When the war broke out there was therefore no single aspect of maritime law which was quite so odious as the Declaration of London.  Great Britain realized that she could never win unless her fleet were permitted to keep contraband out of Germany and, if necessary, completely to blockade that country.  The two greatest conflicts of the nineteenth century were the European struggle with Napoleon and the American Civil War.  In both the blockade had been the decisive element, and that this great agency would similarly determine events in this even greater struggle was apparent.  What enraged the British public against any suggestion of the Declaration was that it practically deprived Great Britain of this indispensable means of weakening the enemy.  In this Declaration were drawn up lists of contraband, non-contraband, and conditional contraband, and all of these, in English eyes, worked to the advantage of Germany and against the advantage of Great Britain.  How absurd this classification was is evident from the fact that airplanes were not listed as absolute contraband of war.  Germany’s difficulty in getting copper was one of the causes of her collapse; yet the Declaration put copper for ever on the non-contraband list; had this new code been adopted, Germany could have imported enormous quantities from this country, instead of being compelled to reinforce her scanty supply by robbing housewives of their kitchen utensils, buildings of their hardware, and church steeples of their bells.  Germany’s constant scramble for rubber formed a diverting episode in the struggle; there are indeed few things so indispensable in modern warfare; yet the Declaration included rubber among the innocent articles and thus opened up to Germany the world’s supply.  But the most serious matter was that the Declaration would have prevented Great Britain from keeping foodstuffs out of the Fatherland.

When Mr. Bryan, therefore, blandly asked Great Britain to accept the Declaration as its code of maritime warfare, he was asking that country to accept a document which Great Britain, in peace time, had repudiated and which would, in all probability, have caused that country to lose the war.  The substance of this request was bad enough, but the language in which it was phrased made matters much worse.  It appears that only the intervention of Colonel House prevented the whole thing from becoming a tragedy.

From Edward M. House 115 East 53rd Street, New York City.  October 3, 1914.

     HIS EXCELLENCY,

     The American Ambassador, London, England.

     DEAR PAGE: 

. . .  I have just returned from Washington where I was with the President for nearly four days.  He is looking well and is well.  Sometimes his spirits droop, but then, again, he is his normal self.

I had the good fortune to be there at a time when the discussion of the Declaration of London had reached a critical stage.  Bryan