the enemy forces and to prevent the supply to the enemy of materials essential for the making of munitions of war, while inflicting the minimum of injury and interference with neutral commerce. It was with this object that the Order in Council of the 29th of October was issued, under the provisions of which a far greater measure of immunity was conferred upon neutral commerce."

But the greater measure of immunity, upon closer examination, did not appear.

So far as direct shipment to Germany was concerned, the new Order provided that hostile and forbidden destination of food and other conditional contraband—that is, destination for enemy forcesshould be presumed in all cases allowed by the Declaration of London, and that the presumption should further be made,

"if the goods were consigned to or for an agent of the enemy state." (Paragraph II.)

This appeared in terms to be a material modification of the August ruling which had included among forbidden destinations not merely "an agent of the enemy state" but also "a merchant or other person under control of the authorities of the enemy state," which evidently meant anyone within the enemy's boundaries.

But unfortunately everyone within the enemy's boundaries was construed as an agent of the enemy state. That is, any consignee in Germany would have to prove before a British prize court that he

was not an agent of the state. He would have the impossible task of proving this before the prize courts of a country which officially identified the civil with the military population of Germany. In his February 10 note, Sir Edward Grey clearly states this identity as the British Government's reason for putting the burden of proof upon the captured instead of upon the captor:

"In the peculiar circumstances of the present struggle, where the forces of the enemy comprise so large a proportion of the population, and where there is so little evidence of shipments on private as distinguished from government account, it is most reasonable that the burden of proof should rest on the claimant."

In view of the small English army in the early months of the war it may have seemed to Sir Edward that the forces of the enemy comprised a large proportion of the population. But, adhering to the facts, there were not 6,000,000 Germans under arms when he wrote the February note. The population of Germany being nearly 70,000,000, the chances were eleven and one-half to one that foodstuffs for Germany were destined for the civil rather than the military population.

By its perversion of the law of evidence the October Order in Council was as effective as that of August 20 in preventing any direct trade in food with Germany. We know this better than we should know it if food shipments had been sent and held up in England. We know it because no one even dared

to send a shipment-until the case of the Wilhelmina in January, considered in the next chapter.

Having thus kept the ban on direct trade with Germany in conditional contraband, the Order then proceeded to make more difficult than ever the conduct of trade with Germany via neutrals and even the trade between America and neutrals themselves.

Paragraph 35 of the Declaration of London, if observed, provides that the German destination of conditional contraband, like food, shall not be the concern of England if the food is to be discharged in an intervening neutral port. The October Order replaced this with the following:

III. "Notwithstanding the provisions of Article 35 of said Declaration, conditional contraband shall be liable to capture on board a vessel bound for a neutral port if the goods are consigned to order,' or if the ship's papers do not show who is the consignee of the goods, or if they show a consignee of the goods in territory belonging to or occupied by the enemy."

IV. "In the cases covered by the preceding paragraph (III) it shall lie upon the owners of the goods to prove that their destination was innocent."

That is, goods moving from us to European neutrals were subject to capture if consigned to anyone in Germany, if the neutral consignee was not named, or if the shipment was "to order" of a neutral. If the goods were going to Germany the owner himself must prove that they were not for the German military. The proof, as we have seen, was impossible.

Therefore nothing was so shipped. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the lawful procedure is for England, the captor, to prove that the German destination of conditional contraband is a guilty one; that is, a destination to the military.

We now come to strictly neutral commerce, between America and Scandinavia, for example, to which England, according to Sir Edward Grey, had conferred "a far greater measure of immunity" through the October Order in Council. The reverse is true. Every burden put upon that commerce by the August Order remained, and there was added the prohibition of shipments "to order." Shipments "to order" were not formally prohibited but they were declared subject to capture, and in the ensuing prize court the owner must then prove their innocent destination. Even if a shipper felt certain of his ability to prove this, he would be mad to ship "to order," for this would mean a delay of his goods in England for several months, until they reached their place on the calendar of the prize court. Shipments "to order" ceased as soon as the British action was known.

The ruling against neutral shipments consigned "to order" disarranged the established method of financing our exports of foodstuffs. Ordinarily the exporter draws on a Swedish buyer, for example, and sells the draft to an American bank. The bank buys the draft on condition of being allowed to retain possession of the shipping documents until the purchaser pays. The goods are then forwarded, but are consigned, not to the Swedish buyer, but "to the

order" of the American bank. The bank sends the draft and the documents representing the goods to its Swedish correspondent, with instructions to deliver them to the buyer upon payment being made or assured. This general practice was prohibited by the British Order. In a large number of instances neutral buyers were put to the great inconvenience-for some an impossibility of providing money in New York before the goods were shipped.

A pertinent case, illustrating the operation of this part of the Order, was that of five steamers, under charter to an American line and containing American packing house products consigned to Scandinavia "to order." Three of the ships sailed from New York before the October Order was announced and the other two before it was known in this country. In spite of this the steamers were forced to call at Kirkwall and were then ordered to proceed to Hull and other British east coast ports, where their long period of detention began.

These steamers were the Alfred Nobel, the Björnstjerne Björnson, the Kim, the Fridland, and the Arkansas. They were Norwegian steamers which the Gans Steamship Company of New York had taken over on a long term charter. Months went by and, in spite of all protests from the Americans interested and from the State Department, the steamers and their cargoes lay in the British ports. They were held there, inactive, at a time when they might have been earning $12 per bale carrying cotton to Rotterdam. This would have been equivalent to net