HOW WAR WOULD INTENSIFY POVERTY 57 



the sea, so far as the protection of our merchant ships is 

 concerned. If there was a period in the history of this 

 country when we might say we had command of the 

 sea, surely it was after the battle of Trafalgar, when 

 there was not an enemy left on the sea. Yet after that 

 battle, hundreds of our merchant ships were captured; 

 and it will be so again. We cannot protect our merchant 

 ships ; the thing is impossible. The true blockade will be 

 the impossibility of our ten thousand slow merchant 

 ships obtaining any insurance, and being laid up as the 

 United States merchant ships were laid up when the 

 Alabama was about. This will prevent the weekly arrival 

 of the four hundred merchant ships which bring us our 

 food, and cause panic on the corn-market, the enemy 

 having made food contraband of war." 



Such views as these are held by quite a host of far- 

 seeing patriotic citizens, whose sole desire is to safe- 

 guard the country from those deadly perils which beset 

 us, owing to our utter dependency on outside aid for 

 our daily supply of bread and other food-stuffs. 



Now it stands to reason that if our outside supplies in 

 war time cannot be safely convoyed and absolutely 

 guaranteed, even by a powerful two-power standard 

 Navy, we must secure ourselves by the development of 

 our internal resources, and that we can do this with the 

 greatest possible ease will be seen in later pages of this 

 work. 



