the most favorable opportunity was lost. Remittances
from Germany did not arrive until long afterwards, and
then only to a very modest extent. Consequently the
whole economic scheme was considerably narrowed and
hampered from the beginning.

The second assumption, that the United States, in con-
sideration of her great commercial connections with Ger-
many, would maintain her rights as a neutral State to
unrestricted sea trade within the provisions of interna-
tional law, proved to be unfounded. The United States,
at any rate according to the view of some very distin-
guished Americans, as, for example, in the journal New
Republic, violated the spirit of neutrality when she al-
lowed commerce of the neutrals one with another to be
strangled by England. To the interest in traffic with the
neutral States, and indirectly with Germany, was opposed
the interest in the still greater trade with our enemies,
to which was added, and indeed to a rapidly increasing
extent, the supply of war material. The United States
did not realize the extent of their economic power in
respect of England, as the inexperienced, newly-ap-
pointed Democratic Government had no statistics to
which to refer, and from a military point of view were
defenceless for want of an army or fleet. So England
was able, slowly and cautiously, but surely, to cut off the
Central Powers from the American market. In view of
this state of things the important thing was to pass all
shipments off as neutral. The exporter had to be an
American or a subject of neutral Europe. The financing
had also to be European, at any rate outwardly. The
destination could only be a port in Holland, Scandinavia,
Spain or--at that time--Italy. Consequently it was not
long before the consignments could no longer be made
through the New York representative of the Hamburg-
Amerika line, but were taken in hand by Herr Albert

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