LAND AND WATER 
January 27, 191G1 
POLICY OF THE BLOCKADE. 
IT is clear that the Government uf this countr\" 
stands at the present moment at a turning 
point in the policy of the blockade. 
We need waste not a moment o' our 
readers' time nor the least o our own space in 
ridiculing the violent nonsense that has been talked 
\ipon one side in fa\our of a sort of revolution in 
policN' probably involving a universal war or in de- 
nouncing upon the other the muddle headed and 
contemptible rubbish about " sparing" the civilian 
population the impossibility of crushing a nation 
of such and such a number of million men or the 
" claims o humanity " against the power which 
is not only determined to destroy this country but 
lias tortured and burnt without mercy wherever 
it has passed. Those who arc in authority at the 
-present moment are necessarily concerned to win 
the war. They are concerned in this to an extent 
far greater thun any other men with the exception 
of the soldiers in the held. 
Being in touch with the million details of 
affairs so enormously complex they must neces- 
sarily avoid extremes, and were one to put sud- 
denly in place of any one of these men any one 
of those who have been clamouring for extremes 
the new comer would either evoke a disaster or, 
much more probably, break down under the 
weight of his new responsibility. 
In the maze of detail, every item of which 
has to be weighed and balanced, two great 
groups have necessarily presented themselves to 
the Government in the past year. 
The first of these groups was the mass of 
neutral interests closely interlocked not only with 
our own commercial interest but with our own 
power of obtaining essential supplies for the 
campaign. The second group was the simpler 
group of aggressive policies open to the power 
which commanded the sea : the group of actions 
which in various ways would solate the enemy 
and check his power for production (especially 
in material for war), cut off his food as far as 
po sible (a most legitimate operation based upon 
his own precedents and pohcy) and in general 
establish the strictest possible blockade. 
To arrive at a working compromise between 
these two motives neither of which could be 
neglected without peril of disaster— has been the 
anxious business of all departments but especially 
of the Treasury, tlie Admiralty, the Board of 
Trade, and the Foreign Office. 
It is possible that a determined policy of 
maximum blockade declared immediately upon 
the outbreak of the war would, in the shock of the 
moment, ha\e been possible without the challeng- 
ing of neutrals to arms or even interfering with 
our own supply from neutrals. It would have been 
an extremel\- risky gamble at ^^ery great odds and, 
r. member, with I aly and the Mediterranean then 
involved. At any rate the discussion of this is 
merely academ c to-day for, like universal service 
and many other dra~.tic po'icies that one psycho- 
logical moment was essential to such a move, and 
once the moment had passed every succeeding 
week made it more and more difficult The way 
in which the Government actually attempted to 
reconcile the weighty opposing motives acting 
upon them was to exercise an increasing pressure- - 
a pressure increasing s owly but none the less 
increas'ng to wait the entry of Italy into the 
A liance before making cotton, for instance, con- 
traband of war (for how could we prevent a 
potential ally from obtaining what might be and 
in the end proved to be material for our own 
explosives ?). to treat the small North Sea nations, 
in separate categories, favouring the more friendly, 
and in the result to establish a curve of gradually 
increasing strictness in the starvation of the Austro- 
Germans and the Turks in the matter of essentials 
not only for war but for civilian hfe. 
That policy has now reached a certain critical 
state in which for the first time it is useful and 
legitimate for pubhc criticism to be directed upon 
it. It will in the immediate future be of some 
consequence both to the support the Govern- 
ment shall receive at home — a matter of very 
great mihtary importance — and to the successful 
prosecution of the war that henceforward, of the 
two motives present that of the blockade shall 
more and more outweigh the other. 
The reasons for this conclusion are already 
apparent to most men of sober judgment and are 
beginning to find expression in quarters which 
deserve and obtain the attention of the Cabinet. 
The first and main reason is one even better known 
to the authorities than to even the best instructed 
portion of the public ; it is the fact that the block- 
ade has at last begun to tell very seriously upon 
the enemy. Now it is a maxim in every kind of 
struggle that in such critical moments you must 
exercise a novel and peculiar pressure. To tighten 
the screw just when there is a touch of panic or 
breakdown is the essential of every sound pohcy 
of success in every form of combat. The chief 
Prussian bombardment of Paris coincided with 
the first sharp rise in the death rate, especially of 
children, and with the serious pinch of famine. 
Next we have the fact that after a year's 
careful observation and a very methodical and 
thorough tracing of that curve of increase of pres- 
sure of which we have spoken, our Government 
and tiiose of the neutrals can establish a close 
estimate of what imports, and in what quantities, 
are necessary for the maintenance of neutral pro- 
duction and trade, and what margin may be 
fraudulently going to the enemy. 
In the third place we have aiTived at a point 
where we are far more independent than we have 
been in the past of external material from neutrals. 
All these things combined do mean not that 
this is the moment for any revolution in policy, or 
for any violent departure ; but for the transference 
of weight as it were from the consideration of 
foreign complexities to the consideration of the; 
enemy's really acute need. A man stands on two 
legs but in action, in fencing or 'n boxing, he is 
depending mon- upoji one than upon the other 
according to the work of the moment. His weight 
reposes upon one or upon the other. It is easy to 
understand how during all the anxious middle part 
of the past year and even late on into the autumn 
the weight lay upon the " leg " so to speak 
represented by the careful and singularly success- 
ful work of the Foreign Office in handling the 
complex problem of the neutrals, in safeguarding 
at lea t one of the few routes into Russia and in 
increas ng our own suppHes. But the time would 
se m to have come when there shou'd be an abso- 
lute transference of that weight to the other 
''leg" of the Navy. F'or at last we have 
many essential supplies of the enemy in our 
power. 
