Page:Science and the Great War.djvu/41

Rh  'How, if a' will not stand?

'Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go; and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave.'

Considering the nature of this determined attack on the liberty of the world we had some reason to expect that the style and tone adopted towards us by official America would have been different. Thus McAdoo's order, put in force in the autumn of 1914, that the clearance papers of outward-bound vessels were to be kept secret until thirty days after departure, seemed a very gratuitous and unnecessary method of inviting international friction. And the President's last note is characterized by the most wonderful lack of humour. In it the task of championing the integrity of neutral rights is unhesitatingly assumed by the United States. How splendid! At last America will honour her own signature and protest, if nothing else, against the wrongs of Belgium! But, no, what the President appears to have had in mind was the wealth of the Chicago packers!

Representative Mann, the leader of the Opposition in the Lower House in Washington, is quoted as admitting 'that certainly America was prosperous because of the war, but we would be more prosperous if we were allowed to trade where and with whom we would'. Therefore he foreshadows a political attack on England. Our policy has led not to official friendship or even official tolerance; it has invited the attacks of vampires who would suck the last drop of advantage out of the death-struggle of Europe.

Mr. Dillon is quoted in The Times of December 1 as saying in the House of Commons that, if cotton had been made contraband earlier, such action 'would have embroiled this country with America and the war would