Effrontery

“ In the face of these indisputable facts, we hear the hysterical cries of the alarmists who scent behind every rock or bush a foreign foe standing with dagger in hand ready to spring upon us, and to rob us of our valuables, if not to kill us outright—or at least making faces at us and insulting the Stars and Stripes. ”

“ The engaging and payment of mercenaries by England, the purchase of horses, arms, and stores, the hire of transport, the interference with commerce—everything in which sharp dealing could be employed by one ally to get the better of the other was taken advantage of to the utmost. ”

“ I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies—from an army whose business it has been to seek the adversary, and beat him when found—where policy has been attack, and not defence. ”

“ Our enemy is the manufacturer who fills his factory with wage slaves; our enemy is the state, whether monarchical, oligarchical, or democratic, with its officials and staff officers, magistrates, and police spies. ”

“ The close espionage under which these poor creatures dwelt, engendered in them a cunning and artifice, which to them seemed only a fair and right attempt on their part, to cope with power and cruelty constantly in force against them. ”

“ There is no adversary who, on an inland territory, can arrive so swiftly as to prevent our knowing not only his existence, but his character too, and where he comes from. But a maritime and naval enemy can fall upon a town on the sea-coast before any one suspects that he is about to come ”

“ VIII. That if any Ship or Vessell, belong'g to Us or Our Subjects, or to Our Allies or their Subjects, shall be found in Distress, by being in fight, set upon, or taken by the Enemy, the Captain, Officers and Company, who shall have such Letters of Marque or Commission, as aforesaid, shall use their best Endeavours to give aid and Succour to all such Ship or Ships, and shall to the utmost of their power Labour to free the same from the Enemy. ”

“ Where are accurately and systematically stated all the circumstances which impress upon the neutral a general, or a limited, hostile character, either by reason of his domicil, his territorial possessions, or his connexion in a house of trade, in the enemy country? The search would be nearly in vain in the celebrated Jurists whose authority has been quoted to silence the present enquiry. ”

“ They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted a valour amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. ”

“ Let the reader imagine them trying to distribute in just and equal parts the due share of blame attaching severally to the following agents—to the man who betrays his country or his cause for gold, and the general who tempts him to his crime or accepts it gladly; to the man who serves as a spy, to the general who on the one side sends or employs him as a spy, and to the general who on the other side hangs him as a spy ”

“ Each man would have sought relief from the strain by unbosoming his hopes and fears to his neighbor, but he dared not. That is one fearful curse of any cause that is buttressed by a system of espionage. It scatters everywhere the seeds of suspicion. ”

“ The destination of articles of absolute contraband is, according to article 30, to be considered hostile if it be shown that they are being sent either to enemy territory, or to territory occupied by the enemy, or, further, to the armed forces of the enemy. ”

“ All persons in the guise of pretended loyal citizens, acting under false names or other false pretenses, within our lines, and giving aid, arms, ammunition or supplies of any kind whatsoever, or furnishing information to, or communicating with, the enemy, are spies, and are to be taken, condemned, and shot as such. ”

“ A notification made after the outbreak of hostilities is addressed only to neutral powers.
Art. 24.—The following articles, susceptible of use in war as well as for purposes of peace, may, without notice, be treated as contraband of war, under the name of conditional contraband: (1) Foodstuffs; (2) forage and grain, suitable for feeding animals; (3) clothing, fabrics for clothing, and boots and shoes, suitable for use in war; (4) gold and silver in coin or bullion; paper money; (5) vehicles of all kinds available for use in war, and their component parts ”

“ A Government communicating with foreign Powers through its own envoys, doling out through them garbled information, while isolating the envoys of those same Powers within its capital, and planning, and if not doing its best to effect, their extermination, at least openly approving the attempt, is surely unexampled in human history. ”

“ These agents, or rather the men behind who set them on, knew the sensitiveness of our people, and how naturally they would be aroused against the foreign country where the enterprise had its origin. They saw that excitement, passion, anger on our part were inevitable, that out of these some complication or collision might ensue, and that any such complication or collision must necessarily help the Rebellion more than a victory on the field of battle. ”

“ I deny that a belligerent nation has been conceded ‘the right of visit and search, and the right of capture and condemnation’ of neutral ships engaged in unneutral service or carrying contraband for the enemy. ”

“ The endeavour to make a distinction between supply in single cases and on a small scale on the one hand, and, on the other, supply on a large scale, and to consider only the former lawful, [690] has neither in theory nor in practice found recognition. As International Law stands, belligerents may make use of visit, search, and seizure to protect themselves against conveyance of contraband by sea to the enemy by subjects of neutrals. ”

“ In the meantime, you have been all over the world, and it is not too much to say, that you have destroyed, and driven for protection under neutral flags, one half of the enemy’s commerce, which, at the beginning of the war, covered every sea. ”

“ A frontal attack being out of the question, the invader could be perpetually worried by guerilla tactics, his sentries caught napping, his chiefs bamboozled: what had been lost through force might thus be won back by force and fraud judiciously blended, for craft is the natural resource of the weak. ”

“ An enemy hath done this, Monsieur the Inspector, and the enemy is represented by those three young men who doubtless look upon it as a petite plaisanterie. But if there is law in the land they shall suffer for it. It is nothing more or less than an outrage to our feelings. ”

“ If the levy and passage of troops, and the forming of corps of combatants, must be prevented by a neutral, he is all the more required to prevent the organisation of a hostile expedition from his territory against either belligerent. ”

