In the slanderous clipping sent me, it is charged that this country is pretending neutrality when in fact, by not forbidding the shipment of arms and munitions of war, we are violating the law of nations governing neutrals.
This slander against our country has been repeated over and over again by thoughtless men and by partisan newspapers. It originated across the sea with those who well know the falsity and hypocrisy of the charge and who have passed it on to a well-meaning and sympathetic, but over-zealous and mistaken, people and press for the purpose of accomplishing a selfish end. This slander has been fostered and given currency also by some designing men and by some designing newspapers who appear to have forgotten their duty to their country and who appear to be concerned more with the effect that the present war has upon some foreign country than with its effect upon our own country.
The laws of nations are the rules which determine the conduct of the general body of civilized states in their dealings with one another. Its doctrines are founded on legal, not simply on ethical ideas; since they purport to be rules of justice, not counsels of perfection, the foreign policies of a country are not founded upon feelings of moral rightness but upon precedents, treaties, and opinions of those recognized as authority.
International law is a part of the law of the land and, since the interest of the United States with foreign nations and the policies in regard to them are placed by the Constitution in the hands of the federal government, its decisions upon these subjects are obligatory upon every citizen.
The above are some of the elementary principles of international law. These nations which are protected by these provisions also are subject to corresponding duties and obligations. Those which invoke the law must obey the law. International law, being the joint product of civilized nations, adopted and made by the common and joint consent of nations, of course, can not be repealed or amended by any one nation but only by the mutual consent of all countries. If it were otherwise, each country would make its own international law to be amended or repealed at the will of such country and thus would have no effect either upon itself or any other nation.
Now we have an international law and its provisions are well defined and recognized. Now is there any provision in this law which forbids or makes unlawful the shipment of
arms by citizens of a neutral country to a belligerent country or which gives a neutral country the privilege to forbid such shipment? No. Then why not? Because it has been the law since civilization began for citizens of neutral countries to engage in commerce as they chose and at their risk, subject only to the right of belligerents to intercept and seize contraband of war in transit to a belligerent enemy. In all the wars in which this country has been engaged, the citizens of the countries now warring in Europe have recognized and countenanced this practice of selling arms to our enemy while we were at war and we have neither protested nor complained against it, fully recognizing that the citizens of such countries were entirely within their rights, that we had no just cause for complaint. We recognized that it would have been a violation of international law if at that time the said countries had prohibited the shipment of munitions of war with a purpose clearly manifested to aid or benefit either ourselves or our enemy.
For scores of years those countries now engaged in the European war have been arming themselves and fortifying their country with the positive knowledge that sooner or later a conflict of the kind now raging would occur. England, France, and Russia did and so did Germany and Austria. They also well knew that, under the provisions of international law, the shipment of arms and munitions of war was permissible subject to the interception and seizure of them by belligerent enemies. Long before this war, which they knew was inevitable, started Germany and Austria had the opportunity and the influence to have changed the international law and there is no doubt that the United States would have joined them in this amendment. Far-seeing as its statesmen are and having well in mind the provisions of international law, yet, notwithstanding, Germany entered this war with the law as it now stands.
If international law had, at the beginning of the present war, prohibited the shipment of munitions of war from this country and the United States nevertheless had violated the rule and permitted the shipment of munitions of war, then it could be charged and convicted of a violation of the law and a breach of neutrality by the country adversely affected
by such violation. Why? Because we would then have been guilty of an affirmative act unlawfully changing the established law to the injury and prejudice of a country with whom we are at peace without its consent. Such act would have been a breach of neutrality because, international law having been established by mutual consent, we would have no right to repeal and amend that law without the consent of those adversely affected by the change.