Note 31 — II THE NEUTRAL MERCHANT AND THE ‘FREEDOM OF THE SEA’

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.