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Through good fortune, and taking chances of being sent to the bottom ourselves, we have saved the lives of many of these neutrals who might have perished. Yes, here we are mine-sweeping as a job, flying the white ensign of the British Navy; and yet we have found time to save life imperilled by the enemy. Sometimes I wonder what sly Fritz would have to say if he'd even saved a single neutral.
His opponents, however, most of the great Agrarians and National Liberals, the men behind Tirpitz, continue to work for a new submarine campaign in which all neutrals will be warned that their vessels will be sunk without notice if bound to or from the ports of Germany's enemies.
"Give a dog a bad name and hang him," says the proverb, and it was exemplified in the case of the Russians, who soon came to be regarded as a tertium quid between enemies of public order and suspicious neutrals. They were profoundly mistrusted.
Although Great Britain at that period was rarely slack in resorting to strong and arbitrary measures in dealing with neutrals, when her interests seemed to demand it, she was always exceedingly desirous to avoid causes of needless offence.
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: Having received an official communication of certain orders of the British Government against the maritime rights of neutrals, bearing date the 11th of November, 1807, I transmit them to Congress, as a further proof of the increasing dangers to our navigation and commerce, which led to the provident measure of the act of the present session laying an embargo on our own vessels,
Now we have confirmation of the intentions to rob and conquer us which, caused the individual entente nations to league together and conduct the war. The neutrals will now see the situation more clearly. For us it is war, literally to be or not to be a German nation. "I begin with England, our worst enemy."
France and England being at war, the Americans, as neutrals, secured most of the carrying trade, to the disgust of British merchants; and, declaring mutual blockade, both French and English cruisers began to capture American trading-ships, the English being especially outrageous in their doings.
Notification to be given to neutrals that freedom of navigation in all territorial waters is given to the naval and mercantile marines of the allied and associated powers, all questions of neutrality being waived. Twenty-one All naval and mercantile marine prisoners of war of the allied and associated powers in German hands to be returned without reciprocity.
As the war with Napoleon increased in intensity, however, the exigencies of the struggle induced the British cabinet to formulate and enforce against neutrals a restriction of trade which it confessed to be without sanction in law, and justified only upon the plea of necessary retaliation, imposed by the unwarrantable course of the French Emperor.
The methods used on both sides were alike brutal, and, when carried to their logical conclusion at the close of the year, crushed the neutrals between the upper and the nether millstone. But it is difficult to see what other alternative was open to an insular State that was all-powerful at sea and weak on land.
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