between the United States and Great Britain when the
former was a neutral. American belligerency had necessitated a change
of basis in the Government's attitude.

The President went to some pains to explain to the country what the
export embargo meant. He created a Board of Exports Control, or
Exports Council, composed of Herbert C. Hoover, the selected head of
the food administration body, and a number of leading Government
officials. This board's duty was to prevent a single bushel of wheat
or the smallest quantity of any other commodity from leaving an
American port without the board's license and approval. This check on
exports, the President pointed out, regulated and supervised their
disposition, and was not really an embargo, except on consignments to
Germany.

"There will, of course, be no prohibition of exports," he said. "The
normal course of trade will be interfered with as little as possible,
and, so far as possible, only its abnormal course directed. The whole
object will be to direct exports in such a way that they will go first
and by preference where they are most needed and most immediately
needed, and temporarily to withhold them, if necessary, where they can
best be spared.

"Our primary duty in the matter of foodstuffs and like necessaries is
to see to it that the peoples associated with us in the war get as
generous a proportion as possible of our surplus, but it will also be
our wish and purpose to supply the neutral nations whose peoples
depend upon us for such supplies as nearly in proportion to their need
as the amount to be divided permits."

Nevertheless the proclamation that came from the White House on July
9, 1917, disclosed an exercise of presidential authority without
precedent in American history in that it contemplated, with British
cooperation, the virtual domination of the country's trade with the
whole world. It provided for the absolute governmental control, by
license, of the exports of essential war commodities to fifty-six
nations and their possessions, including all the Allied belligerents,
all the neutrals, as well as the enemy countries. These commodities
embraced coal, coke, fuel, oils, kerosene and gasoline, including
bunkers, food grains, flour and meal, fodder and feeds, meats and
fats, pig iron, steel billets, ship plates and structural shapes,
scrap iron and scrap steel, ferromanganese, fertilizers, arms,
ammunition and explosives. By the control of coal and other f