ne defendant was fined $2,000; the two others received
terms of imprisonment.

While the act would injure American firms affiliated with German
interests, it aimed to press hardest upon traders in neutral European
countries contiguous to Germany who were trading with the Germans and
practically serving as intermediaries to save the Germans from the
effect of the Allies' blockade.

The appearance of a captured British steamer, the _Appam_, at Newport
News, Va., on February 1, 1916, in charge of a German naval
lieutenant, Hans Berg, and a prize crew, involved the United States in
a new maritime tangle with the belligerents. One of the most difficult
problems which Government officials had encountered since the war
began, presented itself for solution. The _Appam_, as elsewhere
described, was captured by a German raider, the _Moewe_ (Sea Gull),
off Madeira, and was crowded with passengers, crews, and German
prisoners taken from a number of other ships the _Moewe_ had sunk.
Lieutenant Berg, for lack of a safer harbor, since German ports were
closed to him, sought for refuge an American port, and claimed for his
prize the privilege of asylum under the protection of American
laws--until he chose to leave. Count von Bernstorff, the German
Ambassador, immediately notified the State Department that Germany
claimed the _Appam_ as a prize under the Prussian-American Treaty of
1828, and would contend for possession of the ship.

This treaty was construed as giving German prizes brought to American
ports the right to come and go. The British Government contested the
German claim by demanding the release of the _Appam_ under The Hague
Convention of 1907. This international treaty provided that a
merchantman prize could only be taken to a neutral port under certain
circumstances of distress, injury, or lack of food, and if she did not
depart within a stipulated time the vessel could not be interned, but
must be restored to her original owners with all her cargo. Were the
_Appam_ thus forcibly released she would at once have been recaptured
by British cruisers waiting off the Virginia Capes. The view which
prevailed officially was that the case must be governed by the
Prussian treaty, a liberal construction of which appeared to permit
the _Appam_ to remain indefinitely at Newport News. This was what
happened, but not through any acquiescence of the State Department in
the German contention. The _Appam_ owners, the British and Africa