[25] Letters of Historicus, pp. 165, 168.
[26] Letters of Historicus, p. 132:—The following paragraph follows the quotation cited in the text:—
‘The true doctrine is enforced with singular clearness and force by President Pierce, in his Message of December, 1854:—
“The laws of the United States do not forbid their citizens to sell to either of the belligerent Powers articles contraband of war, or to take munitions of war or soldiers on board their private ships for transportation; and although in so doing the individual citizen exposes his property to some of the hazards of war, his acts do not involve any breach of national neutrality, nor of themselves implicate the Government. Thus, during the progress of the present war in Europe, our citizens have, without national responsibility, therefore, sold gunpowder and arms to all buyers, regardless of the destination of those articles. Our merchantmen have been, and still continue to be, largely employed by Great Britain and France in transporting troops, provisions, and munitions of war, to the principal seat of military operations, and in bringing home the sick and wounded soldiers; but such use of our mercantile marine is not interdicted, either by international or by our municipal law, and, therefore, does not compromise our neutral relations with Russia.”’
[27] See p. 13.
[28] The financial stability of the smaller States holds a very prominent position in the argument of The Great Illusion.
[29] That his enemies were at least ‘gentlemen’: an opinion expressed in consequence of the courteous treatment he received at Kirkwall on his journey home under safe-conduct.
[30] The real issue must be understood, or we shall find ourselves in a blind alley. The case must be put as strongly as I have put it. The Washington correspondent of The Times, writing on July 19, full of anxious solicitude at the gravity of the situation, assuming us to misunderstand it, said: ‘It is all very well to trust to the President’s sense of fairness to prevent the closing of American sources of supply of munitions of war. We can surely do so with perfect safety.’ In the prevalence of this view of the case lies the gravest danger. Once admit that ‘fairness’ has in any shape or form anything to do with the matter, we open the flood-gates of Teuton eloquence, and, to use the conventional expression, the President must be a strong man to resist it. The question must be looked at from a higher standpoint; and it cannot be put more strongly or tersely than it was by Mr. Bryan in his letter to Mr. Stone in January: ‘It is the business of belligerent operations on the high seas, not the duty of a neutral, to prevent contraband from reaching the enemy.... If Germany and Austria-Hungary cannot 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.’
[31] The Times correspondent from New York, on January 11, thus recorded an extract from Herr Dernburg’s speech at a Republican club in America.
An enlightening and interesting commentary on the sincerity of the German diatribes against the United States for ‘helping Germany’s enemies’ is furnished by the fact that, during the rebellion in China in 1913, the rebels in the Southern Provinces obtained large supplies of arms from German firms in Shanghai. The German Government took no steps to prevent its subjects ‘helping the enemies’ of the Republic; on the contrary, it joined, so it was reported, in protesting against the Chinese Government exercising in self-defence its undoubted right of search and seizure of cargoes of arms which it knew were being smuggled into the Settlement in order to be handed over to the agents of the rebel leaders. Circumstances alter cases.