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Updated: June 27, 2025
There can be little doubt that if the war goes on, and the neutral countries continue to pile up profits by selling food and war materials to the belligerents, many of them will find it convenient to lend some of their gains to their customers.
It undertook to exclude all neutral ships from a wide zone extending far out on the high seas, irrespective of their mission or the character of their cargo. It was an utter defiance of all law. The citizens of neutral countries have always had the right to travel on the merchant vessels of belligerents, subject, of course, to the risk of capture and detention.
None the less, the Conference of the three Finance Ministers in Paris marked a step in advance, and was subsequently followed up by a closer and more continuous contact. February 6, 1915, and the following three days. Finances are the nerve of warfare, and in a contest which can be decided only by the exhaustion of one of the belligerents they are, so to say, the central nerve system.
Dayton, from Paris, very sensibly objects to the policy of insisting that England and France shall annul their decision concerning the belligerents. Dayton considers such a demand to be, for various reasons, out of season. I am sure that Dayton is respected by Louis Napoleon and by Thouvenel on account of his sound sense and rectitude, although he parleys not French.
After driving McClellan from the Peninsula, he inflicted on Burnside and Pope defeats which would have been ruinous if the belligerents had been on equal terms; but twenty millions of men, with the absolute command of the sea and the rivers, eventually overpowered a third of their number.
Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur achivi! The achivi is the people, and the McClellanists are the reges. Mr. Seward, elated by victories, insinuates to foreign powers that they may stop the "recognition of belligerents." Oh imagination! Such things ought not even to be insinuated, as logic and common sense clearly show that the foreign cabinets cannot do it, and thus stultify themselves.
In other words, with the most scrupulous regard for the neutrality, she may admit both belligerents to bring their prizes into her waters; and of this neither belligerent can complain, since whatever favour is extended to its enemy is extended also to itself.
His campaign speeches prophesied the abandonment of American isolation in the interest of a League of Peace. His note of last December to the belligerents brought out the sinister secrecy of German peace terms and the comparative frankness of that of the Allies. His address to the Senate clearly enunciated the only programme on behalf of which America could intervene in European affairs.
He had nothing to do with the war, and believed that he was sailing in times of peace. Thomas Kirke, by whom he was taken prisoner, treated him as a pirate, illegally, and in spite of the Treaty of Suze. It is true that the Kirkes ignored the existence of this treaty when they sailed for America, but this was only an excuse for their attitude as belligerents.
When it was found that every American vessel was the possible spoil of any French or English cruiser or privateer that she might encounter; that our Government was impotent to protect its seamen; that neither our neutrality rights nor the neutrality of ports in which our vessels lay commanded the respect of the two great belligerents, the Yankee shipping merchants set about meeting the situation as best they might.
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