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Violations of this pledge, further controversies, and increased friction with neutrals marked the next year or more, during which, however, sinkings did not greatly exceed the level of about 150,000 tons a month already attained.
"From this view of the origin of the Orders in Council, you will perceive that the object of our system was not to crush the trade of the continent, but to counteract an attempt to crush British trade; that we have endeavored to permit the continent to receive as large a portion of commerce as might be practicable through Great Britain, and that all our subsequent regulations, and every modification of the system, by new orders, or modes of granting or withholding licenses, have been calculated for the purpose of encouraging the trade of neutrals through Great Britain, whenever such encouragement might appear advantageous to the general interests of commerce and consistent with the public safety of the nation, the preservation of which is the primary object of all national councils, and the paramount duty of the Executive power."
Since the beginning of the war we Great Britain have lost over two million tons of shipping, and our Allies and the neutrals have lost almost as much. There is a certain shortage of food in Great Britain, and a shortage of many other things besides. Writing about the middle of February, an important German newspaper raised a shout of jubilation.
In every great movement there will be an immense class composed of neutrals, who either from interest or indifference remain unmoved. These people will invariably join the strongest side, and where danger threatens will evade it by any concessions. Such was the condition of large numbers in Rome. They had friends and relatives among the Christians whom they loved, and for whom they felt sympathy.
As each of those Governments had pledged its readiness to concur in renouncing a measure which reached its adversary through the incontestable rights of neutrals only, and as the measure had been assumed by each as a retaliation for an asserted acquiescence in the aggression of the other, it was reasonably expected that the occasion would have been seized by both for evincing the sincerity of their professions, and for restoring to the commerce of the United States its legitimate freedom.
Taken as a whole, the Teutonic literature has from the first been characterised by an uncontrollable bitterness and violent denunciation of the enemy and of neutrals; which has also surprised Americans, for we expected you to be more logical and self-contained than the French, instead of less so. Americans believe that the German people are a great people, capable of great and good things.
In one case rumours concerned a conscientious worker in a German factory, desirous of warning the French through Swiss friends, in other cases German scientists were reported to be influencing Francophile neutrals in order that they might warn the French. But an analysis of the propaganda reveals something more than its sensational nature.
The United States protested vigorously against this policy, but the force of its protest was weakened by the fact that during the Civil War the American Government had pursued substantially the same policy in regard to goods shipped by neutrals to Nassau, Havana, Matamoros, and other ports adjacent to the Confederacy.
What all the neutrals want, what every rational and far-sighted man in the belligerent countries wants, what the common sense of the whole world demands, is neither the "ascendancy" of Germany nor the "ascendancy" of Great Britain nor the "ascendancy" of any state or people or interest in the shipping of the world.
These were such flagrant outrages upon the rights of neutrals, that the United States government strongly remonstrated against them as unjust in principle and injurious in their practical effects.
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