raid by the German fleet.
Commanding the Skager Rack and Cattegat as they did, with the Kiel
Canal connecting them, the Germans could bombard the cities on the
Norwegian coast or even land an army to invade the country. The three
little countries together do not have an army any larger than that of
Roumania, and it would have been out of the question for them to
declare war on Germany without seeing their whole territory overrun
and laid waste.

Nevertheless public opinion in Norway was so strong against Germany
that the Norwegian government, on November first, 1917 sent a vigorous
protest to Berlin, closing with these words:

"The Norwegian government will not again state its views, as it has
already done so on several occasions, as to the violation of the
principles of the freedom of the high seas incurred by the
proclamation of large tracts of the ocean as a war zone and by the
sinking of neutral merchant ships not carrying contraband.

"It has made a profound impression on the Norwegian people that not
only have German submarines continued to sink peaceful neutral
merchant ships, paying no attention to the fate of their crews, but
that even German warships adopted the same tactics. The Norwegian
government decided to send this note in order to bring to the
attention of the German government the impression these acts have made
upon the Norwegian people."

The two arguments that the Germans used in trying to justify
themselves for their inhuman methods with the submarine are: (1) that
on these ships which were sunk were supplies for the French and
British armies, the arrival of which would aid them in killing
Germans, and (2) that the English, by their blockade of Germany, were
doing something which was contrary to the laws of nations and starving
German women and children, and, therefore, since England was breaking
some rules of the war game, Germany had the right to go ahead and
break others.

The trade of the United States in selling war supplies to France and
England was a sore spot with Germany. They claimed that the United
States was unfair in selling to the Entente and not to them. Of
course, this was foolish, as has been pointed out, for the United
States was just as ready to sell to Germany as to the Allies, as was
shown by the two voyages of the Deutschland. If our government had
forbidden our people to sell war supplies at all, and if other neutral
countries had done the same thing, then the result w