812 with England in order to
establish that principle. Half a century later, in the American Civil
War, we insisted that neutrals had certain duties which every
belligerent had a right to expect them to perform, and we forced Great
Britain in the settlement of the _Alabama_ Claims to pay us damages to
the extent of $15,500,000 for having failed to perform her neutral
obligations. We have thus been the leading champion of the rights and
duties of neutrals, and the principles for which we have contended have
been written into the modern law of nations. When two or three nations
are engaged in war and the rest of the world is neutral, there is
usually very little difficulty in enforcing neutral rights, but when a
majority of the great powers are at war, it is impossible for the
remaining great powers, much less for the smaller neutrals, to maintain
their rights. This was true in the Napoleonic wars, but at that time
the law of neutrality was in its infancy and had never been fully
recognized by the powers at war. The failure of neutrality in the
Great War was far more serious, for the rights of neutrals had been
clearly defined and universally recognized.

Notwithstanding the large German population in this country and the
propaganda which we now know that the German Government had
systematically carried on for years in our very midst, the invasion of
Belgium and the atrocities committed by the Germans soon arrayed
opinion on the side of the Allies. This was not a departure from
neutrality, for it should be remembered that neutrality is not an
attitude of mind, but a legal status. As long as our Government
fulfilled its obligations as defined by the law of nations, no charge
of a violation of neutrality could be justly made. To deny to the
citizens of a neutral country the right to express their moral
judgments would be to deny that the world can ever be governed by
public opinion. The effort of the German propagandists to draw a
distinction between so-called ethical and legal neutrality was
plausible, but without real force. While neutrality is based on the
general principle of impartiality, this principle has been embodied in
a fairly well-defined set of rules which may, and frequently do, in any
given war, work to the advantage of one belligerent and to the
disadvantage of the other. In the Great War this result was brought
about by the naval superiority of Great Britain. So far as our legal
obligations to