The Manufacture and Sale 
 
 of 
 
 Munitions of War 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY, A.M., LL.D. 
 
 Chairman Standing Committee International Law, American Bar 
 Member Board Editors American Journal International Law 
 Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London 
 
 An Address 
 
 delivered before the 
 
 NATIONAL CONVENTION 
 
 of the 
 
 Navy League of the United States 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 April 10-13, 1916 
 
 For additional copies, order pamphlet No. 46 
 from the 
 
 NAVY LEAGUE OF THE UNITED STATES 
 Southern Building, Washington, D. C. 
 
THE NAVY LEAGUE. 
 
 A SOCIETY TO HELP INSURE THE UNITED 
 STATES AGAINST INVASION. 
 
 'HB Navy League is an association of people 
 
 * who wish to keep war out of the United States 
 and believe that the surest way to do so is to main- 
 ain a navy so strong that no nation can get its 
 forces across the ocean to attack us. It has no 
 connection with any business or political organi¬ 
 zation of any kind and is neither pro-anything 
 nor anti-anything, but just plain Ameican. 
 
 The League was organized in 1903, and includes 
 among its membership Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, 
 Hon. Alton B. Parker, Cardinal Gibbons, Bishop 
 John N. McCormick, Jacob H. Schiff, Isaac N. 
 Seligman, Henry Watterson and Joseph H. Choate 
 and such women as Mrs. William Cumming Story, 
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 Mabel P. Boardman and Mrs. George Barnett. Its 
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 spection on proper application. 
 
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 Cx *£> Co^\ 
 
 THE MANUFACTURE AND SALE OF MUNITIONS 
 
 OF WAR 
 
 CHARGES NOBEE GREGORY 
 
 In the Encyclopedia Britannica under the title “Gun 
 powder” I find that fatal material described as “An explosive 
 composed of saltpeter, charcoal and sulphur,” and the state¬ 
 ment added “Very few substances have had a greater effect 
 on civilization than gun-powder.” 
 
 That the higher developmnt of life (which is civilization) 
 should be fostered by a new and terrible means of inflicting 
 death, seems a paradox. Yet we must reflect that the first 
 necessity for any developing civilization, with the wealth and 
 prosperity which it creates, is defense against the barbarism 
 which it ofifends by its advance and tempts by its prompt ac¬ 
 cumulations. Greek and Roman discipline furnished a con¬ 
 siderable element of this kind and protected Greek and Ro¬ 
 man arts, law, and letters remarkably; but the one great in¬ 
 vention which at once gave civilized man dominion over sav¬ 
 age man, even when a hundred-fold out-numbered, was gun¬ 
 powder. That made the renaissance possible. That made 
 the conquest of the American Continents by our European 
 ancestors assured and furnished the basis of all that has fol¬ 
 lowed. We are here, our blood, law, language, and church 
 spires are here, as a result. 
 
 Brawn had to give way to brains. The Chemist was more 
 than the Smith. The Armoured Knight upon his Armoured 
 Charger went down before the Musketeer, before the man 
 on foot, the noble before the peasant, and democracy became 
 possible. 
 
 In the struggle for existence weaker forms of life survive 
 by fecundity, by powers of flight or of climbing a tree or 
 digging a hole, but the finest and freest by power of attack 
 and defense. 
 
 1 
 
We, I submit, wish to develop and maintain a race of this 
 finest and freest type, not guinea-pigs or white rabbits, not 
 antelopes, squirrels or rats, but men inferior to no creatures 
 in power of attack and defense. I say attack, because that is 
 often the best form of defense. 
 
 I speak of Gun-powder, but I figure by that all those war¬ 
 like supplies on which defense must rest. 
 
 Beasts still fight with talons and hoofs, claws, horns and 
 fangs and nothing else. So did man once, but when the first 
 anthropoid Ape or primitive man broke a branch from the 
 oak and with it struck down his foe — when in the Garden 
 Cain slew his brother with a club, preparation began. The 
 dominion of the prepared over the un-prepared began and 
 has never ended. To which class shall we belong? 
 
