In 1953, Norwegian historian Nils Ørvik, cited above, published a landmark thesis on the history of neutrality through two World Wars and the beginning of the Cold War. He identified the first of these three conflicts as the ‘seminal catastrophe’ for neutrality. The First World War proved that neutrality, both as a legal concept and as foreign policy tool, had no merit; the two later wars, which were equally ‘total’ in their aims, merely provided additional evidence for his central thesis. Ørvik takes note of the fact that the concept of neutrality thus underwent a dramatic ‘decline’ from the lofty heights of nineteenth century legal internationalism to the gritty reality of great-power politics. During the First World War, the neutrals found that what they had come to believe as their rights – most importantly their right to trade with whomever they wished, but in some cases even their territorial integrity – only applied when they could force their acceptance by the belligerents. These belligerents, however, were engaged in a struggle for survival, for their way of life. As casualties on the Western, Eastern, Arab and African fronts started to mount, it seemed ever more foolish to let the letter of the law interfere with their struggle. So, both sides encroached on neutrals’ legal and sovereign rights, while at the same time warning them that any reciprocal encroachment would result in punishment, ranging from economic sanction to war.