It surely cannot be too clearly recognised that Germany’s successive violations of the laws of war have brought the whole fabric down like a house of cards. When the Germans began to sink neutral merchantmen by way of vindicating what they were pleased to call the freedom of the seas, England was forced to jettison much of that famous Declaration of London, which seemed at one time to be as complete an expression of a consensus of international opinion as the world of jurists had yet attained. We have gone further, as we were bound to do, and have so extended the theory of blockade as to qualify very considerably the Declaration of Paris. The Foreign Office has supported these departures by the logic of reprisals--in my humble opinion very properly--but “reprisals” are, juridically speaking, a kind of counsel of despair. In books on international law they receive a kind of shame-faced recognition; their place is always at the end and the chapter devoted to them is often brief and generally apologetic. For the jurist knows that they partake of the character of law about as much as trial by battle. The voice of America is a voice crying in the wilderness; both groups of belligerents deny the American contention that peace, and with it the commerce of neutrals, should govern the construction of the rules of war. How can it be otherwise in a struggle for existence? I very much doubt whether, for a long time to come, international lawyers can afford to assume, as they have been in the habit of doing, that peace, not war, is the normal conditions of nations. A nation which like Germany will not admit your major premises will certainly reject your conclusions when it suits her convenience. The dilemma therefore is inexorable: we can readmit Germany to international society and lower our standard of International Law to her level, or we can exclude her and raise it. There is no third course.