Mudi more senous were the difficulties over contraband with the Allies, and especially with Great Britain, which became the recognized agent for the Allied Powers. On 7 Aug. 1914, the American government proposed to both! groups of belligerents to adopt the definitions of contraband in the Declaration of London ;! with its classification into °absolute contrabandp! —arms, military equipment and warships ; 6con-I ditional contraband°— food, clothing and materials for transportation by land and sea ;; and unon-contraband°— raw cotton and other textiles, rubber, hide, ores, paper, soap, etc., and also articles to aid the sick and wounded. The Germans accepted this proposition and that is why they tried to apply the Declaration of London to the Frye case: The British reserved the right to make °ad ditions and modifications° to the list in the Declaration. By an Order in Council of 24 , Oct 1914 much more stringent rules were laid down as to the effect of the destination of ! neutral vessels. From time to time thereafter,! the British altered the lists to the growing dis advantage of Germany. Oil, being the fuel for motors and air ships, was early- made con traband, raw cotton (21 Aug. 1915), wool, tin, castor oil, paraffin wax, lubricants, hides and ammonia (11 March 1915) and many other arti cles. France, Russia and 'Italy followed in the same path. The Germans abandoned the Decla ration of London, and made up lists closely resembling the British (18 Apnl 1915).
Had the British lost control of the sea. it' would have gone hard with the American ex port trade under this severe doctrine of con traband; but England and France offered good cash markets for almost anything the Ameri cans had to sell, irrespective of contraband. The pinch came when the British began to: use nominal principles of contraband to cut off non-contraband trade to neutrals. On' 28 Dec. 1914 the American State Depart ment lodged a protest against the extension of contraband, which, however, carefully refrained from discussing increases in the number of articles held contraband; it confined itself to the stoppage of ships bound on what Ameri cans claimed were innocent voyages to neutrals. The British argument was that it was neces sary to retaliate against and undercut the Ger man practices; and that the statistics of ex port from the United States to Holland, Scan dinavian powers and Italy showed vast in creases, which could only be available for re export to Germany. They also justified the stoppage of food shipnients, when applied to a nation in arms like Germany, as necessary for the success of the policy of starving out Ger many.
The prohibition of cotton was a heavy blow to the American producer, though the argu ment that cotton was raw material for explo sives proved to be justified. The United State continued to insist that ordinary food ship ments were not contraband; that to seize ship ments and then reimburse the owners did not relieve Great Britain from responsibility to our government; and that there was no right to seize cargoes simply because they might even tually reach the enemy. Later on Great Britain treated money and securities as contraband, which, up to this time, had not been definitely looked on as subject to capture in neutral. ves
sels and was a striking addition to the ordinary principles of international law. There was, however, no redress from any of these seizures during the period of neutrality; and when the United States associated itself in 1917 with the Allied Powers, any claim for later adjustment or indemnity on the ground that the British system was contrary to international 13W arid the rights of the United States became exceed ingly unlikely.
The Submarine Question.—The question of blockade did not stand by itself ; in its extensions and applications it was adopted by Great Britain as a practical means of meeting a new and dangerous system of maritime war fare. For many years Atnerican inventors' followed by Europeans had been working on a practicable form of submarine boat, which could discharge a self-propelling torpedo under water. When the war broke out, Great Britain had a fleet of submarines, but her regular war ships disposed of the German eonnnerce and it was found impracticable to use the sub marines in attacks on the German coast, chiefly because of mines. Since the Germans were unable to keep commerce destroyers at sea, except in a few cases and for a brief period, they sought to employ their submarines agamst Allied commerce. The German war-zone order of 4 Feb. 1915 was a prelude to a systematic policy of hunting out belligerent merchantmen with submarines. The British held this to be an unauthorized and illegal form of warfare, and President Wilson later laid down the rule that any use of submarines as commerce de stroyers was contrary to international law. To this the German reply was that it was lawful to use a new maritime weapon, and that it was justified further as a retaliation for the illegal action 'by the British.
The British Order in Council (11 March 1915) on that subject professed to be founded on a German order of 26 January, by which a government agency was created to take en tire charge of and distribute corn, wheat and flour. The British declared that this system nationalized the German food supply and made legal a policy of intercepting all food cargoes. t Both the German and the English practices !seriously affected the export trade of the United States, and the controversy was further ag gravated by the seizure by the British govern ment of the ship Wilhelnana (9 Feb. 1915) on a voyage from New York to Hamburg. Much later it was proved that the WilheIntitte was not entitled to American register, but that question did not enter into the early proceed ings. To the principle of the right to stop all food supplies going to Germany by any cap 'tures necessary to that end, the British gov ernment adhered to the last. Other important cases of American vessels seized or detained, which became the subject of diplomatic con troversy, were the Neches (Tilly 1915) bound from Rotterdam to the United States; the Seguranca (April 1915) bound to Holland but not consigned to the Netherland Trust, and the Wico (March 1915) with oil for Sweden.. In all these cases the United States lodged a protest.