The involutions of these astonishing sentences are worthy of the White Queen at her best, and it is quite a difficult exercise to arrive at their meaning. So far as I have been able to get at it, it is something like this:--Trade is free; you neutral merchants have a right to trade with Germany as with Great Britain; why don’t you? That would be the ‘practice of right.’ Germany has as much right to have you trade with her as Great Britain has; why do you deny her that right? You allow yourselves rather ‘to be influenced in the direction of conscious wilful restriction’ (in other words, you submit to having your cargoes seized by Great Britain). Of course you have the right to take no steps to protect your legitimate trade with Germany, and you take none (in other words, you refuse to resist the seizures of your cargoes by force); that is ‘the toleration of wrong.’ And so you cease to trade with Germany. But you have also a perfect right to cease trading in contraband (especially in arms) with Great Britain. Why don’t you? In her case you do not allow yourselves ‘to be influenced in the direction of conscious wilful restriction.’ To all of which the neutral merchants reply: When you begin to make an appreciable attack upon our trade with Great Britain and seize our cargoes, then you may be sure that we shall be influenced ‘in the direction of conscious wilful restriction’ of that trade also. But until that time arrives, we regret that we cannot take the risk of having to run the gauntlet of the British Fleet. In all seriousness these mysterious sentences mean no more than that Germany has lost such influence upon the sea as she ever had, and the neutral merchant has made a note of it and governs himself accordingly. Therefore the traffic in arms, in spite of her pathetic protests, must go on. _THE EVOLUTION OF THE DOCTRINES OF CONTRABAND OF WAR AND BLOCKADE_ So much for the Notes and the Answers, and I pass to the realm of international law.[12] In a recent debate in Parliament a noble Lord suggested that, in view of German disregard of it, we need not be ‘too fastidious’ in our application of its principles.[13] Even at the best of times, before war shook things to their foundations, the layman was disposed to look on it as a thing of shreds and patches. I am sure he would be surprised to hear that the principles are coherent, and that there is a thread of simple common-sense running through all the various doctrines. The fate of the Empire depends on the action which the Government takes on these important questions, its honour on this action being strictly in accordance with the law which the nations have agreed to. I make no apology, therefore, for treading once more the well-beaten track, for I take it that it is the business of the good citizen to know what he is talking about, and in order to help him I shall begin at the very beginning. And the beginning is War. _The Meaning of Neutrality_