restrain them unlawfully. alike are unneutral acts.

Both

Is all this fair? Is it American? Is it the performance of that evenhanded justice which befits a neutral?

Above all, have we kept the faith and fulfilled our trust, to hand down to posterity the full body of international law which civilization has intrusted to us?-February 29, 1916.

DUTY OF CONGRESS TO DECLARE REAL NEUTRALITY OF AMERICA

By JOHN W. BURGESS

To the Editor of The Evening Mail:

Sir-Replying to many questions concerning the submarine controversy between the governments of this country and Germany, I beg to say that, in my humble judgment, the administration has woven around itself such a web of fallacies in re

gard to the international duties of neutral governments toward belligerents that it has become practically helpless, and that Congress must take the matter in hand, extricate the administration from its self-im

posed bonds and set it upon the right track again.

The administration made its first fatal mistake when it declared to the people of this country and to the world that this government could not, in the course of a war, prohibit the manufacture and export of arms and munitions of war without committing a breach of neutrality and thus giving the belligerent which considered itself put in disadvantage thereby a just cause of war upon us.

There is no such principle of international law as this and there are plenty of precedents against this groundless claim. To hold that this government is unable lawfully to prohibit at any time the exportation of anything it chooses from its ports is to deny the sovereignty and independence of the nation which has vested it with the power to regulate commerce without placing any such limitation on the power.

By all the principles and practices of public law this is purely a domes

tic question. The British government itself, through the mouth of Mr. Gladstone, expressly declared it to be such in the year 1870. We put it on or take it off, said he, in accordance with the interests of our own people. I am unable to understánd, and have never been able to understand, how the government of the United States could make such a declaration. Even were it true, it would be the height of imprudence and indiscretion to make it. It certainly has proved itself to be such. It has apparently taken the only peaceable weapon out of our hands, with which we could have forced Great Britain to observe our rights of trade with other neutral countries and with her enemies in noncontraband articles, and has bound us hand and foot to the policy-the war policy-of Great Britain.

Happily, however, our constitution vests in Congress, not the President, the regulation of commerce.

It is Congress, and Congress alone, which can prohibit the exportation of munitions or anything else. It is Congress, therefore, which has the ultimate determination of the question whether the laying on of any such prohibition would be unneutral, and Congress, fortunately for us, has not yet committed itself to any such view as that announced by the administration.

Again, the administration has proclaimed that no nation can change a rule of international law during the course of a war. It might have said that no one nation can change a rule of international law at any time, although Great Britain has been announcing to the world almost every month during

the course of this war some change which she has claimed to make in the rules of international law obtaining at the beginning of the war, and this government has acquiesced in them, either tacitly or under protests so mild as to be ineffective in all really important matters. It is, however, a principle laid down in all text books of international law that a sovereign nation may withdraw itself justly and rightfully from the observance of any so-called rule of international law or even from the express obligations of a treaty when it regards them as threatening to its own life and vital interests.

But this high sounding declaration of the administration about the inviolability of the rules of international law during the course of a war has no application at all to the matter which the administration is endeavoring to make it cover, viz., a warning by this government to its

citizens not to travel on the armed merchantment of the belligerents. Pressed to its utmost limits, such warning is only an announcement to our citizens that the government will not be responsible for their safety on such ships, that it will not plunge this country into the hates and horrors of war in order to attempt to avenge the accidents to a handful of inconsiderate, reckless and unpatriotic men, who obstinately insist upon traveling on such ships.

Can any man with one grain of common sense left in his cranium call that the changing by this government of a rule of international law? Where is the rule of international law which requires any government to be responsible anywhere or at any time for the safety of its citizens? There is none and never