Issues with Great Britain interposed to engage the Administration's attention, in the brief intervals when Germany's behavior was not doing so, to the exclusion of all other international controversies produced by the war. In endeavoring to balance the scales between the contending belligerents, the United States had to weigh judicially the fact that their offenses differed greatly in degree. Germany's crimes were the wanton slaughter of American and other neutral noncombatants, Great Britain's the wholesale infringements of American and neutral property rights. Protests menacing a rupture of relations had to be made in Germany's case; but those directed to Great Britain, though not less forceful in tone, could not equitably be accompanied by a hint of the same alternative. Arbitration by an international court was the final recourse on the British issues. Arbitration could not be resorted to, in the American view, for adjusting the issues with Germany. The Anglo-American trade dispute over freedom of maritime commerce by neutrals during a war occupied an interlude in the crisis with Germany. The dispatch of the third _Lusitania_ note of July 21, 1915, promised a breathing spell in the arduous diplomatic labors of the Administration, pending Germany's response. But a few days later the Administration became immersed in Great Britain's further defense of her blockade methods, contained in a group of three communications, one dated July 24, and two July 31, 1915, in answer to the American protests of March 31, July 14, and July 15, 1915. The main document, dated July 24, 1915, showed both Governments to be professing and insisting upon a strict adherence to the same principles of international law, while sharply disagreeing on the question whether measures taken by Great Britain conformed to those principles. The United States had objected to certain interferences with neutral trade Great Britain contemplated under her various Orders in Council. The legality of these orders the United States contested. Great Britain was notified by a caveat, sent July 14, 1915, that American rights assailed by these interferences with trade would be construed under accepted principles of international law. Hence prize-court proceedings based on British municipal legislation not in conformity with such principles would not be recognized as valid by the United States.