As for the English blockade, England was doing no more to Germany than Germany or any other country would have done to England if the English navy had not been so strong.  In our own Civil War the North kept up a like blockade of the South and no nation protested against it, for it was recognized as an entirely legal act.  In the Franco-Prussian war of 1871, the Germans were blockading the city of Paris and the country around it.  The Frenchmen tried to send their women and children outside the lines to be fed.  The Germans drove them back at the point of the bayonet, and told them that they might “fry in their own fat.”  According to the laws of war they were perfectly justified in what they did.  Then, too, the English blockade, which stopped ships which were found to be loaded with supplies for Germany and took them peaceably to an English port, where it was decided how much the owners should be paid for the cargoes, was a very different matter from the brutal drowning of helpless men, women, and children by the German submarines.  In one case, owners of the goods were caused a great deal of annoyance and in some instances did not get their money promptly.  On the other side, there was murder of the most fiendish kind, an act of war against neutral states.

Plots and Threats Against the United States

[Illustration:  American Grain Set on Fire by German Agents]

Let us turn now to the second cause for grievance that the United States had against Germany.  At a time when American citizens who sympathized with Germany were subscribing millions of dollars for the relief of the German wounded, it is strongly suspected that this was the very money, which, collected by the German government’s own agents, was being spent in plots involving the destroying of the property of some American citizens and the death of others.  The German ambassador and his helpers were hiring men to blow up American factories, to destroy railroad bridges, and to kill Americans who were making war supplies for the armies of Europe.  Factory after factory was blown up with considerable loss of life.  Bombs, with clock work attachment to explode them at a certain time, were found on ships sailing for Europe.  Money was poured out in great quantities to influence members of the United States Congress to vote against the shipment of war supplies to France and England.  Revolts paid for by German money were organized in Mexico and the Islands of the West Indies.  For a long time there had been a series of stories and newspaper and magazine articles trying to prove to the American people that Japan was planning to make war on us.  The same sort of stories appeared in Japan, persuading the Japanese that they were in danger of being attacked by the United States.  It now appears that the great part of these stories were started by the Germans, who hoped to get us into a war with Japan and profit by the ill will which must follow between the two countries.