It had not forgotten the seventeen long months of public pressure and the trouble there had been to force cotton as contraband; nor the seventeen months of "wait and see" before the Navy was permitted to examine mails and extract (_inter alia_) parcels of rubber. It had not forgotten Sir Edward Grey's declaration that "he had no intention of making cotton contraband"; nor Lord Haldane's contention that "it was useless stopping the import of cotton to Germany, because if we did Germany could find a substitute for it."
The nation had been deceived and lulled to sleep before by soft words and gentle assurances. It had been told, "we decline to be bound by judicial niceties." It had been promised "to prevent commodities of any kind from entering or leaving the enemy's country"; "to stick at nothing." It remembered with some misgiving how these promises had been kept.[22]
What, it reasoned, were the disappointments of a few Dutch and Scandinavian adventurers from making fortunes out of a war which to ourselves was a tragedy? The country had unbounded confidence in the Navy. It had not unbounded confidence in either the Government or the Foreign Office. It hungered with an overwhelming desire to know why the Navy should not be given a free and unhampered hand.
The speaker skilfully evaded too much information on that point, and the nation was compelled to nurse its resentment.
At the outset of his speech, Sir Edward Grey attempted to deal with the mass of statistics and evidence of direct importation of goods into Germany accumulated by the Press. He selected wheat and flour only, whilst he casually referred to a list of figures issued by the Press Bureau from the War Trade Department of the Government the day before the debate, which members in the House rightly complained had not been supplied to themselves. This list was stated to have been compiled officially in this country from true copies of the ships' manifests, and it alleged the figures given by the Danish _Borsen_ were in many cases wrong and unduly inflated. For instance, the increase in rice imports should have been only 480 per cent. as against 580 per cent.; lard, 275 per cent. instead of 375 per cent.; pork only 1,216 per cent. instead of 1,300 per cent.; and so on. Now everyone knows that statistics are not infallible and a generous allowance should always be made by a careful calculator. But when all circumstances are taken into consideration it can safely be concluded that the majority of the increases alleged by the various Press writers, as having percolated into Germany, were, if anything, under rather than over the mark.