American Participation in Belligerent Commercial Controls 1914-1917

Extract

Even before most of the world was embroiled, the war of 1914 was a world war. Those countries which attempted at the outset to remain aloof from the conflict soon found that, while they might avoid military hostilities, they became parties, whether willing or not, to an economic war, a struggle scarcely less destructive than that which raged on the battlefield. National leaders might will the division of Europe into separate political or military units, but to break the economic ties which linked the warring countries to each other was an infinitely harder task. The truism that the world is economically interdependent, so blandly reiterated today, became grimly apparent in 1914. The demands of war could not be met without the continued exchange of commodities; no country was capable, by itself, of feeding and clothing its population and of supplying its fighting forces with arms and munitions. With the markets of Europe barricaded by belligerent lines, thus cutting off from both sides normal sources of large supplies, the neutral states became factors of immense importance. The war could not go on without the neutral merchant; each belligerent needed him, and a major objective of offense was to prevent the enemy from satisfying that need.