PREFACE ix 



Britain is an island, notwithstanding aircraft 

 and submarines. 



The sea is our frontier, the cradle of our 

 freedom; our national temperament has been 

 created by the sense of security arising from 

 the consciousness that we can, by our command 

 of the sea, frustrate any attempt at invasion, 

 as another nation protects its frontier by a line 

 of forts. History has shown that command 

 of the sea is command of the land; that 

 the sea has always dominated the land ; in 

 the words of the economist. List, one of the 

 founders of modern Germany : — 



" The Sea is the High Street of the Earth. 

 The Sea is the parade-ground of the Nations. . . . 

 The Sea is, so to say, the rich village Common 

 on which all the economic Peoples of the World 

 may turn their herds out to grass. The man 

 who has no share in the Sea is thereby excluded 

 from a share in the good things of the world ; 

 he is the stepchild of our dear Lord God." 



Whatever may be the aerial developments of 

 the future, the seas and the sea communications 

 are to us exactly what land frontiers are to 

 continental nations, and of these truths we 

 must never for an instant lose sight. For 

 those frontiers we fought and conquered in 

 the seventeenth century when the principle 

 involved was covered by the words " Mare 

 clausum,"*' of Selden, as against the " Mare 

 liherum,'" of Grotius, and the herring fishery 

 was a crucial point in the dispute. The question. 