 If Abel had been vigilant and had had the bigger club 
 what a benefit to the world his club would have been! As 
 it is, I suppose, we are all sons of Cain. 
 
 I am here to advocate one source of safety, and that 
 mechanical, and not picturesque or heroic. Namely that 
 the business and laboring men of this country be allowed to 
 freely manufacture munitions of war and freely vend and 
 export them to all, except the enemies of the United States. 
 
 I claim these rights for them because they are lawful, be¬ 
 cause all nations have agreed to them and far more, be¬ 
 cause they conduce to the welfare not only of our own coun¬ 
 try but of mankind and are therefore politic and right. 
 
 First: They are lawful. Neither International nor 
 Municipal Law forbids them. By custom and prescription 
 the workers of the principal nations, including our own, have 
 for generations exercised them. 
 
 Our first Secretary of State, appointed by Washington, as¬ 
 serted them in a communication to the British Minister, 
 
 May 15, 1793. Mr. Jefferson says: 
 
 “Our citizens have been always free to make, vend 
 and export arms. It is the constant occupation and 
 livelihood of some of them. To suppress their call¬ 
 ings, the only means perhaps of their subsistence, be¬ 
 cause a war exists in foreign and distant countries, 
 in which we have no concern, would scarcely be ex- t 
 
 ) 
 
 2 
 
pected. It would be hard in principle and impossible 
 in practice. The law of nations, therefore, respecting 
 the rights of those at peace, does not require from 
 them such an internal disarrangement in their occu¬ 
 pations. It is satisfied with the external penalty pro¬ 
 nounced in the president’s proclamation, that of con¬ 
 fiscation of such portion of those arms as shall fall 
 into the hands of any of the belligerent powers on 
 their way to the port of their enemies.” 
 
 Alexander Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury, 
 is equally positive to the same effect. In a Treasury circular 
 of August 4, 1793, he declares: 
 
 “The purchasing within, and exporting from the 
 United States, by way of merchandise, articles com¬ 
 monly called contraband, being generally war-like in¬ 
 struments, and military stores, is free to all the parties 
 at war, and is not to be interfered with.” 
 
 If the democrats question our views, I cite Jefferson their 
 founder; and if the republicans, I cite Hamilton, their 
 founder. 
 
 Mr. Seward, the great Secretary of State under Abraham 
 Lincoln, when Mexico objected to the sale of military sup¬ 
 plies to the French under Maximillian, answered with equal 
 decision, asserting our right and saying that otherwise, 
 “Commerce,.... instead of being free and independent, 
 would exist only at the caprice of war.” (December 15, 
 1862). Mr. Seward and our whole people were most hostile 
 to the French occupations and ultimately compelled its 
 abandonment, but the rule was too clear to dispute and too 
 important to in any way abate. 
 
 Hon. John Bassett Moore, our greatest and ripest inter¬ 
 national publicist, to whom I owe my other references, in his 
 digest prints eighteen pages of extracts to like effect from 
 Secretaries of State, Attorneys-General, and Presidents, 
 from Henry Clay, General Grant, Marcey, Fish, Evarts, 
 Bayard, Frelinghuysen, Blaine, Foster, Olney, and John 
 Hay, and also a clear and strong opinion by Mr. Elihu Root. 
 
 The famous Lord Chancellor Westbury was called the 
 boldest Judge that ever lived and was said, in a celebrated 
 
decision, to have “abolished Hell, with costs.” He quoted 
 from the opinion of our own Supreme Court, written by its 
 greatest scholar in International law, Justice Story, and ap¬ 
 proved the following passage: 
 
 “There is nothing in our laws or in the law of na¬ 
 tions that forbids our citizens from sending muni¬ 
 tions of war to foreign ports for sale. It is a com¬ 
 mercial adventure which no nation is bound to pro¬ 
 hibit, and which only exposes the persons engaged in 
 it to the penalty of confiscation.” 
 
