March 23, 1916. 
LAND AND WATER 
I 
NEUTRALS AT THE CROSS ROADS 
By John Biichan 
SINCE tlie beginning of the year, two speeches have 
been deUvered in America which will probably 
rank as the most important exercises in the 
spoken word which the world has seen since the 
outbreak of war. The speaker was Mr. Elihu Root, an 
ex-Senator of the United States, formerly a Secretary of 
State, and one of the foremost living American jurists. 
One speech was made in Washington, another to the 
Republican Convention in New York City. They dealt 
partly with American domestic politics with which we 
are not concerned ; but their main importance lies in the 
fact that for the lirst time a man of great eminence has 
stated the true doctrine of the interests of neutrals, 
stated it so broadly and sanely that his words mark 
an epoch no less for Britain than for America, for the Old 
World as well as for the New. We have drifted into a 
legal controversy with Washington in which lawyers' 
arguments have been bandied across the table. That 
way there lies no comfort. It is our business to get back 
to fundamentals, and raise the discussion to a different 
plane. Often in a wordy litigation the common sense of 
judge or jury cuts through the knots of dialectic tied 
by the counsel on both sides, and finds that a very plain 
((uestion is at issue. That is what Mr. Root has done. 
To understand the significance of his speech we must go 
nack a little. 
German Peace Talk 
The German attitude of mind, which believes in 
organised Force as the greatest thing in life and denies 
any rights to individuals or nations which they cannot 
maintain by force, is by now familiar enough to the world. 
It is the negation of the political ideals of the Allies, which 
are based on a reasonable liberty, and is indeed a denial 
of what is commonly regarded aS civilisation. Germany 
hoped to realise her dream through her mighty armies, 
which she thought, with some justice, would give her 
the land hegemony of Europe. But in recent months 
she has begun to have doubts about the efficacy of this 
method. She has made immense conquests of territory, 
but to her surprise she seems no nearer ending the war. 
The Allies have shown in her eyes a shameless disregard 
of the rules of the game and have refused to acknowledge 
defeat. 
About Christmas the Imperial Chancellor gave an 
interview to an American journalist and quoted " a high 
military authority " to the following effect : 
" Germany could take Paris. It would only be a question 
of how many men we were willing to sacrifice. But 
that would not bring England to terms, and therefore 
would not end the war. We could take Petrograd. But 
sujjpose we drove the Tsar out of his capital— Britain 
would not care. We could drive the Italian army into 
the sea — it would make no dift'erence to England. The 
more territory we occupy the thinner our lines and the 
greater difficulty in supplying them. Going ahead on 
such lines would help England more than' us." 
Germany is tardily recognising the meaning of Sea 
Power. Many wild things were said on this subject before 
the war. Sea Power alone will not give victory over a 
military Power. By itself it is not even adequate for 
defence. But now, as in the time of Napoleon, it stands 
between the land conqueror and his ambition. " Purpose- 
less they surely seemed to many," wrote Admiral Mahau 
of Nelson's ships before Toulon. " but they saved Eng- 
land. Those far-distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which 
the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the 
dominion of the world." It is as true to-day. The 
German High Command seem to have become converts 
to the creed which Admiral von Tirpitz has always 
preached. It is Britain's strength on the sea which 
bars the way to Germany's hegemony by land. But for 
tha.t fatal Navy an early decision might have been won. 
It is that Navy, too, which theatens her economic endur- 
ance. The " freedom of the seas," in Germany's sense 
of the phrase, nuist be the lirst of Germany's winnings, 
even if to gain it she has to sacrifice for a little some of 
her cherished territorial dreams. She cannot hope to 
dictate to the world on land if Britain rules the water. 
During the winter there have been various unofficial 
overtures, emanating chiefly from the German circles of 
higli finance. French and British business men have 
been abjured to interfere while there was yet time. Is 
Europe, it has been asked, to make a present of her com- 
merce to America ? Suggestions for peace have followed. 
Their tenor has varied, but the terms have been modera- 
tion itself compared to those which filled the neutral 
press nine months ago. But one condition has been 
common to all. Germany demands the " freedom of the 
seas." In this respect the views of the financiers coincide 
with those of the naval and military chiefs. 
The Freedom of the Seas 
This high-sounding phrase is worth examining. In 
Germany's mouth it means that a naval Power should be 
compelled during a campaign to tie its hands, and to 
treat trade with neutral countries as wholly free, except 
for enemy consignments of munitions of war. The land 
Power will have the free use of its hmbs, but the naval 
Power will be hobbled. The claim is a curious one to be 
made by a people who have sent every rule of civilised 
warfare crashing like Alnaschar's basket. But two 
blacks do not make a white. The dictatorial conduct of 
the British fleet, a conscientious neutral might argue, 
is really the complement on the sea to the high-handed- 
ness of the German armies on land. It is less brutal, 
to be sure, but it is no less arbitrary. If we decline to 
contemplate a German hegemony on the Continents of 
F^urope and Asia, why should the world tolerate a British 
hegemony on the sea ? Each of them is a form of 
omnipotence, and therefore has mankind at its mercy. 
This argument seems to have impressed a certain 
proportion of American observers. But it is fundament- 
ally unsound, for the two hegemonies differ in kind and 
in purpose. In time of peace the seas have been free 
for law-abiding citizens of all countries to go their way 
upon. This freedom was won by the British fleet 300 
years ago, and it has been maintained by the British 
fleet ever since. Is this the object of the German land 
hegemony ? A control exercised on behalf of hberty 
• and peace is one thing, and a conquest sought for pride 
and aggrandisement is another. The first is a task of 
police, the second of brigandage. Now that all nations 
are subtly hnked together the sea is the great common 
highway of the world, and its routes are the arteries of 
every nation's commerce. Let us imagine what the 
situation would be if Germany, holding her present creed, 
dominated the ocean as she now seeks to dominate the 
land. This freedom would utterly disappear. The sole 
security for its continuance is that Britain still rules the 
water. In the far future, when the domain of law has 
grown, this pohce work may be internationahsed, but for 
the present it must be done by the only Power that can 
do it. 
It is true that in the course of the war Britain has 
been, forced to depart from some of the practices of 
International maritime law in which she had hitherto 
acquiesced. It is easy to fasten on such minor infractions ; 
the American Note of November 5, 1915, laboriously 
enumerated them. But in a world war, where con- 
ditions have suffered a chemical change, some such 
departures were inevitable. Rules framed under one 
set of circumstances may be sheer nonsense under another, 
and International Law, like all human law, must have a 
certain elasticity and conform to facts. Some of the 
British departures may have borne hardly on neutral 
commerce. That was inevitable, for a great war cannot 
be strictly delimited. A householder, whose house has 
been shaken by an earthquake, cannot sue on his coven- 
ant for (]uiet enjoyment. If neutral rights have been 
infringed in minor matters, Britain is fighting to establisli 
the greatest of all neutral rights, the right to freedom. 
