But the maritime war, the British blockade and Black List and, finally, the participation of the United States have shaken the fabric thus laboriously raised. German ingenuity had overreached itself. For it was the insidious and cruel method of German land-grabbing in Guatemala which more than anything determined that republic to declare war, in order to escape from this ignominious economic dependence, this foreign control of a national industry. For it would be difficult to define a clear _casus belli_. But in the peculiar form of her declaration of war she told the world under which system she chose to live. For in April 1918 Guatemala announced that thenceforth she occupied the same position as the United States towards the European belligerents. The iniquity of North American intervention in Nicaragua and the implied menace to other states were insistently preached by Germany throughout Central America; yet, a month later, Nicaragua also declared war, proclaiming at the same time her solidarity with the United States and with the other belligerent American Republics. In Costa Rica the Germans represented the non-recognition by the United States of President Tinoco, who owed his position to a _coup d'état_, as a menacing insult to that Republic. Then, the same Germans intrigued to overthrow Tinoco on account of a Government proposal to tax coffee stored for future export. The upshot was that, in May 1918, Costa Rica declared war. Two months later Haiti took the same decisive step, and also Honduras. The significance of these additions to the belligerent ranks is perhaps hardly realised in Europe. Every one of them is a serious reverse in the economic war which Germany is waging, and every one makes it more difficult for Germans in America to keep up communication with Hamburg. Indeed, the tale of recent events reads like a mere series of German reverses, snatching away advantages already gained. In 1912, the treaty for the American purchase of the Danish Antilles was all but complete, when German influence in the Upper House of the Danish Parliament prevented ratification and thwarted, for the time, the plans of the United States. During the present war, the purchase was completed, Germany being impotent. Again, Germany, having acquired a strong position in Haiti, designed that the Haitian Republic should become a Teutonised base of activity, repudiating the Pax Americana and threatening the security of American sea-paths. The United States put out a hand, and this highly-coloured vision faded away. Cuba, Panamá, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Haiti, Honduras--all of these in turn struck at Germany through the declaration of war[3].