LAND & WATER 
January 25, 1917 
The Present State of Neutral Opinion 
By Hilaire Belloc 
THE message delivered by tlie President of the 
United States this week to the Senate of that 
Power, renders it imperative for every belligerent 
to consider the present state of neutral opinion. 
Among the moral factors that support or weaken an 
anny at war, the most important, after the spirit of its 
own people at home, is this attitude of neutral opinion 
and particularly of gieat neutral powers. 
This is particularly tnie in the case of the present 
great war for two reasons. First because the mass 
of the white races are involved in it, and yet one 
great section of them,- that of the New World, stands 
(juite apart in distance as in mind. 
Secondly, because the war being one of Ufe and death 
and compelling each nation to use all sources of supply 
available, has made the industry and material of the 
New World, the procuring of their products, the con- 
veying of them to Europe, a vital factor in the whole 
affair. 
The enormous German accumulation of propellant 
explosive, for instance, and the immense continued pro- 
duction of it. in the first months of the war -in Ger\nany. 
were, economically, nothing more than a transformation of 
American cotton. 
That is only one example, but the whole war teems with 
them. Indeed the main function of the opposed naval 
instruments has been so far, for more than two years, not 
to tight, but to convey, and to hinder the conveyance 
of material from the New World to either belligerent. 
Now when we use the words " neutral opinion " we 
must distinguish between two moral factors in the matter 
which, tliough closely interdependent, are not identical. 
There is first the judgment passed by a neutral upon 
the ethical nature of the struggle, and that, of course, 
is -the foundation of the whole thing. 
There is, secondly, the intellectual judgment as to 
which of the two parties is preponderant and likeliest 
to reach his end in the war. 
To consider the first : 
A very strong conviction that either party to an issue 
is morally wrong and that his opponent is coiTespond- 
ingly justified in seeking a complete solution, determines 
the whole of an external judgment upon the dispute. 
We are apt to forget this now-a-days from the absence 
of common religious standards and from the admitted 
prevalence of non-moral commercial motives, which of 
themselves are, of course, indifferent to the moral char- 
acter of parties to an economic exchange. But a little 
reflection will show us that we should be wrong to think 
of the purely ethical judgment as having less importance 
now than it had in the past. For if we examine our own 
lives we shall find that the real spring of action lies in some 
kind of violent affection or indignation, and that the mo- 
ment this emotion arises all other action is coloured and 
determined by it, whether it be present in an intense 
degree or no. It makes the balancing difference and 
turns the scale wherever there is doubt. It determines, 
to use another and perhaps better metaphor, the direction 
of the current, whether that current be sluggish or 
swift. 
To consider the second factor : 
If the opinion of a neutral closelv, though indi- 
rectly, concerned with a great struggle inclines to the belief 
in the victory of the one or the other party, it also affects 
all his action. He may regret the defeat of that one 
with whom morally he sympathises ; but the more pro- 
bable he thinks that defeat the less will his sympathies 
be operative, and that for two reasons : 
First, a growing conviction that such sympathy is 
jjractically useless and is therefore an expense of energy 
that may be spared. Secondly, because according to 
the result of the war will the future be shaped. 
Let us suppose an individual neutral merchant, for 
instance, watching the struggle between France and 
Germany in 1870. Let us suppose his sympathies to bo- 
French : his desire to be that the French should win 
the war and his moral judgment that Prussia was the 
aggressor and lier methods treacherous and vile. ' The 
action of such a man in his practical affairs would have 
been very different in August 1870 from what it would 
have been in the December of the same year. Upon 
the first date matters were not decided nor even apparently 
approaching a decision. But already by the middle of 
September all the French regular army was out of action. 
tMther contained in Metz or destroyed at Sedan. By 
November the army in Metz, already long out of action, 
had ceased to exist. By December it was clear that the 
resistance of Paris was coming to an end. Of the two 
belligerents one was certainly coming out of the 
struggle impoverished, weakened in the action of its 
national will, and perhaps condemned to dechne. The 
other was as certainly coming out enriched, 
strengthened in its national will and probably thereby 
destined to a rapid economic growth. The \actor would 
almost certainly impose an economic treaty which would 
give him the advantage. Our business m"an, concerned 
say, with establishing relations in the steel industry and 
knowing the value of the Lorraine beds of iron ore, 
might still in August have been negotiating for the 
estabhshment of new plant in Eastern France. By 
December he would have preferred a German connection"; 
for he would so be more certain of his future and its ex- 
pansion. He would rightly guess that the enterprise 
upon the French side of the new frontier would be handi- 
capped, and on the German side of the new frontier 
immensely advantaged. 
It is the judgment of a great number of such individuals 
which makes up the judgment of the neutral nation com- 
posed of them, and when that judgment is supported by 
the judgment of its Government as well, it is conclusive. 
Now in the light of these considerations let us consider 
soberly the present attitude of neutrals and particularly 
of the neutral most important to us morally and economic- 
ally, the United States. Let us consider that attitude in 
its present phase and ask ourselves first what validity it 
has, morally and intellectually, that is, what reasons in- 
form it and next, if we believe that judgment to be 
erroneous, by what arguments we should attempt to 
convert it. 
It is the foundation of any such work (and that work 
to be of practical value must consider the mentaUty, 
not of ourselves who are already con\inced, but of the 
neutral only— and that with the respect due to his 
abilities and his position)— that in both of the great 
iactors of which we have spoken the opinion of the 
United States has arrived as nearly as may be at an 
exact balance between the two belligerents in this awful 
debate. 
American opinion cannot be said — it cannot be said 
at this moment, at any rate— to support the ethical 
thesis of the one side or of the other. It does not —at any 
rate, at the present moment, and as a whole— tliink of 
the war as a struggle between two parties, one of which 
it desires to win because it believes its cause to be just. 
It regards it ethically as a mere disaster, terrible beyond 
precedent, and continuing only through the action of 
unreason. We may judge this attitude from any one 
of innumerable indications, from the American press, 
from the most stable and best relations obtainable from 
individuals, from private correspondence, from all the 
evidence at our disposal. 
As to the second factor, it is remarkable (I speak of 
the present moment alone) that we discover a similar 
balance. There is not only no con\iction in America 
that either party will issue victorious from this mortal 
conflict, there is actually a positive conviction that 
neither party cam issue victorious, but that each will 
face the other at its close unsatisfied and as nearly as 
possible equally matched. In other words there is a 
positive conviction of an approaching draw, and 
