involved in the Hague Conventions was the neutrality of non-belligerent shipping; all neutral shipping should be immune from belligerent capture (Coogan, 1981, p. 55). The United States did agree that neutral ships should be subject to belligerent capture if such ships were carrying contraband cargo (Coogan, 1981. p. 56). Some American military leaders, however, were beginning to realize that the traditional American position with respect to neutral shipping was out of step with development trends in American foreign policy as the United States became a more interventionist nation (Coogan, 1981, p. 57). Some thirty-odd years following the second Hague Convention, the United States government engaged in a series of machinations designed to circumvent the nation's traditional neutrality stance, before junking altogether the concept of American neutrality. Much earlier, during the First World War but before the United States entered that war, the American position received another test that was essentially failed by the Wilson Ad
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