cepted law of nations. Our State Department on August 6, 1914, however, had proposed to the belligerents that this declaration be accepted. Whether they would do so or not was a matter of choice, and as France, Russia, and Great Britain suggested modifications, the proposal was withdrawn by us on October 22, 1914, and we fell back on our own treaties and the rules of International Law.* The question of what constitutes contraband was in the absence of any such general agreement a matter for discussion, though we could hardly claim as neutrals what we had denied to other neutrals when we ourselves had been belligerents.

In President Lincoln's Proclamations of June 13 and 24, 1865, he had listed as contraband "all articles from which ammunition is manufactured," and Secretary of State Hay, at the time of the Boxer troubles had included both copper and raw cotton as among such articles.† In spite of this, however, the United States refused to acquiesce in Great Britain's treatment

* American Journal of International Law, Special Supplement, July, 1915, pp. 7-8.

†Telegram to Mr. Rockhill, American commissioner, March 19, 1901. This whole question of contraband is thoroughly discussed by Scott in "A Survey of International Relations," pp. 74-105.

of copper shipments as contraband, and Secretary of State Bryan was compelled frankly to admit the awkwardness of the situation in his letter to Senator Stone of January 8, 1915.

"The United States has now under consideration the question of the right of a belligerent to include 'copper unwrought' in its list of absolute contraband instead of in its list of conditional contraband. As the Government of the United States has in the past placed all articles from which ammunition is manufactured' in its contraband list, and has declared copper to be among such materials, it necessarily finds some embarrassment in dealing with the subject.

"Moreover, there is no instance of the United States acquiescing in Great Britain's seizure of copper shipments. In every case in which it had been done vigorous representations have been made to the British Government, and the representatives of the United States have pressed for the release of the shipments." *

Neither in this matter of contraband nor in any other did we make the slightest concession to England. Her request that Canadian soldiers who were returning from Europe, and who, whether owing to wounds or otherwise, had been discharged as unfit for further service, be al

* Am. Jour. Inter. Law, Special Supplement, July, 1915, p. 258.

lowed to pass through the State of Maine on their way home from Saint John's, New Brunswick, was denied, although it might have been granted without impropriety.

In contrast with this scrupulous insistence on our rights with England, when the German Embassy had been guilty of a capital breach of international decorum, to say the least, the Secretary of State,* took no action at the time and referred to it only with "regret" in the first Lusitania note, to call attention to the fact that such a warning could not be considered as an excuse in the following terms:

"There was recently published in the newspapers of the United States, I regret to inform the Imperial German Government, a formal warning, purporting to come from the Imperial German Embassy at Washington, addressed to the people of the United States, and stating, in effect, that any citizen of the United States who exercised his right of free travel upon the seas would do so at his peril if his journey should take him within the zone of waters within which the Imperial German Navy was using submarines against the Commerce of Great Britain and France, notwithstanding the respectful

*It is generally assumed that this note was written by President Wilson.

but very earnest protest of his Government, the Government of the United States. I do not refer to this for the purpose of calling the attention of the Imperial German Government at this time* to the surprising irregularity of a communication from the Imperial German Embassy at Washington addressed to the people of the United States through the newspapers, but only for the purpose of pointing out that no warning that an unlawful and inhumane act will be committed can possibly be accepted as an excuse or palliation for that act or as an abatement of the responsibility for its commission." †

Furthermore, as early as January 20, 1915, the Secretary of State wrote to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations:

"The Department of Justice has recently apprehended at least four persons of German nationality, who, it is alleged, obtained American passports under pretense of being American citizens and for the purpose of returning to Germany without molestation by her enemies during the voyage. There are indications that a systematic plan had been devised to obtain American passports through fraud for the purpose of securing passage for German officers and reservists desiring to return to Germany.

* No action was taken subsequently.

† American Journal of International Law, Special Supplement, July, 1915, p. 132.

Such fraudulent use of passports by Germans themselves can have no other effect than to cast suspicion upon American passports in general.'

At the time this letter was written by our Secretary of State, evidence was in the possession of our Department of Justice which proved conclusively, as we shall see in a later chapter, that this wholesale counterfeiting which "cast suspicion on American passports in general," was being carried on in an office maintained by the German Embassy and directed by officers paid by them. Yet no action was taken and no protest made to Berlin. Instead the State Department merely passed new regulations requiring the attaching of a photograph, and expressed the hope that this would "prevent any further misuse of American passports." There is, therefore, absolutely no basis of fact for the accusation that in our interpretation of our rights as neutrals we favored England as against Germany; an excellent case could be made out to prove the contrary, and it is certainly true that toward Germany we * American Journal of International Law, Special Supplement, July, 1915, p. 262.