Germans and especially to save a big Hamburg firm from disaster. The active entry of Brazil into the war has in great part superseded the action of the statutory list in that country: for Brazil has taken decisive measures towards Germans within her borders. All enemy enterprises are in the hands of government receivers. All contracts for purchase of coffee or other Brazilian products by Germans are null and void; and in cases where payments had been made by the German purchasers, all such payments must be handed over to the official receivers. The United States also publishes a Black List of firms with whom her citizens are forbidden to deal. Evasion of allied watchfulness becomes more and more difficult: yet ingenious, and sometimes successful efforts are made to find loopholes in the wall of the blockade. There are now in Buenos Aires nearly 150 Turkish firms--Levantines of every denomination, Mohammedan, Christian, Jewish. Some of these are long-established and well-reputed houses. But most of them have sprung up during the war. Some of them, starting with exiguous capital, have made large fortunes in a year or two of trade. This has been done by supplying to German black-listed firms goods imported direct from Manchester and Bradford. Through the close co-operation of the German bank with German trade, these Syrians and Armenians are enabled, by the Germans standing behind them, to pay cash against documents in place of the usual sixty to ninety days' credit, and thus have a great advantage over the British or allied trader. The British authorities now permit export only to certain registered Turkish firms. The restriction does something to limit the abuse of this kind of trading. Besides these ingenious efforts to keep open communication with Europe, there is another side of the commercial war. In the neutral states of Latin America the German business man is as ubiquitous and energetic as ever, nay more so as he has greater difficulties to contend with. So far as he can, he sells from accumulated stocks of German goods, for the German importing houses before the war had gathered great stocks, especially in Chile. Where this resource fails, he repairs his stock by buying anywhere. Up to April 1917 he bought largely in New York. Now he buys where he can and what he can--American goods, French goods, British goods--anything to hold the market until the ocean shall be free once more to German keels carrying German goods.