This question cannot be treated with levity, and waved out of sight by a doubtful story. Even if Count Bismarck, adapting himself to the situation, and anxious to avoid additional controversy, had declared in conversation that he would take these arms on the banks of the Loire,[11] this is no excuse for us. Our rule of duty is not found in the courageous gayety of any foreign statesman, but in the Law of Nations, which we are bound to obey, not only for the sake of others, but for the sake of ourselves. All other nations may be silent; Count Bismarck may be taciturn; but we cannot afford to cry, “Hush!” The evil example must be corrected, and the more swiftly the better. On this simple statement of International Law, it is evident that there must be inquiry to see if through the misfeasance of officials our Government has not in some way failed to comply with its neutral duties. Subordinates in England are charged with allowing the escape of the Alabama. Have any subordinates among us played a similar part? It is of subordinates that I speak. Has the Government suffered through them? Has their misfeasance, their jobbery, their illicit dealing, compromised our country? Is there any ring about the Ordnance Bureau through which our neutral duties have been set at nought? Here I might stop without proceeding further. The question is too grave to be blinked out of sight; it must be met on the law and the facts. In this presentation I do not argue. The case requires a statement only. Beyond this I point to the honorable example which our country has set in times past. The equity with which we have discharged our neutral obligations has been the occasion of constant applause. Mr. Ward, the accomplished historian of the Law of Nations, and also of a treatise on the “Rights and Duties of Belligerent and Neutral Powers,” which Chancellor Kent says “exhausted all the law and learning applicable to the question,”[12] wrote in 1801, four years after Washington’s retirement:-- “Of the great trading nations, America is almost the only one that has shown consistency of principle. The firmness and thorough understanding of the Laws of Nations, which during this war [the French Revolution] she has displayed, must forever rank her high in the scale of enlightened communities.”[13] Another English writer, Sir Robert Phillimore, author of the comprehensive work on International Law, speaks of the conduct of the United States as, “under the most trying circumstances, marked not only by a perfect consistency, but by _preference for duty and right_ over interest and the expediency of the moment.”[14] Then again, in another place, the same English authority, after a summary of our practice and jurisprudence in seizing and condemning vessels captured in violation of neutrality, declares:-- “In these doctrines a severe, _but a just_, conception of the duties and rights of neutrality appears to be embodied.”[15]