NEW--TRALITY

United States neutrality is today a very different thing from the policy we tried to maintain in 1914. It rests on a new foundation, and requires new methods to keep it in running order. In many ways it is better kind of neutrality, but its success depends on our learning how to handle the new problems that it will raise, problems for which 1914 can give no precedent or provide no experience. America is like a child with a brand new shiny tool, who has yet to prove his ability to use it.

Practically all the troubles that arose over our neutrality before the last war stemmed from one of two things: German submarine attacks on our shipping, and English interference with the freedom of the seas. In principle we denied at that time the legality of the whole British blockade. We insisted on our rights as neutral to trade with both sides as much as or little as we pleased, an insistence that naturally ran headlong into British, determination to starve out Germany. This policy could not succeed unless backed by the force, and as a result the British gradually wore it away, using each incident to chip off a little more of the foundation on which we built the structure, until the whole thing collapsed. German attacks capped the climax, and it was hard for the U.S. to become enraged at British economic pressure while Germany was taking, America lives. In addition, the gates of the U.S. money market had been lowered, and American capital flowed into England and France. Under all erosive influences, our neutrality was fast weathered away.

Today the picture is vastly altered. U.S. ships cannot enter the war zone, so that no longer do our diplomats have to butt their heads against an unyielding British blockade, nor fear torpedo attacks by a sullen Germany. Of course this meant giving up profitable trade, and here lies the danger, for powerful shipping interests may try to circumvent the law, and a doubtfully neutral Administration can help them do it. Our other new neutrality tool is the Johnson Act, which forbids loans to nations that have defaulted in former war loans, meaning England and France. This is a potent weapon, but again must be guarded jealously against forces both abroad and must be guarded jealously against forces both abroad and at home that would like to blunt it. Britain especially, who needs capital to carry on her enormously expensive blockade, may well be appalled at the sight of a creditor nation like the U.S. accumulating more credit all the time, and putting it out of her reach by the Johnson Act. Just how these possible threats to our neutrality will materialize is still uncertain, but they should be a warning to the government to keep its diplomatic powder dry.