false reports designed to interfere with military operations; attempts
to cause disaffection in the army and navy, or obstruction of
recruiting; the control of merchant vessels on American waters; the
seizure of arms and ammunition and prohibition of their exportation
under certain conditions; the penalizing of conspiracies designed to
harm American foreign relations; punishment for the destruction of
property arising from a state of war; and increased restrictions on
the issue of passports.

The measure acquired a conspicuous place in the war legislation by
reason of the embargo provision. It appeared an inconsequential
clause, judging from the little public attention paid to it; but the
President saw a weapon in it that might have more effect in bringing
Germany to her knees than Great Britain's blockade of her coasts,
stringent as the latter had proved. It developed into a measure for
instituting a blockade of Germany from American ports. It had long
been known that the maritime European neutrals--Holland, Denmark,
Norway, and Sweden--had flourished enormously by supplying Germany
with various necessities--mainly obtained from the United States on
the pretense that the huge increase of their American trade was due to
enlarged domestic consumption, the same being due, in its turn, to the
cutting off of needed supplies from other countries by the British
blockade and the war situation on land. The design of the embargo
provision was to stop these neutrals from receiving any American goods
until it was clearly established, _before_ leaving an American port,
that they would not be transhipped to Germany. With this object the
President was authorized to stop any or all exports to any or all
countries in his discretion. This was a sweeping blanket instruction
from Congress aimed at placing a barrier on transhipment trade with
Germany from the port of departure. "Satisfy us that your goods are
not going to Germany via neutral countries," the Government told
exporters, "and your ships can get clearance. Otherwise they cannot."
The embargo was even aimed at neutral countries that permitted their
own goods to cross the German frontier by threatening to cut those
countries off from any trade with the United States. But it was not
clear how it could be made effective in this respect. Its chief aim
was rather to make it impossible for the neutrals to replenish with
American goods such of their domestic stocks which had been depl