 In 1901, our United States Court for the Eastern District 
 jf Louisiana held the same as to exports of war supplies to 
 Great Britain during the Boer War; and, in 1905, the Eng¬ 
 lish Courts held like Doctrine as to the shipment of contra¬ 
 band during the Russo-Japanese War. 
 
 Two years later, in 1907, the second Hague Conference, 
 representing substantially all the nations of the world, 
 adopted the following convention: 
 
 “A neutral power is not bound to prevent the ex¬ 
 port or transit on behalf of one or the other of the 
 belligerents of arms, munitions of war, or, generally, 
 of anything which can be of use to an army or fleet.” 
 
 This declaration was especially desired by Germany. One 
 of our delegates at the conference said to this writer that ap¬ 
 parently the main purpose of the Conference was to prevent 
 any interference with the export of arms by the Krupps at 
 Essen. 
 
 Austria Hungary and Germany promptly ratified this con¬ 
 vention, November 27, 1909, which merely re-affirmed the 
 
 established rule. 
 
 Mr. Bryan, then Secretary of State, who is believed to 
 have communed more often with the Dove than with the 
 Eagle, in January 1915, in a communication to Senator 
 Stone, fully confirmed this doctrine. 
 
 This right so deeply grounded in practice, precedent and 
 agreement, in the opinion of statesmen and of Judges, is con¬ 
 stantly attacked and criticised, and sought to be revoked by 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
direct statute: it is constantly condemned as immoral and 
 impolitic by the thoughtless and uninstructed, though well 
 intentioned, advocates of peace. I submit that these critics 
 misapprehend the effect of the rule and the results which 
 would flow from its repeal. 
 
 The ability of a peaceful commercial state to freely ex¬ 
 change her wealth for war supplies in the worlds markets is 
 her one great defense and her one chief bulwark. 
 
 If she could not use her cash and her credit in the worlds 
 marts to equip herself for defense when attacked, her wealth 
 would be merely a lure to the robber states, a source of weak¬ 
 ness and not of strength. 
 
 If a nation, the moment she is assailed, finds all outside 
 ports closed to her, all markets shut, if she must resist the 
 premeditated and prepared attack with such munitions as she 
 has on hand then either the peaceful commercial nations 
 must be rapidly and hopelessly conquered and enslaved, or 
 they must change their whole type and adopt the military 
 policy in its entirety and, to be safe, keep always at the top 
 notch of preparedness, with nothing lacking to defeat any 
 foe. Certainly the cause of peace can not be served by of¬ 
 fering to peaceful and prosperous nations like our own the 
 dilemma of destruction or the adoption of the extremes of 
 militarism. 
 
 Yet, if by this change of rule you sterilize the wealth of 
 these countries, so that in time of war it can draw to them no 
 equipment, that would be the result. 
 
 Any nation caught unprepared must miserably perish or 
 miserably submit. She could not get from outside, as this 
 writer lately pointed out in The Outlook, “A pound of 
 powder, a gallon of petrol, an ounce of copper, a gun, a sabre, 
 a harness, or a horse.” 
 
 As General Wood said recently to a Committee of Con¬ 
 gress: “We are gradually accumulating most of the gold of 
 the world. We had better stiffen that supply of gold with a 
 little iron.” 
 
 If the rule allowing a belligerent to buy and neutrals to 
 sell war supplies were abolished, all this wealth would be, in 
 
case of attack, as useless to us as a ton of gold to a ship¬ 
 wrecked sailor dying of thirst on a barren reef. 
 
 This writer lately said, and he would re-affirm: 
 
 “Wars now are sudden as conflagrations in their 
 origin and the advantages of preparation and initia¬ 
 tive are immense. Why make them vastly greater? 
 Why tempt to secret preparation and sudden aggres¬ 
 sion by greatly reducing the resources and avails of 
 the defending power? Why aid the wolf and ham¬ 
 string the lamb? Why by a change of law and policy 
 aid and encourage the predatory policy, and debili¬ 
 tate defense? Such change must stimulate war and 
 discourage peace.” 
 
