l solution of the problem than to make Chief Justice
Chase, of the United States Supreme Court, really the author of the
British "blockade" against Germany? The policy of the British Foreign
Office was to use the sea power of Great Britain to crush the enemy, but
to do it in a way that would not alienate American sympathy and American
support; clearly the one way in which both these ends could be attained
was to frame these war measures upon the pronouncements of American
prize courts. In a broad sense this is precisely what Sir Edward Grey
now proceeded to do. There was a difference, of course, which Great
Britain's enemies in the American Senate--such men as Senator Hoke
Smith, of Georgia, and Senator Thomas Walsh, of Montana--proceeded to
point out; but it was a difference of degree. Great Britain based her
blockade measures upon the American principle of "ultimate destination,"
but it was necessary considerably to extend that doctrine in order to
meet the necessities of the new situation. President Lincoln had applied
this principle to absolute contraband, such as powder, shells, rifles,
and other munitions of war. Great Britain now proceeded to apply it to
that nebulous class of commodities known as "conditional contraband,"
the chief of which was foodstuffs. If the United States, while a war was
pending, could evolve the idea of "ultimate destination" and apply it
to absolute contraband, could not Great Britain, while another war was
pending, carry it one degree further and make it include conditional
contraband? Thus reasoned the British Foreign Office. To this Mr.
Lansing replied that to stop foodstuffs on the way to Germany through a
neutral port was simply to blockade a neutral port, and that this was
something utterly without precedent. Seizing contraband is not an act of
war against the nation whose ships are seized; blockading a port is an
act of war; what right therefore had Great Britain to adopt measures
against Holland, Denmark, and Sweden which virtually amounted to a
blockade?

This is the reason why Great Britain, in the pronouncement of March 1,
1915, and the Order in Council of March 11, 1915, did not describe these
measures as a "blockade." President Wilson described his attack on
Mexico in 1914 as "measures short of war," and now someone referred to
the British restrictions on neutral commerce as "measures short of
blockade." The British sought another escape from their predicament by
justifying