I, A N D AND W A T E R . 
jNovemoer ij, 1913. 
suppl>' or as a free road to neutral markets, is 
included in the protest. This makes it certainly 
a (■omprelien>r\ e indictment. But its very com- 
])rehensi\'eness is, from our point of \ie\v, its most 
liopeful characteristic. We have only to assume 
it a just indictment to realise its weakness. Let 
us ask oursehes a simple question, " What would 
happen if we admitted— as Washington contends 
- that the whole of our proceedings were illegal and 
indefensible, and ceased all these practices accord- 
ingly ? " 
WHAT SEA POWER EXISTS TO DO. 
The purposes of a predominant fleet are to 
defeat or demobilise the enemy's sea forces, in 
order that it may — 
(i) Assure a safe passage to our armed forces ; 
(2) Assure the sea-service of supplies to our- 
selves and our Allies ; 
(3) Exercise upon our enemy — so far as that 
enemy is dependent upon sea supplies — 
the pressure of siege. 
A beleaguered city can be brought to submission 
either by irresistible' military attack or by in- 
tolerable privation. It can be saved from the 
last when supplies are brought in. The besieged 
are none the less relieved if the supplies that reach 
them are brought, not by their own nationals, but 
by neutrals. The value of the British Fleet in the 
European Alliance depends on its power to achieve 
these three objects. All are vital to the success 
of the cause for which we are fighting— the 
reduction of German strength by hunger, by 
shortness of metal, no less than the reduction of 
the German forces by fighting them on land bj- 
sea-borne armies. If we may not ask the ultimate 
destination of cargoes shipped to Amsterdam, 
Copenhagen, Christiania or Stockholm, then there 
need be no limit to German imports at all, unless 
indeed they are limited by the capacity of the 
Dutch and "Danish railways and of Norwegian and 
Swedish shipping. We should certainly have the 
satisfaction of knowing that German imports and 
exports were not crossing the Atlantic in German 
bottoms. But our command of the sea, whose 
only weapon is siege, would be brought to nullity. 
Do the countrymen of the great Mahan 
seriously wish us to admit, if our siege of Germany 
does not immediately square with the " juridical 
niceties" of an old-w"orld law, that it is the siege 
and not the juridical niceties that must go by the 
board ? And observe, we are not asked to make 
this sacrifice in the cause of justice and humanity. 
No inhumanity, no barbarism, no murder, nor 
even threat to hfe, no cruel suspense to passengers, 
are alleged. It is injury to property that is the 
sole grievance, and, as neutral trade has always 
suffered in war, it is not the fact of injury, but its 
legal as contrasted with its moral justification^ that 
is in issue. One answer then to America— it is the 
reductio ad absurdum of their own argument— is 
to set out the mihtary position that would follow 
from the American contentions being admitted. 
AN ALLIED, NOT MERELY BRITISH 
CASE. 
But there is surely a far stronger reply than 
this to be made. And before we discuss it, a pre- 
liminary point should be remembered. Both in 
!a\'ing an embargo on German exports and imports, 
raid in enforcing that embargo, Great Britain is 
rot acting solelv for herself. She is acting for an 
'\lliance. The American protest, therefore, should 
be addressed as much to Russia, France, Belgium 
and Taiwan, whose agents in this business we arc, as 
to (Vreat Britain. And if, through the accident 
of previous correspondence, the Note is addressed 
to us alone, there is no conceivable reason why 
the answer should not be in the joint names of the 
five Governments. There would be one ad\'antage 
in this that would not be w^ithout an argumentative 
value. Mr. Page quotes Sir Edward's inter- 
uretation of the " Springbok " case, offered when 
the unlucky Declaration of London was being 
drafted, and it is not an interpretation that 
strengthens our case. Is there not much in the 
Foreign Office records in this matter that had 
better be jettisoned ? A reply sent on behalf of 
all our AUies need not carry this burden. 
THE HIGHER APPEAL. 
Given a joint reply to America, is it possible 
to base it on something loftier than the law of 
property ? The controversy up to now has run 
upon familiar lines. It is urged that American 
trade has suffered so that there is a substantial 
grievance to be remedied ; next, that our actions 
by which such damage has been inflicted, arc not 
strictly in accordance with previous case law. 
We deny the damage by pointing to the general 
import and export returns, and then fall to a legal 
wrangle over the latter-day meaning of old de- 
cisions. Would not a plain statement of the real 
position make it easier for America to endure 
what cannot be prevented ! 
When all Europe was in profound peace, the 
Central Empires devoted themselves, with a vast 
sacrifice of money, to producing an armed force 
of unprecedented numbers, of unheard-of mobility, 
and equipped with the implements of war on a 
scale beyond any independent expert's conception. 
To prepare this vast instrument of conquest, three 
years were devoted, and then without a suspicion 
of provocation by any European Power, without a 
single one of such Powers being in the least pre- 
pared, war was not only unexpectedly declared, 
but we all found ourselves engaged in an entirely 
unexpected kind of war. It was a case of un- 
scrupulous aggression. 
At the beginning of August, 1914, Belgium was 
a country entirely undefended and indefensible in 
any modern military sense of the word. Its safety 
lay in the honour of the neighbours who had 
guaranteed its safety. It was one of these 
guarantors that first threatened, then conquered, 
then outraged, and is now exterminating the people 
who had relied upon his honour. It was an act of 
which it has been well said that it was a challenge 
to the conscience of the world. Russia, France, 
and Great Britain are fighting in obedience to that 
challenge. W^e are in the field to vindicate public 
faith and to make a similar violation of it impossible 
in the future. 
The perfidious preparations of our enemy gave 
him a vast initial advantage. He had challenged 
Europe to a game which he alone knew. He did 
not expect Great Britain to accept the challenge. 
He reckoned without Great Britain's Fleet. He 
found that he too had to play a game he did not 
know. Our entry into the field checked his 
victorious progress. Our command of the 
sea secured our own and our Allies' supplies, 
and these, with our wealth and manu- 
facturing resources have given them staying 
t8 