 Such a change of law and practice, it is submitted, is 
 highly opposed to the general interests of mankind. It magni¬ 
 fies the power of the prepared and predatory states and it 
 hinders and prevents the defense of the pacific states. It 
 helps the carnivorous states, and it hurts the herbivorous 
 states, as it were. It sharpens the fangs of the wolf, con¬ 
 stantly used in attack, and it takes away the antlers of the 
 stag, as constantly used for defense alone. It tends to em¬ 
 broil the nations and to destroy their balance and repose. It 
 is a pernicious, unwise, and immoral restraint, an injurious 
 change in a just rule. 
 
 But it has be£n urged that in the present war one side 
 commands the sea, and therefore the other is excluded from 
 our markets, which are in fact open to only one, and that 
 this is not “true neutrality.” 
 
 I submit that because one of the belligerents has an ad¬ 
 vantage over the other, got by the exercises of war, is no 
 ground for changing the rule to his detriment. The neutral 
 does his full duty if he leaves his market door open freely to 
 both, letting either hinder the other in his access as much as 
 he can. The neutral vendor has nothing to do with access. 
 That is the business of the belligerents, each to get it for 
 himself and to defeat the getting it by the other. 
 
 At present the Central powers are denied access to our 
 markets by the British naval supremacy. During the South 
 
 6 
 
African War, when the Boers, for like reason, had no access 
 to German markets, the German dealers still thought it right 
 to sell to Great Britain large quantities of munitions, al¬ 
 though Germany was friendly to the Boers and profoundly 
 hostile to England. 
 
 This writer tabulated from the British Custom House re¬ 
 ports large numbers of such sales, and submitted the same to 
 the American Academy of Political and Social Science at 
 Philadelphia, in 1915. The neutrality board of our govern¬ 
 ment verified the figures, except for some minor and insigni¬ 
 ficant errors, and filed them with the Department of State, 
 and Senator Cabot Lodge kindly wrote this writer that they 
 were used in the reply of the United States to Austria. The 
 practice of Germany was entirely correct, and so is the ex¬ 
 actly similar practice of the United States at the present 
 time. 
 
 The practice of Germany, moreover, in fostering her enor¬ 
 mous establishments privately owned for the production of 
 arms and munitions is wise and politic and affords us a 
 most useful example. 
 
 The Paris correspondent of the Army and Navy Journal 
 recently mentioned that the works at Essen employed a hun¬ 
 dred and thirty thousand hands. The Ambassador of one 
 of the great powers, long in the diplomatic service, recently 
 told this writer that no one in the service could fail to see 
 that the principal business of the Army and Navy Attaches 
 of Germany was to place foreign orders for arms and muni¬ 
 tions with their great factories. Thus, with profit to Germany 
 their colossal works in times of peace were established, sus¬ 
 tained, and extended. Thus, like manufacturers in other 
 countries were undermined, discouraged, and broken down. 
 When war came, Germany was prepared and ready to in¬ 
 crease her supplies from within, and the other countries 
 which had too much depended upon her were in quite the 
 opposite situation. Cannon for the defense of Antwerp had 
 been contracted for in time of peace by a Great German 
 maker, but the great part, though a year over due, were not 
 delivered. Many of the bombs furnished by the German 
 
 7 
 
makers would not explode, and Antwerp fell a rich and easy 
 prey to the invaders. 
 
 This incident illustrates the danger and inconvenience 
 of depending upon a neighboring state for munitions of war. 
 That state may be at any time your enemy in war and may 
 contemplate that situation long before you awake to its 
 menace. Even if not your enemy in war, it may, as an inci¬ 
 dent of war, become wholly inaccessible to you, however 
 friendly, as Germany to the South African republics during 
 the late Boer war, and as all the American Republics to 
 Germany at the present time. Moreover, private factories 
 are apt to be numerous and widespread; therefore, in case 
 of invasion, they afford greater prospect of safety. No 
 part of the country which continues to resist is apt to be 
 wholly without such resources. 
 
