October 23, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER. 
right to trade and an indisputable right to live. 
The points in issue between ourselves and the 
Americans may have caused much loss to planters, 
traders, and ship-owners; may have occasioned a 
great deal of irritation, and not a little very 
natural anger. But it is not this sort of con- 
troversy that will drive America into war, nor yet 
deflect the sympathy of a civilised Commonwealth 
from the Allies' effort to defend European civili- 
sation. We are to remember, then, that if 
technical forms of offence can be avoided, we can 
go to almost any limit in inflicting practical dis- 
advantages on individual American traders. The 
question is : have we done all that is possible to 
keep outside the limit of technical offence? The 
new campaign against the German trade in the 
Baltic goes far to clear up one important point of 
controversy. 
But tiiere is a second point that may ulti- 
mately prove of greater importance still. The 
American pacifists — some of them consciously, 
and all of them unconsciously — in co-operation 
with the Germans who are intriguing for peace 
e.t the German price, have made, and are now 
making, great play with the catchword " Freedom 
of the Seas." And the more clear it becomes that 
this country will in no circumstances agree to a 
limitation of the power of its Fleet in this, or in 
future wars, the greater the danger that the Ger- 
man-American pacifists, foiled in their larger 
policy, may try to strike at us through an un- 
expected quarter. What form this campaign may 
take, it is, perhaps, premature to discuss. The 
point to keep clear is this. Old memories of the 
Kevolutionary War, and more recent memories of 
our treatment of Ireland, supply a ready-made 
body of opinion in America, always ready to give 
formal support to any anti-British party. In a 
moment like this, wise statesmanship, recognising 
that the policy of Washington is not the policy of 
a single man, but an interpretation of the general 
wishes of the community, would go far towards 
disarming the anti-British party by making the 
British cause appear no longer that of a single 
State, but the common cause of the whole Christian 
European community. The fact that the Baltic 
Blockade is being carried out by the Czar of 
Russia, and not by the King of England, surely 
supplies exactly the occasion that is needed for 
■Buch a transformation as I suggest. 
18 5-1915. 
One hundred and ten years ago, on the day of 
the month on which these pages are given to the 
reader, was fought the Battle of Trafalgar, the 
most decisive sea fight in history. On such a 
tremendous anniversary it is right to recall the 
glorious actions of our forebears and to dwell 
upon the lesson of their victory. 
The jrear 1805 saw the beginning of the series 
of campaigns which were essentially Napoleon's 
own— that is,, carried out by him as Emperor, the 
unquestioned autocrat of France. For a time 
during the summer it v.as doubtful if the blow 
would fall first on England or first on Austria. 
The preparations for an invasion of England 
were colossal and undi-sguised ; but the failure of 
Villeneuve to get past the British squadrons into 
the Channel made it, by the early autumn, quite 
clear to Napoleon that the project was impossible, 
and he forthwith embarked upon the campaign 
that ended at Austerlitz. The news of the defeat 
of the French by sea and of the Austrians on land 
came to England within very few days of each 
other. Austerlitz began a series of victories that 
in a few years made Napoleon the undisputed 
master of Europe. First Prussia, then Russia 
succumbed, either to his armies or to his diplo- 
macy, and Italy, Spain, and I^ortugal were 
mastered by sheer prestige, threats, and un- 
scrupulous intrigue. 
Whatever faith the people of these islands 
had reposed in their victorious Navy, it must have 
been sorely tried when, in spite of victory, Great 
Britain was found to be alone, with all Europe — 
either allied with Napoleon or under his direct 
domination — arrayed against her. Our states- 
men in those days have not been represented to us 
by historians as a particularly brilliant or in- 
spired lot. The younger Pitt had died, despair- 
ing of Europe's future. We h?.d no Chatham. 
The incomparable Nelson was dead. There was 
not an Admiral, nor, indeed, a Genei-al, with a 
career to give the public confidence. How m.any 
foresaw the beginning of the end in the popular 
risings of Portugal and Spain, to which a handful 
of British troops were lending support under the 
command of a man whose reputation was based 
solely upon Indian successes? Compared with 
the numbers at Napoleon's dispo.sal, our force in 
Portugal was indeed " a contemptible little 
army." Compared to Napoleon's military re- 
nown, General Wellesley's repute v.'as as nothing. 
But the British command of the cea was a 
patent fact. It was her sea-power that turned the 
subservience of the conquered States to revolt, and j 
made the Peninsular the focus of those who in r^ 
every country had first dreamed and now dared 
act for liberty. 
FACTOR OF SEA-POVvER. 
It was characteristic of Napoleon's genius 
that he had realised, even before he was First 
Consul, that just as Austria alojie stood in the 
way of French domination of Eujope, so it was 
England that blocked the French domination of 
the world. But he misconceived the character of 
Great Britain's Eastern Empire and failed to 
understand that world empire has its origin and 
can only exist through sea-power. Sea-power 
itself he only understood too late. He thought 
that if the British Eastern Empire fell, the task 
of conquering Europe would be .simple. It is this 
that explains his invasion of Egypt. But by _, 
1805 he had learned liis lesson, lie then knew 
that the heart of the British Empire was England 
and not India, and that that heart could only be 
struck if the British Fleet was either defeated or 
evaded for a period sufficiently long to permit of 
the blow going home. Barham's plans, following 
the traditional British strategy at sea, and bril- 
liantly carried out by Nelson and his brother 
Admirals, made it impossible for Villeneuve's 
mixed fleet to enter and hold the Channel if only 
for the brief period that Napoleon thought sufti- 
cient for his plans. Trafalgar terminated the 
existence of that fleet. Thenceforward Napoleon, 
ever alive to the fact that Great Britain was the 
most formidable of his foes and seeing no hope 
of either beating her at sea or invading her with- 
out such a victory, tried to counter her sea-power 
and encompass her fall by the destruction of her 
trade. The principal use, then, of Napoleon's 
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