August 10, igi6 
LAND & WATER 
13 
so far as can be seen, in the least degree weakened the 
military power of the Alliance. Nor have they been on 
such a scale as to prevent us making fresh drafts on the 
shipping that can still be devoted to supply, if it 
should become necessary either to begin a new military 
campaign based on an oversea port, or greatly to extend 
the campaign already originated, as at Salonika, from such 
a base. So far, then, as sea war has affected the Allies 
adversely, it may be said that no form of the enemy's 
naval action, except his submarine activities, has affected 
us at all, and that the effect of these is only economic, 
and not in the least grave or serious at that. 
Germany's Sea Trade Ruined 
If this statement is true, we could look upon the situa- 
tion at sea with almost perfect satisfaction even if it re- 
presented the whole truth, but of course it represents 
nothing of the kind. For while the sea service of the 
Allies, viewed purely as a military factor in the war, is 
integral and unimpaired, the immense help which the 
Central Powers, but chiefly dermany, obtained from 
overseas in the first year of the war, and indeed in the 
first three or four months of the second year, have been 
subjected gradually but effectively to a rigorous restric- 
tion. The enemy, of course, lost the service of his own 
shipping at the very outset. It has become a common- 
place to dilate on the fact that Great Britain was able, 
at the very outbreak of war, to assert and exercise a 
command of the sea with a promptness and completeness 
entirely unknown in history. In the wars with Re- 
volutionary France and with Napoleon, and in the war 
of 1812 against the United States of America, the enemy's 
trade in his own bottoms suffered with terrible severity 
from the naval predominance that we possessed. But 
in no one of these three wars was such trade absolutely 
extinguished. And complete as our naval predominance 
may fairly be said to have been in the two decades of these 
struggles, our own trade suffered even larger losses than 
the enemy — larger that is in numbers — for the relative 
loss was less owing to the far greater volume of the 
shipping we possessed. Throughout these wars too, 
France continued to receive a very noticeable supply of 
goods through neutral shipping as well as her own. 
However broadly effective our commerical blockades, it 
was not possible in the days of sailing ships for complete 
efficiency to be realised. 
But in this war things have followed a very different 
course. The sequence of events is familiar, but it bears 
restating. Relations between Great Britain and Germany 
were broken off at midnight on August 4th, 1914. Not 
a single ship left any German harbour for any over.-;ea port, 
nor cleared any oversea port for any German harbour 
from the moment that this event became known. From 
August 5th, 1014, to August 5th, 1916, German trade 
in German bottoms has been absolutely and totally non- 
existent. The traffic that ended with the declaration of 
war has never in the case of a single German merchant 
ship been resumed. There has been literally no evasion 
of our sea cordon. Only one ship in all these two years 
has broken through our line of cruisers, and she was not 
a trading ship at all, but an armed raider. Think for a 
moment what this must mean to the enemy. In 1913 
Germany had a foreign trade of approximately 
£1,000,000,000, if we add imports and exports together. 
Three-quarters of this was trade by sea, and more than 
three-quarters of her sea trade was carried in German 
ships. Now for two years she has had no such trade at all. 
All this the British Navy has been able to effect without 
striking a blow, because the German Navy allowed sea 
command to go by default, and preferred the risk of 
siege to the risk of battle. 
But no Blockade 
Unfortunately, the Allied governments did not besiege. 
The fact is incontestable that the sea command, 
which the enemy had ceded to us, put us into the 
position of being able, had we so wished it, to put the 
pressure of siege upon Germany and that, in a fateful 
moment, the resolution was taken not to exercise this 
capacity. We had subjected the enemy to the economic 
loss involved in the capture of a certain portion of his 
merchant fleet, in the internment in foreign ports of a 
still larger portion, in the compulsory idleness of the 
rest in his own commercial harbours. It was an economic 
embarrassment only. We left him free to import every- 
thing that could be obtained from oversea — so long only 
as it reached him indirectly through a neutral port. His 
supplies might cost him more ; but their war value made 
any price a low price. Rotterdam, Flushing, Amsterdam, 
Copenhagen, and Gothenburg at once began an importa- 
tion of food, cotton, copper and other goods from 
America — things all vital to feeding the army or arming 
it— on a scale that almost passes belief. Instead of 
taking our stand upon the rights conceded by all coun- 
tries to belligerents, we made the greatest renunciation 
of the sea offensive that could possibly be imagined. By 
an Order in Council — which was probably ultra vires, 
because it altered the rights of British subjects — we 
expressed our determination to be bound in our opera- 
tions against German trade carried in neutral bottoms , 
b / the provisions of the Declaration of London I will 
not weary the reader by a history of this unhappy 
instrument. Let it suffice that for many months we 
proceeded on the principle that only those articles were 
contraband that were recognised as contraband by the 
Declaration. For more than a year the enemy's imports 
of cotton, for instance,, were entirely unrestricted. Even 
after the Order in Council of March 1Q15, wherein His 
Majesty was represented as having " decided to prevent 
commodities of any kind from reaching or leaving Ger- 
many," the even course of the enemy's supply went 
smoothly on. It was not until the October or November 
of that year that the restrictions became real ; not until 
perhaps March 1916, that the enemy's supplies became, 
for practical purposes, limited to what he could get by ' 
subterfuge, smuggling and evasion. No one who has 
read the evidence which the German Press supplies us 
of the economic state of Germany to-day, can doubt 
that the stringency so tardily enforced, has already 
become a serious discouragement to the enemy. What 
would his case have been if the embargo had been abso- 
lute from the first ? 
The First Principles of War 
No explanation yet offered of our unwillingness to use 
sea power to its full extent is entirely satisfactory, 
because none of them is entirely credible. The prin- 
ciples underlying war are terrible, but simple. And they 
apply equally whether that war is carried on by land or 
sea. Philosophically speaking, no proper distinction 
can indeed be made between the two kinds of war. When 
one community determines to fight another, it sets about 
the task of imposing its will upon its opponent by force. 
And, in the main, it employs two, and only two methods 
to gain its end. Its first method is to send its armed 
force — whether by land or sea — against the armed forces 
of the enemy. It seeks to subdue those forces in battle. 
When the armed forces conquer — that is when effective 
opposition to one has been made to cease by the defeat 
of the other, when there is the surrender or destruction 
of the army or the fleets of the enemy — then, by in- 
vasion or by siege, the final resolution of the civilian 
population, represented by its government, is overcome, 
and peace is made upon the victor's terms. Sometimes 
the two processes are employed together. There may be 
passive obstacles to the progress of armed forces. Fleets, 
for instance, cannot operate on land. They cannot 
therefore employ force beyond the range of their guns. 
And a fleet can be put beyond the reach of an enemy's 
guns. But a stronger fleet can shut out the enemy from 
sea supply by denying the use of the sea to his merchant 
ships. Similarly, armies of greater force may be held 
stationary by physical obstacles, whether natural or 
artificial, such as mountains or trenches or forts. An 
enemy, unable himself to conquer, may then prevent 
or postpone the destruction of his armed forces. Just 
as fleets may be kept in inaccessible harbours, so 
armies may take ' refuge in impregnable strongholds. 
It is precisely at this point that the second process of 
war comes in. Siege becomes the auxiliary of active 
force, cutting off either a section of a country from 
the rest of it, or, as in the present case, a whole country 
from intercourse with the rest of the world. The be- 
leaguered community is thus compelled to support itself 
and its fighting forces, purely from such stores of food 