 Our army arsenals, which largely manufacture our arms 
 and munitions are, with one exception, near Atlantic tide 
 water and between Boston and Philadelphia,—a very import¬ 
 ant, but, after all, limited and exposed part of the United 
 States. The one exception is the Rock Island Arsenal, which 
 occupies an ideal position in the heart of the Mississippi 
 Valley. 
 
 In the present war, the great factories at Liege,—for many 
 forms of arms, especially small arms, perhaps the greatest 
 in the world,—were early captured by the central powers 
 and became a part of their warlike assets. Lodz, in Russian 
 Poland, had a like fate. Over one-half of the industrial plants 
 of France were, in like manner, seized, and held by the 
 enemy. 
 
 Our Middle West and Southwest, with their abundance 
 of coal and iron, their oil and copper, their vast systems of 
 transportation and their thronging labor markets, ought not 
 to be forbidden or discouraged from the manufacture and 
 sale of munitions of war. Let their unsurpassed resources 
 and energies be mobilized in these lines purely for the gains 
 of commerce; yet they remain a great safety and resource to 
 this republic in case of attack, or emergency. 
 
 There is no wiser proverb than that which advises against 
 
 8 
 
putting all your eggs in one basket. Let our arsenals be 
 maintained, but by no means refuse to utilize and recognize 
 the energy, capital, and labor embarked by private enter¬ 
 prise in like productions whose enormous contributions can 
 be switched in a moment from foreign commerce to the aid 
 of our flag and our country. 
 
 Far be it from me, even to think of our seacoast as de¬ 
 fenseless or abandoned; but our flag and our republic de¬ 
 serve something more than a first line of defense, and that 
 first line deserves a loyal unshrinking support from behind, 
 not merely in men but munitions. 
 
 Our whole supply of sodium nitrate, on which the manu¬ 
 facture of explosives depends, comes by sea from Chile. In 
 case of war with a naval power, or with two naval powers, 
 stronger than we are upon the sea, it would be instantly cut 
 off. 
 
 Modern science has taught us to derive nitrates from the 
 air by the use of electricity. The process requires elaborate 
 machinery and preparation. Its installation requires a length 
 of time. Its product is as valuable as a fertilizer of our 
 fields in peace as for the manufacture of explosives in war. 
 It is produced most economically by water power. Our 
 country abounds in water power, much of it belonging to the 
 government. 10,000 horse-power goes to waste at the Rock 
 Island Arsenal on the Mississippi and at innumerable other 
 points the waste of this vast source of energy is far greater. 
 Government should encourage in every way such factories to 
 utilize this waste power. They are as wholesome in peace 
 as they are needed in war. They enrich us in the one and 
 they defend us in the other and add vastly to our independ¬ 
 ence and security. The needed capital is understood to wait 
 only permission to harness the water now running to 
 waste, and to make it work for the profit of capital, for 
 the employment of labor, and the safety of us all. 
 
 Senator Underwood, than whom no man in public life is 
 more entitled to our gratitude and our confidence, is urging 
 the establishment of a government plant for this purpose and 
 I am not suggesting anything in opposition to that plan. 
 
 
 9 
 
March 30 last he said: “Germany at the beginning of the 
 war had two hundred and seventy thousand tons of nitrogen. 
 The supply was exhausted in two months.” That Germany, 
 lacking water power, has had to create great steam power 
 plants for this purpose, which are much less economical; that 
 to get two-thirds the power Germany is using, we would 
 need one hundred and twenty thousand horsepower, and that 
 for economy this should be developed in one place; that there 
 are few places capable of developing such power, and if the 
 government delays, private capital will preempt them. 
 
 General Crozier testified: “These processes are now con¬ 
 trolled by private individuals in this country. We do not 
 know how to use them,” but he thinks we would not apply in 
 vain to “the patriotism or other good will” of the owners of 
 these processes. 
 
