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to the American Academy of Political and Social Science before alluded to.21 He there said:

A system under which a peaceful commercial state may not, when attacked, use her cash and her credit in the international markets to equip herself for defense, is intolerable and in every way pernicious.22

The warlike and aggressive nation chooses the moment of attack and is naturally fully equipped. If the nation assailed cannot replenish her supplies from outside she must always maintain them at the top notch of efficiency or she exposes herself to ruin.

If a nation, the moment she becomes, willingly or unwillingly, a belligerent, is helpless to augment her defensive equipment from outside; if she cannot, as this writer, if he may be allowed to quote himself, said recently in the Outlook, "import a pound of powder, a gallon of petrol, an ounce of copper, a gun, a sabre, a harness or a horse," then a wasteful system is forced on all nations under which they must always, without intermission or relaxation, maintain their defenses and warlike supplies on a war footing of the highest efficiency and amplitude.

One of the ripest scholars in international law was the late Professor Westlake, one of the founders and president of the Institute of International Law. Moreover, his was one of the clearest, strongest and fairest minds addressed to international questions. In 1870, when a former Count von Bernstorff, then German Ambassador at London, protested against the export of military supplies from England to France during the Franco-German War, Professor Westlake discussing the effect of forbidding such export, wrote:

One disadvantage of no ordinary magnitude I can plainly see. The manifest tendency of all rules, which interfere with a belligerent's power to recruit his resources in the markets of the world, is to give the victory in war to the belligerent who is best prepared at the outset; therefore, to make it necessary for states to be in a constant condition of preparedness for war; therefore, to make war more probable.23

In other words, as Professor Westlake has pointed out, it would tend strongly to force all nations to the extreme of militarism, a policy economically impoverishing and also most perilous to peace. The policy of open neutral markets for war supplies enables peaceful wealth to be transmuted and defense to be rapidly provided. Neutral markets would not be denied the aggressor by the restriction since he, knowing his plans, could largely provide for them before belligerency. As this writer lately observed:

21 Annals American Academy Political and Social Science, July, 1915. Publication No. 913; New York Herald, May 16, 1915.

22 Mr. Roosevelt in his Fear God and Take Your Own Part, p. 162, quotes this passage too kindly, attributing it to a great expert on international law."

23 Collated Papers, Westlake on Public International Law, p. 391.

Wars now are as sudden as conflagrations in their origin and the advantages of preparation and initiative are immense. Why make them vastly greater? Why tempt to secret preparation and sudden aggression by greatly reducing the resources and avails of the defending Power? Why aid the wolf and hamstring the lamb? Why by a change of law and policy aid and encourage the predatory policy and debilitate defence? Such change must stimulate war and discourage peace.

It is therefore opposed to the general interest of mankind, and the present rule is wiser and more pacific, tending to maintain the safety and stability of the nations whose main employments are in the peaceful

arts.

One of the most serious lessons of the present great European War is that all the successes and failures of modern war depend on "mechanical preponderance." Supplies of munitions have become even more important than levies of men. A few men with munitions can overcome far greater numbers animated by the greatest courage and the most patriotic devotion, but without military supplies.

Any rule which prevents a powerful and wealthy nation, when attacked, from buying where she will such munitions, is hostile to the interest and the existence of such peaceful states, and so to the general interest of mankind. As this writer has said:

*

Such a change of law and practice, * magnifies the power of the prepared and predatory states, and it hinders and prevents the defense of the pacific states. It helps the carnivorous states, and it hurts the herbivorous states, as it were. It sharpens the fangs of the wolf, constantly used in attack, and it takes away the antlers of the stag, as constantly used for defense alone. It tends to embroil the nations and to destroy their balance and repose. It is a pernicious, unwise, and immoral restraint, an injurious change in a just rule.24

It is submitted that our people have a right by all laws, international and municipal, to manufacture and freely sell to all comers munitions of war (except when restrained for special circumstances by special laws, as along our Southern border); that this right is founded not merely on the long-established customs of all nations, including our own, on the opinions of statesmen, judges and scholars and on the express agreement of the nations at the last Hague Conference, but it rests upon considerations of wise and necessary policy, salutary for all peaceful nations and

24 Navy League of the United States, Pamphlet 16.

hostile to predatory nations; that it ought therefore to be fully preserved and fully exercised for the welfare and safety of all nations seeking to avoid the extremes of militarism, and to devote themselves, without sacrifice of security, to pursuits of peace; that in adhering to, maintaining, and exercising such a right we pursue a policy hostile to no nation and vital to the safety of our own.

CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY.

BOARD OF EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL

OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

CHANDLER P. ANDERSON, New York, N. Y.
PHILIP MARSHALL BROWN, Princeton University.
CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY, Washington, D. C.
AMOS S. HERSHEY, Indiana University.
DAVID JAYNE HILL, Washington, D. C.

CHARLES CHENEY HYDE, Northwestern University.
ROBERT LANSING, Washington, D. C.

JOHN BASSETT MOORE, Columbia University.
JESSE S. REEVES, University of Michigan.
GEORGE G. WILSON, Harvard University.
THEODORE S. WOOLSEY, New Haven, Conn.

Editor in Chief

JAMES BROWN SCOTT, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D. C.

Secretary of the Board of Editors and Business Manager
GEORGE A. FINCH, 2 Jackson Place, Washington, D. C.

EDITORIAL COMMENT

THE CORRESPONDENCE REGARDING THE S. S. SUSSEX

The negotiations between the Governments of the United States and Germany regarding the Lusitania were believed to be approaching a conclusion when, on March 24, 1916, the unarmed French steamship Sussex, while crossing from Folkestone to Dieppe with 325 or more passengers, among them a number of American citizens, was torpedoed and sunk in the Channel.

On March 27th inquiry was made by the Secretary of State of the United States through the American Ambassador at Berlin if the Sussex was sunk by a submarine belonging to Germany or her allies, and in the next few days similar inquiries were made regarding four other vessels reported to have been sunk with American citizens on board, thus re

newing the whole question of the methods employed by Germany in submarine warfare.

The circumstances of this renewal of the submarine policy of Germany, after the tardy endeavor to reach an understanding with the United States regarding the Lusitania, were of a nature to aggravate the new offense. The evasive character of Germany's reply to the notes of inquiry in the face of the evident facts, was tempered in only a slight degree by a request for such evidence regarding the sinking of the Sussex as the United States might be able to furnish. This, happily, was abundant, precise, and overwhelming; and the German Government was unable to escape the conclusions that the Sussex had never been armed, that the vessel had been habitually used for the conveyance of passengers across the Channel, that the route followed was not the one taken by troop ships or supply ships, that about 80 of her passengers,—noncombatants of all ages and both sexes, including citizens of the United States, were killed or injured, and that the cause of the sinking was a torpedo of German manufacture sent without warning from a submarine.

In the note of April 18th, in which the evidence supporting these conclusions was furnished, the Secretary of State said:

If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government to prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the use of submarines without regard to what the Government of the United States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of international law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue. Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels, the Government of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether.

Such an attitude was not only justified by every consideration of international law and national duty, but was absolutely necessary to support any pretense that the rights of American citizens on the sea would henceforth be protected. The limit had been reached beyond which long-suffering could not go. In making this decision, therefore, there was no room for doubt or debate. Not to have made it would have been to abdicate the place of the United States among civilized nations. This is not an occasion for a general review of the diplomacy of the United States regarding the submarine policy of Germany, but it is

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