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There are two parties to all trade. It is impossible to interrupt the trade without striking them both.

The economic war began in August, 1914. Soon after the outbreak of the military war England's sea power drove German naval vessels from the ocean. Since then, Germany's navy upon the high seas has been unable to do more than carry on a sort of guerrilla warfare beneath the waves. England, after driving German cruisers from the Atlantic, proceeded to inaugurate measures designed to withhold from Germany the importation of most commodities that come to her by sea. Germany retaliated by a submarine campaign that endangered not only neutral property but also neutral lives on vessels sailing to or from England.

Through this policy of action, retaliation and counter-retaliation the seas have become a battlefield where the commerce and citizens of neutral countries venture at peril of capture or sudden destruction.

This book, dealing with the effect of belligerent violations of neutral trade rights upon the agriculture, industries and commerce of the United States, could be written about any nation now at peace. Our wrongs and losses are merely types of what has been forced on other neutrals as well. The sum of these wrongs and losses is an argument demanding that nations which plan to work and trade be led to dismiss now, and for all time, the aggressions of those that plan to devastate and slay.

It happens that the United States is the only great power remaining neutral, the only force today that is

able to assert the rights of the world of peace. If we fail in the objects we seek, in the negotiations we carry on with both belligerents, the hope of all neutral nations is gone.

It is worth while briefly to review that body of neutral rights which we called international law and the successive measures by which those rights were abolished.

By common consent the seas are the public highways of nations; outside a zone three miles from shore they are not the domain of any one nation. They belong to peaceful commerce, not to belligerents who roam their surface seeking to destroy each other. As a remnant of marine barbarism, a belligerent has the right, if it has the power, to capture or drive from the ocean the merchant vessels of its foe. To the extent of its command over the sea, a belligerent may prevent contraband of war from reaching an enemy in any vessels; and, if capable of blockading the enemy's seacoast, may put a stop to all ocean commerce of the blockaded country. Under international law, these were the limits and conditions of interfering with commerce between neutrals and a country at war.

Only within much narrower limits, according to modern conceptions of international law, can a belligerent interfere with commerce between neutrals themselves. This commerce may be interrupted only when it consists of contraband of war-the actual tools of fighting-demonstrably in transit to enemy territory.

These are the rights of commerce on the seas. The rights of travel are as well understood. Though a belligerent may capture and in certain cases destroy a merchant vessel of the enemy, this may not be done without providing for the safety of crew and passengers. All passengers on neutral vessels, wherever bound, are immune from interference, excepting members of the armed forces of the enemy traveling home.

The laying of mines at sea is not permitted except for defensive purposes and then only in the territorial waters of the warring power that lays them.

With these main exceptions, which are burdensome enough, the sea must be free for the uses of commerce.

While this is international law as generally understood, it has not been in form to give nations a sense of security. The law is mainly in the form of precedents, such as proclamations of belligerents in previous wars, decisions of the prize courts of captors, and treaties between individual nations. Some of the precedents of different countries are conflicting. Therefore civilized powers have made several attempts to reduce the law of the sea to a form acceptable to all and accepted by all.

One such attempt resulted in the brief Declaration of Paris, adopted as a sequel to the peace negotiations following the Crimean War. More recently in the Hague Conferences efforts were made to form treaties which all nations were to sign. Most important for our present purposes is the Declaration of London. The British Government in 1909 called the London Conference to codify the law of the sea. All

the leading nations took part. The result was the Declaration of London, signed by all national representatives who attended the Conference.

It is true that not all the Hague Conference agreements, called Conventions, were accepted by all civilized nations. It is true that for reasons partly selfish and partly technical the Declaration of London was not ratified by many home governments and so did not become officially binding upon them. But it was signed by the representatives of all great powers. The Preliminary Provision reads:

"The Signatory Powers are agreed that the rules contained in the following Chapters correspond in substance with the generally recognized principles of international law."

Hence it is that neutrals felt that the Declaration of London was morally binding. Hence it is that nations at peace looked forward to seeing the judg ment of civilized nations as to the rights of neutrals upon the sea, expressed particularly in the Declaration of London, proclaimed as sea law by all belligerents at the outbreak of the war. We were disappointed.

The disregarding of legal limits was first in evidence when either Germany or England began laying floating mines upon the high seas, forbidden in a Hague Convention. Each took the alleged action of the other as the excuse for retaliation. Because of these floating mines in the North Sea, literally scores of vessels were lost, mostly belonging to the Scandi

navian countries or Holland. Three American vessels were included, the Greenbriar, Carib and Evelyn. Because of the danger of mines, ocean freights and war risk insurance rates became a heavy burden on shippers and buyers and, in the case of some commodities, became prohibitive of commerce. A pall of uncertainty and fear was thrown over the commercial world.

Unfortunately, as it would seem in the light of later events, America refused to join the North Sea neutral countries in a protest against the mining of the North Sea. Such action might have made more effective the protest of all neutrals against the later German War Zone about the British Isles.

Yet the effect of mines upon the high seas was small compared with the paralysis of trade effected by a practical abolition of the rights of neutrals to trade with Germany and a severe restriction of their right to trade with each other. England brought this about by certain amendments to international law through its Orders in Council. Germany, with her retaliatory submarine warfare, designed the same paralysis of English trade. That the object was not attained is due solely to the fact that German submarines are less omnipresent and less able to intercept all trade than British cruisers are.

The exact process of this abolition of the freedom of commerce is easy to follow.

At the very opening of the war the American Secretary of State, with a view to protecting neutral rights while allowing the belligerents all lawful free

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