 The chief objection to undertaking to manufacture our 
 whole supply at one government plant is that it leaves us 
 dependent upon the safety of those works. The protected 
 activities of a single popular member of the diplomatic corps 
 might destroy them over night. The wider plan by which the 
 government and private enterprise at various points both 
 produce this essential supply will most conduce to safety, and 
 some sacrifice of economy is warranted. 
 
 As to the advantage of these developments, I do not speak 
 alone. As to the danger and disadvantage of depending upon 
 narrow and inadequate war supplies, derived from a limited 
 and exposed territory, I do not speak alone. 
 
 I trust it is not invidious to refer, among many, to two 
 men, as thoughtful and far-sighted as any in our service, 
 who within the past three months have fully and in greater 
 detail testified in support of these views before the Com¬ 
 mittee on Military Affairs of our House of Representatives, 
 — namely, Major General Leonard Wood, late Chief of 
 Staff, and Brigadier General William Crozier, for fourteen 
 years Chief of Ordnance. 
 
 The Department of Ordnance recognizes that such private 
 factories are an aid to and not a hinderance to the work of 
 our arsenals, and that they promote in every way the effici- 
 
 10 
 
ency, the advance in inventions, and the supply of ordnance 
 and munitions. 
 
 England had depended too much on inadequate govern¬ 
 ment arsenals, but all that has been changed. The man of the 
 greatest energy and resources in the Kingdom was made 
 Minister of Munitions of War and given a free hand. A 
 pamphlet just received from Sir Gilbert Parker says, “We 
 have multiplied our production of munitions nearly three 
 hundred fold and we are taking steps to multiply it many 
 times more.” Workers have been registered, private fac¬ 
 tories by the hundred taken over. 
 
 General Crozier testified in January that both sides ran 
 short of ammunition in the first six months of the present 
 war. That Germany was the first to recover, because she had 
 her factories mobilized and was ready to use their installa¬ 
 tions. That France, too, recovered quickly, but England 
 more slowly because short of Government factories and un¬ 
 able to mobilize private works, and that neither of these 
 has yet caught up. 
 
 Lloyd George said, in the House of Commons, on Decem¬ 
 ber 20, last: “The place acquired by machinery in the arts 
 of peace in the nineteenth century has been won by machin¬ 
 ery in the grim art of war in the twentieth century. In no 
 war ever fought in the world has the preponderance of 
 machinery been so completely established.” 
 
 He showed that all the successes and failures of the war 
 had been due to “mechanical preponderance.” He said that 
 the allies had the mechanical superiority in the navies, and 
 were accordingly supreme on the sea. “What we stint in 
 munitions we squander in life, that is the one great lesson 
 of munitions,” he said. 
 
 Our lesson of the present war is that the consumption of 
 powder and munitions is both vastly beyond all experience, 
 and beyond the most modern and liberal estimates, as our 
 Chief of Ordnance has testified. In one great battle, as much 
 was used as in the entire Boer war. 
 
 Rapid fire guns are of infinite importance for attack and 
 greatly more for defense, but they are prodigal of powder 
 
and ball. Guns of much increased calibre are used even as field 
 artillery, because modern machinery can move them as horses 
 could not, and they, too, are prodigal of powder and ball. 
 
 When for a time supplies of munitions failed the Russian 
 army, those brave men fought desperately with clubs and 
 sticks. Machine guns and artillery won. The unprepared 
 failed and died, and the prepared swept over Poland. 
 
 The lessons I would urge upon our nation are: 
 
 That we have a right by all laws, international and muni¬ 
 cipal, to manufacture and freely sell to all comers muni¬ 
 tions of war (except when restrained by special laws, as 
 along our Southern border). 
 
 That such right ought to be fully preserved and freely ex¬ 
 ercised, because it vastly strengthens our country for de¬ 
 fense in this time of unprecedented menace and of un¬ 
 fathomed danger. 
 
 That such rights should not only remain unabridged, free 
 from hinderance or discouragement, but should be fostered, 
 protected and encouraged. 
 
 That in so doing we adopt a policy hostile to no nation and 
 salutary to our own. 
 
 12 
 

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