“ But it will be said they defend the nation from foreign enemies.—Alas, could a foreign conqueror occasion more wretchedness than such defenders?—When he who calls himself my protector has stripped me of my property, and deprived me of my freedom, I cannot return him very cordial thanks, when he tells me, that he will defend me from every other robber. ”

“ One class of adversaries, not by an appeal to reason, or even to official documents, but by the importation and retail from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and one end of the province to the other, and from house to house, of bits and parcels of perverted private conversations—a mode of warfare disgraceful to human nature, much more to any Christian community. ”

“ Private combinations of one kind, however, are congruous with the militant type—the combinations, namely, which are formed for minor defensive or offensive purposes. We have, as examples, those which constitute factions, very general in militant societies; those which assume forms like the primitive guilds, serving for mutual protection; and those which take the shape of secret societies. Of such bodies it may be noted that they fulfill on a small scale ends like those which the whole society fulfills on a large scale—the ends of self-preservation, or aggression, or both. ”

“ I have got those napoleons, francs, and half-francs, and I have got the information that they think it necessary to watch me, and therefore have planted their spy. That’s fair enough. But, in revenge, I have sent a bombshell into the camp of the enemy, and it will be lighted there by their own man. ”

“ The nation which sets out to obtain complete information of her enemy must pry into every neglected corner, fish every innocent pool, and collect a mass of matter concerning the industrial, social and military organization of the enemy which when correlated, appraises her strength—and her weakness. ”

“ The discussion of narrow rules hinders the clear vision of the things which are; and of these the all-important one is that, call it by what name you please, a belligerent will, whenever he has the power, take the necessary steps to cut off all supplies from the enemy ”

“ The very ease with which interference can be made, the trained instinct of the subordinate to follow the wishes of his superior if he can, the temptation to the superior to wield personally some military power and get some military glory, conspire to bring about interference. ”

“ When from one's own country or from another's country merchandise or commodities for manufacture in a manufactory are going to an enemy's country, spies may spread the information that those commodities are obtained from one whom the enemy wanted to march against. ”

“ Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, passed early in our war progress, an Alien Property Custodian took charge of properties and businesses belonging to enemy aliens in this country or operated for the benefit of enemy subjects elsewhere. ”

“ Some were the reckless advance agents of those hardy vices that follow close in the wake of empire,—devils too villainous to be tolerated in the cities of the East, and too bold and too wary to be stamped out by the deliberate machinery of the law. ”

“ Further, the goods of such subjects of the belligerents as are domiciled on each other's territory and are allowed to remain there after the outbreak of war, acquire enemy character in the eyes of the belligerent whose subjects they are, but lose their enemy character in the eyes of the belligerent on whose territory they are allowed to remain. [157] Again, the produce of an estate on enemy territory belonging to a subject of a neutral State who resides abroad, does bear enemy character, for "Nothing [158] can be more decided and fixed than the principle ... ”

“ Whilst concentrating all available powers of offence against the enemy, and allowing nothing to divert us from our main object, we took every step to bewilder the defence and to shift the weight of the difficulties upon the shoulders of our opponents. ”

“ Much is done under the name of “good offices,” whether in the form of mediation or intercession,—and much also by military power, whether in the declared will of superior force or directly by arms. Recognition of independence is also another instance. Intervention in any form is interference. If peaceable, it must be judged by its motive and tendency; if forcible, it will naturally be resisted by force. ”

“ Citizens of Neutral States.—Members of a neutral state may lend money to a belligerent or may go into the army or navy of a belligerent without breach of the neutrality of their nation. They may sell goods, except materials of war, to either belligerent, Blockade.—A belligerent may, as a war measure, close the ports of the enemy. ”

“ The policy of the Company to act on the defensive, since they had not the power to resist their pretended friends, and could only protect their rights by protest, was better and more prudent than to come to hostilities. ”

“ Many of them have extensive connections and much property to defend, and all seem attached to arms. The mode of acting toward them at the present crisis, is an inquiry of importance. If we give them not our confidence, the enemy will be encouraged to intrigue and corrupt them. ”

“ It is true that, by the modern law of nations, provisions, while not generally deemed contraband, may become so, although belonging to a neutral, on account of the particular situation of the war, or on account of their destination, as, if destined for military use, for the army or navy of the enemy, or ports of naval or miltary equipment. ”

“ Besides, Madame, they are too far from us to afford immediate relief from the present dangers internally surrounding us. These are the points of fearful import. It is not the threats and menaces of a foreign army which can subdue a nation’s internal factions. ”

“ Since, according to British and American practice, domicile in enemy country makes an individual bear enemy character, all goods belonging to individuals domiciled in enemy country are enemy goods, and all goods belonging to individuals not resident in enemy country are not, as a rule, enemy goods. ”

“ Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to twenty of one’s own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one’s own store. ”

“ These form laws and regulations for their general good; they are not alarmed at the appearance of every stranger; and, if attacked or invaded by a public enemy, have strong-holds to retire to, where they can with advantage defend themselves, their property, and their country. ”

“ The tactics of the gentlemen who suggest the use of the public armed forces to "hold" their claims in foreign lands sufficiently refute any pretense that they may make of concern for the American consumer. ”

“ The penalties inflicted by the invaders for irregular warfare, and the profits made by individuals who remained neutral, were cleverly calculated to Page 247 render the peasantry, not only harmless, but actually useful to the enemy. ”