that they were only doing what the United States
itself had done when engaged in war and would do again if it ever
became a belligerent. Diplomacy failed to reconcile the differences,
and so nothing was settled.

Great Britain, as the chief offender in trampling roughshod over
American privileges of trade in war time, added to her manifold
transgressions, in August, 1916, by placing further curbs on neutral
trade with the Netherland Overseas Trust. Under a scheme to ration the
neutral countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Holland--that is,
restricting their imports to their estimated domestic needs--further
licenses granted to British exporters to trade with these countries
were discontinued. Here was a check on British exports for fear of the
surplus reaching Germany through neutral channels. A check on
American exports followed by Great Britain forbidding the Overseas
Trust to accept further consignments of certain commodities from the
United States for Holland, and by her refusal to grant letters of
assurance safeguarding the delivery of American shipments destined for
the three other countries. By these devices Great Britain controlled
supplies to these countries at the source. The effect was that certain
American consignments predestined for Holland were stopped altogether,
while the shipping companies trading between the United States and
Scandinavia could not take cargoes without British assurances of safe
discharge at their ports of destination. The British official view was
that excessive exports from Great Britain to these countries could not
very well be forbidden while permitting them from the United States
and other neutral sources. The veto had to be general to be effective.

One measure passed by Congress, providing for the creation of a
Shipping Board, empowered the Secretary of the Treasury to forbid
clearance to any vessel whose owner or agents refused to accept
consignments offered for transport abroad by an American citizen for
reasons other than lack of space or inadaptability of the vessel to
carry the cargo offered. Another measure, the Omnibus Revenue Law,
made similar provisions in a more drastic form, aiming specifically at
retaliation for the Allies' blacklist of German-American firms, and
the various blockades and embargoes in operation against American
products. It provided that the owners or agents of vessels affiliated
with a belligerent engaged in a war to which the United States wa