January 30, 1915. 
LAND AND WATEE 
I 
because, at the very least, they can obtain some 
supplies from neutrals. 
But there is another point which -will be 
universally conceded, and which has not been dealt 
with in these columns. It is of the first import- 
ance. It is of capital importance at this particu- 
lar moment. 
If for political reasons distinctions must be 
made between absolute contraband, conditional 
contraband and free goods, it is at least clear that 
the scale so established must run from more 
dangerous to less dangerous goods. We may 
doubtfully allow luxuries to pass into a besieged 
place ; we may still more doubtfully allow certain 
necessaries — medicaments, for instance, or (less 
surely) clothing — to pass into a besieged place ; we 
may do so from a respect for a particular code of 
morals or from fear of a neutral who is supplying 
the enemy with these. But before we allow guns 
and ammunition, and, in general, lethal weapons 
to pass into the hands of the enemy, we must surely 
have infinitely stronger grounds for our action. 
Now, the point to which all this leads up is 
that cotton is to-day in the latter case. 
Cotton is not only a harmless substance which 
provides the civilian portion of our enemy with a 
livelihood, with wealth, and with clothing. Nor 
is it even only a necessary requisite for the equip- 
ment of his troops whose function it is to kill or 
disable as many Englishmen as they can. It is 
also — and the matter is so clear that one marvels 
it should ever have stood in doubt — the equivalent 
of what was known to generations of soldiers as 
the chief factor in ammunition — gunpowder. 
When you allow cotton to go into Germany 
you are behaving exactly as though i/de Germans 
had allowed train-load after train-load of good old- 
fashioned black gunpowder to come week by week 
through their lines into Paris during the great 
siege of 1870. You are supplying the enemy with 
a lethal weapon just as much as though you were 
to send an order to some neutral country begging 
them to cast heavy artillery for the benefit of the 
Germans and imdertaking to let those guns enter 
Germany without molestation. And you are in 
particular permitting Germany to obtain that one 
element in her power of killing your soldiers which 
she cannot supply of herself. 
These are, of course, strong words, but they 
are as clear a part of the truth in the present situa- 
tion as is the weather or the numbers we discover 
for recruitment. 
It is not to be presumed from this statement 
that no political argument can be found strong 
enough for the raising of the blockade (^) in the one 
matter of cotton. 
In time of war there is no public duty more 
imperative than acceptance of existing authority, 
of whatever character ; and the political authori- 
ties of a great country to-day have before them, as 
no private citizen can have before him, all the 
evidence upon which they determine their policy. 
But what, perhaps, is not always before them or 
before the public is the purely military aspect of 
that policy, and it is only to emphasise the military 
a.spect that this note is written. 
There might have been the very best and 
strongest reasons to convince Bismarck in 1870 
that the free passage into Paris of train-loads of 
gunpowder was Avorth permitting. He would, 
perhaps, have had a difficulty in persuading 
Moltke, but still good reasons might conceivably 
have been present. It none the less would have 
remained within the due province of criticism to 
point out that what was going in was not black 
sand, but an explosive which, when you put a 
match to it, discharged a missile, and that such 
missiles killed and wounded German soldiers. 
Why does one say that cotton is the equivalent 
to-day of what was then gunpowder? 
Because every explosive charge which launches 
a missile In modern war is simply cotton treated 
In a particular fashion — "nitrated" to use the 
barbarous jargon. The proportion in which it is 
" nitrated " gives it Its explosive character or 
lack of chemical equilibrium. For Instance, the 
famous T.N.T. (not a cotton explosive), about 
which such furious nonsense has been written, is 
a stable form : a triple nitration. The French 
formula Is less stable, that Is, more explosive ; it is, I 
believe quintuple ; because the French nitrate more 
highly than the Germans. But In every case, where- 
ever a modern weapon is discharged cotton is the 
stuff that launches the missile. All the factories have 
their plant for the treatment by nitration of cotton, 
and It is in terms of cotton that every operative 
In the process and every engmeer connected with 
It has thought for years. 
The chemicals whereby cotton Is subjected to the 
process of nitration which turns It from a harmless 
vegetable product to an explosive are obtainable 
by Germany and Austria In spite of the blockade. 
They are obtainable in any quantities, for tliey 
are obtainable In the last resort from the air. 
The air we breathe contains, as is now very generally 
known, nitrogen. But cotton cannot be produced 
in Europe at all. It is a sub-tropical product 
and the three great sources of it are the Southern 
States of the American Union, India and Egyjot. 
The supply from India and Egypt we can ourselves 
control. The whole question, of course, turns 
upon how to deal with the supplies from America. 
Whether to purchase them ourselves or no : whether 
to let them go through to Germany freely. 
It will here be objected by those who are 
familiar with the elements of modern armament that 
other substances than cotton can be used for the 
purposes of making the explosive In question. Wood 
pulp, for instance, can be used, and has been used. 
Almost any substance capable of absorbing a fluid, 
of fixing elements In It, and of subsequent dissection 
and moulding Into any shape large or small, might 
take the place In theory of cotton. 
This is true. The objection Is sound, and 
Germany and Austria have Inexhaustible reserves 
of wood, for Instance, which might replace cotton if 
cotton were denied them. Or they might fall back 
on rags, 
i I am reminded by s correspondent that, »trictly epeaking, in the 
Bnglish language and in legal terminology the teriu "blockade" applies 
only to the pretention of goods from entering a port. Bat I know of 
no other convenient term to describe what is called abroad a " bloous 
and I therefore continue to uee it. 
But the check that would be produced by a 
stoppage of cotton supplies may be compared to tlie 
check that would be produced by a sudden change 
of calibre In armament. It would mean the 
erection of new plant for the manufacture of 
this all-unportant military material, the charge 
used in your guns and rifles, and it would mean 
what Is perhaps more important under the strain. 
of war, new habits in the workman and his 
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