The House, in passing the measure, made it more drastic by inserting an amendment prohibiting the further manufacturing of alcoholic liquors during the war, and authorizing the President, in his discretion, to commandeer existing stocks of distilled spirits. The President was unwilling to countenance such a drastic curb on the liquor industry, and the Senate Agriculture Committee, on his recommendation, restricted the veto on the manufacture of liquor to whisky, rum, gin, and brandy, removing the ban on light wines and beer, but retained the clause empowering him to acquire all distilled spirits in bond, as above named, should the national exigency call for such action. The Senate approved the bill as thus amended.
The antiwhisky provisions, which were due to the Prohibitionists, were denounced as unconstitutional. Nevertheless, the House vote on the bill was 365 to 5. The Senate vote was as emphatic, being 81 to 6.
A more direct contest with the President over his war powers was waged around the Espionage Bill. Though primarily framed to make spying and its attendant acts treasonable offenses punishable by death or heavy fines and imprisonment, it was projected more as a measure aimed at news censorship, on account of a section forbidding the pursuit and publication of information on the war. A violent and persistent agitation by the press of the country against such a restriction, echoed in both Houses in the course of lengthy debates, finally won the day. All control of the publication of war news was denied the Administration, despite the President's appeals to Congress for the provision of a press censorship. The newspapers demanded to be placed on their good behavior and scouted the idea that any law was needed to restrain them from publishing information likely to give aid and comfort to the enemy. Thwarted by Congress, the President had to be content to forego the authority he sought for placing a veto on war news except such as the Government permitted to be disclosed. He was reminded that when relations were broken with Germany and war neared, the press readily responded to the Administration's request—made in the absence of legal authority to establish a press censorship—to suppress the publication and transmission of information concerning the movements of American merchant craft, then about to be armed against German submarines. Since then announcements of arrivals at and sailings from American ports of all vessels were excluded from the newspapers.
The Espionage Bill had an inherent importance of its own, but its purposes had been so overshadowed by the prominence given to the censorship provision that they were lost sight of. It empowered the President to place an embargo on exports when public safety and welfare so required; provided for the censoring of mails and the exclusion of matter therefrom deemed to be seditious and anarchistic, and making its transmission punishable by heavy fines; the punishment of espionage; the wrongful use of military information; circulation of false reports designed to interfere with military operations; attempts to cause disaffection in the army and navy, or obstruction of recruiting; the control of merchant vessels on American waters; the seizure of arms and ammunition and prohibition of their exportation under certain conditions; the penalizing of conspiracies designed to harm American foreign relations; punishment for the destruction of property arising from a state of war; and increased restrictions on the issue of passports.
The measure acquired a conspicuous place in the war legislation by reason of the embargo provision. It appeared an inconsequential clause, judging from the little public attention paid to it; but the President saw a weapon in it that might have more effect in bringing Germany to her knees than Great Britain's blockade of her coasts, stringent as the latter had proved. It developed into a measure for instituting a blockade of Germany from American ports. It had long been known that the maritime European neutrals—Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—had flourished enormously by supplying Germany with various necessities—mainly obtained from the United States on the pretense that the huge increase of their American trade was due to enlarged domestic consumption, the same being due, in its turn, to the cutting off of needed supplies from other countries by the British blockade and the war situation on land. The design of the embargo provision was to stop these neutrals from receiving any American goods until it was clearly established, before leaving an American port, that they would not be transhipped to Germany. With this object the President was authorized to stop any or all exports to any or all countries in his discretion. This was a sweeping blanket instruction from Congress aimed at placing a barrier on transhipment trade with Germany from the port of departure. "Satisfy us that your goods are not going to Germany via neutral countries," the Government told exporters, "and your ships can get clearance. Otherwise they cannot." The embargo was even aimed at neutral countries that permitted their own goods to cross the German frontier by threatening to cut those countries off from any trade with the United States. But it was not clear how it could be made effective in this respect. Its chief aim was rather to make it impossible for the neutrals to replenish with American goods such of their domestic stocks which had been depleted by exports to German customers.
The subject raised a stormy debate during a secret session of the Senate. Senator Townsend, in an assault upon the embargo proposal, took the view that the Administration wished to use the embargo to force small neutral nations into the war as American allies.
"I am not willing," he said, "to vote for the very German methods we have condemned. I understand that this provision is not to be used for the protection of American produce or to protect the American supply, but to coerce neutral countries. We stood for neutrality, and urged the nations of the world to support neutrality. Now that we are engaged in war we ought not to coerce other nations and force them to enter the struggle."
The Administration found a supporter from an unexpected quarter—from Senator Stone, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who opposed the war and all its works. He thus defended the embargo:
"If we were still neutral I should join readily in opposing such legislation. But we are now belligerent. If it is true that any neutral country, contiguous to Germany, which is now our enemy, is supplying Germany with food, munitions, and other materials out of its own productions, and then comes to the United States to purchase here and transport there a sufficient quantity to replenish its supply, doesn't the senator think the United States is within its belligerent rights to say that the United States doesn't consent?"
"It is true we are no longer neutral," insisted Mr. Townsend, "and we don't intend that any other country shall remain neutral. We are in trouble and want everybody else to be in trouble if we are strong enough to put them in."