[29] That his enemies were at least ‘gentlemen’: an opinion expressed in consequence of the courteous treatment he received at Kirkwall on his journey home under safe-conduct. [30] The real issue _must_ be understood, or we shall find ourselves in a blind alley. The case _must_ be put as strongly as I have put it. The Washington correspondent of _The Times_, writing on July 19, full of anxious solicitude at the gravity of the situation, assuming us to misunderstand it, said: ‘It is all very well to trust to the President’s sense of fairness to prevent the closing of American sources of supply of munitions of war. We can surely do so with perfect safety.’ In the prevalence of this view of the case lies the gravest danger. Once admit that ‘fairness’ has in any shape or form anything to do with the matter, we open the flood-gates of Teuton eloquence, and, to use the conventional expression, the President must be a strong man to resist it. The question must be looked at from a higher standpoint; and it cannot be put more strongly or tersely than it was by Mr. Bryan in his letter to Mr. Stone in January: ‘It is the business of belligerent operations on the high seas, not the duty of a neutral, to prevent contraband from reaching the enemy.... If Germany and Austria-Hungary cannot import contraband from this country it is not because of that fact the duty of the United States to close its markets to the Allies.’ [31] _The Times_ correspondent from New York, on January 11, thus recorded an extract from Herr Dernburg’s speech at a Republican club in America. An enlightening and interesting commentary on the sincerity of the German diatribes against the United States for ‘helping Germany’s enemies’ is furnished by the fact that, during the rebellion in China in 1913, the rebels in the Southern Provinces obtained large supplies of arms from German firms in Shanghai. The German Government took no steps to prevent its subjects ‘helping the enemies’ of the Republic; on the contrary, it joined, so it was reported, in protesting against the Chinese Government exercising in self-defence its undoubted right of search and seizure of cargoes of arms which it knew were being smuggled into the Settlement in order to be handed over to the agents of the rebel leaders. Circumstances alter cases. [32] The paragraph of the Protest which is here criticised is set out at length on p. 81. [33] See p. 14. [34] In order not to confuse the argument, I refer here specifically only to the case of a neutral vendor and an enemy purchaser. Where the purchaser is also a neutral trader the legal position does not alter until the facts make the case one of ‘continuous voyage.’ [35] See p. 37. [36] See the quotation from the Protest, set out on p. 89.