The great friendliness of its tone cannot but be grateful to us; yet in this short sentence all the fallacies and misconceptions of the real nature of the neutral merchant’s position are concentrated. I have endeavoured to show that we have claimed to exercise a right which a fuller examination of admitted principles shows to be entirely warranted, that the only thing which stands in the way of the prompt admission of its legality is a popular conception of belligerent rights which unduly confines them within limits which have proved themselves to be impossible in modern conditions of war. Law once was the handmaid of commerce: she has long since become its mistress. But what, for want of a better name we call international law is still in a state of servitude. If its doctrines are to be treated as intelligible they must be considered as a continuous development springing from, and as the inevitable consequence of, the first cause, that two nations are at war. Then War becomes the key-note, subdominant, dominant, leading note, every note of the scale of action throughout the world, and the neutral merchant cannot pitch the tune as it may best suit his interests. Is then the justification for the new procedure of the Order in Council an ultimate reference to Might is Right? Have I, following far behind the United States Government in the strenuousness of the law as I have formulated it, found also a justification for the German who relies on Might without troubling to assert the Right? Surely not. I have striven to base the whole law and every part of the law as it affects the neutral merchant on the plain fact that all exercise of might against the enemy, so long as it comes within the laws of humanity and the rules of war, is justifiable, and the omission of it mere folly, and that it is not limited by considerations of time and space; and on this still plainer fact that the exercise of might against the enemy engenders ‘right’ against such neutral merchants as do, of their own free will and with eyes open, bring themselves within the scope of it. * * * * *