So sang Clemens Brentano in the year 1813. Today, we once more realize that the attempt to remain neutral through a conflict which is deciding the history of the world not only brings great spiritual difficulties, but is even felt to be a downright moral impossibility, just as the poet saw it a hundred years ago. Legal neutrality is, of course, a simple thing. Every state can itself practice it, and impose it as a duty on its citizens. One may even think that modern states should go further in this direction than they do. The indifference of the Government toward the business transactions of its citizens with foreign states is a political anomaly, comprehensible in an age when foreign policy in war and peace was viewed as something that concerned the ruler only, but contradictory in a democratic age, when wars are peoples' wars. Today, in all civilized states, the Government is morally answerable for those activities of its subjects which have international results.

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